Work’s been tough today, you’re wiped out and ready to go home. But before you do, your work will go much easier if you take a few minutes to wrap things up.
If you don’t, your brain will continue to remind you about the work pressures, even when you’d rather be doing more important things with your family. Or sleeping. If you want to find out more about this concept, check out Getting Things Done by David Allen.
So before you leave, here’s how you can spend your last ten minutes at work:
- What were you able to accomplish today? Take just a moment to appreciate and celebrate that.
- What’s left undone, and how does that change what you want to do in future days? Watch out that you don’t just repeatedly slip to-do items from one day to the next in an ever-growing list. Spend a few minutes truly considering what will be realistic and appropriate for changing your priorities.
- What are the current tasks in progress and conversations in progress? Create reminders so that your attention will be drawn back to them at the appropriate times. Capture the state of conversations in your notebook or someplace else that will be quickly accessible.
- What do you want your priorities for tomorrow morning to be? This will be useful when you start work, as I described in the previous blog post.
Now you can unplug from work, secure in the knowledge that when you come in tomorrow, or next week, you’ll be able to start up quickly.
by Carl Dierschow
Leave a Reply