Your Evening Isn’t Broken—It’s Unclaimed
by Michelle Kuehner
After a long workday, it’s laughably easy to tumble into the Couch Dimension: shoes kicked off, brain unplugged, thumb scrolling like it’s clocking overtime. It feels like decompression, but more often it’s just inertia wearing sweatpants. The problem is that the hours between logging off and lights out aren’t disposable. They quietly determine how well you sleep, how steady your mood is, and whether tomorrow you wake up refreshed or already irritated by the sound of existence.
What actually helps is a clean break between work and everything else. Your brain craves a clear signal that the day’s responsibilities are finished, not just paused. A simple, repeatable end-of-day ritual does exactly that—closing all the mental tabs before you shut down. It doesn’t need to be impressive or photogenic. Some people reset the house for five minutes. Others rewrite tomorrow’s to-do list, so it stops rattling around in their head all night. The value isn’t productivity; it’s closure.
The fastest way to sabotage that transition is to immediately surrender your evening to your phone. Phones don’t help you relax; they keep your nervous system lightly electrified. Notifications, feeds, and endless novelty tell your brain to stay alert, just in case something important happens in the next three seconds. Create a short phone-free buffer after work and the whole evening shifts. When self-control is running on fumes, make the phone inconvenient. Distance does what discipline won’t.
Screens themselves aren’t the villain. The real issue is how actively you engage with them. Email, social media, and news pull you into decisions and emotional reactions, keeping your brain in work mode. More passive options—reading, watching something familiar, listening to music or a podcast—are gentler and easier to come down from. Lighting matters too. A bright screen in a dark room hits your eyes harder than the same screen in a well-lit space. Your pupils open wider and let more light in.
Television is similar. Because it’s farther from your face, it’s generally less disruptive to sleep than handheld screens. Still, it can swallow time and leave you oddly unsatisfied if you watch without intention. There’s a difference between choosing a show and accidentally watching whatever auto-plays next. One feels like leisure; the other feels like time theft.
This is especially worth dialing in at the start of a new year. January loves big goals that fizzle by February, but evenings are where consistency is built. You don’t need a dramatic overhaul—just a few intentional choices that signal rest instead of avoidance. Pick one “anchor” habit you can repeat most nights: a short walk, a shower, stretching, prepping coffee, or setting out tomorrow’s clothes. Keep it almost insultingly easy at first. Do it for one week, then another; the goal is calm, not a nightly self-improvement bootcamp.
Reclaiming your nights starts with awareness, not perfection. Small shifts—how you end work, how you use screens, how intentionally you unwind—create momentum fast. Next time, we’ll look at more ways to build an evening routine that actually restores you, from movement timing to food, sleep cues, and why simple habits often work best.
