5 Easy Ways To Unplug Yourself From The Matrix

It's late. You arrived home after a 14-hour day of meetings, phone calls, and an over-extended dinner-meeting. You're exhausted. You flip on the television and pour yourself a drink just to unwind. Suddenly: bling! Your phone notifies you of an email from your boss with a document to read ahead for the following morning--it's 11:30... 

It's Saturday morning, 10:00. You just finished pouring your sons a bowl full of cereal and milk, and are waiting for your elixir of life--dark roast coffee--to brew. You're going over plans for the day with your family--it's been a long week of meetings and late night reports. Just as you're pouring your coffee, "Bling!"--an email from work. "Sorry Honey--I've gotta take this one..." as you leave the boys clowning over their cereal bowls and your coffee swishing around in coffee maker.

These scenarios are commonplace in modern life. Our mobile devices keep us plugged in 24/7/365--and it's becoming harder to unplug from them. As a result, overwork is on the rise, stress is on the rise, and, overall, people are working significantly more hours in a given week than ever. 

There are a number of things that drive this behaviour: insecurity of losing one's job, the rush of being needed that a late night email can create, the cognitive flow of ideas and information that results from having one's head in work 18-20 hours per day, and, among many other things, an overall ambition that drives one to greater feats of over-work and under-rest. And technology is driving and feeding this behaviour. There is a growing body of research showing the decline of productivity and personal health when you work longer than between 40 and 50 hours per week: burn-out, depression, home-life stress, etc. 

Whether you're working for Jeff Bezos's Amazon or elsewhere, it's important to be able to unplug yourself from work and draw the boundaries you need to be able to get refreshed, spend time with your family, and get a decent night's sleep. Below are some strategies for unplugging from the machine:

1. Put a plan together for being offline: It's important in your work to be available, but you also need some time to yourself. Between the work emails and the social network notifications, you can be on-call 24 hours a day. So what is your unplug plan? Will you spend 10 minutes offline every 2 hours, or only check email at a certain time of day? Make a decision, test out some different options, and put it to practice. 

2. Turn the thing off: When you've unplugged, try to literally turn off your machine--for real! It's easy to tell yourself you're taking  break, but then that Facebook message pops up and you can't help but respond. When you turn it off, you won't hear the notifications, and thus be free of it for that period of time. What if there's an emergency? Well, how have humans handled emergencies for the past 30,000 years before iPhones?

3. Put your brain to use: You've come home and are still amped up from work, and can't shut your brain off without a three-finger single malt and re-runs of the Mindy Project. Here's something else to try: brain games. It could be chess, Soduku, or something else--anything that will occupy your brain. It could be fussing around with a crossword puzzle. If you love playing an instrument, do that. Zone-out when you're working on a car? Perfect. Anything that will occupy your mind.

4. Sign out: It's easy to say you'll unplug, but you might need to just sign out on any company accounts for the evening and/or weekend. Easier said than done, but necessary.

5. Leave your laptop: Do you really need to take your company laptop home with you, or can you leave it at work? And if you take it home, does it have to leave your attache case? Leave your laptop in the car, or in the closet--it'll keep you from having to look at it.

These are important tips to try out and use. We all need breaks. Think of the term recreation as literal re-creation--to re-create yourself from the workaholic you might just be back into a human being with passions and hobbies and family and, dare it say, a need for some fun. Don't let the technology drive you--you can always turn it off. And when you do, everyone will benefit--including your boss.