Beginning a day, a project, a new phase of life carries its own energy. We looked at the idea in the ‘reset on the long weekend post. Today we look at rituals, or habits if you like, at day’s end. You’ve read about my dedication to fresh starts as a long weekend reset; today I present you with the magic of the end-of-day options.

Your daily fresh start is dictated by your priorities and responsibilities to others in your sphere at home, work, gym or community. You’ve no doubt noticed that even if you lost control of your bedtime, you have dominion over your day’s start, and with these tips, its glorious end.

Now let’s look at the end of your workday and how it can set you up for personal sovereignty and professional success.

Tip 1: Do You Say Your Stop Time Out Loud? Ever?

Harness the power of the spoken word. Decide when the day ends and say it out loud before you get anywhere near it. Spoken words land differently than a thought does, and a stop time you have said becomes something you notice yourself passing rather than something that quietly slides.

Brain bonus: Pick a single moment, such as sitting back down after lunch, and say the hour you are finishing. Use the same words each day.

Tip 2: Shut Down Your Screen Fully Tab by Tab

After more than 40 years as a writer, most of it using a computer, I’ve begun to put my machine on ‘sleep’ mode. I feel this saves me computer warm-up time at my next work session, and now tedious 2 step verification to log in to the many apps and platforms we now must subscribe to.

My reset and suggestion to you is to spend two minutes at your desk closing every tab, document and window you have open. An open screen is an open loop, and a machine left mid-task snags on your brain and signals a day still in progress.

Brain bonus: Close things in the same order each evening, finishing with the same final click, so the closing becomes part of the ending rather than one more chore.

Tip 3: Note Tomorrow’s First Task

Create your own ‘to-tackle’ list before you close the laptop. What is the ONE thing you will start with in the morning? Write it down. I like the tactile bonus of handwriting, but up to you.

Your ever-protective mind holds on to unfinished work because it does not trust that the thread will be picked up again. A written line is usually enough to relax its hypervigilant grip on you.

Brain bonus: Keep it to a single sentence, on the same pad or in the same file, so tomorrow you already know exactly where to look and your mischievous brain doesn’t hijack your energy or focus straight out of the gate in the morning.

See my post on the benefits of HANDWRITING on our body and brain. 

Tip 4: Empty Your Head

Write down everything, like a messy first draft. Two minutes. You can spare that, right? List anything that is still outstanding, or on your mind. No tidying up. Most of the evening’s mental noise is small unsorted material that has nowhere else to go, and spewing it onto a page takes it out of circulation.

Brain bonus: We had 10s of thousands of thoughts a day. Most of them are repeats from other days. Do an end run around your brain; do this at the same point every day, right after the last task rather than later on when you have sunk into the sofa, and it’s basically too late.

Tip 5: Park the Worry With a Return Time

Some thoughts linger. Early in my tenure as Sales Coordinator at the Winnipeg Convention Centre, I attended a seminar by, I believe, Stephanie Winston. She advised setting a weekly worry hour so as not to waste work time on what might resolve itself or be out of our control anyway. I thought it was nuts.  I worried n-o-w. Eventually, it made sense.

Brain bonus: When something will not close, give it a specific place and a specific time to be looked at again. A worry keeps resurfacing in a big not-to-be-forgotten, and naming when you will return to it is what stops the reminders.

Write the concern and the time you will pick it back up, such as Thursday morning, then leave it there.

Tip 6: Note One Thing That Went Right

At the end of your desk time and before you stand up, write one line about something that worked today. Days end on whatever is unfinished, so leave yourself a favourable, positive last impression instead of the usual self-berating, perhaps?

Brain bonus: That single recorded good thing changes what you carry out of the room. Keep it short and keep it in the same notebook. The magic, aka value, is in the habit. A pattern of finishing on something solid, not in the sentence itself.

Tip 7: Mark the Threshold

Boundaries make for better lives and interactions, but they can also be the line over which you ‘cross’ from work to the rest of the evening. Make it something physical and significant rather than a spot. How about a doorway, the last stair, or the end of the driveway. They all work. Do make it the same one every time.

Brain bonus: Pause there for a single breath before you carry on, and let that pause be the whole ritual.

Tip 8: Change Your Clothes or Your Lighting

Change out of your work identity, or alter the ambient light environment-maybe switch the room from overhead light to a lamp. Your super sensors in the body read this shift rapidly. Faster than your conscious or even stated decision to relax.

Brain bonus: With this, you feed our certainty-hungry brain something concrete to chew on. Make the same change at roughly the same point every evening, so it embeds itself as a true separation between the two halves of the day, rather than a ‘preference du jour’.

Tip 9: (Re)Enter Slowly

Transition zones save relationships! You might want to take time before you speak to anyone, as walking into the house still carrying dialogue from the day means the evening starts inside the work mindset. The people at home get the tail end of a conversation they were never part of.

Brain bonus: Let your ‘arriving’ be separate from your ‘leaving and finishing’. For some people, a few breaths, or a pause at the door before hitting the garage close button works. As a writer, I can’t recommend the process enough of jotting down some thoughts before leaving the car or public transport. Try it; you might like it. It works.

The brilliance in your brain you might have noticed in the tips! Work doesn’t end with the factory whistle, or the clock. It ends when you tell your mind it has stopped.

The tips are actionable steps you can integrate over time to prove to your brain that some of its amazing features can rest or go offline!

While there is a place for novelty and challenge, success in ending a day well will come from, ho hum, yawn…. Sameness. Repeat the choices or the small gestures, and it becomes a reliable, constructive signal… just like the biological ones in this previous post.

Implementation tips:

Just like you are advised on how to integrate fibre that feeds your system and helps things move along, “low and slow”… same applies to integrating the tips above:

Next Steps

Key #1: Pick a single ritual from the nine and use it at the same time every day for seven days. Repetition is what does the work here, so the same small action at the same moment matters far more than choosing the right ritual to begin with.

Which ritual will you repeat this week, and at what time each day?

Key #2: Once you are doing it without deciding, and it is natural, add a second ritual. Adapt more too early and you will either forget or feel overwhelmed.

What will tell you the first ritual has become automatic?

Lectures or reading that inspired me (especially as I worried about how much time I was frittering away):

• Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman
• The Power of Ritual by Casper ter Kuile
• Slow Productivity by Cal Newport (He also made us think about zero social media in another platform)
• Atomic Habits by James Clear

Share your tips, questions or comments below… sometimes many minds on a topic are helpful~