The Best Way to End Your Workday

Taking a few minutes at the very end of the day to map out how you’ll tackle any ongoing tasks or commitments is a great way to facilitate detachment.

Making a plan for where, when, and how the task will be completed seems to reduce the urgency in our brains that naturally presses for completing goals. In this case, a plan is a reasonable substitute for actually completing the goal.

Knocking out simple, completable tasks at the end of the workday — and avoiding complicated ones — is another good way to psychologically disconnect.

If you finish the day by tackling something complex and unfinishable, this creates “oose ends that have the potential to continue distracting us during leisure time. You’re better off working on these earlier in the day, and reserving the easy stuff for your final hour or two of work.

Don’t make checking your inbox the last thing you do each day.

This is the opposite of detachment. If there is nothing to attend to in your inbox, checking email is a small waste of time. If there is something urgent, a new task has now been activated in your mind, which will press for completion.