A 15-minute Friday Reset Routine. The End-of-Week Exhale
A short, soulful ritual to close your week with clarity, calm, and confidence. Reset, reimagine, and return to poise and purpose, leaving the pressure of the week behind you.
We can say Happy Friday and have casual Fridays as much as we like, but in reality, Fridays can be frantic. The mad rush to the finish line for all you wanted to achieve, and perhaps the sobering realisation that some things, you didn’t even start. So, how much attention do you give to your Friday routines and rituals?
Rituals aren’t just for athletes on game day, preparing to take to the court. They matter for professionals. A 2016 study published in Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes found that rituals reduce performance anxiety and increase confidence, even when they’re self-created and symbolic.
End-of-day or Friday routines act as ‘transition routines’. This is a short, intentional sequence of actions that helps you mentally and emotionally shift from one mode, role, or phase of the day to another. The idea isn’t just about productivity - it’s about psychological clarity. Transition routines create boundaries between tasks or time blocks, especially in blurred work-life environments, which is increasingly common when so many people are working from home.
In this blog, I’m sharing ideas to elevate your Friday routine. Some of these I’m already exploring, some are on the list.
1.Clear the Canvas
Unless you intentionally opt for organised chaos, clear the clutter on your desktop. What can be filed away, and what do you intentionally want to keep the focus on for next week? I rearrange my desktop files in a system depending on the stage of the activity. The stage dictates where it sits on my screen. I’m a bit of an obsessive organiser, so you might not need to be so pedantic. Still, try and take a few moments to reset the digital decor you see all day, every day at work.
According to research in Psychological Science (2013), rituals provide a sense of order and control, especially during periods of uncertainty - highly valuable for professionals navigating transition, decision fatigue, or leadership demands.
2. Revisit your vision board
I keep my vision board as my desktop background. So it’s the first thing I see on my screen every day. In the chaos of the working week, my vision board can become wallpaper. Use Fridays, even just an extra minute or two, to revisit your intentions for the year. The research shows that performing small, repeated symbolic actions can reinforce personal values, identity, and self-concept, making them particularly powerful for personal branding. It ties into what anthropologists call “identity rituals” — everyday acts that help us feel more like who we are or who we’re becoming.
3. Add to your Wins folder
Early on in my career, I heard someone suggest keeping a folder in your emails for all the wins. This might be the wonderful feedback or whatever makes you feel good. Take this off email and into a folder too. Saving screenshots of achievements here and there, outside of emails from others. Use Friday to add your wins to your folders.
While you might not always peruse your Wins folder, it matters in those moments when you need it most. Rituals can help us process emotions and manage stress. When you find yourself having a down week, you have a folder that quickly reminds you why you do what you do.
4. Reflect on what could have gone better
Not every week is going to be about wins. Reflect on what’s working, along with what isn’t; it is going to help you take small steps in the direction you want to go.
5. Set yourself up for slow productivity
Weekends are your chance to reset, reimagine and recreate. You might spend the entire weekend doing nothing at all, or with friends and family. But, if like me, you like to use at least some of your downtime for more relaxed productivity, use Fridays to set your weekend up for success. For example, I pick the book I’m going to read for the weekend, or the meal I want to make.
6. A Friday refresh ritual
According to ISO 8601, Monday is the first day of the week. It works for the business world. But, Monday Blues are real for many. Studies consistently show that many people experience increased stress, anxiety, and lower mood on Mondays compared to other days of the week. A 2015 Journal of Clinical Psychology study noted a spike in negative affect and stress hormones on Mondays.
I once read someone say that you can decide what day is the first day of your week. It’s simply about having a personal paradigm shift. So, what if you made the mental shift to make Fridays the start of your week? Using it to set yourself up for the week ahead, rather than feeling all the pressure of what didn’t work. For me, it’s the things that I started and didn’t finish that used to make me the most stressed come Friday evening. Now, I simply mentally reframe how I see this day. It’s less about having to finish it all and more about setting myself up for success for the week ahead.
What other little things can you do on Fridays to make it feel like a fresh start and not a finish? For example, I’ve started to love shopping for fresh fruits on Fridays.
Fridays are not a finish line, it’s a threshold
Fridays don’t have to be a finish line you crash through, breathless and behind. They can become a threshold — a pause, a pivot, a personal brand moment.
Your Friday reset doesn’t need to be elaborate. It just needs to be intentional. A quiet exhale before the weekend. A way to honour your effort, release the pressure, and reconnect with the version of you who leads with purpose, not panic.
When you treat Friday not as an ending, but as a soft beginning, you don’t just end your week well, you start the next one with clarity, calm, and quiet confidence.
