7 to 10: How to End Your Work Day

Experiments #7 8 9 & 10

In academic and research settings, we juggle diverse responsibilities and collaborate with many people in long-term complex projects. We struggle with high bars for achievement, shifting benchmarks, and so many demands.

Of course, we know we want and deserve a life beyond work, but how to get there? Sometimes it can feel like nothing is ever enough.

The Hard Stop Cutoff

If you have younger children, the hard cutoff is when childcare or school is done for the day. You probably know to the exact minute when you need to leave your workplace to meet the bus or childcare providers need to lock the door. If you are taking a course, teaching a late class, or moonlighting as a barista, you also have a hard stop cutoff.

When my kids were younger, sometimes this end-of-day hard stop cutoff loomed large. Of course (of course!) I was excited to see them. But mid-afternoon, I would sinkingly realize Oh! I have 90 minutes to finish all the things I was interrupted from doing all day. I would try to focus, get stuff done, and rush out last minute. Sometimes I even left my email open on my desk. And then after they were heading to bed I'd pick up work I had abandoned earlier.

Not a good system.

So, how to make sure you are productive in your last hours, do actually end your workday, and leave things ready to pick up again?

I experimented with 4 strategies -- Here are my reviews.

Create a Hard Stop Cutoff, Experiment #7

Strategy: If you don't currently have a hard stop cutoff, pick an end time and plan something: Walk with a friend. Promise to make dinner. Make a date with a book.

Commitment scheduled, a few hours ahead you use the hard stop to generate some deadline energy on your to-do list. Speed up as hard stop approaches. Get as much completed as you can, and then be done.

Experiment: I discovered I do like a fixed and predictable end of day.

But how to generate that deadline energy?

Nearing the end of a full day, my energy can lag. So I tried scheduling some lighter tasks for the last hours. Sometimes it helps to schedule a Flow Club "Finish Strong" session for the last hour leading up to my Hard Stop Cutoff [see link to 2 free weeks in comments].

I'm really not up for big social/exercise right after work, but you might find it motivating. I did better with a 'commitment' to have some tea, eat dinner, hang with my family.

Evaluation: B+. The principle is sound -- We all need an end to our day.

The challenge is in the implementation. And maybe in giving ourselves a break...not every moment needs to be planned, intentional, and purposive.

Leave Breadcrumbs, #8

Strategy: So many projects take forever, with documents and email threads stretching across months and years. Leaving breadcrumbs is the strategy of always leaving a note to yourself of where to pick up when you return to a complex task you left partly done.

Experiment: What worked for me:

• Highlight last word read so clear where to start
• Margin comment "Next: Rearrange paragraph so main point jumps out"
• Post-it notes
• Add to Tomorrow's tasks in bullet journal "Check row/column totals"

Evaluation: Leaving a note to yourself is probably Office/Life Skills 101, but NOT doing it really can waste time. I can jump into a task much faster when I do this well... A

Clean Your Space, #9

Strategy: Leave your real and virtual workspaces in whatever state they will feel welcoming to you when you return. You may like piles of curling paper and musty books, or you may dream of living in a sleek condo joyified by Marie Kondo. What you like is what you like. Just do your best to leave your space as close to your ideal as you can.

Experiment: I am somewhere in the middle. I am not a tidy person, but I like tidy spaces. So my compromise is to keep piles of unsorted paper on a side table out of my visual line. Then I work at a desk containing my computer and other essentials, and I clean this off a few times a day.

I do eat al desko (bad habit, yes), so at the end of the day I usually have dishes to remove, highlighters to go in the drawer, recycling to take away, cushions to rearrange. Doing this quickly is totally worth the effort for me.

When I return in the morning, the clear desk feels good. I spray and clean the desk so it smells fresh. OK, not every morning, let's be reasonable. But I am happy when I do.

As for my virtual desktop, I have a vague ambition to leave it organized. All the tabs closed. Programs shut down. Tomorrow's slate clean and fresh. Sadly, the serene computer desktop is not natural for me, but I am working to make it a habit.

Evaluation: A+ for the strategy, relatively easy and excellent payoff

A- for me at real world desk

C- for me on desktop

Define When You Will Be Done... #10

The Challenge: A challenge with reading, writing, teaching, data analysis, presenting, etc. is that your product can always be better.

If you tend toward perfectionism and excellence, and/or a have fear of messing up [surely almost all readers here have at least one of these tendencies?], then it is difficult to know when you are done. When to stop writing, searching, fixing the tabs? When to submit?

We've all been there: Knowing we are spending too long on something but...

Strategy: I learned and tried the When-Will-You-Be-Done strategy in June in a virtual writing sprint/summer camp created by Dr. Katie Peplin She coaches people working on PhDs, including running a very economical supportive coaching community (links in comments).

Her idea is that when you create your task list, you should also define in advance what will count as done. This can be tricky in academia but worth the effort.

Experiment: I was writing a short empirical research paper, and needed up-to-date, high-quality sources for the intro. I decided I needed to find a maximum of 3 high-quality refs from at least 2 countries for one point. Being this specific helped me to NOT select and skim some papers with weak samples, duplicate countries, etc.

When-Will-I-Be-Done has a million other applications:

• How many optional videos are needed on your course website?
• Which specific alternative hypotheses do you need to rule out analytically?
• How well-written/formatted should a document be before sharing?
• How much time will I spend on these slides?

Evaluation: A. Super helpful!

Like many productivity hacks, I need to use it more often. No more rabbit holes ??

How do you make sure YOUR workday is over?

How do you check your perfectionism and move on?

?? Please share in the comments what works for you.

?? And subscribe to be notified when I post Experiment #11 on Tuesday 10 October

Next Week: Will it be...Vision Boards or Gamifying or Better Lists? We will see.