7 More Ways to Leave Work at Work

One of the difficulties with nurses, or many other jobs for that matter, is that it can be really hard to leave work at work. This failure to separate work from everything else means that our stresses, anxiety, and even sorrow from work spill over into all the other areas of our lives. Those things from work don’t have a right to infect the rest of our lives.

A few days ago I posted 5 ways to leave work at work. Here are 7 more ways to leave work at work.

1 – Cry

It’s crazy in a field dominated by women and completely focused on caring for others that some of us would feel that we can’t cry. That’s such BS. It’s totally ok to cry. Sometimes in nursing, you need to take a couple of minutes off the floor to cry. That’s ok. Certainly, there are times when we simply can’t leave the unit. That does not mean that we can’t let it out later.

Before you carry the stress, anxiety, and even sorrow from your shift home with you, take a few minutes to just sit in your car and cry. LET IT OUT!!

I’ve done this both after and even before some shifts. I don’t need to tell you this, but crying can be incredibly therapeutic. One shift I can clearly remember even though it was nearly 20 years ago. Over the course of 4 hours on this particular shift, I had 3 patients code and die. Two of those patients came in talking to me and left in a freaking body bag. Yeah, I cried after that shift. I doubted if I should even be a nurse. I seriously considered what other options I might have, all while in the care before I even got home.

2 – Learn, then move on

The unfortunate reality is that sometimes we will make mistakes. We will miss things. We will forget things. We are human. In the vast majority of these cases, no harm will come to our patients because of these things. Still, we will tear ourselves up over them. When we make mistakes, we need to spend a little time thinking about them. If you don’t, you can’t learn from it.

However, think about it, learn what you need to learn from it, THEN MOVE ON!

Running it over and over in your head isn’t going to change anything. You will not learn it any better by dwelling on it. You cannot change what has passed by dwelling on it. All you will do is make yourself crazy and will carry that stress home to your family. Learn what you need to learn, then move on.

The other thing about this is that sometimes bad things happen. It sucks, but it’s true. Sometimes we can do everything right and our patients still die. These might be the hardest ones to let go of because there is often not really anything we can learn from them. We did nothing wrong, so there doesn’t seem to be a lesson hidden in the experience. The lesson to learn in these situations is that sometimes you can do everything right and bad things still happen.

3 – Set boundaries

The entire goal of this post is to help us leave work at home. Yet, some of us will come home and want to talk with our spouse about our day. While there can be value in this and your spouse may really want to support you in this way, sometimes it’s better to not talk with them about it. It can be difficult to leave work at work if you are often coming home and talking about it with your spouse.

I’m not saying that you can use your spouse for support. By all means, tell them that you had a rough day. Tell them that you need a hug. Ask them to rub your feet, bring you a drink, run you a bath, whatever you need. But, they are probably not the best person to talk with about the specific stresses of your day. Doing this brings your work into your house and into your relationship which makes it impossible to leave it at work.

4 – Plan for tomorrow, then stop thinking about it.

There are times when you leave work with things undone. This is often less of an issue for bedside staff but can be true for them as well. These are often things that you do need to do. However, thinking about them as you drive home or as you sit with your family, or as you lie in the bed will not make them get done.

So, make a plan for tomorrow, then stop thinking about it. If you really want to leave work at work, make this a habit before you leave each day. With the different office jobs I’ve had over the years I found it valuable to keep a notepad on my desk to the right of my keyboard. In fact, if you were to look at my desk right now, as I type this, there is a notepad next to my keyboard. One habit I’ve often kept was to take a couple of minutes at the end of my day to write down, on that notepad, a few things that I wanted to get done tomorrow.

I’ve known some leaders that use sticky notes instead. For some, they would write their entire to-do list for the upcoming day on one sticky note. The reality is that you are not likely to get more done than what you can fit on a sticky note. So, writing more than that down doesn’t really help. Others would write each task on a separate note and stick them to their desk, wall, or computer monitor. They got extreme satisfaction from completing a task, wadding up that note, and throwing it away.

For the techy folks, such as myself, you can do the same thing with any of the multitudes of to-do, task management, or project management apps out there. For me, I have a list in the task manager I use called “Today’s Tasks”. This list is not for everything that I have coming up. It is not for every project. It is for the specific things I want to accomplish today. If I don’t accomplish them, then I will review them at the end of the day for tomorrow, adding anything that’s new for tomorrow. I make a point to keep this list to 5-7 items MAX.

5 – Put the phone down

As mentioned earlier I like to ride home with the windows down. Yes, even in the summer in Florida. If I’m driving home and don’t have anywhere else to be I will roll the windows down and ride. While doing so, I’m either enjoying the silence or jamming with the music up loud. In either case, what I’m not doing is talking on the phone.

My wife, on the other hand, likes to talk on the phone while driving home. Depending on who you are talking with this can help you disconnect from work. However, I had to explain to my wife that if I was talking on the phone with her, then it, in essence, brought me immediately from work to home, without any mental separation and, therefore, no time to disconnect from the other. She understood and gave me that time, knowing that it meant I would be much more present when I got home.

Now, the one caveat I would give to this is if the person you are talking with is your debriefing partner. I’m not talking about the coworker that you like to gossip with (Don’t hate me. You know it happens.). AND, if is your debrief partner, then debrief and move on. If you spend the entire drive home complaining about work, then you will bring that work all the way to your little house and right up into your home life with you.

6 – Find a distraction

Throughout my career, I’ve had a few different go-to distractions for when I simply couldn’t get myself to drive home yet. Sometimes you just need a little extra time to decompress before you’re ready to go home. When I worked nights one of my favorite places to do this was a local coffee shop. In fact, we would often combine this with debriefing as a group of us gathered there to debrief and drink coffee.

Another go-to for me was the church we were part of at the time. Obviously, there was nobody there at 7:30 in the morning when I’d be on my way home. That wasn’t the point. Heck, I usually didn’t even go in the building, even though I had a key. You see, this church is on a large lack. So, I’d often drive there. I’d drive up as close to the lake as I could safely get and park there. Sometimes I’d just sit in the car. Other times I’d get out and walk along the shore. Other times I’d sit or lay on the hood of my car and stare out at the water.

The exact location of this distraction isn’t important. The point is simply to find something to allow a little more time before you go home. This is not for every day, but when you need it, it’s there. I would add one thing. If your distraction includes an alcoholic beverage, don’t be stupid and try to drive yourself home. Be safe.

7 – Get a hug

If you read the previous 5 ways to leave work at work then you know that this was on that list. I wanted to include it again because it’s really that powerful.