Forcing yourself to shut down at 4.00pm is let’s face it rarely an option. Planning, marking and meetings always seem to find a way to creep into the end of every day but as any teacher who has experienced burnout will tell you, finding a way to maintain some semblance of work-life balance is essential.
But how I hear you say? Well ever heard of transitional markers? We hadn’t either but it turns out they can be rather useful! A transitional marker is any small prompt that we can use, that helps our minds to recognise that it is time to shift focus.
We seem to be pretty good at this at the beginning of our day but most of us struggle when it comes to the end of our workday. To help us with this scientists are now suggesting that we should be incorporating at least one transitional marker, to help us go from work mode to life mode.
Whilst this isn’t revolutionary, if we can repeat our chosen transitional markers and importantly we do not return to work after, then our mind will begin to know when it is time to switch off. Thus limiting stress and giving us time to relax at whatever time we do manage to shut down.
So why not give it a go, our team have all contributed their favorite transitional markers below to get you started and best of all they all take under 5 minutes!