What is it about the weekend that makes us slow things down? There's something so fun about waking up on Saturday and Sunday mornings where the days feel full of relaxation and time well spent with family and friends, yet during the week, there's always a sense that we need to be getting things done.

Do you feel this way or is it just me?

I think what I need to work on, is to bring that weekend sensibility and incorporate that into my workflow during the week, slowing things down and taking time to stop and smell the roses.
             

At the end of each of my work days, say between 5pm and 6pm, I'm going to try something rare in this day and age... Shut down and stop working!

In one of my favorite books, Deep Work, Cal Newport talks about the importance of shutting down after work. 

"If you keep interrupting your evening to check and respond to e-mail, or put aside a few hours after dinner to catch up on an approaching deadline, you’re robbing your directed attention centers of the uninterrupted rest they need for restoration. Even if these work dashes consume only a small amount of time, they prevent you from reaching the levels of deeper relaxation in which attention restoration can occur. Only the confidence that you’re done with work until the next day can convince your brain to downshift to the level where it can begin to recharge for the next day to follow. Put another way, trying to squeeze a little more work out of your evenings might reduce your effectiveness the next day enough that you end up getting less done than if you had instead respected a shutdown."