End your Day with Intention: Daily Transition Rituals

One of my favorite, go-to tools that I recommend for 

every client's New OS (and swear by personally)

is a tried and true Transition Ritual.

An intentional, repeatable process

that marks the transition from

one mode to another…

(ex. work life to mom life)

& one day to the next.

It’s like passing the baton to your future self.

I swear by transition rituals personally,

and recommend them to all of my clients.

Here’s why:

An intentional power down at the end of your work day

prepares you to be more present as a parent, and

tees up Future You for a successful start

the following day.

Who doesn’t love a win-win?!

I have two versions.

Monday through Thursday

takes about 20 minutes,

sometimes less;

Friday takes

about 45.

These are among the most

high-leverage minutes

of my entire day.

My checklist for the Mon-Thurs version:

• Status on my Top 3 goals for that day and allocate any open items to a future date

• Capture any important “notes to self” so I can pick up where I left off.

• Reconcile tomorrow’s calendar (no overlapping commitments)

• Jot down my shortlist of follow-ups & tactical tasks*

• Set my Top 3 goals for the next day

• Clear my desk surface

Nothing like starting the day with a clear desk, amiright?

* Pro tip for moms (aka The Keepers of The Lists):

Create a standing calendar event for tactical minutiae

(frequency dependent on volume of minutiae —

therefore highly correlated with # of kids)

And use the description field in the calendar invite

to itemize specific tasks or calls you need to knock out.

Do you have a transition ritual?

Pic: Sunset over the lake at camp… nature’s end of day transition ritual