Today I pushed the reset button. Reset is a course I took a few years ago, at a time I still was self-employed. The promise of the course was to give my workday a cosmic tune-up. And it did! It totally transformed how I worked each day.

So now as I am a full-time employee I had forgotten a bit to work this way. And since I am still on sick leave this week I felt like revisiting the course so I wouldn’t struggle with busy work and deadlines the day I go back to work.

Since my work situation is a bit different now, working in a company and in a team, I cannot integrate everything like when I worked self-employed. But there are quite some things I can do that I’m sure will make my work day feel lighter, more productive and creative.

For planning a project I want to integrate obstacle thinking as well as define some key actions.

Obstacle thinking is about challenges that can arise and how to overcome them. Mostly they relate to the four aspects confidence (Am I ready?), skills (can I learn this or give it to someone else?), time (what am I willing to give up?) and material assets (how can I do more with less?).

Defining key actions helps to plan the project more loosely and not too detailed and can be used as a guide for focus and setting priorities.

I also want to think about what kind of analogue progress tracker I could use.

Another thing I want to do is to align my work and tasks with my body clock. The most important thing is to use my golden hours (peak creativity, from about 10-12 in the morning) for deep attention, creative work.

Another deep attention work session I want to put in the late afternoon when I usually experience another creativity peak.

I also want to batch processing emails and messages 2-3 times a day for no longer than 30 minutes in total.

I want to block focus hours into my calendar and try to put meetings in the afternoon.

Another thing I want to try is planning my to-do list the evening before and also doing zoom-outs for seeing the bigger picture on a regular basis.

I will report if I managed to integrate those things and their impact on my work day. Stay tuned.