I play games on PS:) sometimes it can take hours and hours. Also walking on the streets with music in my earphones is also relaxing my brain. And hot bath gives me real relief. But if I can’t fix something for a long period of time or there are some problems with deadlines, I can be stressed and nothing can help. I even can’t sleep. And I can think about bug lying in my bed till the morning.

I don't have to. I have a wife, two kids, and a half done house that does it for me.

Seriously, when I come home from work, or I stop working when I work from home, my family quickly turns my brain off. We do stuff together, so I can't really think about work, even if I want/have to.

In the rare cases they are not at home, I fix something on the house. We bought it a year ago, but I think it will provide me with work for at least 7 more years.

Watch-out on efficiency in your coding work.. if it mundane and route-en, change it, through automation..or test cases.

Always commit to what best can be done by you with excellent professional skills, rather than trying to meet stupid deadlines given by others..

If you follow agile, stress has to come down and it makes you to run faster than rest of the team, this way you are not under stress created by rest of team talks..

Apart from this, play with kids, watch some serials and see how they drag the same 1 min work into 20 episodes.. watch on their creativity .., yoga etc..

Doing anything that does not involve watching a screen. I do enjoy watching movies or a tv series with my wife but after working hard with code for a long a time in a screen the less I want to do is keep watching a screen. Normally I read a book, talk to my wife in the porch, go out and eat something, visit some friends, listen to music. Anything that keeps me away from watching a screen.

Have a coffee with an awesome friend !! or maybe read a poetry book !! ^^

After a hard day of grafting, I do some more coding. If things get a bit too much (usually when doing 14+ hours a day, 7 days a week for many months at a time), some yoga, pilates, mountain biking, hiking, scuba or other outdoor activities will recharge me.

I'll add my experiences here too.

As a former DJ, I play music just for me. Hunt down new tracks on Beatport or digging through the treasure chest of SoundCloud. Music is the door to my heart and my brain. I can spend ours and get lost for real, but it's also a very costly 'distraction' or sometimes not possible due to other activities/appointments.

I play games. RTS games when I need a full escape from work. Focusing on build orders, attack timings, scout patterns, and tech upgrades while dealing with different opponents to forget about work entirely; otherwise, I lose hardly and get 'owned' by anyone. Racing games when I don't want to escape from work altogether but still want to forget about some situations or colleagues. Racing games aren't complicated, just visual recognition and repeating of steering controls. Easy to keep in mind some details about work but distracting enough to forget weaker details. RPG games or MOBA games when I have no concrete plan of getting lost in work details. RPG's and MOBA's allow me to jump in quickly and stop playing minutes later or jump in for a whole weekend and forget about anything that happened at work or in a project - sometimes I don't care.

I go out for a jog and run at least one hour. While fighting the pain in the lung, I spent no time on thinking about work. But sometimes I find personal excuses too easy for not going out today.

Enjoy a new movie at the theaters. Meet with friends and come together to remember good old times; happens rarely. Talking with good friends about work may help to sort things out and see things from a different perspective.

Just a few times a year I get addicted to TV series or movies on Netflix, Amazon Prime, Apple TV. Sometimes I also occasionally watch streams on Twitch and follow how 'pros' play the same game as I. It doesn't help much when I'm stressed at work but it helps not getting stressed too much at times when situations change from easy going to due date chasing.

Games. Immersive games like Elite: Dangerous or Elder Scrolls Online, and quick-fire games like Rocket League. That's what keeps me sane.

Spend time with my kids, go running or workout. Anything that keep's me away from a screen and keyboard.

Like after long physical exercises you need to relax your body, same goes with brain and mind. When you work and using your brain for many hours per day, you have to recharge it and calm down. There are many ways to do so:

• Qi Gong
• Tai Chi
• Meditation (many people thinking it is something complicated and you have to sit in a lotus stance, you can do it even by sitting in the office chair)
• Slow physical exercises, stretching
• Nap (Short sleep)
• Walking in a woods, park, listening for wind, birds
• Walking in a beach, listening for the ocean, slow waves
• Listening for relaxation music
• Burn incense (aroma) sticks
• Playing simple games which doesn't requires much thinking
• Owning a pet(s), aquarium
• Let it go (Let go everything, be here and now, don't worry about what is not happened, what can happen, what you still have to do, just ignore, be only in present, only here and only now)

To sum up:

Do slow things, do not think, watch slow things, be in less urban environment, be more relaxed and slower even when you already are, be only here and now, and don't worry.

I have a couple of hobbies that require me to be in the moment and not think about other things - particularly rock climbing and FPS gaming. Both require enough concentration that I tend not to think about other stuff. I also do a bit of cycling, but when the road's clear my mind can wander a bit.

Another thing than can help is to intentionally do some kind of "leave it behind" ritual, where you mentally leave your work day and change to your own time. I try to find something in my commute - ideally walk part of the way and use the movement to help that sensation of transition.

Also simple stuff - take work email, chat etc off your phone; leave your work laptop at work. Maintain a separation of spaces so you can mentally switch. Coming back to work rested is important.

Ultimately - have "non coding time" where you do something else. Doesn't really matter what, but if you have no downtime you'll be less effective when you're trying to be on your game.

The gym has always worked wonders for me. I can go in there with a mind full of thoughts about my work / project. after my workout, when I leave the gym, I'm a different person. Totally reset from what ever occurred that day. As a bonus - go to the gym with a workout buddy!

Find hobbies and activities that you like as much or even more so than coding then commit to those in some way. Get outdoors if possible and ideally involve other people so that you have some peer pressure forcing you to follow through on the commitments.

Realise that not breaking away from your work will cause burnout and probably already has since you posted this question. In the long term its going to make you less productive and affect your mental health and wellbeing.

If being unable to break away is related to anxiety and stress about your work then attack the problem at the source. Find out where the pressure is coming from and aim to reduce it by talking to your coworkers about issues and changing how you organise your workload. Sometimes I find that something as simple as writing down what I'm thinking about or creating tasks on a todo list will stop recurring thoughts and anxiety.

Importantly realise that you'll feel internal resistance when trying to break your bad habits but make sure to break through that resistance and establish better habits. When you feel an inappropriate urge to work ignore it and focus on something else, every time you get pulled back push yourself in the opposite direction until you break away from it. Reading up on mindfulness will give you some good tools to achieve this.

Running and exercising is always a great option to get your mind away and even keep it more focused when you are working. I agree some game can be too to some extend, however if I'm stressed about something I want to finish, a game is not gonna distract me. Sometimes when I'm really stressed about work because I have been working non-stop for too many days, I take a night out get myself completely wasted, for regular days a beer or two otherwise can be good too.

I have a routine to watch something before I go to sleep, right now it's family guy, but can be any show that doesn't require me to think a lot and make me relax. This routine puts my brain into a state of knowing it's time to sleep, it's a common psychological trick to have fixed habits to change the state of the brain.

I have kids, so playing with them is enough as of now. But before that, I used to do the below.

anime, blogs, co-op/multiplayer gaming,tv shows!

And now, apart from playing with kids,

anime, co-op/multiplayer gaming!

Me after work try to watch some tv shows, navigate per facebook or if you like gaming you can play some game :)