My shutdown ritual captures loose ends and helps me set myself up for a great next day. It also lets me relax in the evening, knowing I’ve captured my follow up tasks. I use it to process any easy open-ended tasks that I forgot about or didn’t have time for throughout the day. It also gives me space to take stock of the day.
As I’ve written about before, I’m a firm believer that structure leads to creativity and growth. This is despite my natural tendencies to eschew structure whenever I can! While this set of tasks might seem burdensome, it is actually a reasonably quick process that ultimate frees my brain up to do the important stuff instead of worrying about the details of my day or an email that still needs my response.
My shutdown ritual consists of three main sections:
1. Capture any missed follow ups or tasks
This section is designed to capture any incomplete or new tasks/projects that may have popped up throughout the day. I notoriously struggle with follow through. For those Kolbe fans out there, my Follow Through is a 2 out of 10. This routine at least helps me track the things I’m not following through on!
Review all notes made today
My team and I all use Microsoft OneNote to capture our notes for both internal meetings and meetings with customers. OneNote has a great feature that will show me all of the content that has been added or changed within a date range across all of my notebooks. I scan through it all to capture any follow up tasks that I need to move over to my task list.
Scan email inboxes
I currently have 3 active inboxes. At the end of the day, I scan through each for any emails that need a follow up. I’d like to say that I follow David Allen’s two-minute rule and only respond to the emails that will take 2 minutes or less, but I will probably spend up to 10 minutes per email response.
Depending on the level of task an email represents, I’ll either add it to my task system or just flag it and leave it in my inbox. I’ve read a lot of productivity content recommending against this. It seems to work for me, but I’ll confess that task management is not my strong suit.
2. Plan tomorrow
After I’ve processed today, it’s time to plan tomorrow. I’ve already put work in at the beginning of the week to sketch out my week, including the 1 or 2 things I want to accomplish on each day. Of course, as the week progresses, things change. We all know Moltke the Elder’s famous saying, “No plan survives first contact with Monday.”
Review my weekly plan
At the end of every week (if I’m on my game) or the beginning of the next week, I set out a high-level plan for the week. As part of my daily shutdown ritual, I check in with the plan to see if I’m on or off track and look at what my top 1-2 things are for the next day.
Review any new tasks created today
Just a quick glance to make sure that tomorrow’s plan has the highest priority tasks associated with it. Is there anything I just added that means I should adjust my 1-2 tasks that I want to get accomplished tomorrow?
Review tomorrow’s calendar
Of course, as I’m planning out my day, I give a quick glance to my calendar. I’m looking to see which meetings I need to plan for and to understand how much non-meeting time I have to work on my major projects or eat lunch.
Block out my day
I use a modified version of Cal Newport’s Time-Block Planner. At the top of my plan, I write down the one thing that is most important for me to accomplish. Beneath that, I plan my day in 30-min blocks. This includes all meetings from my calendar and the time blocks where I’ll be putting time into a specific project or activity.
3. Reflect on the day
I want to live my life with intention. Part of that is making sure that I’m leaning into my values and showing up the way I want to – not always an easy thing for me. I use a set of daily question to center and remind myself of who I want to be as a person.
This is based heavily on Marshall Goldsmith’s daily questions. I have a series of question that I track daily that make sure I’m living to my values. While they change roughly every 12 months, they are directionally consistent. Some of the question I ask myself right now are:
- Did I do my best to live my day with purpose?
- Did I reach out to someone today?
- Did I lean into vulnerability?
- Did I lean into kindness?
- Did I complete my shutdown routine?
- Did I give anyone a real thank you or complement
- Did I get my one thing done today?
- Did I write?
It can be very inspiring to see the “Yes’s” piling up daily. I don’t want to blow my streaks. Likewise, it can be eye opening to see “No’s” starting to stack up in a given category. Usually, this leads me to ask some difficult questions to myself.
This entire shutdown process can take anywhere from 15 to 60 minutes depending on how busy my day was, how much email I received, and how many notes I need to process. I’m not perfect with it. There are more days than I’d like to acknowledge that get away from me. Furthermore, on the weekends, I only do step 3: Reflect on the Day. I definitely do not time block my weekends!
A note to future John
Keep this process and make sure you are blocking time for it!
Thanks to Ann Savchenko for her photo of the sun setting behind a Ukranian wheat field.