<story><title>Flexible working can make you ill, experts say</title><url>http://www.theguardian.com/money/2016/jan/02/work-life-balance-flexible-working-can-make-you-ill-experts-say</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jedberg</author><text>I was just thinking to myself yesterday how sometimes it would be nice to have one of those jobs where when you are away from work, there is no work to be done.  Like working in a factory or something, where there is literally nothing I can do during the off hours other than relax.&lt;p&gt;This through crossed my mind because I had just finished two weeks of vacation where I literally did nothing related to work, and it was really relaxing.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ChuckMcM</author><text>Exactly.&lt;p&gt;So the take away is that in order to avoid burnout you need to mindfully develop the skill of &amp;#x27;stopping work&amp;#x27;. While that is easy when you work on a factory line and you can&amp;#x27;t bring the tools home, and its really really hard when your job consists mostly about thinking about how to solve a problem.&lt;p&gt;I found early on that since I really enjoy programming I couldn&amp;#x27;t &amp;quot;stop&amp;quot; instead I had to shift to one of my projects so that it would be more enjoyable for me. That works a bit but not as much as sitting on the deck of a mountain cabin with no Internet connectivity does :-).&lt;p&gt;But the bottom line is figure out a way to &amp;quot;not work&amp;quot;, whether it is by reading, exercising, or doing some hobby, so that you don&amp;#x27;t let the stress of work overwhelm you.</text></comment>
<story><title>Flexible working can make you ill, experts say</title><url>http://www.theguardian.com/money/2016/jan/02/work-life-balance-flexible-working-can-make-you-ill-experts-say</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jedberg</author><text>I was just thinking to myself yesterday how sometimes it would be nice to have one of those jobs where when you are away from work, there is no work to be done.  Like working in a factory or something, where there is literally nothing I can do during the off hours other than relax.&lt;p&gt;This through crossed my mind because I had just finished two weeks of vacation where I literally did nothing related to work, and it was really relaxing.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>phyllostachys</author><text>I&amp;#x27;ve also thought about that a lot. I had a friend at a previous employer who considered starting a food truck business instead of doing software development.</text></comment>