Develop a Shut-Down Ritual

“At the end of the workday, shut down your consideration of work issues until the next morning —no after-dinner e-mail check, no mental replays of conversations, and no scheming about how you’ll handle an upcoming challenge; shut down work thinking completely. If you need more time, then extend your workday, but once you shut down, your mind must be left free. …Decades of work from multiple different sub fields within psychology all point toward the conclusion that regularly resting your brain improves the quality of your deep work. When you work, work hard. When you’re done, be done. Your average e-mail response time might suffer some, but you’ll more than make up for this with the sheer volume of truly important work produced during the day by your refreshed ability to dive deeper than your exhausted peers.”

Cal Newport, Deep Work

Performing at your peak on a consistent basis—which often results from embracing the deep life—is incredibly demanding on your energy.

Which is why we need to ensure we remain vigilant about resting up and recovering on a regular basis.

Actionable insights

• Create a shut-down ritual. Implement a hard stop at the end of your work days. “When you work, work hard. When you’re done, be done.” 
• Here’s Cal Newport’s personal shut-down ritual:

  • He checks email one final time to ensure he’s handled anything urgent, 
  • looks over any unfinished action items,
  • plans out the appropriate time-blocks to complete them the following day,
  • and then, finally, as he turns off his computer for the night, says to himself, “Shut-down complete!”

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