The ‘space’ to de-stress on way home

Sam Smith used to struggle to switch off from a long day at work. 

“I thought I was fully present, but I’d be scrolling through emails on my phone, thinking of things I had to do at work and just being generally distracted,” says Smith of arriving home and his fiancé telling him about what was going on in her world. 

That wasn’t all. 

After a particularly stressful day, Smith tended to sleep poorly and would turn up to work feeling fatigued. And like most of us, he found it difficult to walk into back-to-back meetings positively after the first one hadn’t gone particularly well. 

The stress that Smith, a senior project manager at Westpac’s Corporate Property Improvements team, carried from one activity to another – and ultimately into his home – has become an all too common scenario among Australian workers. According to a 2018 study by health tech company Medibio, almost one in three workers suffer from some form of mental illness. Of those, 36 per cent had depression, 33 per cent anxiety and 31 per cent high levels of workplace stress.

Enter Dr Adam Fraser, peak performance researcher and author of The Third Space, a bestselling book centred around the idea of creating a gap between activities to focus on the present and enjoy the small moments in life.

“It’s about using those tiny gaps in the day to get your head right for what's coming next,” Fraser tells Westpac Wire.