It’s the most wonderful time of the year. Champagne is flowing. Presents are gifted. The fridge is stuffed full of various cheeses.  

But wait, what’s that smell…? And why is there smoke coming out of the oven? Great, now the turkey’s ruined. Again.  

Who was in charge of potatoes? What do you mean you forgot?!  

Now everyone’s yelling at each other. “For the last time, Sarah, Yorkshire puddings don’t belong in a Christmas dinner!” You can’t find the batteries for your son’s new toy from Santa. Your mother-in-law hates her present and isn’t hiding it particularly well. Your brother’s nipped out for a cigarette to “avoid all the drama”.   

Suddenly, you’re 17 again, rolling your eyes at your sister.   

It’s times like these, just two days into the Christmas break, when work feels particularly alluring. Think, a place where people (mostly) act rationally. Where politeness is the norm. No one is arguing over boiled versus roasted carrots. 

Maybe you should just reply to a few of those work emails. It’ll make your January a bit easier… 

Or will it? 

Should you reply to just one email?

The short answer is no. Doing so might make you feel more stressed in the long run, finds new research. 

Mentally disconnecting from work has a consistently positive impact on employee wellbeing, according to research from the University of Trier in Germany and RWTH Aachen University. This, the research found, is true regardless of emotional responses, job satisfaction, and life satisfaction. 

The researchers conducted a large ongoing survey of 5,411 employees. Their psychological detachment from work was measured using a scale assessing the ease of ‘switching off’ from work during leisure time.  

The recorded outcomes covered negative emotions like sadness, anger, and worry; and positive emotions like happiness. It also covered cognitive wellbeing, with aspects such as job, family life, health, sleep and global life satisfaction. 

The results found that employees who had higher detachment scores from work were consistently associated with better wellbeing, such as more happiness and less anger, worry and sadness. They also had higher satisfaction across job, health, leisure, family life and overall life satisfaction. 

The study offers some interesting insights into managing stress from work. It reinforces the idea that recovery from work stress doesn’t happen automatically when work ends. If people are still mentally engaged with work, the stress response stays active – and can spill over into other aspects of life.  

Instead, taking that time to detach from work -?even if it does mean throwing yourself into hectic family life over the holidays – can be incredibly positive for your wellbeing in the long run.  

How do you switch off from work?

Switching off from work is easier said than done. Even if you do have a perfect family Christmas, you may find yourself lying awake at night thinking about that one unfinished project, or that email you really should’ve sent.  

A group of researchers from universities across Germany looked into how to help people psychologically detach from work during their free time. To do this, they pooled and analysed results from 30 different studies published between 1998 and 2020. 

The researchers were looking at four key measures of effectiveness:  

• How detachment was measured
• Whether the intervention addressed job stressors, primary cognitive appraisal (such as beliefs about work, etc), and secondary appraisal (such as coping skills)
• Duration and level of intervention
• Participant characteristics, such as age and initial health status

They discovered that if you’re needing to switch off from work, you should do the following five things:  

Change your mindset to work 

The researchers found that approaches that changed how people think about work demands – for example, Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT)-based workshops, cognitive restructuring exercises and planning and prioritisation training, were more effective than those that didn’t.

So, ensure you develop strategies to manage your work tasks proactively during work hours, and set goals and plans for the year ahead. The festive period can be an excellent time to reflect on what went well and what you can do better next year -?both in your personal and work life. Journaling can be a calming way to do this. 

Practice mindfulness 

Several studies used mindfulness programmes (such as Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), guided meditation, and present-moment exercises). These studies all found that mindfulness techniques led to small-to-moderate improvements in psychological detachment. 

During the festive break, try to incorporate mindfulness practices into your daily routine, through guided meditation (the Calm app for example offers lots of excellent exercises in mindfulness), focused breathing sessions, or something that requires focus, such as reading, jigsaw puzzles or crosswords – all perfect activities for the festive season. 

Set your boundaries (and stick to them) 

If you’re constantly available on email or Teams, no wonder you find it hard to switch off. The researchers discovered that many studies included interventions like no after-hours email policies, manager modelling of off-time, and flexible time boundaries.  

One way to set these boundaries is to make your intentions clear in an out of office. State that you will not be responding to messages or emails during this time and that you will reply on the date you’re back. It might also be helpful to switch notifications off too if Teams messages and emails tend to pop up on your phone.  

And most importantly, stick to this. Remember: people do not want to be receiving emails from you while they’re trying to switch off too!  

Try stress-reduction exercises 

If, like me, your family has a flair for the dramatic, stress relief exercises could be good to do anyway. But the researchers also found such activities to be an excellent way to reduce work-related stress. Not only can it help to cleat your mind, it can also help to improve your sleep quality, which, as we know, is linked to reducing overall stress. 

This could again be through breathing exercises, mindful movement like yoga or pilates, or my personal favourite: crocheting. The key thing to avoid here is scrolling on your phone.  

As a last resort – try everything! 

Some of the studies the researchers looked into combined CBT, mindfulness, and boundary techniques -?so, all of the above. They found combining these techniques resulted in stronger effects on detachment as thoughts, attention and environment were targeted simultaneously.  

As a result, employees learnt to restructure thoughts, focus on the present, and modify external cues all at once. 

How to have a holly jolly Christmas

If you’re struggling this year, remember you’re not alone. This is an overwhelming time for a lot of people. YouGov’s study on how Christmas impacts people’s mental health found that 43% of people feel stressed during December, 30% experience anxiety over the festive period and 24% feel lonely. 

Be kind to yourself and to those around you. It’s likely that some of your family members are also feeling stressed and overwhelmed too.  

And if the above exercises don’t work, a long walk and a chat with a friend over coffee can also make a lot of problems feel smaller.  

Merry Christmas from all of us at BlueSky Thinking. We hope you have a restful and restorative break.

By, Chloë Lane 

Interested in this topic? You might also like this…