How to relax after work when you sit at a Mac all day

To relax after work, first make the workday actually end, then do something that uses a different part of you: change rooms or clothes, go for a walk, cook or make something with your hands, and keep screens off for the first part of the evening. Relaxing comes much easier once work has stopped, so the ending matters as much as what you do next.

That is harder than it sounds when you work at a Mac. The laptop that holds your job also holds your evening, the chair is often the same one, and there may be no commute in between. Most of what follows is about putting that missing line back.

Why can't you relax after work?

Most people who can't unwind aren't doing the evening wrong. Work just hasn't stopped. The laptop is still open on the table, work chat is still on the phone, and an unanswered message sits at the back of your mind while you cook.

Researchers who study recovery from work, notably the psychologist Sabine Sonnentag, call the missing piece psychological detachment: not thinking about work during time off. In their studies, people who manage to detach in the evening tend to report feeling better recovered. Sonnentag and her colleagues name a few other experiences that help as well: relaxation itself, what they call mastery (learning something or taking on a challenge that has nothing to do with your job), and feeling in control of how you spend your spare time.

That gives a plain plan. First stop the work, properly. Then fill the evening with something different from it.

How to switch off from work: give the day a clear end

Without an ending, work leaks into the evening one message at a time. Ten minutes of closing up makes the rest of the night easier.

• Empty your head onto a list. Write down what is unfinished and the first thing you will do tomorrow, so you don't have to keep holding them. A shutdown ritual turns this into a short routine you repeat every day.
• Quit, don't just close. Quit your work apps with Command Q rather than closing their windows, so nothing keeps running and pinging in the background.
• Put the laptop away. Close the lid and put it somewhere you can't see it: a drawer, a bag, another room.
• Quiet the phone. In System Settings > Focus on the Mac, or Settings > Focus on iPhone, you can give a Focus a schedule, so work chat and email go quiet at the same time every weekday.

If you keep finding yourself back at the laptop at nine, the problem is the drift rather than the relaxing. How to stop working late goes into that in more detail.

Change something physical

When you work from home, nothing around you tells your body that the day is over. You can supply the signal yourself, and a physical one is the hardest to ignore.

• Change clothes. Even swapping a work shirt for a sweater draws a line.
• Change rooms. Leave the room you work in. If you work at the kitchen table, clear it completely, so dinner happens at a table and not at a desk.
• Change the light. Switch off the desk lamp and switch on something softer.
• Take a fake commute. A ten or fifteen minute walk around the block stands in for the trip home that remote work took away. You leave as a worker and come back as yourself.
• Wash your face or take a shower. Many people find it is the quickest reset there is.

What should you do after work to relax?

Pick something that is different from your workday. If you spend the day typing, reading and deciding, the evening activities that work best usually involve your body, your hands or other people.

There is no wrong choice, as long as it isn't more of your workday in a different window. If learning something absorbing is what lets you switch off, a language or a craft counts as well. And if one evening you only manage the walk, the walk is enough.

Should you avoid screens after work?

Not completely, and not because screens are bad in themselves. Watching a film with someone you live with is a perfectly good evening. The trouble for people who work at a Mac is narrower: the same device, the same posture, and the same inbox one click away. A phone in the evening has a similar pull, because work chat and email live there too.

A few ways to put some distance in:

• Keep the first hour off screens, even if you watch something later. For many people that is when work thoughts are loudest.
• Charge your phone outside the room you relax in.
• Use Downtime. In Screen Time on your iPhone or Mac (System Settings > Screen Time > Downtime on the Mac), you can limit the evening to the apps you choose.
• Move the Mac. If you do use it in the evening, use it somewhere other than your desk, and for something that isn't work.

When relaxing doesn't help

Some evenings won't work whatever you do, and that is normal. But if you can't switch off for weeks at a time, dread the start of every workday, sleep badly, or feel worn out most evenings no matter what you try, take it seriously. It can be a sign that the workload itself is the problem, or something that needs more than an evening routine. Talk to your doctor. If your employer offers an employee assistance program or confidential counseling, it exists for exactly this.

A gentler end to the day from the notch

Most of what helps you relax happens away from the Mac, which is how it should be. Notchpals is built for moments like this one: a character slides out of your Mac's notch, says one line and goes. Two kinds have jobs at the end of the day, noticing that the workday is over and giving the evening a softer first step.

With a Schedule character on the team, you get one Wrap up visit early on weekday evenings. Walter, the walrus who does the grumbling so you don't have to, puts it his own way.

WalterGo home. Or somewhere comfy that isn't this desk. Hmph.

Press Done and close the lid. If you need to finish a thought, Later buys you twenty minutes, and he asks only once more. And if you have already shut the laptop and walked away, there is nobody at the keyboard to remind, which is the best result of all.

If the evening finds you back at the Mac anyway, a Self-care character can add one more step. Kapi, a capybara who has never once hurried, stops by once with the one good thing question.

KapiThink of one good thing today. Got it? Mm. Now sit with it a moment.

It takes a few seconds, and it means the last thing you think about at the Mac isn't work. Notchpals won't close your apps or lock you out of anything. It points at the door; the walking out is up to you.