How to Stay Focused on Your Work While You’re Breaking Up
Breakups don’t just kill romance – they can disrupt almost any area of your life. You don’t feel like doing what you enjoy, you can’t stop thinking about your ex, and it can be incredibly difficult for you to focus on work. If you find it difficult to stay productive during your breakup, here are some ways to overcome it.
The end of a relationship feels a lot like the loss of a loved one because, well, you are losing a loved one. It’s hard to accept that this person will no longer be in your life (or at least not like that). Of course, it is important to go through all the stages of mourning and how to heal from the breakup . But in this post, we’ll focus on specific steps you can take to deal with the challenge. Healing is part of it, but here’s how you can stay productive while healing.
Focus on small tasks
You’ve probably heard that you need to “take things one day at a time.” It’s a cliché, but it’s true. Bridging the gap is kind of any other goal. This helps break down the healing process into smaller, more digestible steps . Thinking about the weeks or even months you have to go through is overwhelming. Instead, focus on getting through the pain that day, or even the next few hours.
You can also transfer this concept to your work. When you have a work project and are thinking about a breakup, you may not be in the mood to follow through. But take on this task at a time. Focus on completing just one task. Don’t think about the next one until you get to it.
I tried this when I had a breakup years ago. When I thought about long-term work projects, I felt defeated. I wondered how can I get through this next month feeling so trashy ? Instead, I told myself that if I could complete one task that lasted an hour, that would be enough.
Soon enough, I found that I really enjoyed this job because it gave me a little respite from my grief.
Emotional Interruption Schedule
You might feel like you should completely forget about the breakup and move on. But instead of hiding your feelings under the rug, it’s better to work them out.
One study in social psychology and personality science suggests that periodically reflecting on your breakup may actually help you heal faster. The researchers studied 210 people who had recently experienced a breakup. Half of the subjects were ordered to come to the lab regularly and answer questions about their breakup for the next nine weeks. The other half were asked to complete only two surveys – one at the beginning of the study and the other at the end. The first group recovered better. According to research:
Participants in intensive measurement settings reported greater reductions in self-esteem impairment over time; no other major effects were observed depending on conditions. Improvement in self-concept clarity (for those in intense measurement states) explains the decrease in emotional intrusion associated with breakup, loneliness, and the use of first-person plurals when describing separation.
You can meditate periodically by taking periodic breaks during your work day. Jose Gonzalez, author of How To Overcome Your Ex, calls this “emotional interruption.” He suggests taking this time to reflect on your emotions and learn how to heal. Learning can mean talking about your breakup with a friend so you can understand him better. This could mean reading articles like this on how you can deal with the problems. The goal of an emotional break is to relieve grief and regain control of your emotions.
The magazine helped me. Over lunch, I wrote a few sentences about how I felt about the breakup and my thoughts on those feelings. It helped to put it down on paper because I could clear my head and focus on my work. It also gave me the opportunity to reflect, so I didn’t get distracted all day trying to ignore my emotions. I knew I would have time to deal with them later by keeping a diary.
But don’t get hung up
On the other hand, journaling doesn’t work for everyone. In some cases, this could aggravate the situation. A study by Atlantic Health found that some recently grief-stricken people actually felt worse after being asked to journal their breakup for 20 minutes every day. Jezebel reported this :
“If you are someone who tends to be completely in your head and repeat over and over again what happened and why it happened, you need to get out of your head and just start thinking about how you are going to get your life back. and organize your time, ”said lead author and psychologist David Sbarra. “Some people may naively call it avoidance, but it is not avoidance. It’s just re-engaging in life, and the test letter asks people to get involved in the process. “
You don’t want to avoid a breakup, but you also don’t want to be overly consumed by it. This is probably why Gonzeles recommends planning time separately from work, not only reflecting during this time, but also studying. Bottom line: Take the time to productively deal with the gap, but be careful not to dwell on it. Find the right balance based on your personal situation and personality.
Ignore your phone
As you probably know, it’s best to stop hanging out with your ex while you are recovering. This gives you time to think about things on your own. But it’s always tempting to text or pick up the phone, especially if your ex is reaching out to you first.
Stay away from your phone to resist this temptation and avoid the emotional outburst that accompanies communication after a breakup. This may mean turning it off. If this is not possible, it could mean blocking your ex’s number. If your ex could email you, you might not need to check your personal account at work.
The point is, you don’t want to bring drama from your personal life into your work, and when you’re in a breakup, it can be difficult to do as emotions run high. Minimizing any possible interaction with your ex during work hours will ensure that your mind is focused on work and helps you stay productive.
It also ensures that you don’t text your friends during the day to talk about the breakup. Again, it helps you deal with your emotions and learn from them. But this is why you should reserve interrupts so that you can allocate time for this without affecting your performance.
When your ex works in your office
Of course, if you work with your ex and have to see him every day, it’s much more difficult. Chiara Atik, author of Modern Dating: A Field Guide, tells Forbes :
This is not so much the end of a romantic relationship as a transition to a more distant, professional one. Your ex is still a part of your daily life, and changing the way you think about him and how you communicate with each other is not easy.
There are several habits that can help you deal with this problem.
- Be professional : Don’t scold your ex at the office or talk about breaking up with coworkers.
- Don’t talk about your relationship with your ex at work : It’s even more tempting to rephrase a breakup when your ex is in the same building. Do your best to avoid this temptation, and that probably means avoiding your ex whenever possible. Again, be professional and only discuss business.
- Focus on work : associating your job with your ex sucks, so focus on your skills instead. Take a few new ones and think about how you can improve yourself and make your job more challenging and enjoyable.
You will have to try a little to keep your professional life separate from your personal life. Until then, you can stay productive by doing your best to stay professional and focus on yourself, your job, and your skills.
Create a new procedure
Sometimes part of the breakup sucks – less because we miss the person and more because we miss the routine we had with them. As we explained earlier , when you love someone, you usually include them in your daily routine. When they are gone, you don’t know how to deal with mistakes in this routine. For example, if they have always washed dishes, washing the dishes will cause a fountain of emotions, making the task seem more difficult than it really is.
In fact, it can be very similar to addiction. This is what researchers at Stony Brook University did a study that found when they compared the brains of addicts to the brains of people who had recently experienced a breakup:
[T] He’s research findings suggest that the romantic rejection perspective and cocaine craving have several neural correlates in common. The findings are consistent with the hypothesis that romantic rejection is a specific form of addiction (Fisher 2004). The view that love denial includes subcortical reward gain / loss systems that are critical to survival helps explain why feelings and behaviors associated with romantic abandonment are difficult to control and provides insight into the high cross-cultural levels of persecution, murder, and suicide. and clinical manifestations. depression associated with the refusal of love.
You will have to break this habit. We offered to remind ourselves that restoring your routine is part of restoring your independence. And change that routine a little to make you feel stronger.
If you used to call your ex from your workplace every day for lunch, now lunch time will feel emotionally unbearable. Change your daily routine by leaving the office and eating lunch with a colleague instead. If you walk into your ex’s house after work, you may feel emotional if you start thinking about him towards the end of the day. Fill that space with a different routine, like going to the gym. You want to establish a new, independent daily routine that ends these emotional triggers. This not only helps you stay more productive, but it is also an important part of your recovery.
When you’re going through a breakup, you may feel like your world has been turned upside down. It is difficult to stay focused and productive during this time. But the steps above should help you control the healing process a little better.