The key factors for productive work are:

• Being energized by having enough sleep and healthy
• Being in deep work mode
• Removing distractions
• Blocking your calendar for key tasks

What about the time when you work as a Leader, or a Manager and you have some “challenges” which cannot be closed and you may be tempted to think about them in your private time or worse over night?

Then the best option is to implement a method which I called: “plug in and plug out”.

You give 100% at work, and maybe more – that’s fine. But the time after work is yours – so use it for yourself and not for thinking about things which may be depended on other people’s decisions or behaviors.

Imagine yourself “plugged in” to your laptop when you start work (of course take some time for breaks :D) and when you finish work “plug yourself out” from laptop as if you were plugging out the iron from the power socket.

At the beginning it’s difficult, but the more you practice, the better you feel and the healthier you are. If you want to calm yourself, you can ask the following questions:

• Did I do what could be done to make a progress or to finish it?
• Did I really spend quality time on this “challenge”?
• Was I professional during the process?
• If I could do it from scratch, what would I change?

As Jeff Bezos says (to be honest, I’m not his fan), a role of a CEO is to make a small number of high-quality decisions. Do you think like a CEO of your life? Warren Buffet says that if he makes three good decisions per year, it is a good year. He’s focusing on quality over quantity and chooses to prioritize the impactful decisions which create the path for success. This is a strategy.

Become a person with high agency. You will have more satisfaction from life, work and time which is the most precious asset you have.   

You may already have it. The only thing is to use it every day : )