What to Do in Your Last Week at Work: A Day-by-Day Plan

Your last week at work is short, strange, and weirdly important. You're mentally already gone, but the work you do — or don't do — in these final five days is what people will remember. Here's exactly how to spend it so you leave clean and your reputation comes with you.

Set the mindset for the week

The goal of your last week isn't to finish everything. It's to make sure nothing important breaks after you leave. Those are different things. Trying to ship one more feature or close one more deal at the buzzer usually backfires — you create loose ends instead of closing them.

Approach the week like a relay runner approaching the handoff. Your only job is to pass the baton cleanly. Speed doesn't matter anymore. Drops do.

Monday: finalise your handover document

If you haven't written your handover document yet, this is the priority. Everything else this week depends on it. The handover is what your manager and successor will refer back to long after you've gone — it needs to actually exist before you start walking people through it.

Cover the essentials: active projects with current status and next steps, key internal and external contacts, recurring commitments, system access, and the unwritten knowledge only you have. Keep it to one to three pages.

Tuesday: walk through it with your successor or manager

Book a 60–90 minute session. Share your screen. Open the handover document and go through it section by section. This catches things the document misses — context, history, the reason a particular client is sensitive, the workaround for the broken integration.

If you don't have a named successor, do this with your manager. They'll either become the temporary owner or pass the notes to whoever does. Either way, the conversation matters more than the document alone.

Take notes during the walkthrough on what to add. Update the document the same day while it's fresh.

Wednesday: send your transition emails

Mid-week is the right time to tell people you're leaving. Earlier is too far ahead; later is too rushed. Send three kinds of email:

• External contacts — clients, vendors, partners. Tell them your last day, who's taking over, and how to reach that person. Keep it short and warm.
• Internal stakeholders — people across other teams who rely on you. Same content, slightly less formal.
• A wider goodbye email — usually sent on your actual last day, but draft it now so you're not writing it under pressure on Friday.

Thursday: close the loops

Thursday is for the practical exit work. None of it is glamorous. All of it matters.

• Clear your inbox. Reply to anything outstanding or forward it to your successor.
• Decline or transfer ownership of recurring meetings on your calendar.
• Move important files out of personal folders into shared team locations.
• Cancel software subscriptions tied to your name or transfer ownership.
• Submit your final expenses, timesheets, and any outstanding admin.
• Check what HR needs from you — return-of-equipment forms, exit interview booking, references paperwork.

On personal files and contacts

Anything genuinely personal — saved articles, your own writing, photos — copy off your work machine onto a personal drive. Do this openly, not secretly. Don't take client lists, internal documents, or anything that isn't clearly yours. The legal and reputational risk is never worth it.

Friday: the goodbye and the actual exit

On your last day, send the wider goodbye email you drafted on Wednesday. Keep it short. Thank specific people if you want to, share a personal email or LinkedIn for staying in touch, and don't moralise about the company on the way out.

Spend the morning doing final walkthroughs with anyone who needs one. Spend the afternoon saying actual goodbyes — in person where possible, on Slack or email otherwise. People appreciate the effort.

Hand back your laptop, badge, and anything else company-owned. Confirm your last paycheck and benefits details with HR. Then leave on time. Staying late on your last day to finish "one more thing" almost never produces a better outcome than calling it done.

What not to do in your last week

• Don't start new work. If something genuinely urgent comes in, flag it and pass it to whoever's taking over.
• Don't air grievances. The exit interview is not the place to settle scores. Keep it factual and forward-looking.
• Don't badmouth anyone. The industry is smaller than it looks. Things you say on your last day travel further than you think.
• Don't disappear early. Quietly checking out three days before your last day is one of the most-noticed exit behaviours, and not in a good way.
• Don't promise to "always be available." Once you're gone, you're gone. Offer a two-week window where colleagues can email a personal address with quick questions, and leave it at that.

The handover document is the spine of the whole week

Notice that almost every step above orbits the handover document. The walkthrough on Tuesday, the transition emails on Wednesday, the loop-closing on Thursday — they all assume you have a clear written record of your work to point to. Without one, the week becomes a scramble of half-remembered details and last-minute Slack messages.

If you work in Google Workspace, OneLast.Day reads your Gmail, Drive, and Calendar and builds the handover document from your actual work data — projects, contacts, meetings, and the context buried in your emails. It turns the Monday task above from a day's work into about ten minutes, which is the difference between a calm last week and a frantic one.