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Self-employed people, and especially entrepreneurs, tend to work longer hours than employed people. Those who work for themselves barely remember the days when they punched in at 9 am and punched out at 5 pm.
Their working life can easily consume all of their daylight hours if they allow it to, and things don’t get much better when they get home. It’s all too easy for the self-employed to feel like they’re never away from work, and that makes it all the more important that they find ways to relax and unwind after their long daily shift is over.
Unfortunately, not every ‘relaxing’ activity is as relaxing as it might otherwise seem to be. There are some activities that are good for you after a long, hard day’s work, and there are some that aren’t. Some of those that aren’t are, unfortunately, some of the most popular choices of post-work activity that we make.
If we make the wrong choices, we can make ourselves even more tired, stressed, and jaded than we were when we finished working, and than can bleed into the next working day. Continue doing that over many days, weeks, or months, and you’ll eventually burn out completely and get sick.
Sick days are the ultimate enemy of the self-employed because we don’t get paid for them. To avoid that happening to you, check out this list of post-work activities to avoid, and change your habits if any of them apply to you!
Don’t Go Straight To A Bar
Many of us still believe in the ‘work hard, play hard’ mentality. We push ourselves to the limit during working hours, and as a reward for our hard work, we want to let our hair down when the day is done.
Where better to do that than at a pub or a bar? We understand the appeal, but it’s not always a great choice. As a starting point, self-employed people don’t take long enough for meal breaks during the day. Going to a bar on an empty stomach is a terrible idea for obvious reasons. Secondly, you’re probably already very tired.
Alcohol isn’t going to help with that. You might have an urge to socialize, but if you have work the next day, it’s better to find a means of socializing that doesn’t involve drinking. From hangovers to regrettable conversations, there are multiple ways that post-work bar trips can be detrimental to your professional life, and so it’s best to save them for weekends.
Don’t Check Your Emails
We’ve touched on this earlier on in this article, but let’s give a little more emphasis to the point. Don’t check your emails after you’ve decided that you’re done working for the day.
Only two things will come of you doing so. You’ll either see something that you might be able to take care of right now and therefore sacrifice your evening time doing it, or you’ll see something that you can’t do anything about right now, and you’ll become frustrated because of it. Neither of those outcomes is relaxing.
Successful self-employed people and entrepreneurs have the self-discipline to put a hard stop on the end of their working day. If someone emails you outside of office hours, they’re not entitled to expect a response until the next working day. Don’t give them one. Have a clean break from work-related thoughts until you’ve got your energy back.
Don’t Gamble
This goes right back to the ‘work hard, play hard’ mentality we discussed earlier. It used to only be high ranking (usually male) executives who’d finish up a day of business by going to a casino, but now new UK slots website exists, casino games are available everywhere, and everyone is playing them.
Some people don’t see a difference between online slots and video games. Those people are wrong. A video game won’t cost you money if your luck isn’t in. An online slots game will.
You might well feel very relaxed – and perhaps even ecstatic – if you’re lucky enough to get the jackpot out of an online slots game, but you’re equally likely to regret it if you lose some of the money you’ve made that day on a bad spin or two.
Online slots and all other forms of gambling have a time and a place, and straight after work. The ‘high risk, high reward’ theory of gambling appeals to a lot of entrepreneurs, but it shouldn’t become part of your post-work routine.
Don’t Spend Hours In Front Of The Television
Television is great. We’d much rather live in a world of television than a world without one. It shouldn’t be the centerpiece of your whole evening, though. If all you do is sit down and watch television after you get in from work, you won’t feel like you’ve accomplished anything non-work related.
That means your personal life will begin to feel neglected, and you’ll feel like a working machine with no life outside of your job. Studies have been performed into the effect that binge-watching a whole series of a television show has on our brains, and very few of those effects are good.
Spend a few hours with the television by all means, but don’t sit down as soon as you get home and stay there all evening. Find something more productive to do with your time. If you can’t think of anything, it’s a sign that you need a new hobby.
Don’t Nap
Your sleep pattern is incredibly important. Getting a regular number of hours of sleep each night at a consistent time is how to get the best level of functionality out of your brain. As tired as you might be when you come in from work, and as comfortable as your bed or sofa might look, this is not the time to catch a nap.
If you feel sleep drawing in, make a coffee, and push it back by a few hours. If you nap as soon as you’re done with work, you’ll likely struggle to get a full night’s sleep later on, and that will play havoc with your body’s natural sleep rhythms.
It makes getting up the next morning harder and then has a knock-on effect on the next day. Stay awake. Find a distraction. Don’t sleep until it’s bedtime!
You might wonder what all of this leaves you with if everything we’ve mentioned above is cut out, but there are plenty of options. Go to the gym. See a friend. Check out a movie at the local cinema. Go for a walk. Indulge in a hobby. You’re limited only by your imagination, and nearly anything you could do aside from the things we’ve mentioned above would be good for you!