The After-Work Reset — How to Create Weeknight Evenings that Feel Restful

One of my least favorite feelings is getting home from work, sitting down to rest, and then getting so distracted that the hours have gone and I’m nearly at bedtime. In the past, it wasn’t uncommon for this to happen. With only 4-5 hours between when I get home and my ideal bedtime, it’s a challenge to fit basic life admin done within that short window.

By the time you account for cooking, eating, showering, helping with the homework, and getting caught up on your favourite new show, there’s not a lot of time leftover.

I’ve had to learn to be diligent about protecting the after-work hours so I can get it all done without stressing out.

Accepting the reality of weeknights

I find my weeknight evenings go more smoothly when I’ve set out a loosely followed plan that gets the most important things done but supports a leisurely pace.

The key word here is loosely.

I have no interest in optimizing every minute of a Tuesday night, I just want to get to what needs done and accomplish it in a leisurely fashion that moves me to a lower state of stress. For that reason, I am extremely realistic about how much I can actually do in that time.

In my world, the only must-dos in the evening are:

• Making dinner

• Showering and winding down for bed

That’s it. If those two things happen, I consider the night is a success.

Getting in one extra project

If I’m lucky, I’ll have time for one more thing, but I don’t expect more than that and I don’t worry if I have to skip it altogether. That one thing is often reading or writing depending on whether I feel like consuming prose or creating it.

Accepting that my average weeknight is not the time to get ahead is important for me in this moment because I’m still prioritizing rest in my life. Sometimes there are seasons where I can commit to chipping away at goals, but for the most part my work evenings serve the purpose of undoing the stress of the day.

Following the weeknight plan

Most of my evening calm is actually set up earlier in the week.

As I’ve mentioned in another post about planning the week, I decide what dinner will be for each weeknight ahead of time. That single habit removes a surprising amount of friction. There’s no 6pm mental spiral about what to cook and questioning whether I have the right ingredients.

It also means I’m at less risk of ordering food delivery, something I heavily relied on when I was at school completing my master’s program. Again, that was a different time and place.

What the transition from work to home looks like for me now

As soon as I get in the door, I take some time to relax and mentally and physically allow myself to move into a different rhythm. Yes, I have more to do before I’m done for the day, but I treat this as an entirely separate experience, one that’s more leisurely and present.

I don’t rush straight into dinner, rather I sit down on purpose.

I might catch up on the news or check on my Animal Crossing: New Horizons island on the Nintendo Switch (a vestige of my pandemic days where I found tending to my digital garden to be soothing).

Once I’ve felt sufficiently relaxed and free of residual stress of work, I then start on the rest of my early evening routine. If I skip that decompression time, the whole night feels slightly tense. That short reset creates a line between the two parts of my day.

I usually tackle the rest in hourly blocks. Again, if I’m trying to sleep at a decent hour there’s not a lot of extra time, so I keep on task by blocking time:

• One hour for dinner and light tidying
• One hour for reading or writing
• One hour for showering, changing, and winding down

This is by no means a rigid schedule. Sometimes dinner spills over into the next hour. Some days I don’t feel like writing. Sometimes I abandon the ‘extra’ hour altogether to get to bed early if I’m feeling exhausted. I mostly listen to what my mind and body need in these moments.

If you can’t yet tell, I’m not a fan of forcing yourself to do things and powering through exhaustion. Granted there are moments for this but not as a way of life.

Conclusion

If weeknight evenings often feel rushed, full of home admin, or a long list of housekeeping chores, it might be time to reevaluate whether staying up until midnight to get it all done is helping in the long run.

For myself, I decided that in the middle of the week when I’m already moving from one deadline and schedule to another, that’s not the time to load on more chores. My main goal is to keep the household running and tend to the most urgent things. The rest can wait until Friday afternoon or some other time during the weekend.