EVERY WORKDAY ON A HIGH

Maintaining boundaries between your work and non-work life is challenging. It can be tough when you work from home, especially if your home office is in a space used for non-work activities – like the kitchen, living room or bedroom. And it can also be a problem when working from the office, especially if you’re in the habit of taking work home.

This often results in no official start or finish to the workday, which makes work and non-work life blur together. To avoid this happening, consider creating a ‘Shut Down’ ritual to delineate the end of your workday with the start of your night life, and finish your workday on a high.

Creating an effective Shut Down ritual is as simple as completing two sentences. The first sentence you should write is: “Today, I made progress on…” and then, simply write down the things you made meaningful progress on. It might be a report, a presentation, strategy work, anything.

The second sentence to write is: “If I get ‘X’ done tomorrow, it will be a great day.” This sentence helps you focus on the most important thing you need to achieve to make meaningful progress. It also eliminates the overwhelm that can often characterise our day when

DR AMANTHA IMBER SHARES HER EASY FIVE-MINUTE HACK we have a million things we feel like we need to achieve.

Once you have identified this one thing, schedule it in your diary. This prevents co-workers from blocking out your time with their needs and ensures you can prioritise the most important thing that you need to get done.

The final piece of the strategy is putting in place a trigger to remember to actually write these sentences. Think about what existing behaviour you could link the writing of these two sentences to, so you actually remember to write them. For example, you might use the act of closing your laptop to be the trigger that prompts you to write your two sentences as your Shut Down ritual. Or you might use the habit of deciding what to have for dinner to be the trigger to then take 1-2 minutes to complete your sentences.

In research conducted by Inventium, they found that the simple act of completing this Shut Down ritual (even just 1-2 times per week) lead to a 46 per cent increase in productivity and a 23 per cent increase in wellbeing (that is, people experienced more positive than negative feelings). Not bad for a five-minute time investment!

• Dr Amantha Imber is the founder of behavioural science consultancy, Inventium, and the host of How I Work, a podcast about the habits and rituals of the world’s most successful people.