Self - August 5, 2019

How to Detox Your Life: Work

Time for installment number three of four in my How to Detox Your Life mini-series. Have the other posts on home and self-care been helpful for y’all? I really hope so! They’ve honestly been helpful to me just writing them out and visualizing what I need to do to clean up my own life a bit.

But anyway, today is all about work. I’ve talked about finding work/life balance on the blog before, but never really dove into what you can do to feel more at peace throughout your workday, which is what I think detoxing your work life will help you do. I’m definitely not an expert at this because it’s something I constantly find myself working on, but I do have some tips that I think will help you as you work your way through detoxing the different areas of your life.

Here’s what I suggest:

Clean up your email/tech

I don’t know about y’all but I cannot function if my inbox slash digital file system is a mess. This could be slightly time-consuming, so you might want to do it in chunks over a week-long period or something but go through every single email and all the subfolders you have set up in your inbox. If the thought of this gives you anxiety, that probably means you definitely need to get it done for your sanity. Trust me when I say I KNOW how overwhelming it can feel, but you will feel like a hundred-pound weight has been lifted once you’re done.

I would also recommend doing the same for any folders you have on your computer for work. Delete what you don’t need and organize what you keep. You can categorize everything by year, then by the project – that’s how I like to do things. I have some good tips in this post about cleaning up your tech in general that I think will help you get started with this part of your detox.

Touch base with your boss

Not knowing where you stand with your boss or not having a clear picture of what your path is at work can be very emotionally draining. If you work in a traditional office and have a manager you report to, definitely set up a meeting ASAP. Go in with some talking points about what you’ve contributed to the company so far, but also prepare some questions for them about what they see your future being with the company. I know I don’t have this exact scenario but I have brands and partners that are important to my business and knowing where I stand with them always makes me feel much more confident in the work I’m putting out.

Check-in on your relationships with your coworkers

Sometimes I think it’s easy to think of your job as this place you have to report to, work hard and then go home. But there are a lot of things you can do to make your time at work more enjoyable like building relationships with your coworkers. I know when I worked an office job, having someone to talk to, even if it was just about stuff going on in the office, made the day so much better. This can especially be true if you’re at a job you don’t love. So ask you cubicle neighbor to go to lunch or happy hour – you never know when a work friend might turn into a real-life friend!

That being said, in the spirit of detoxing your work life, it’s also important to be aware of any negative relationships happening at work. You don’t usually get to choose all your coworkers, so chances are there’s someone in the office you don’t quite mesh with and that’s OK. Make your best effort to work with them and focus on what you can control. I’m someone who wants everyone to like me because I’m a people pleaser (something I’m working on), but you can’t control how that person acts or what they do and the sooner you accept that the better off you’ll be.

Set goals for yourself

Something that always reinvigorates me when it comes to work is sitting down and writing out new goals. It just feels like a fresh start, ya know? You can think about them from both a long-term and the short-term perspective, which I break down how to do in this post. It will give you some ideas on how to use your long-term goals to set your short-term ones if that makes sense? Just go read that post, k? It’s one I refer back to often whenever I’m feeling like I’m in a rut with work.

These are simple ideas, but I think once you add them all up they’ll make a positive impact on your work life and hopefully help you feel refreshed!