End of Day Shutdown: Finish Your Day Well To Disconnect and Reduce Workplace Stress

Having a strong finish to your day or week is one of the key ways you can easily affect you workplace stress. Finishing the day with the knowledge that work is under control is vital to disconnect and to properly disconnect from work.

Unfortunately, this feeling can be hard to find when tasks aren't always completed on the day they are started, so it's vital to have a process in place for dealing with this inevitability.

In my Note Taking Practices for Modern Leaders article I mention the concept of reviewing and end of day revision. In this article I want to go a little deeper on the topic of shutting down your workday in a way that allows disconnection from the environment and reduces stress.

Pro tip before we start: I highly recommend this list is written with a pen and paper.

Before I get into the end of day shutdown process I am going to address the #1 pushback I hear when I tell people about this routine:

There is always something left to be done. The end of day shutdown isn't about finishing everything all the time; it's about changing the relationship with task management to properly acknowledge progress and get clear on next steps.

The act of writing down tasks is a proven productivity method for reducing stress, and the shutdown extends on this by creating the regular habit of making time to manage the process.

David Allen, author of Getting Things Done says it best, "your mind is for having ideas, not holding them."

One of the major reasons why disconnecting from work can be tough is the anxiety around possibly forgetting tasks. Ensuring your maintain a list of things to do, checking them off, and maintaining it is critical for freeing yourself to focus on doing the work as opposed to remembering the work.

The shutdown process is incredibly simple. The entire process can take as little as 5 minutes and at worst shouldn't take more than 30. The outcome is to simply ensure that as you walk away from your desk you've taken stock of your day and prepared yourself to move forward when you return.

The process is super simple and can be broken down into 3 steps:

If you have a habit of shutting down your day effectively you will also start your day with a list of objectives. Ideally this means a personal to do list, project board, or some other way of tracking what you need to do and what has been completed.

Start your shutdown by updating this list. Simply check off off items which are completed, as well as items where significant progress has been made. It may sound strange to tick off incomplete items, but there is a method to this which will become clear.

Next ensure any items that came up during the day which also got achieved get added to the list and checked off. Add them to the list and check them off at the same time.

This might seem unnecessary but taking a moment to add these items and tick them off gives an incredible sense of accomplishment. It also helps on days where the items aren't being checked off because other priorities got in the way.

Note: it's important that this list of daily tasks are personal and not shared. It may be necessary to double up some work on task management where other team members require access, but this process works best on a list that is personal.

Next you want to look back at your day and the things you achieved and identify the next steps on items that have them. Most tasks that get achieved in a work day have either (a) more work to be done, or (b) follow on work that needs to be considered.

It's normal for work to feel unfinished at the end of the day, the important thing is to reframe how you deal with this and how work gets carried over into subsequent days.

This means that if you performed a task that is at partial completion, the best way to handle this is to check it off, then write down the remaining effort for that task into the next day. As a practical example, it might look like this:

This ensures that you end your day feeling the accomplishment of the work that was done, but you also have the confidence that the next day you're well-equipped to complete the remaining effort and move on to other tasks.

The last item on the shutdown is to connect with anyone who may need an update on progress. This includes items that are finished, partially finished, and even items which may have had limited or no progress.

While it can seem strange to contact someone about work that is still in progress, I can assure you that the receiver appreciates these messages.

A short email that informs someone that you're continuing on projects they care about and what the next steps are have a profound impact on your relationship with the person, not to mention the impact it has on yourself when you know you've kept them in the loop.

Shutting down your work day effectively is not strictly about completing every task but rather managing them in a way that enables you to disconnect and reduce stress.

The shutdown aims to ensure you have a clear understanding of your progress of the day, as well as clear goals for the days coming. And with consistency it will reframe your relationship with incomplete work or projects that span many days or weeks.

Like all habits it will likely take some time to develop but the practice is well worth it when it becomes a natural part of your work day.