1. Call off the mental fire drill that occurs whenever you get a Slack or email notification.

I know I'm not the only one whose heart rate accelerates when I see a new email in my inbox ( or a Slack message). It could be a client, a staffer, my accountant, or my mother. My anxiety drives me to want to quickly fix what they're writing me about so I'll feel better. But before I do, I often spend time worrying and trying to suss out the "true" meaning of their message on a fool's errand, since emotional nuance is lost in almost any digital communication. Then I'll force myself to respond no matter what - even if I'm finally eating lunch at 3 PM or doing time-sensitive work. Don't blame yourself for leaping to reply to every message - much of modern knowledge work is built on this Pavlovian system of instant feedback and urgent response. With so many of us working from home and without the normal in-person interaction, this past year we've gotten trained to crave the feedback of a "ping" or a visual notification.

To start to de-program ourselves from the need to always be on, we need to practice being disconnected for a small amount of time. Begin with a time limit. Pick an after-hours moment when you don't need to be online, and then turn off or hide your devices for an hour. Gradually work towards doing this during a workday, For that, select an hour when you can purposefully avoid checking updates ( set up an "away" or "in the meeting" notification so people won't wonder why you're not getting back to them). See how you feel when you can take a break from checking. When I avoid my phone for an hour, I notice that my neck is looser and so are my shoulders! Immediate benefit.

2. Stop waiting to get permission to log off.

When work isn't a place you leave at the end of the day, it can be incredibly difficult to stop. And let's face it, when the option is to keep working and feel in control or spend more time on the sofa doom-scrolling or with whining kids, overworking might seem even more attractive. But learning to stop work is a discipline that creates good habits and is a necessary step to keeping your energy tank filled.

I am an accomplished professional, but unconsciously I still want someone to tell me, " You did a good job today - you're done." Well, you need to learn to give yourself that permission.

Psychologist Alice Boyes changed my life when she suggested setting concrete limits around the amount of time I spend on the tasks that make me anxious and tend to overdo. Such shortcuts and hacks that help calm anxiety are called heuristics.

Here's how you could come up with a heuristic to set boundaries on your work hours. At the beginning of your day ( or the day before), create a reason to-do list. The keyword is reasonable - no writing up a list based upon an imaginary 240-hour day - and based on experience, you'll probably know how long most of your tasks will take. And if you have to guess time for any, guess upwards. Structure your day based on this list, and when you're finished, close your computer. You did well.

3. When you get stuck in a worry spiral, ask: " What's making me anxious right now?"

The flip side of overwork is avoidance - avoiding deadlines and tasks because you're anxious. Everyone has their greatest hits of coping mechanisms, from trying to worry the fear away to working it away to dividing it into a bag of cheese doodles. Our brain does this because it's trying to help us avoid our bad feelings. Understanding the motivations and causes behind your anxiety helps to pause to feel your feelings and monitor how you react to those feelings. Start by looking at what's making you anxious right now and how the anxiety is making you react. Here's an example from my life. Thinking about money makes me anxious. When the economic news is frightening, I might act out when I'm faced with a work task that has anything to do with money. So if I need to prepare a financial report for my small business, I assume it's going to reveal negative results, which sends me into a spiral of fear. Cognitive behavioral therapists call this kind of reaction an anxious automatic thought.

Consequently, instead of facing the spreadsheet and doing my work, I might avoid it entirely. I might eat that bag of cheese doodles or buy something online that makes me feel good. I'm reacting to my anxiety. It's better if I can learn to move from reacting on auto-pilot to knowing what sets me off and then managing how I will respond. I can say to myself: " Looking at my company's finances is going to set me off right now. Maybe I should ask my business partner to do it. Or maybe I should build in a reward if I face the challenge head on? I could let myself have an extra hour of Nexflix if I complete the spreadsheet." I find that most of the time, doing the work doesn't feel nearly as bad as what my anxiety anticipates.