At the end of the day

Posted May 29th, 2009

I hate the phrase “at the end of the day” except when it actually refers to the end of the day. It usually crops up in speeches and arguments that include other phrases I’ve heard too many times like “it is what it is”.

But in this case I’m actually thinking about the end of the day.

Do you like to end your day in the middle of a task or do you like to wrap things up? I know writers on both sides of the fence. Some set a task of finishing a section or a chapter before calling it a day. Others set a number of pages or a fixed amount of time and will stand up when they reach that point. Some deliberately end as things are getting interesting because they know that they will have an easier time starting the next day.

I usually start the day trying to fix what I wrote the day before. It made sense when I hit save a few hours ago but now I’m not sure what I meant or why I said it that way. Once I’ve made a pass at fixing things up, I’m ready to write new things that won’t make much sense tomorrow.

I’ve been rereading “Littlewood’s Miscellany” looking for a quote on relaxing. I’ll write about that next week. For now I wanted to share a quote about the difference in styles at the end of the day. Hardy and Littlewood were a pair of mathematicians in England who were accomplished individually and collaborated very successfully. The secret to their success may have been in their differences.

Littlewood writes, “Hardy liked to end the day’s work feeling that the last idea had some hope in it. To me it is most repugnant to be enjoying possibly false hopes; I want if possible to know the worst. (As a matter of fact, those crises happen at the end of the day, and especially the one before a day off, with diabolical frequency.)”

At the end of the day, you’ll punch out and head home for the weekend. How do you like to end your day?

This post originally appeared in the Pragmatic Life blog.