The Power of Ritual, Part Deux: Closings
How do we say goodbye to 2020? Or, how do you immolate a dumpster fire if it’s already burning?
In short, show me a person alive today who isn’t ready for this year to end already.
So my blog post to close out the year is about how we close out our days.
If we’re still fortunate enough to be working, and more fortunate still to be among the third of Americans working from home, 2020 was the year of fuzzy boundaries.
Boundaries between paid work and child care, with schools and daycare centers closed. Boundaries between the work day and the rest of the day, with no commutes to mark the difference. Boundaries between work space and home space, if you don’t have the luxury of a separate room or even a separate corner.
Enter the closing ritual. It sets a boundary where none might have existed. It announces to you, and to anyone else who might be around, that you’re done with work for the day.
Cal Newport is one of my favorite authors about the working world. In his book Deep Work, he describes his own closing ritual: he runs down his task list and his calendar, and he says a phrase to himself: “Schedule shutdown, complete.”
My ritual: put the laptop to sleep, turn off the light in my office and go upstairs to make dinner. But before I even pull up the evening’s recipe, I make the bubbles dance on my tongue.
No, I’m not a weeknight beer drinker. The beverage that starts my transition is a zero-calorie concoction of carbonated water (SodaStream) and True Lime.
It’s a fizzy, citrusy reminder that I’m done working for the day.
Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve added another piece to my closing ritual. Or rather, I’ve added hundreds of wooden pieces. It’s not the jigsaw puzzle. A client in the travel industry sector introduced me to Woody 99, a game for the iPad. I get to exercise my order-seeking brain for a few minutes when I play it at the end of the day.
Says my client, “Playing Woody 99 is truly one of the ways that allows my very busy brain to be soothed at the end of the day, and when I am feeling overly stressed I find it has an ability to help me stop my overthinking cycle.”
Having a workday-ending ritual doesn’t prevent an errant phone call after hours, and it doesn’t stop you from sneaking an occasional peek at your email at night. But it honors the job you do at your desk (or table or counter) by leaving it there.
What’s your ritual?
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