Break the Cycle

Posted on Jul 30, 2020

I’m quite a workaholic and I know I have this bad habit. It tends to be bearable in normal circumstances but in the current pandemic situation is been so noticeable than in my dayjob I’ve been asked, repeatedly, to stop work.

I know, I’m lucky. My employer asks me to have healthy rutines. To keep a healthy personal life and stop my work, even though they are benefited in the short-term of my workaholicsm but they do understand the only outcome of this continuous habit is burnout and they want to avoid it.

Given this has been the case, I decided I was going to break the cycle and take actions to stop the workaholic train. Yet, my context makes things that others have tried a little more hard. People tend to have different locations in their home for work, so they can “disconnect”, yet I have only one place available at home to work and play and live. I love being at a computer, my work is computers, my hobby is computers, so is kinda hard to stop working.

I started by having separate computers, separate keyboards, separate screens, separate apps. I even changed themes on my code-editors so I can “disconnect”.

IT WORKED. Weird, right? But thanks to this my brain basically disconnects from work and surprisely I’m even writing in my personal blog again.

If you’re like me, then try it. Anything that hints your brain “work-time ended” will help.

Hope you can break the cycle as well.