TCW #038 | Your new daily wind-down ritual

Idle brains are more creative, spontaneous, and strategic. They also have less work anxiety. Give yourself the gift of cognitive rest, every day.

Hey, it’s 📣 Coach Erika! Welcome to a 🙏 paid subscriber edition🙏 of The Career Whispers. Each week I tackle reader questions about tech careers: how to get one, how to navigate them, and how to grow and thrive in your role.

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This week, I’ll lay out a quick, science-backed daily work wind-down ritual that will:

1. improve your cognitive output by giving your brain rest between workdays.

2. enable you to be more present with yourself, your friends, and your family during non-work hours.

3. give you more career-catapulting “eureka” moments.

As a bonus, this daily wind-down ritual will also modulate the Sunday Scaries: that feeling of dread on Sunday that comes in anticipation of returning to work on Monday. Reclaim Mondays with a plan you can trust and a running start.

This could be you. This is your brain with a daily wind-down ritual.

Let’s dive in.

The thesis behind a daily wind-down

The ritual behind this week’s post was derived from one of my favorite books on professional impact and productivity: Deep Work by Cal Newport.

In “Deep Work,” Cal Newport asserts that the greatest intellectual feats and achievements come not from "getting lots of things done" but from "getting the right things done, and doing them well."

The book proposes that the best way to do the right things well is to have a block of deep work built into your daily work schedule. This is daily or weekly focused work time that is sanctimonious, non-negotiable, and uninterruptible — just for Deep Work.

The book also makes it clear that there is creative cognitive work that happens only when the brain is relaxed (idle) and free of active thinking.

Why? The brain needs time for idleness. Creativity and spontaneous connections are blocked by continuous thinking. They arise in great force from a rested, idle, curious mind. To create this space for our brains to make magic, we working people need a way to "shut down" our day and create a space of cognitive idleness.

This is where the daily wind-down comes in.

note: Cal Newport calls it a shutdown ritual, I call it a daily wind-down. Tomato tomato potato potato, you can choose what to call it.

Your new 15-20 minute daily wind-down ritual