The ritual that costs nothing and ends the working day

Without something to mark it, work leaks into the evening and the evening never quite starts.

The commute used to do this job by accident. Thirty minutes of being neither at work nor at home, during which the mind changed gear whether or not you intended it to. Where that gap has gone, the day tends to run continuously from the last email to bed, and the evening is spent in a state that is not quite either thing. The remedy people find, when they find one, is almost always small and slightly odd: closing a particular door, changing shoes, washing up the day's cups, walking to the end of the street and back.

None of these accomplish anything. That is the point of them. The action is a signal rather than a task, and it works because it is consistent, not because it is meaningful. Ten repetitions in and the door closing has become the thing that ends the day, and it will keep working for years. It is one of the cheapest useful arrangements available and it is invented privately by most people who have one.

It fails when it becomes a rule with a moral attached, or when it gets bundled with three other improvements and turns into a routine to be maintained. One small action, done because it works, is stable. A programme is not. The measure of whether the thing is any good is simply whether the evening feels like it has started, and if it does, no further justification is needed.