18
votes
What's your after-work routine?
What do you like to do after getting home from work?
I'm a software developer and usually feel mentally exhausted by the time I get home, so I like to unwind. I kick back on the couch, play my latest YouTube subscriptions on the TV, and browse through the day's worth of social media.
It's pretty mindless, but that's exactly what I need before tackling dinner and everything else.
I used to just work, eat, play video games and sleep when I worked 9 hour days in the office, plus a 1 hour commute each way. I believe I was depressed for years.
Since switching to work from home, I am able to spend those 2 (previously commuting) hours walking my dog and then preparing breakfast/dinner. In the warmer weather months especially, I feel a sense of happiness after spending that time just putzing around outside that I haven't felt since I was a kid. I also tend to be social anxious, and having my dog with me as the basis of conversation has helped me to talk with strangers and make acquaintances in my neighborhood, which is a great feeling.
I'm kind of the opposite! When I'm working (currently I'm not, but I'm starting a new job soon) if I sit down / chill out immediately when I get home, I lose my momentum and have trouble getting started again. I am also on a medication that wears off around 8PM that helps me get things done. So I usually knock out chores ASAP on arrival - I have an app, Sweepy, which tells me what my chores are for that day.
After that it's time to walk the dog, which is a nice ritual for my wife and I. It's light exercise, it's relaxing, and we are friends with a lot of the neighbourhood dog-owners so it's also social time. When we get home I make dinner about 80-90% of the time (because I like it, not because I'm stuck with it - I traded for laundry duty) so I'll do that. While it's cooking I'll plan tomorrow's meal (or noodle around on my phone), and then I finally get to relax during dinner where my partner and I will watch one show together. Lately it's been Taskmaster.
Then everything opens up and it depends on the day! I am... kind of a busy lady during the week, tbh, but I don't think I mind as long as I can make it up a bit on the weekend.
Congrats on the new job! The last comment I remember I think you were about to interview.
Do you use the free version of Sweepy or the premium? I've been looking into something similar and wonder how you're liking this app and the feature set of it.
Thanks! It was a long process, but it's a job that I am genuinely looking forward to in solar energy. :)
Regarding Sweepy, I use premium because that way my partner and I can both pull from the same pool of household tasks. I think it'd be possible to configure it similarly with separate free accounts but probably not worth the trouble.
I really like it. How it works is that each task is given a timeline and effort point value. The timeline isn't necessarily tied to a specific day (though it can be), the default behaviour is more like each task gets a cleanliness value which decays over time. Tasks can also be set to specific people, set as priority tasks, set to particular days of the week, marked as seasonal, or marked as alternating so that no one gets it over and over. One-time tasks, dated tasks, or as-needed tasks can also now be defined more easily as of a recent update, which had been my main complaint.
The effort points are meant to reflect how difficult or time consuming a task is to complete. There are only three levels of granularity so that can feel limiting but it's a trade off for simplicity. The household leaders assign effort point capacity per person per day, and the schedule is generated given the constraints.
It's great if you can get the buy in from everyone. I know it's kind of an illusion but it feels like oh, it's coming from the app, there's nobody to complain to... like outsourcing nagging, haha. It's cut down on mental overhead and I've had to think/talk about chore organization much less.
Congrats again on the job; it sounds awesome!
Thanks for the info on the app; it sounds very interesting. I have one final question - do you and your wife both need to have premium, or just one of you?
Just one premium membership per household!
Congrats on the new job!
I think maybe we have similar medication. For me, it helps, but it doesn't overcome mental exhaustion from work.
Sweepy looks really useful though. I'll check that out!
Go get my kid, bring her home, play with her, cook, make her eat, clean, read for her, shower her, fight so she kind of brushes her teeth, prepare her for bed, get her to finally sleep. Then it's 9pm or 10pm already.
*Crash from exhaustion and then do it all again the next day.
…and sometimes the stars align and you get to sit quietly on a chair and just watch the wall.
I work from home, so the line between work and home is a bit blurry, but in general the end of my work day looks something like this:
My free time could be spent on any number of hobbies, often includes a light workout, or media consumption, sometimes with my wife or one of my daughters (who stay up a bit later than our youngest). Most of the time it's me doing something on my own; watching a show while sorting through boxes of stuff is my current jam. We moved last year and moved so much stuff, and I'm working on reducing the amount of stuff we have.
My afterwork routine is taking of the software engineer hat and putting on the parent hat. Taking children to activities, cooking dinner, cleaning the house, getting things ready for the next day, and going to bed. I wish I had more time to myself but it's just not that season of life for me.
I heard someone refer to it as the rush hour of life.
That's a pretty accurate statement.
I work 12 hour shifts so it's pretty simple.
I get home right when it's my kids bedtime, so we read to them for 15-20 minutes and say goodnight.
Reheat and Eat dinner.
Help make the kids lunch for the next day.
Talk with my wife for a bit about our days and watch a little tv together before bed.
I work from home, so my after-work time is pretty easy.
I look down and to my left, where my 10 year old pup is sitting and staring at me knowing the workday is nearing completion and awaits his evening walk. All day he brings me toys to play with since my office is situated to send them flying down the hallway, but end of day is our personal going for a long walk time and he loves the schedule. During summer we go for a ride to the park instead so our walk can be had entirely on grass instead of hot concrete. He of course loves going for a ride as well.
Back from the walk, small treat for the pup , and I work out in our little home gym (just a combo bench and rowing machine).
Post-workout protein and some sort of entertainment for the rest of the evening be it youtube, movies, reading, or gaming. Mix in any chores that need doing like laundry, etc.
Get changed and 'recombobulate' - typically catching up on reddit/lemmy etc - for half and hour or so. Eat, then probably watch an episode of something on my Plex. Maybe a short chore of some kind then, and maybe another Plex view after that. Sometimes we will just read separately for the evening though - or listen to an audio drama or similar.
Then put the dishwasher on, make lunch for the next day and then a bit more reddit/lemmy and read for up to an hour or so in bed.
I used to be a bit of a news junky, so an embarrassing percentage of my off-work hours (and even during-work hours) would be constantly narrated by whatever the current 24 hour news cycle was obsessing over.
Then Donald Trump happened and I realized how truly miserable that addiction was making me, so I've now gone (too far, according to my wife) in the opposite direction and deliberately avoid news and current events. Now my free time in the evenings and weekends is spent walking my dogs, cooking when it's my turn on the Hello Fresh, watching movies and old TV shows or YouTube with my wife and/or kids, reading books, listening to podcasts, and working on various creative outlet side projects. Kind of boring to talk about but I've never felt more content and hope I never end up back in that headspace I was in before disconnecting from news and politics.
I was similar with the news until I discovered some good journalistic podcasts that sum-up and put into perspective what is happening at the moment. This way I have a sense of knowing what is going on without the anxiety of being at the shore of the breaking news wave.