7 Good Minutes: Extra - A Two-Minute Way to Park Your Workday

0:00Clyde Lee Dennis here with today's episode of 7 Good Minutes, Extra. Work tends to follow you home when it's unfinished, and a specific plan for the unfinished part can help your mind let it wait. Here's a way to do that in about 2 minutes. I call it parking your day. Use it at the very end of your work day. Before you leave the building, before you start the car, or before you close the laptop at home. First, pick the one or two unfinished things most likely to follow you tonight. Not your whole list. Just the ones already tugging at you. Second, for each one write two things, where you stopped, and the very next action, with when you'll do it. Something like, finish the draft through page 3. Next, send it to Marcus, tomorrow at 9. Keep it on a sticky note in your phone, or on the first line of tomorrow's page. Specific enough that you don't have to hold it in your head. Third, close the note, and do one small thing that marks the switch. Turn off the engine and take one slow breath before you go inside.

1:03Change your shoes. Put the laptop somewhere you can't see it from the couch. What should you expect? Not a perfectly quiet mind. But often fewer work thoughts pulling at you in that first hour home, and an easier start tomorrow, because the first step is already decided. If something still pops up later, you don't need to argue with it. Add it to the note. Give it a time, and let it wait there. You don't have to finish the day to leave it. You just have to tell it where to wait. Until next time, I'm Clyde Lee Dennis, and this has been 7 good minutes. Extra.