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Comment by shakezula | Hacker News Reader

I have found myself day-dreaming about a manual labor job for many of the same reasons. I am supremely jealous of my friends who work these types of jobs and can "leave it at the door" when they come home. I can't do that as well, even when I try to enforce boundaries. Slack, emails, my home office, etc... make it impossible to shut it all out. I'm considering tearing down my home office and working solely from a coffee shop because of it.

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Why are you on your work PC/phone after work? Or is it all the same? I notice a lot of people do not have personal computers anymore... like back in the 90s.

For home office I shut off the work PC and turn on the gaming PC where I am not logged in on work accounts. Work phone on disturb mode.

Or go take a walk.

Its not "impossible to shut it all out"

> Its not "impossible to shut it all out"

I think this highly depends on the person. For me, it wasn't just about enforcing separation of equipment.

For a time, I was using the same desk for work during the day and then switching inputs on my screen to use my personal gaming PC in the evenings. I still shut off notifications, never had notifications on my phone, etc.

This wasn't enough.

So I set up a small desk in another part of the apartment and made that the work desk. It was better than using the same desk.

This wasn't enough.

I've realized that a lot of my emotional states and memory recall are very anchored to where I am physically. Just being in the same physical space after a stressful workday was the problem. Glancing at the plant in the corner that I was staring at while contemplating a challenging problem earlier in the day immediately made me start thinking about work again.

> Or go take a walk.

Walking is one of the best ways I've coped. But I also live in a four seasons climate, and this isn't always possible.

As much as I dislike the idea of going back to a physical office space, I think this is one of the hidden costs of WFH.

It's not insurmountable, but neither is it easy.

For me, work from home didn't really change the hardest things about shutting down. It has never been (again, for me) the equipment or the emails or the messages, but that the mind doesn't stop chewing on things. I can put away the computers and go for a walk and still have my mind working over whatever problems I was trying to solve. I think it's an example of the mind working against itself, because I enjoy solving problems but I also enjoy putting work aside after hours.

I have heard of someone who got dressed up, walked around the block, then arrived at work (at home). And the same in the evening.

Commutes can be terrible but they do serve an important role in decompressing and separating spaces in our brains through a repeated ritual.

>For a time, I was using the same desk for work during the day and then switching inputs on my screen to use my personal gaming PC in the evenings. I still shut off notifications, never had notifications on my phone, etc.

I mean yea I have this too but I don't actively look at notifications. I'm constantly "on" and nervous but Ive just been that most of my life.

And now I'm in office. I do not know if its gonna get better.

> But I also live in a four seasons climate, and this isn't always possible.

Kind of curious what season it’s impossible to walk in, and how it’s related to 4 seasons?

I’ve lived in 4 season climates my whole live, and the only time I can think of it would be inadvisable to take a walk (though not impossible) is in the middle of a thunderstorm/typhoon.

I don't think it's about "advisability" per se, but desirability. I probably shouldn't have used the word "possible". I guess possible relative to my ability to deal with it.

Sure, you can walk in a snowstorm, when it's -15F, when it's downpouring, when it's 100F, but these are hardly a refuge from the inside environment in many cases.

Don't get me wrong. I've spent plenty of time doing exactly this, but my underlying point is that it's not a consistent or low friction option.

This reminds me of a fairly insightful meme: Tired of looking at Bad screen, can't wait to get home to look at Good screen

Back when I worked my last job. I’d find that when work was scarce (pretty common mostly thanks to an impenetrable bureaucracy) My brain would wake up and I would suddenly feel motivated to think about and work on new projects, then I’d get home and for some reason not have the energy and just pass out instead.

Perhaps a contributing factor is that when stuck at work you have a limited range of options that don't include passing out whereas at home you have fewer restraints and more competition from the easy solutions

That’s probably exactly it.

This is one of the biggest benefits to working from the office, at least for me. The mental shift between home and work is so much easier when they are very distinct physical places.

I genuinely miss working in an office because of this, and am looking to return to one soon, but right now it seems that just about every company has a hiring freeze in place for the foreseeable future.

A hybrid 3-4 in office / 1-2 out of office per week seems to be prime for my personal and social values at work.

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