“How It Ends is How It Was”

I’ve been watching a lot of TikTok lately. And while that may sound like it’s not conducive to learning about productivity, I actually stumbled across a really good quote on it the other day.

The person on the video talked about one of their managers at a fast food place telling them a piece of advice I’d never heard before: when it comes to your day, how it ends is how it was. Meaning no matter how many good things you might have done during the day, if it ended badly—it will most likely stick in your memory as a bad day.

Maybe this isn’t always true, but I suspect it’s true in enough cases that it’s worth paying attention to how you close out your day. For me, there are 2 things that I don’t do often enough—but I know from experience that they almost always help the day end well.

The first thing is to close out the day with a written reflection on what happened during the day and how I felt about it. If I can specifically name something I was grateful for that day—all the better. My mood naturally lifts.

The second thing is to write down the things that are pulling at my mind that I know I need to address tomorrow. It’s not a commitment to doing them tomorrow, just an act of acknowledgment. I’m acknowledging that these things are tugging at my mind, and I’m telling myself that it’s okay to stop thinking about them for the night.

The great thing about this principle is it also means that if a day has gone really badly, but ends on a high note—you’ll tend to remember it as a good day. So if you find yourself in the dumps for most of the day, you can still salvage the day with the right practice at the end of it.