---
title: "The Simple Habit That Saves My Evenings"
url: https://daily.dev/posts/the-simple-habit-that-saves-my-evenings-ngxozt391
source_url: https://alikhil.dev/posts/the-simple-habit-that-saves-my-evenings/
type: article
source: "Hacker News"
published: 2025-10-02T23:20:54.547Z
updated: 2025-10-02T23:21:14.739Z
tags: ["career", "productivity", "work-life-balance"]
reading_time: 3
upvotes: 588
comments: 28
language: en
---

> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# The Simple Habit That Saves My Evenings

**[Hacker News](https://daily.dev/sources/hn)** · 3 min read · 588 upvotes · 28 comments

## Summary

Software engineers often get caught in productive flow at the end of the workday, leading to overwork and wasted evenings. Instead of pushing through to completion, write down your next steps and action plan before leaving work. This practice clears your mind, maintains work-life balance, and allows you to return refreshed with a clear plan the next day.

## Full article

daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: <https://alikhil.dev/posts/the-simple-habit-that-saves-my-evenings/>

## Community discussion

Top comments from developers on daily.dev.

**@ianhgdev** · 24 upvotes

> I once called this phenomenon 'chasing rabbits' alluding to the expression 'going down the rabbit hole' when advising coworkers against such overextension. These days I keep a markdown file to serialize my state of mind at the end of a day. More often than not, however, I must force myself to take this/my own advice...

**@friedrich** · 11 upvotes

> Not later than yesterday/today I experienced that. "Bro this will take like 30 mins and we can continue with something else". From 9PM to 2AM I was not able to finish to solve the issue. I decided to stop and come back. Sometimes it is the best thing to do. I have to start taking notes of what progress have been made and what I need to do too.

**@rryyqn** · 7 upvotes

> Then the next day, I don’t feel like doing any work at all. Is this just me?

**@ksolomon** · 2 upvotes

> I created a GitHub action that will turn `todo` comments (or lines in `todo.md`) into issues in whatever repo I happen to be working in for stuff like this.
>
> That said, I still find myself working on things after work hours…simply because I can’t let things go… 😂

**@a\_meb\_a** · 2 upvotes

> code and bake, or bake and code

---

Tags: [#career](https://daily.dev/tags/career), [#productivity](https://daily.dev/tags/productivity), [#work-life-balance](https://daily.dev/tags/work-life-balance)

[View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/the-simple-habit-that-saves-my-evenings-ngxozt391)