Tag: self-improvement

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Plug in and plug out method – Why it’s so important to disconnect & detach yourself from your work?

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 : )

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Fear and limiting beliefs are a self-imprisonment.

Quality of our lives depends on the decisions we make. 

Although we may try to make the best decisions we can, we are not able to control the outcome as the things can go not as we planned or wanted due to outside circumstances.

What we can do is to prepare ourselves to various outcomes and manage risks or try to learn to manage risks.

There are many factors which may influence the decisions we make in our lives. I would like to focus on two which are now on my mind:

  • fear and 
  • limiting beliefs. 

Fear has both positive and negative aspects in life. The positive side can save us from doing unreasonable or unsafe things. In this aspect it’s a mechanism related to alerting and protecting. 

On the other hand – fear can also limit our life. Both fear and limiting beliefs may become a self-imprisonment which block our full potential. 

Do you have a life you want and/or deserve? If not, ask yourself, how many times:

  1. You don’t take “managed risk” out of fear?
  2. You stay in your comfort zone.
  3. You do the jobs below your competencies, knowledge, and skills?
  4. You don’t take an action out of fear of rejection, judgement, criticism, or fear of failure?
  5. You don’t take an action out of fear of losing money?
  6. You don’t take an action out of fear “what others will say if I do not succeed?”

The best you can do is to learn to manage risks and ask the questions what’s behind of the fear and limiting beliefs. If you are stuck in certain areas of your life, what are the payoffs which keeps you there? If you identify them, it will be much easier to make the decisions. 

The fear will never go away, until you are growing. It’s not about suppressing it. It’s about accepting it and doing anyway the things which have to be done.

There’s a famous quote: 

You didn’t fail because you didn’t succeed, you succeed because your tried.

If you are interested in the subject, I recommend a book “Fear the fear and do it anyway” by Susan Sanders. There are plenty of in-depth questions and tips which help you to step into the journey you really want to participate. A journey of a quality and fulfilled life.