MAP Strategic Wealth Advisors

Here’s Why Everyone Should Have a Work Shutdown Ritual

Seven takeaways:

When done right, a workday shutdown routine helps you leave work at work, quiet the worries about unfinished tasks, and set yourself up to hit the ground running the next morning.

Author and work expert Cal Newport describes a workday shutdown routine as a ritual that “should ensure that every incomplete task, goal or project has been reviewed and that for each you have confirmed that either 1) you have a plan you trust for its completion, or 2) it’s captured in a place where it will be revisited at the right time.”

Here are 7 science-backed steps you can mix and match to create your own shutdown ritual and end your workday right:

1. Clean up your physical and digital workspaces: Workspaces can get messy over the course of a work day. Studies show that cluttered work environments restrict our ability to process information and be productive. Give the “you of tomorrow” a boost by providing a clean workstation to arrive to.
2. Review your to-done’s: Maintain motivation and a sense of progress by celebrating the day’s progress. Studies show that noting small achievements helps people maintain a sense of progress towards bigger goals.
3. Confront the things you’ve been putting off: Putting off difficult tasks has been proven to cause a “doom loop” of guilt and anxiety. Identify the tasks that you’ve been avoiding or that make you feel uncomfortable at the end of every workday. Break those tasks down into smaller, more manageable sub-tasks and schedule the next step to tomorrow’s to-do list.
4. Write out tomorrow’s to-do list: Creating a list for the next day not only increases willpower and a sense of order, but it also helps you stop thinking about work while away from your desk. Studies have shown that simply writing out a plan to finish our uncompleted tasks provides the same mental relief as actually completing the task.
5. Set yourself up to “Eat Your Frog” first thing in the morning: Mark Twain famously said, “Eat a live frog first thing in the morning, and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day.” Choose a hard task to attack first the next morning, giving yourself an easy win and a sense of momentum to start the day.
6. Set a time to end your workday and stick to it: Research consistently shows that the more hours we work, the less productive we become. So put structure around your hours, knowing that without guardrails work will always fill your time and mental bandwidth. Scheduling a consistent activity can help.
7. End on a high note: Do not get down on yourself if the day wasn’t as productive as you would have wished. Bring positivity to the end of the day by showing gratitude for the work of others, doing a colleague a favor or kindness, or actively forgiving yourself for missed benchmarks. After all- tomorrow is another chance to crack that difficult task!

From Becky Kane for Todoist
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