Facing back to work blues after Spring Break?
A recent
study
suggests that "re-attaching" to work at the start of a work day is just
as important as "de-attaching" at the end of the work day. Researchers found that h
aving a re-attachment process is vital for worker engagement throughout the workday.
In practice, this is basically starting to think about work before you start your work day.
Suggestions from the study: reattachment to work may already start when still at home (e.g., when thinking about specific tasks that need to be done or when discussing the upcoming workday over breakfast with one’s spouse). It can occur during the commute (e.g., when mentally simulating a difficult conversation with one’s supervisor while sitting on the train) or upon arrival at work before actually starting to work (e.g., when mentally running through one’s to-do list while standing in line for a coffee). To be effective, reattachment should take place before logging into a formal time-tracking system or before starting billable hours.
