I may be a Cal Newport fan and follower. I have read several of his books, and listen to his podcast often. 

I reviewed one of Cal Newport’s books in two posts here and here.

No, I don’t follow everything he suggests for productivity and living the life of our dreams to the T. Mostly because I live a different life than the one that all his suggestions fit on to. But a lot of his thoughts and ideas that make sense to me, I embrace, or at least try to embrace. 

One of his ideas that I like the sound of is the Work Shutdown Ritual. He first wrote about this idea on his blog back in 2009. But this idea in the productivity nerd circle is big enough now (I am counting myself as a member since I know this term well!), that it is now a standard term.

This is to be done at the end of a workday. What this entails for him is to basically go over his to-dos and see if anything urgent needs to be scheduled in the very near future, review his calendar for the next 2 weeks to assess what is coming up, and add anything necessary to his weekly plan. And finally, turning off computers (or closing of notebooks) with some magic words, like “Schedule Shutdown, Complete”. 

The idea behind this ritual is to be able to capture all that is on one’s plate and needs attention shortly, and not miss out on important deadlines and appointments. But most importantly, to demarcate the end of a work day knowing everything has been taken care of. And then, going about the rest of the day without stress or worry, and putting work out of mind once the workday is over.

I really like the sound of it. I would obviously design my own shutdown ritual based on my needs. I would also say my own magic words, if I felt the need to say them at all. 

I have tried, many a times, to have a shutdown ritual.

My problem is that when I am done with work, I feel lazy about doing anything more. A shutdown ritual seems like more work that I do not want to do. And so, most days I don’t. Is it because, well, I am so done with it that it wont worry me, and so I don’t really need a shutdown ritual? 

But the reason I would do it in the first place is not because I would stress over what needs to be done soon enough, and what am I missing if I’m not going over everything. That is not my problem. 

Instead, the reason I would do a shutdown ritual is because…

It would give me a chance to design my next work day based on what I did today.

It would allow me to plan ahead based on what mindset I was in today, and capture my ideas before I forget them. 

Because I do forget them by the next day. 

If I capture my ideas and plans before I finish for the day, I would have a smooth start the next day- I would know exactly where to pick up, without having to dwell on what to do when I start the next day. 

But for that to happen, I have to get over my laziness first, right? And that is a whole other post. As well, I actually plan to design my shutdown routine in that second post I will write next week.

Until then, I will shutdown without a ritual, like I always tend to do, and dwell on how I can do better with one. And with that thought, motivate myself to start doing a ritual on the regular 🙂