There’s a moment most evenings where I physically stop working. I close the laptop, I put the phone face down, I might even sit outside for a bit. And it does nothing at all, because the business doesn’t live in the laptop. It lives somewhere behind my eyes, and it doesn’t recognise that the working day is meant to be over.
I’ll be sitting there, meant to be relaxing, and a stray thought will surface about a supplier who hasn’t replied, or a caption I should have written differently, or whether I priced something wrong three weeks ago. None of it is urgent. None of it needs solving at half past nine at night. But when you’re the only one running things, there’s no one else it can occur to instead of you, so it just occurs to you constantly.
I used to think the answer was discipline. Set a proper cut off time, stick to it, treat the evening as sacred. It didn’t work, because the thoughts don’t ask permission. Telling yourself not to think about work is a bit like telling yourself not to think about a lighthouse. The lighthouse turns up anyway.
What’s actually helped is different, and less about willpower. I keep a small notebook near where I sit in the evening now, and when one of those stray work thoughts turns up, I write it down there and then. Not to act on it, just to log it. There’s something about getting it out of your head and onto paper that seems to convince your brain the thought has been heard and can stand down for the night. It’s still there in the morning, waiting, but it’s stopped nagging.
I’ve also stopped treating rest as something you have to earn by finishing everything first. There is no finishing everything first when you run your own business. The list refills itself faster than you can clear it, so waiting for it to be empty before you allow yourself to switch off means never switching off at all. I’ve had to accept that stopping for the day is a decision, not a reward, and I make that decision even with things left undone.
The other thing, and this one felt uncomfortable at first, is that I’ve started doing something with my hands most evenings that has nothing to do with the business. For me that’s often the jewellery work, which sounds like more work but genuinely isn’t, because it asks something completely different of my attention. It turns out the mind needs somewhere to go, and if you don’t give it somewhere, it goes back to the shop.
I still catch myself mid-evening, thumb hovering over the phone to check something that can wait until morning. But I catch it more often than I used to, and I put the phone back down more often too. If your business has moved into your head the same way mine has, you’re not doing anything wrong. It’s just what happens when you’re the one carrying it. The trick isn’t shutting it out. It’s giving it somewhere smaller to sit while you get on with the rest of your evening.
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