Those five minutes in the parked car before you walk inside are your airlock. Use them to decide who’s showing up.

Travelling between two places leaves a gap, and that gap is where you decide which version of yourself walks in. Without it you arrive still carrying the last room, and whoever is inside gets the residue of a bad afternoon they had no part in. Those few minutes are not wasted time. They are the only part of the transition you control.

Use the pause on purpose rather than filling it with your phone. Ask what the people inside need from you and what you want to leave in the car. Two minutes of that is usually enough to change how the next two hours go.