Why is it so hard to leave work at work? When you leave the office, thoughts of work often linger and take away from free time. It is impossible to relax and to connect with family and friends when work is on your mind.

A phone that is always on may be partly to blame but studies suggest another major culprit: unfinished business. Our brains are wired to hold onto the item we never got to on the to-do list, the ongoing project, and the uncompleted goal. We tend not to think about what we accomplished. It is the incomplete tasks that stand out. They linger long after the workday is over and that can spoil precious downtime. Even if we decide to turn our phones off in the evening or leave our briefcase at the office, for many of us, work still weighs heavily on our mind.

Two Steps

A new study offers an effective strategy to prevent the stress of your day job from creeping into your precious evenings:

1. Make a LIST of the most important tasks you didn’t get to at the end of each workday.
2. Make a clear ACTIONABLE PLAN of exactly WHERE, WHEN and HOW you plan to tackle each one. Don’t leave out any details. Here is an example: “Before checking email or returning calls, I will send an email to X first thing tomorrow morning detailing the proposal.

The participants who engaged in this exercise in the study were more at ease and less bothered by the tasks they had left undone. By creating a concrete plan, they were able to take their mind off of the unfinished business and it became easier to unwind and relax.

Let it Go

To echo the defiantly persistent earworm song from Frozen, the best strategy to improve work/life balance is to let it go, let it go…

How can you get yourself to do things you really don’t feel like doing but really should do? University of Pennsylvania professor Katherine Milkman has developed an ingenious strategy to solve this conundrum: temptation bundling. Temptation bundling is the coupling of two activities—one you should do but avoid, and one you love doing but feel guilty about.

It’s about combining “want” experiences (listening to an un-put-downable audio book or binge watching Narcos) with a valuable “should” experience (cleaning the house, exercising, writing thank-you letters). Dr. Milkman personally discovered the benefits of temptation bundling a few years ago when she was having trouble making it to the gym on a regular basis. Her solution was to allow herself to listen to Hunger Game audio books only while exercising. She ended up at the gym five days a week.

Here is how it can work for you:

1. Think about activities you should get do but put off. Exercise, studying, working on a special project, having dinner with a relative you are not particularly fond of, etc.

2. Make a list of your guilty pleasures: Watching Narcos, reading Us Weekly, listening to your favorite music, eating your favorite food, etc.

3. Now pair them

As Milkman explains:

So what if you let yourself get a pedicure while catching up on overdue emails for work? Or what if you only let yourself listen to your favorite CDs while catching up on household chores. Or only let yourself go to your favorite restaurant whose hamburgers you crave while spending time with a difficult relative you should see more of.

Temptation bundling can be especially effective when trying to jumpstart a positive new habit and make it just a little less painful. Combining a guilty pleasure with an unappealing activity is a win-win strategy.

So go ahead and watch The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. Just make sure you do it at the gym.

Reading a great book is not just an indulgence. Increasing evidence highlights the mental benefits of getting lost in a book. Harry Potter deserves a special mention. Research suggests that tales of the young wizard engender empathy. Children who read Harry Potter seem to be less prejudiced towards minority groups and to have more open minds:

Literature with complex, developed themes and characters appears to let readers occupy or adopt perspectives they might otherwise not consider; and it seems that Rowling might get at the beautiful, sobering mess of life in a way that could have a meaningful impact on our children’s collective character.

Harry Potter is an excellent role model and research shows that thinking about fictional characters you love can help you make better decisions. Psychology writer Eric Barker suggests asking, “What would Harry Potter do?” when confronted with a moral dilemma.

In addition to inspiring ethical decision-making, there is reason to believe that reading books like Harry Potter boost creativity. In Originals, Adam Grant points out that highly creative people often cite works of fiction as sources of inspiration and fuel for originality:

Growing up, many originals find their first role models in their most beloved novels, where protagonists exercise their creativity in pursuit of unique accomplishments. Elon Musk and Peter Thiel each chose Lord of the Rings, the epic tale of a hobbit’s adventures to destroy a dangerous ring of power. Sheryl Sandberg and Jeff Bezos both favored A Wrinkle in Time, in which a young girl learns to bend the laws of physics and travel through time. Mark Zuckerberg was partial to Ender’s Game, where it’s up to a group of kids to save the planet from an alien attack.

The great thing about fictional stories is how they stretch the imagination. They make the impossible possible. They inspire dreams of possibility. They enable us to see past, the here and now and to dream of a better world.

Curling up with a great book may seem the ultimate luxury. It is high time to think of it as a necessity.

You can find magic wherever you look. Sit back and relax, all you need is a book.

-Dr. Seuss

Everyone knows the benefits of exercise so why is it that so few people bother? One study found that 75% of people barely exercise at all. We also know that a healthy diet is important but more than a third of adults are overweight. Why is there a mismatch between what we know and what we actually do?

Translating information into action is only part of the challenge. Even if we make a change, how do we maintain motivation?

Rethinking how we set goals offers a key insight into effective behavior change. According to researchers at Harvard:

Setting goals can help you think more clearly and stay motivated, yet for many people, this approach does not work. A recent study provided an explanation for why this may be. Beyond your conscious goals, there are many unconscious goals also competing for attention. For example, while weight loss may be your conscious goal, stress relief may be your unconscious goal. While healthy eating may be your conscious goal, this may take a back seat to resolving relationship difficulties. All around, goals are selfish. It’s every goal for itself in the human brain. If your health-related goal doesn’t have a special preference, it may fail you.

So what can you do? According to the researchers at Harvard, the solution is to clarify priorities:

It helps to attach a “priority tag” to the goals that are most important to you. To do this, you need to delve a little more deeply — that is, ask yourself why your goal matters to you.

In other words, think long and hard about what you really want and put that goal front and center.

To make changes for the better, your health-related goals should be the goals above all other goals. When you elevate their importance by thinking of them in ways like these, they will beat out other goals in your brain.

I love the idea of attaching a “priority tag” to the goals that are most important to you. It will remind you to make choices that are consistent with what you say you want to achieve.

As Mahatma Gandhi said:

Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.