Have an activity to do right after work

For many high performers, it's hard to stop working for the day.

There's always more work to do. Working for as long as there's work to do doesn't create consistent high performance.

It's hard to realize when we're tired. Working until we feel like we need to stop pushes us beyond the point where the work we do is optimal.

The only consistent way I've found for high performers to stop working on time is to have something they must do after work.

My time to exercise and mentorship

I had boundary issues with stopping work on time for a long time. Working remotely exacerbated the problem, as did timezone differences.

At first, I didn't even have a specific time to stop work. I'd work for as long as I felt needed – late into the night.

Often, my brain felt so fried that the quality of my work late into the night suffered, and all I could do after work was sit in front of the TV and eat snacks, disrupting my recovery.

I experimented winding down with other personal activities: meditation, gym, practicing the guitar, contemplation. But since I had no time in the day when those activities needed to be done, they didn't help me stop working on time.

Several years ago, I started practicing brazilian jiujitsu. Unlike strength training, which I could do at any time in the day, my class was 3 times a week at 6pm. I couldn't just arrive at 7pm – I had to be there at 6pm or miss class for the day.

Suddenly, I started leaving work on time, but only on those 3 days a week when I needed to be at the gym by 6pm.

My brazilian jiujitsu classes created the back pressure necessary for me to stop working on time consistently.

When I ramped up my mentoring, I took a similar approach: I allocated my time right after work for mentorship, so I knew that on those days, I must wrap up my workday on time to be ready for my mentees.

There's always more work to do

Andy Grove, Intel's CEO through its incredible transition from memory to semiconductors, is widely known as one of Silicon Valley's most effective and influential tech leaders.

In the book High Output Management, he talks about his work hours and acknowledges there's always more work to be done.

My day always ends when I’m tired and ready to go home, not when I’m done. I am never done. [..] There is always more to be done, more that should be done, always more than can be done.

Grove, Andrew S.. High Output Management (p. 47). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Andy Grove lists an example day in the book that ends at 6:15pm, and calls it one of his busier days. The last 1 hour and 15 minutes of his day are spent checking mail.

5:00–6:15 Read the day’s mail, including progress reports. As with the morning’s mail reading, this was information-gathering, interspersed with nudging and decision-making through my annotations and messages scribbled on much of it.

Grove, Andrew S.. High Output Management (p. 46). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Having work to do is not reason enough to keep working for the day. There's always more work to do.

But stopping when we're tired is also not optimal. After all, it's hard to know how much is tired enough to stop working.

It's about energy, not time

Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz's book The Power of Full Engagement is one of my favorites, and it illustrates its thesis that "energy, not time, is the fundamental currency of high performance" with relatable scenarios:

Consider these scenarios:
• You attend a four-hour meeting in which not a single second is wasted — but during the final two hours your energy level drops off precipitously and you struggle to stay focused.
• You race through a meticulously scheduled twelve-hour day but by midday your energy has turned negative — impatient, edgy and irritable.
• You set aside time to be with your children when you get home at the end of the day, but you are so distracted by thoughts about work that you never really give them your full attention.
• You remember your spouse’s birthday — your computer alerts you and so does your Palm Pilot — but by the evening, you are too tired to go out and celebrate.

Loehr, Jim; Schwartz, Tony. The Power of Full Engagement: Managing Energy, Not Time, is the Key to High Performance and Personal Renewal (p. 4). Free Press. Kindle Edition.

It's much easier to extend your workday by an hour or two than it is to extend the energy necessary to match it.

While our energy varies throughout the day, how consistently we manage our energy through rest, exercise, healthy eating, and sleep significantly influences our energy levels.

But while rest, exercise, healthy eating, and sleep are necessary for high energy, they're often the first to go when we decide to work more.

When we choose to work more, we extend our energy spending and skip our energy recovery activities.

Over time, this leads to less effectiveness and even higher pressure to work more, creating a vicious cycle.

Define work hours and have something to go to

Our necessary daily work hours will vary depending on our job and abilities. Leaving work on time is not about working less or little but about being disciplined and consistent.

Once you define a time to end work that is sufficient to accomplish your role successfully and with excellence, you should consistently stop working at that time.

Exceptions will happen, but unless you have a solid back pressure mechanism, they'll be too frequent to be called so.

The best option under our control for an activity after work is gym classes, but it needs to be a class that starts at a set time, like a sport, spinning class, CrossFit, etc.

For those who don't exercise every day, other lessons can fill the time: photography, painting, music, etc.

We often have an activity or a hobby we say we'll pursue once we have time. Well, this is the time.

No matter which activity, a personal commitment is one of the best ways to enforce our boundaries between work and the other parts of our lives.