Feierabend, The German Tactic To Disconnect From Work

The  Feierabend is a tactic that the Germans created to disconnect from work. As everyone knows, never before has the line separating personal and professional life become so thin. In some cases, it can be said that people work all day.

This is especially the case for those who work remotely. At any time, they receive emails, messages of all kinds or requests of different natures. This means that there are no effective breaks or breaks. The  Feierabend  is an antidote to this situation.

The effect of not being able to disconnect from work causes greater fatigue  and an impoverishment of personal life. The value of  Feierabend is that this technique allows you to generate an effective space to break away from the demands of work and rest physically and mentally.

Teleworking and its ups and downs

Telecommuting has meant that many people no longer need to make the daily commute from home to work and vice versa. Although this route is often dominated by traffic jams or the coming and going of crowds in the streets, the truth is that it was also a moment of transition and a space that belonged to each person.

With telecommuting, this route was eliminated. Instead, working hours have become extremely flexible for many businesses. Sometimes the person may start earlier than normal and continue throughout the day until late at night. There are even cases where we get a last message from work at midnight.

Added to this is the fact that the daily commute between work and home adds dynamism to the day. It forced people to go through different places, see different people, and move to different places. Telecommuting has made people much more sedentary.

What is Feierabend

The  Feierabend is defined as the time of ending the workday begins and the rest. It is a German word and refers, in particular, to that feeling that exists after all the tasks/appointments written down for the day are finished. There is a special satisfaction in this moment, because the duty has been fulfilled, making us worthy, in some way, of the control of our time.

Therefore,  Feierabend is equivalent, in one way or another, to that journey from home to work when the work is done in person. Since there is no equivalent for telecommuting, the Germans created this tactic. It consists of taking a walk at the end of the day.

The idea is to mark the transition between the working day and the hours that are unrelated to you. So, if work ends at six, the walk is at that time. That means the rest time starts. It is a “clean” disconnect, as its function is to close a loop.

The advantages of Feierabend

Everything indicates that those who work in the telecommuting mode, even with restricted hours, tend to dedicate themselves more to work. It’s likely that if a task is pending, we’ll resist taking a break before it’s finished. On the other hand, we can stop working, but not mentally. The fact that we don’t change the environment doesn’t help us in this regard.

In face-to-face work, leaving the workplace ends up marking a before and an after. In telecommuting, this boundary is very fragile. So it’s easy for a person to end up working more than before or making their work and personal life the same. Neither is healthy ​​and therefore it is very valid to define a limit.

This is the role of  Feierabend : to mark the before and after. Every day, we must take a walk. This means that work has been left behind and that rest must begin. This is essential not just for maintaining good physical and mental health, but for productivity itself.

The  translation  of Feierabend  is not accurate. Some understand it as “the happy hour”. Others say that it is more necessary to aim to “reconnect with the core”. Whatever the literal meaning, the truth is that it corresponds to that moment of cutting off obligations, whatever the circumstances.