Managing work and relaxation balance during the Christmas and winter period
By Niamh Sweeney
According to several sources, including theorist D. E. Guest, management of the work — relaxation aspects is currently more critical than ever during the winter months. For those who celebrate Christmas or are planning on staying inside this year due to the pandemic, responsibilities may pile up and merge with our relaxation or designated “switch off” time. The Christmas holidays usually arrive with food, fun, and social interaction, which can prove difficult to manage alongside everyday tasks. Also, Christmas can potentially generate financial stress and winter blues in cold climates, and this year these factors are worsened due to the current health crisis. Today we plan to address three ways you can improve or develop your work — relaxation balance during winter 2020.
Write down goals and establish a routine to increase flow
Depending on how agreeable or spontaneous your personality is, you may or may not approve of having a set routine and goal setting method. Many people prefer to have a specifically stylized routine, whereas others prefer an element of surprise and lack of repetition. Either way, in order to improve work — relaxation balance, it is necessary to establish hours that you can mentally label as ‘work time’. It’s difficult due to the desired combination of friends, family, children, cooking, and self-care — however, by focusing on our work hours when we have them predetermined allows us to enjoy these fun factors more.
This does not necessitate a 9 am-5 pm grind or have to be enforced every single day. However, establishing a point of the day where your mind is ‘entering work’ and then ‘leaving work’ can prove very beneficial in terms of being more productive and anticipating your following rest period. A way you can generate this is by making a daily goal list at the beginning of each workday and allocating a certain slot of time per goal until everything on the list is ticked off. Ticking off a list also generates a feeling of achievement and may result in optimum rest. According to psychologist Csikszentmihalyi, humans can flourish within set work times by entering what is known as the state of ‘flow’ — that being, being completely involved in what you are doing due to adequate challenge and skill. Csikszentmihalyi regards it easier to enter a state of flow when we designate certain hours as ‘work-flow’ hours.
Essentially, in order to be able to enjoy our work and relish in rest more effectively, we must have some sort of achievable challenges — such as the list of goals to tick off. You may already be accustomed to the idiomatic phrase, to ‘go with the flow’. In this case, we want to ‘enter the flow’ and in turn achieve effective balance.
Set specific times for hobbies and family/friends and turning off technology
For most, Christmas is a vacation associated with appreciating others and the warmth of human company. We may feel overwhelmed with the arrival of relatives or excess human interaction. Relating back to our first point on the importance of having at least a vague routine, a great way to achieve effective balance is by literally setting a time that you will relax — whether that is by practicing a hobby, spending time with people, watching a film and so on. The common concept of having a routine and time we ‘have to work’ has become normalized within industrial society — however, strangely enough, setting a time for when we ‘have to relax’ has not.
Setting a time for work and then a time for relaxation and sticking to it shifts our mindset from regarding work as the most important to regarding work and relaxation equally important. An easy way to process this is by imagining a weighing scales or a children’s seesaw — when one side is heavier, the weighing scales or seesaw lacks balance and equality. We want to be able to apply the same theory to workplace mentality — too much relaxation can lead to boredom and imbalance, and too much work can lead to stress and imbalance. Hence, by prioritizing work and relaxation equally, we can eliminate any time inequity and achieve our desired balance.
This ideology can also be applied to the internet and technology if your work requires extensive technological use. Selecting a time of day where you plan to detox from technology/social media use and sticking to it can also result in less of a tendency to make comparisons during the Christmas period. According to a 2019 Robinson et al study, excessive social media and technology usage can lead to an unhealthy comparison mentality, which has a correlational relationship with depressive disorder.
Vitamin D
Accessibility to sunlight and vitamin D during the winter months varies depending on your climate and location. For some, Winter months are cold and reserved for inside activities. However, boosting vitamin D can improve concentration during work hours and lead to more active recovery rest in non-work hours. According to several healthcare providers, including the NHS vitamin D intake is linked to effective cognition and memory. If our memory and overall mindfulness are working at an optimum level, we are more likely to be productive during work hours, hence actually ‘having the time’ to relax.
Whereas, if we are deficient in vitamin D or even lacking optimum intake, it may take longer for us to complete our work — resulting in working overtime and in an unhealthy lack of balance. Planning a lunchbreak during daylight hours or taking a ten-minute microbreak to go for a walk and have a coffee outside may prove doable and beneficial. If you live in a country where sunlight is lacking during this time of year, it may prove helpful to discuss vitamin D supplementation with your doctor — or investing in light therapy if recommended professionally.
Workee would like to wish everyone amazing Christmas, a safe holiday season, and upcoming year. Feel free to sign up for Workee early access that would also help to improve work and relaxation balance during the winter period — due to our categorized platform and convenient website design, you can separate your tasks and responsibilities following your desired work hours. Check out our website to find out more.
