After Hours

I have noticed that it takes me about 30 to 60 minutes to clear my mind after work. Until then, my mind is foggy and I’m living life on auto-pilot for a while. Sometimes I even feel I’m not completely back for the rest of the day. It sounds a little bit scary, and I the more I think about it, the more I realise it should make me scared, for my own good.

I don’t have any sophisticated takes on this matter, but I think it is quite obvioue that putting yourself into a mental state like this one cannot be healthy. Especially if it happens 5 out of 7 days in the week, each week.

It’s hard to plan things, it’s hard to get out of the rut. It’s even hard to read books at times. What’s easy is mindless scrolling of news websites and feeds on social media. But it does not help clearing the fog at all.

What I realised is that the more I focus on being here and now, the faster I get control over my thoughts, and the more present I am after hours. I don’t meditate or do any mindfullness stuff, but sometimes I force myself to simply close my eyes and get my shit together. Tink about past weeks, current date and upcoming days, any chores that I forgot about – it’s so simple and silly when I describe it in words, but I know that it’s often just too hard to do properly.

I read today that acute aerobic exercise sessions can help you recover quicker from cognitive fatigue than leisure time. The study even used “watching a popular sitcom” as the “leisure” approach. I guess this means I should do a trial myself. Let’s say instead of another episode of The Office I should probably do a 20-minute run around the block. And then compare the results with my notmindfullness sessions.

Not sure when I’ll start with this research of my own though – still waiting for funding.