The leaders at Bloomsbury Publishing wanted to shorten the workweek – but the teams already had demanding workloads and were already finding it hard to prioritise and get all their work done.
So, we knew that shortening the workweek could amplify these problems, and potentially lead to burnout… But we also knew that if we could reshape how people thought and felt about their work, we could transform the whole business.
Here’s what one manager said after the programme:
“These sessions have provided a seismic mindset shift for me, and I can’t imagine ever being the same.”
And here’s how we did it
3 Steps to Workload Mastery
1) MASTER PRIORITISATION.
We started by helping people master their prioritisation. The key here is to become more outcome-orientated, clarify your year and quarter goals, and identify the work that generates the highest value.
2) TRANSFORM PRODUCTIVITY.
Then, we empowered the teams to transform their productivity, especially their focus. The key here is to increase and sustain mental energy, eliminate distractions, redesign digital communication, upgrade meetings, and optimise mental recovery.
3) OPTIMISE WELLBEING.
Finally, we helped everyone apply the science to sustaining performance and well-being. This is a big topic, but ultimately, it comes down to optimising brain fitness, improving emotional well-being, prioritising psychological recovery, mastering emotions, and building resilience.
Here’s a video that (briefly) takes you through each step.
Here are 20 bullets you can start implementing today
20 Tips to Shorten Your Workweek
- Get clear on your 3 priority goals/projects for the month
- Turn each goal into processes through 5 main moves or 3 key habits
- Calendarise your moves and establish and track your success habits
- Identify and calendarise your highest value tasks and activities (MVTs)
- Each morning, spend your first 60 minutes working on your highest-value priority
- Have a decent break every 60-90 minutes
- Work in sprints of non-distraction (single task, deep work)
- Eliminate distractions ruthlessly (especially notifications)
- Redesign how you and your teams use digital communication, establish a clear channel for ‘urgent’
- Systematically upgrade meetings, making them more effective, less frequent, and less costly
- Be more mindful with your phone use (and stop multi-media multitasking)
- Have sufficient mental recovery
- Prioritise your sleep, no less than seven hours a day
- Prioritise physical exercise and brain-based nutrition
- Identify and calendarise activities that promote psychological recovery
- Learn to regulate your physiology including relaxation techniques
- Learn to master your emotions, including mindfulness practice
- Learn to apply cognitive reframing techniques to meet challenges at your best
- Review and reflect regularly always seeking to improve
What It All Comes Down To
Be less reactive and more self-directed.
Apply a systematic framework to thinking and working smarter. You’ll increase your productivity, improve your relationship with work, and experience greater levels of all markers of well-being.
Hope this helps.
Phil
