Quit work: how to unwind with an evening routine

Sleep is the most underrated productivity tool you own. An evening routine, repeated until it becomes a cue, is how you reclaim it.

October 4, 2022By Jojanneke Vonk · 2 min read
Evening light through a window

When the workday bleeds into the evening, sleep is usually the first thing that loses. The fix is not willpower — it is rhythm. A short, repeatable evening routine teaches your body the signal that the work is over.

Tip 1: Put yourself first for an hour

Self-care is one of those phrases that has lost meaning. What it really means here: protect a single hour at the end of the day that nobody else gets. Not your inbox, not your boss, not the half-finished pitch deck. You.

Sleep is the recovery tool that everything else depends on. Defending the hour before bed is how you defend tomorrow.

Tip 2: Make a list of things that calm you

Different bodies wind down differently. Candles, music, a long shower, a chapter of fiction, a slow walk around the block. Write down the three or four things that lower your heart rate, and rotate through them.

Tip 3: Put the phone away

Blue light is the smaller problem. The bigger one is that your phone is an infinite stream of new contexts. Every notification is a small invitation back into work mode.

Park it in another room thirty minutes before bed. The first few nights are uncomfortable. By night five you stop noticing.

Tip 4: Repeat until it becomes a cue

Routines work because the body learns them. Do the same three things, in the same order, for two weeks. By the end of the third you'll feel sleepy when you start the routine, not when you finish it.

Moments AI can hold the rest. End-of-day briefs land before you log off, follow-ups go out in the morning, and the work knows where to find you tomorrow — not at 11pm.

Stop reacting. Start operating.

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