Leave Your Work At Work

I have often heard the advice that one shouldn't take their work home with them. That means that, not only do you not do tasks while off the clock, but it means that whatever frustrations you have from your work, you don't inflict them upon your friends and family.

In most cases, it's pretty good advice. It makes home happier, makes your loved ones happier, makes you way less stressed in general because you are detached from your frustration. It's actually a beautiful mental trick. When you know that you can leave your frustrations elsewhere, you are already mentally separated from them because you know you can take it off regularly. And when you are there, you're halfway toward losing your frustration all together.

I think it's pretty good advice for writers, too. Stress is stressful and totally no fun. If you can detach yourself from it by leaving that stress in a specific location, you get all the benefits that everybody else does. It's the best reason possible to make your own designated writing area and using it during designated writing time.

However, you don't want to have a total disconnect. Writers are observers and questioners. No matter what you are doing, you should be paying attention. When a thought strikes you that would be worth writing about, write down the thought. If you need more than just a thought, write down as much as you have. Then you have it for the next power session you choose to do.