Thanks God It’s Friday! After buckling down on an important project for the whole week, weekend finally comes and it should be the time to rejuvenate yourself after all the hectic weekdays. However, instead of relaxing, you cannot stop thinking about your unfinished project and getting worried about the upcoming deadline. Without realising it, your mind has always been occupied with work-related matters that makes you unable to enjoy your time-off. Even worse, you might end up using your holiday to get back to your tasks.

While you want to be a professional with astounding loyalty and commitment towards your job, it does not necessarily mean you should sacrifice all your lifetime for work. Taking work stress home will not only ruin your mental health as it overwhelms your mind and makes you restless, but also damage your body as it steals your sleeping hours that will lead to sleep deprivation. What should you do, then?

Every now and then, you should leave work matters at work and maintain good work-life balance. Here’s how you can achieve a peace of mind during your day-off:

See also: Self-Development: How to Keep Learning on Your Busy Schedule

Create a to-do list

Most people start to worry about their incomplete tasks right before the end of the day. When the clock shows the time is 5 pm, they have just realised that there are still a lot to do. This is most likely to happen when an employee does not have good time management. To deal with it, you can jot down a brief list of what you have to do for the next morning in your notebook. This way, you will be less bothered about the job matters as you have prepared for tomorrow’s schedule. Close the note and make sure you don’t open it again until the next morning. Besides task-related list, you should also create a list about what you will do exactly after you exit the office door. You can write any meaningful activities such as having exercise, making dinner, doing your hobby or other activity to fill your spare time.

Make another project

To divert your attention and stress about work, you can busy yourself to do other meaningful activities that will make you feel happy and refreshed. For example, you might want to change your room layout, have the wall repainted, take care of your garden, learn a new language, or anything else which needs your focus. However, you should keep in mind that this other project will not add up a new burden for you.

Don’t be alone

When people are alone, it is easier to have their minds wandering around and thinking about a lot of things, including their incomplete assignments. When it happens, you should find other person to talk to. You should go out of your room and have a quality time with your family. Or, you can call your friends and hang out with them. Talking about your job matters for minutes is okay to reduce your burden, but you cannot ruin your quality time with your beloved ones by lamenting the matters all the time.

Stay away from your working devices

There is a common pattern: you receive an email notification, then you open it and accidently you see other emails related to work. After that, you feel disturbed by the fact that you have not finished the report requested by a client two days ago. As a result, you cannot enjoy your holiday and choose to open your laptop and work on that report. To prevent this from happening, it is important to stay away from your working devices such office laptop or mobile phone. When you have an office account on your own mobile phone, you can turn the notification off until the next day you go back to work.

Next read: How to Deal With People at Work Who Don’t Respect Your Holiday