This article was provided as a paid guest post.

Ask a room of London office workers how they switch off after a long day and the answers have changed. Five years ago you’d have heard about the pub, a takeaway and whatever was on Netflix. Now the same question gets you cold showers, magnesium supplements, breathwork apps, therapy apps, earlier bedtimes and a wider mix of habits than most people would have admitted to trying a decade ago. Something has shifted in how people wind down, and it didn’t happen overnight.

Part of it is plain exhaustion with the old coping methods. The post-work pint is a ritual, but an expensive one, and plenty of people have worked out that three drinks on a Tuesday makes Wednesday worse. Alcohol consumption among younger adults has been sliding for years. What’s filled the gap is a patchwork of habits borrowed from sports recovery, sleep science, psychology and the wellness aisle more broadly.

why is workplace stress driving the change?

Because the numbers are hard to ignore, the Health and Safety Executive’s latest figures show 964,000 workers in Great Britain suffered from work-related stress, depression or anxiety in 2024/25. That’s just over half of all work-related ill health, and it cost an estimated 22.1 million lost working days. Hybrid working blurred the line between office and home, and for many people the commute that once acted as a decompression chamber simply vanished. The laptop is always there. So is the inbox.

Employers have noticed. Wellbeing budgets that once stretched to a fruit bowl now cover meditation app subscriptions, mental health first aiders and, in some workplaces, access to counselling. But most of the real experimentation still happens at home, after hours, where people are quietly building their own wind-down routines and figuring out by trial and error what actually helps.

what actually helps with stress, according to the evidence?

There’s no single fix, and most of what works is unglamorous. A few approaches have decent evidence behind them:

• Movement: Regular exercise, even a brisk daily walk, is one of the most consistently evidenced tools for lowering stress and improving mood.
• Sleep hygiene: A fixed bedtime, less screen time beforehand and a cooler, darker room do more for next-day resilience than almost anything else on this list.
• Talking therapies: Cognitive behavioural therapy and similar approaches have strong evidence for anxiety and stress-related difficulties, and in England they’re available free through the NHS.
• Breathwork and mindfulness: Structured breathing exercises and mindfulness practice have a growing evidence base for lowering physiological stress markers, not just a subjective sense of calm.
• Social connection: Time with friends, family or colleagues outside of work tasks is consistently linked to better stress resilience, and it’s easy to let slide when things get busy.

Supplements and other products sit further down this list in terms of evidence, but plenty of people experiment with them as one part of a broader routine.

where does CBD fit into all this?

Among the supplements people experiment with, CBD is usually mentioned. CBD, short for cannabidiol, is a non-intoxicating compound from the hemp plant. It won’t get you high, and it’s legal to buy in the UK provided products meet strict THC limits. It’s one of several products some people have added to their evening routines alongside things like magnesium or herbal tea. However, it remains a minor part of the overall picture rather than a mainstream stress-management tool. 

It’s worth being clear-eyed about the evidence here. Research into CBD for stress in humans is still limited and largely preliminary. The FSA’s consumer advice on CBD recommends that healthy adults keep intake below 10mg a day, and advises that pregnant women and anyone on medication should avoid it altogether. 

That’s sensible, cautious guidance, and it reflects how early-stage the evidence base still is rather than an endorsement of CBD as a stress remedy. Anyone considering it, particularly alongside existing medication, should speak to a pharmacist or GP first. 

what does a realistic wind-down routine look like?

The people who seem to manage stress best aren’t doing anything dramatic. A common pattern looks something like this:

1. A hard stop: Laptop shut, notifications off, ideally at the same time each day.
2. A physical transition: A walk around the block, ten minutes of stretching, anything that tells the body the shift has ended.
3. One calming ritual: Herbal tea, a warm shower, a few minutes of breathing exercises – the specific choice matters less than the consistency.
4. Screens down an hour before bed: Boring advice. Still the most effective on the list.

None of this costs much, and none of it is a cure for a toxic workload. If stress is tipping into something heavier, the NHS talking therapies service is free to access in England and self-referral takes minutes.

But for the ordinary, grinding pressure of office life, small rituals compound. The workers coping best in 2026 aren’t the ones with iron discipline, but the ones who stopped treating rest as a reward and started treating it as part of the job.

---

latest posts

• Black Cherry Blush Season – Kash Beauty Soft Suede Blush
• The Ultimate Guide To Cruelty-Free, Vegan Nail Polish & Press Ons
• Real Skin: Learning to Love and Accept my Imperfections
• e.l.f. Cosmetics Sheer For It Blush Tint Cherry Cola Review
• Glazed Skin with MCoBeauty Hydrate & Prepare Milky Toner