Feeling as though you’re suffocated by your own restricted schedule can bring a lot of anxiety. It can feel as though you can’t find any time for yourself, and if you make time for yourself, you might start to worry that you’re falling behind on your work.
This is a cycle that’s difficult to break, but it might be that small adjustments are able to offer you some reprieve. Instead of immediately looking at taking larger breaks, just examine your schedule and find how and when you can take smaller breathers – they might have more of a positive impact than you expect.
A Simple Game You Enjoy
Thanks to the multipurpose technology offered by smartphones, as long as you carry one, you’re never too far away from a games console. Even if you’re someone who regularly enjoys gaming on other consoles, you might not often look to your phone for this purpose due to the different games that the varying platforms are associated with. This gap is narrowing thanks to improving mobile hardware, meaning that you can enjoy new high-budget titles on some phones, but you still might want to investigate the simple, short-form games that can help you to disengage and enjoy yourself.
Playing Blackjack online offers a straightforward solution as it’s a game that many people are already familiar with, regardless of whether or not they consider themselves to be gamers. Alternatively, there are multiple rhythm games or similarly distracting offerings available on your app store of choice.
Breathing Exercises
You could also use your time to try and combat the stress you’re experiencing. Of course, for long-term results, it might be more beneficial to seek out a change in your line of work or therapy that can help you deal with the stress. Still, there are small ways that you can use these times to help yourself.
Breathing exercises are something that you can deploy easily, and they provide you with a small reprieve – drawing your attention away from your swirling anxieties and back to your breathing. This doesn’t sound as though it would be transformative, but over time, it can help you find little forms of escape here and there.
Take Time Off
While taking time off might seem to clash with your previous issue of feeling more stressed when you know you’re kicking work down the road, it might still be worth doing. Taking time off gives you a whole window to engage with your hobbies, go outside, spend time with your friends – all activities that can provide you with a mental health boost. As much as you might worry about cluttering up the time you spend working even more and adding stress to your professional life, this in itself could be a prime opportunity to relieve some of that stress. The risk is that you spend all of the time you take off simply worrying about work again. In that case, techniques like mindfulness and breathing exercises can come in handy yet again.
