You stretch and sigh: work’s over. What do you do now?
The answer varies for each of us, but it’s more important than we realize.
Those who end up stagnating and being unsuccessful tend to have similar after-work habits.
By taking a look at these habits you can know what to avoid.
Let’s go over the habits of unsuccessful people after work. Avoid these and you’re golden.
1) Lie around lazily
After work it’s understandable that somebody is tired and wants a bit of a break.
But lying around lazily and doing nothing actually leads to feeling more tired.
Those who are unsuccessful usually treat their post-work life as a time to do nothing and lie around. But they end up losing more and more motivation as a result.
This has the impact of also negatively impacting their physical and mental health.
Tip: try to get some exercise after work instead of only relaxing.
2) Long naps
When you’re done working for the day, it can be very tempting to take a nap.
But if you end work after 3 p.m. in the afternoon, taking a nap is actually a bad idea.
It ends up sabotaging your sleep schedule later in the evening, leading to a more unhealthy and sporadic schedule overall.
As The National Sleep Foundation notes:
“If you nap too late in the afternoon, or for too long, you may experience difficulties falling and staying asleep during the night. This can occur because daytime napping reduces your sleep drive, your body’s need for sleep.
“Because of this, most experts recommend avoiding naps after 3 p.m. to limit disruptions to your sleep schedule.”
Tip: avoid napping after work.
3) Channel surf
Unsuccessful people usually finish work and flip on the TV for far too long.
There’s nothing inherently bad about watching a bit of TV or streaming a film after work, of course.
But when it becomes a habit or turns into hours of channel surfing, it saps a person’s energy and takes up the rest of their day.
Watching too much TV after work also leads to being in a passive mode instead of doing activities, exercise or social things after work.
For those who already work on computers, channel surfing also puts undue strain on their eyes to consume many more hours of screen time per day on top of work.
Tip: avoid watching mindless television for hours on end without any purpose or real interest.
4) Scroll social media for hours
Spending excessive time scrolling through social media feeds is another habit of unsuccessful people.
This often also involves comparing themselves to others or paying a lot of attention to what other people are up to in their lives (even total strangers).
This habit ends up leading to a lot of dissatisfaction and creates an abstract ideal that they never feel they’re living up to. It also increases FOMO (fear of missing out).
Using social media is great, but too much of it can be poison.
Tip: use social media as an enhancement and bonus in your life rather than as a core part of your life.
5) Overindulge in unhealthy habits
Excessive drinking or junk food consumption are typical examples of unhealthy after-work behaviors.
Other examples include using substances, watching too much pornography, gambling and betting to an excessive degree or eating way too much (even of healthy food).
There’s a tendency after work to let loose and finally be glad of being free from the day’s main responsibilities.
But those who are successful manage to maintain their self-control even when nobody’s watching, and they enjoy themselves without completely letting loose.
Tip: keep junk food and unhealthy habits to a minimum after work. If you indulge, indulge responsibly.
6) Irregular sleep
This point ties into the previous issues with napping after work and lying around lazily.
The truth is that many people have healthy habits in various areas of their life but they just don’t have their sleep worked out.
As a result, they sleep at random times of the day and night and fit their work somewhere around that.
The importance of getting regular and consistent sleep can’t be overstated, however.
According to a 2,000-person study done several years ago in the American College of Cardiology, sleeping regularly can literally save your life.
“Older adults who didn’t have a consistent sleep schedule — aka they had irregular bedtime and wake-up times, or different amounts of sleep each night — were nearly twice as likely to develop cardiovascular disease as those with regular sleep patterns.”
Tip: establish a regular sleep schedule and try to get eight hours of sleep a night.
7) Have a b*tch session
When somebody works in a high-stress environment or with colleagues they don’t like, they may have a tendency to b*tch about their job after work.
They talk to friends and people at the bar about how awful things are at work.
I mean… fair enough.
The problem is when this becomes a habit and a daily occurrence and b*tching about work becomes almost like a ritual.
This person should be looking for new work that’s better for them instead of just complaining about everything that’s not working out.
Tip: do your best to leave your work problems at work and not to vent at other people about your frustrations with work.
8) Wing it without goals
There’s a place for spontaneity and the whole week doesn’t always need to be minutely planned out.
But those who are unsuccessful tend to come home from work and just do whatever. They wing it. They don’t have a plan for the next day. They don’t have a plan for the next month.
They’re just chilling and seeing what happens.
And what happens, more often than not, is that they end up stuck in a job they don’t really like and never go anywhere or grow much as a person, because they’re not setting future goals.
As Desirée O insightfully points out:
“It can be easy to get home and fall into the couch without a care in the world.
But if you’re really serious about productivity, you’ll want to make a plan for the next day.”
Tip: plan out your week ahead of time with your goals, including goals for outside of work.
9) Work out too late at night
Working out late at night gives the body a boost of adrenaline and cortisol that can make getting to sleep difficult.
It can also lead to exhaustion for the next day, since muscle exhaustion tends to hit the next day.
If working out after work is the only possibility, so be it:
But people should make sure it’s not too late at night and doesn’t invert their schedule in an unhealthy way.
Tip: try to get up early and work out in the morning before work.
10) Bring work home
Some jobs are harder than others, and overtime or taking work calls after work hours are a reality for many of us.
But unsuccessful people tend to have no line between work and non-work.
They are always on the clock, and unable to really “switch off” and fully sink into a post-work relaxation mode.
As this study from Stanford discovered, doing too much overtime can actually sabotage you, and “employee output falls sharply after a 50-hour workweek, and falls off a cliff after 55 hours.”
Tip: maintain a clear boundary between work and after-work, even if you work-from-home.