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For you who prefer listening to reading, this post is also available as an episode of the ""Done!"" podcast:

Make a clean close

Amongst many oth­er use­ful tips, New­port shares what he calls his ​“shut­down rit­u­al”, which is a method intend­ed to assist us in let­ting go of work when we are free after the work­day is over.

New­port describes how he goes through every unfin­ished task, any goal he has still not reached, and every active project at the end of the day and makes sure he either has a plan for when he will do all the things these projects involve or that he has them all writ­ten down some­where where he knows he will see the tasks at the right time some­time lat­er on.

How I close the day

In the ​“shut­down rit­u­al” I have cre­at­ed for myself I have cho­sen to only go through the tasks I have left on today’s list from those I had intend­ed to do dur­ing the day. Since I have a week­ly rou­tine when I go through all my projects and upcom­ing assign­ments, I do not feel the need to run them through every day. It is enough that I take a new deci­sion regard­ing every task remain­ing on the dai­ly list at the end of the day. It can be that I:

• do it straight away any­way, since I real­ly want to fin­ish it before I leave the office.
• set a new due date for the task if the date is some­thing I decid­ed myself and it was not relat­ed to some­thing I promised some­one else.
• remove the due date I set for the task when I at some point and for some unjus­ti­fied rea­son thought that it ​“would be good” to do the task today when it is not actu­al­ly all that impor­tant that it gets done imme­di­ate­ly. It will do just as well that I see and resched­ule it the next time I do my week­ly run-through.

The pur­pose of this clos­ing rou­tine is that I get to fin­ish the day know­ing that I am free to let the work­day go — just as it is for New­port. Noth­ing else is wait­ing for me or needs to get done before I close shop for the day, and the dai­ly to-do list is empty.

“Over and out”

Cal New­port fin­ish­es his rit­u­al by say­ing ​“Shut­down com­plete” out loud to con­firm to him­self that work is done for the day and that he can leave it until tomor­row with a clean conscience.

What do I say? Well, ​“Done!” of course.

Do this

Do you also want to feel what it is like to have a shut­down rit­u­al or rou­tine at the end of the work­day? If you are curi­ous, do the following:

1. Take a few min­utes to think about what you would need to do, ask your­self, or check in with in order to feel that you can let go of the day com­plete­ly once the work­day is over. Write the things you come to think of as a checklist.
2. Enter, post, or write the check­list for your shut­down rit­u­al where you will remem­ber it at the end of the day to ensure you actu­al­ly remem­ber to do it.
3. If you work dur­ing pre­de­ter­mined hours, add a recur­ring reminder to your cal­en­dar towards the end of the day that will tell you to go through your clos­ing rou­tine. If you want to, add the check­list to the cal­en­dar book­ing or add a link to wher­ev­er you keep it so that it is avail­able with ease at the moment you need it.
4. Try fol­low­ing the rou­tine every after­noon for the rest of the week.
5. On Mon­day, right after you have read the next ​“Done!” that will drop into your inbox, take a minute or two to eval­u­ate what dif­fer­ence hav­ing a shut­down rou­tine made. Decide if you want to stick with it or not.

More off the hook (if we are any­thing alike)

If you con­scious­ly shape your clos­ing rou­tine and com­plete it before leav­ing work at the end of the day, you will, if you are any­thing like Cal New­port, myself, and many oth­ers, feel lighter at heart and that it becomes eas­i­er to let go of work after you leave the office. You know for a fact what you still have to do and know when you have planned to do it. You will feel less haunt­ed by things that used to stress you out because you have made con­scious deci­sions regard­ing what lies ahead of you and that is still left to do.

What’s your way?

What does your shut­down rit­u­al or clos­ing rou­tine look like? Please share your rou­tine with me! You might inspire the rest of us!

(Look­ing for more tips on how to dis­con­nect from work? Feel free to check out my eight ways to turn off work dur­ing the week­end!)