Summertime is fantastic. For many of us it is synonymous with visions of endless fun, delicious watermelon, and beach fires under an August full moon. The fast-paced lifestyle we lead in the workaday world, however, can make the transition to a more relaxed, summer-y attitude quite hard.
Even if you are on the perfect 2-week vacation, your work mentality may keep you checking your email every couple of hours, or checking in with a colleague to ensure nothing falls apart while you’re away. And that’s not the way to relax.
WORK MODE OFF
An overloaded mind cannot relax that easily. We train ourselves and discipline our minds to be focused, productive, and results-oriented. While this is an asset on the job, it means that when we have free time on our vacation we often don’t know how to redirect all that energy and productive flow. This causes a lot of anxiety and stress; for some people, it even leads to a feeling of doing something wrong or being useless.
This mentality, so useful at work, can be eliminated through simple but effective hacks that reposition you to make the most of your time off.
You might not realize it, but your work mentality is actually something you can switch on and off by choice. There are practical things you can do to achieve this: turn off your smartphone, log out of your email account and any social media sites, turn off work notifications on your computer, and stay away from any tech device with an Internet connection.
This is the first step to getting out of your work mentality.
SUMMER MODE ON!
Once technological distractions are out of the way, you should consider the next step: Summer Mode On. You can completely relax and empty your mind to fully enjoy summer. The secret is not some expensive vacation or extraordinary experience – although these wouldn’t hurt — because what you need is something much simpler and inexpensive: a good book.
Reading is the best way to take your mind off things. Whether it’s work issues, a frustrating personal conflict you cannot deal with right now, a nagging 3-year-old, or anything else that’s occupying your brain, everything can be solved (or at least paused for a while) when you immerse yourself into a fascinating page-turner.
Next time you’re heading for the beach or the pool don’t forget to take a book with you. It will put you into a vacation mood super fast. The mere habit of reading a book on vacation acts like a STRESS OFF switch you can access with a mere turn of the page.
If you’re not the bibliophile, you can still enjoy the benefits of reading by curating a collection of articles and other content you want to read. Just make sure they’re fun and interesting – nothing work-related – and that you’ve downloaded all of the documents before you leave, so that you don’t have to turn your internet connection back on.
Get lost into a riveting plotline, empathize with your protagonists, and feel grateful you’re not in their plight. Get lost in a romantic realm where the world seems to stop and see how all that work craze will feel like it’s far, far away. Summer reading mode: engage!
