You’ve been at the desk since dawn, and the sun is already getting lower in the western sky.

You’re deep into the project: 8 windows open, 31 browser tabs.

You know if you try to relax, you’ll just end up thinking about the project all night, so you wearily dive back in.

Your phone buzzes and you see a reminder: “Grey and Sage come over at 6” 

It’s already 4.

“Thank goddess that’s over,” you think as you snap the laptop closed. You step into the kitchen and open a pint, then start to wonder if the figure on page 17 is accurate.

So you pop back into the office, bottle in hand.

Before you know it the pint is gone, you still don’t know if page 17 is accurate, and it’s already 5:30.

“Shit shit shit!” repeats in your head as you scramble to get the house in order.

All night you’re thinking about page 17, the conflicting data stealing your attention from your friends like a background process on an overworked CPU.

Laying in bed trying to fall asleep, you can’t remember the big news Grey shared with you, and you still don’t know if page 17 is accurate.

What if there’s a better way?

What if your whole brain and body knew that work was over, because you’d told them work was over in a dozen small ways?

If we don’t hold the next steps in our working memory, we use half the morning figuring them out. 

So at the end of the day write down what you’ve done and what the next steps will be.

Browser tabs are metaphors for the things we’re holding in our working memory. 

Too many tabs → slower processes (for computers and for brains).

So at the end of the workday we can copy the relevant info (or the link) into a place we can actually use it, then close the tab. (Or at least use a Chrome extension like One Tab or a browser like FireFox to consolidate the tabs into relevant categories.)

Feeling unpleasant emotions about our work makes our lizard brain want to avoid it. 

So we can make our mornings easier by intentionally feeling good in the afternoon. 

When you’re done for the day, review what you’ve done and celebrate it.

Dance, clap, laugh, lift your face towards the sky, tell yourself you did an amazing job …

All these actions release dopamine and norepinephrine, which tell your nervous system that you just finished something worth doing. 

And that makes your lizard brain want to do it more.

Our computers are like magical portals.

Open that portal with intention in the morning, close it with intention in the afternoon.

Intention could just be presence of mind and intention of will.

You could also ring two different bells, play 2 different songs, light 2 different incenses, spray 2 different scents …

Our sense of smell is wired to the oldest parts of our brain and has the biggest impact on things like memory, but any pair of sensory experiences can serve as keys to the portal.

The last emotion we feel about our work will be like an aftertaste for our whole nervous system. 

Bad aftertaste → avoidance and reduced executive functioning.

So make the last action of every work day something that almost always feels good: gratitude.

If that seems trite it’s ‘cause it works.

We can feel grateful for what we accomplished, for the impact that will have in our world, for the countless support systems that helped us get there …

Right now I’m feeling grateful for finishing this draft, for ADN making this possible, and for the evenings and weekends these practices will give back to you.