5 Day Productivity Reset

Welcome to this 5 day mini reset designed to enhance your efficiency, saving you time and energy so that you can improve your work life balance. When you clarify what work-life balance means to you and establish principles that create freedom in your decisions and actions, you pave the way to your own success.

Tip: As you read through this, note your ideas they arise and
ask yourself "how will I make this work for me?"

A Secret to Work-Life Balance

The truth about work life balance is that it is determined by your self esteem, your ability to nurture productivity, your right to adopt a fixed mindset that you deserve balance.

You get to create your rules and a process that allows you to get lasting results. You must know exactly how you will enjoy your free time, it must be compelling to you.

Q. What will you do with this free time? It has to excite you. Sometimes overworking allows you to avoid other problems that need to be addressed, are you doing this?

The Approach

The goal of this reset is to help you achieve your outcomes at work with greater efficiency. This will save you both time and energy, which you can then use in other areas of your life.

To be human is to be habitual and to give meaning to everything you do. Now is the time for you to take control of your narratives and habits in the workplace and give them meanings that will keep your focused, engaged, positive and productive in achieving your work outcomes.

Be open, curious, and flexible in your approach and mindset. It is an iterative process, and when you know what to focus on and track, it becomes easier to make informed decisions.

Let’s begin…

There are five concepts, one for each day of the week. Start today as you can begin on any day. Naturally, the first time you do each exercise, it may take you a little longer, so set aside 15-30 minutes. This reset is designed for repetition, as you repeat each concept, you will further embed this way of working in your habits, mindset, and identity. You will need a notepad or a working document to capture this and make notes on your progress toward achieving work life balance.

Tip, set a repeating appointment in your calendar with the link to this document, so that you can easily refer to it.

01 DAY

Influence ALL Your Outcomes

Problem: Constantly under pressure? Waking up tired? This can make you feel frustrated, reactive, and diminish your effectiveness. Even the best of the best with no sleep will react and be less productive. Be objective.

Today’s Focus: Take Control

Which statement is true for you?

1. I can take actions that influence my reality.

2. Everything is controlled by external forces.

Every moment offers you a chance to be proactive and take control to influence the next moment, when you do not, you are reactive. This happens from the moment you get out of bed, snooze vs. cold shower, your commute to work, stuck in traffic vs. leaving 7 minutes earlier, approaching a colleague before a meeting to discuss a difficult point, or surprising/ambushing them in a meeting.

When you react, you are operating from your emotions and this can lead to victim mindset thinking, that then traps you in negativity. When you take a chance and take actions, you open up the possibility to generate better outcomes and levels of satisfaction.

Activities for today:

Reflect on last week. How did you handle control? Analyze challenging tasks and your response to unplanned events. List what you will do differently next time.
Celebrate your successes: Identify actions you took that led to positive outcomes.
Plan your responses to potential challenges next week. What do you need to aware of and proactively manage? What will you tell yourself to stay in control? What actions will show you're taking responsibility?

Tip, creating a new habit requires time and repetition. How much time are investing in building your productivity muscle to achieve greater work life balance?

02 DAY

Master Productivity

Problem: Not enough hours in the day! There are core activities to be delivered on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis. There are important projects and there are urgent interruptions that disrupt your flow.

Q. How do you track this, proactively manage it and communicate it to the right people?

Today’s Focus: Leverage Your Focus & Functions of the Mind

Do these 2 things:

1. get really clear on the outcome and

2. time boxing

Getting clear gives your subconscious mind the target to move towards, it narrows your focus. Time Boxing is telling your mind to give you the result in a certain period of time. Imagine needing to cover the distance of 5km, will you run it or take a leisurely stroll?

How to time box: Set a time limit to achieve the outcome (with the intention of beating that time), also check your progress halfway through, and block any interruptions (turn off notifications, use airplane mode, inform others when you will get back to them).

Activities for today:

What was your energy like each day? How did you sleep, hydrate and exercise and how did it influence your focus and output? What will you do differently to increase your energy?
Review the prior week for time. How long tasks took and how the output was used. Set time benchmarks for all repetitive tasks and assess how useful the output is and whether it can be modified to save you time?
Analyze interruptions, urgent items, and assess their impact on your productivity. List three proactive behaviors that will minimize these. E.g. who do you need to speak to proactively

03 DAY

Master Self-Trust

Problem: You self-sabotage, unintentionally.

Imagine a friend that keeps saying they would do something and didn’t do it, repeatedly. There are apologeties and explanations. Would you trust them?

Q. When have you done this to yourself? And how has it impacted you over time?

Today's focus: Define your Principles for Self-Trust

Self-trust is essential for confidence, reliability, and authenticity. What principles do you need to operate from to build trust in yourself?

Here are some suggestions:

1. Track your behaviors.

2. Don't take things personally (including any of your own self-criticism).

3. Never make assumptions; your mind is designed to fill in the gaps that make you right (confirmation bias).

4. Walk your talk.

5. Pause before you speak and speak what is true, respectfully (including to yourself).

Activities for today:

Create your principles for self-trust. Make this your own, keep this live and updated, reorder it as you deepen your understanding of how this impacts you.
Reflect on the past week for when you didn’t meet your commitments. How did this affect your trust in yourself? What was your narrative?
Develop a supportive dynamic narrative: Praise yourself when you walk your talk and meet commitments, and plan improvements (be realistic) when you don’t.

04 DAY

Embrace Change

Problem: Humans prefer the familiar, but the world is full of change. You are designed to naturally resist change unconsciously.

Q. What is familiar that frustrates you? Increase your awareness on this.

Today's focus: Build a Mindset that is healthy towards Change

A mindset is the summary of all your thoughts on a particular topic. You can have many or none, and they can compete with each other, which causes indecision and inconsistency.

With self-reflection and awareness you can optimise your mindset and attitude. When you are first presented with change, notice what you do. Are you resistant, accepting, or embracing straight away? Your response to change is situational and non-linear!

Activities for today:

Reflect on recent change: How did you react? Write down the thoughts you had, the emotions you felt. What insights did you get about yourself?
Based on your behaviour, what is your mindset on change? How can it evolve to embrace change?
If things do not change, what will be the impact in 1 month, 6 months, and in 3 years? Looking back on it in 3 years, will it be significant?

05 DAY

Skill Development

Problem: If you do not grow, boredom will. Enhancing your skills is essential for personal fulfilment and professional advancement.

Today's focus: Self Development

Limited training budgets, making it difficult to develop and entire team simultaneously. During my time in leadership, I prioritised my teams development and provided personal growth and training. Now, with my expertise in trauma, I understand how past experiences affect performance, confidence, and career progression. Here are the skills I recommend everyone master:

1. Proactive Communication: Communicate so effectively that no one needs to follow up with you.

2. Solution-Oriented Thinking: Always present potential solutions (the best 2 your can come up with), it demonstrates effort which is proactive.

3. Self-Assessment and Ownership: Asses your progress, and calibrate with others assessments of you. Ask for feedback regularly and assess what you could change..

4. Belief Upgrade: Focus on delivering results. When you seek praise it distracts you from the quality of your work. Seeking praise, may also be a coping mechanism for lack of self-esteem, do subconscious work to resolve this.

Activities for today:

Reflect on the last 3 months. Identify a list of skills that could have enhanced your enjoyment and performance.
Pick one and focus on developing it for the next 6 weeks. Set aside a specific amount of time, use your imagination to understand how it would help you, the behavior you would be taking when you mastered the skill, what you would be thinking, saying, the actions you would be taking and how it would make you feel.

Continuous Progress

Congratulations! You have completed the 5 Day Productivity Reset. What insights did you get? Keep a list of the things you can change and make the commitment to integrate 1 change per week. Commit to doing the reset once a month, or pick one concept and apply it for 1 week. Commitment and Consistency is key. Share it with a friend and hold each other accountable.

Work Life balance is dynamic to your industry and unique to you. Step out of your circumstances and take an eagle eye view of your situation. How can you refresh your perspective and approach at work and to your private life?

Your work life balance is yours to manage. Regularly review and adjust your strategies, be very clear on your goals and make what you do outside of work exciting and enjoyable.

Committed to real progress? Let’s continue this journey together. Your future self will thank you!

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