Productivity

Time to reflect for Evaluate Your Life Day

Reading time:  3 Minutes

Take a pause, check in with yourself and find small but important ways to enhance your everyday life 

Self-awareness has been called the metaskill of the 21st century. Being able to see and understand ourselves clearly has been linked with career performance, job satisfaction, improved personal relationships and being a better leader. But how often do we carve out time in our schedule to take a long hard look at ourselves? 

In an age when we’re constantly seeking ways to be more productive, and focusing on our output, we forget the value in taking a step back. Sometimes getting off the hamster wheel is what’s needed to see whether there’s a better way for us to move forwards. Evaluate Your Life Day may sound corny – and you’re probably looking at your calendar and frowning at the thought of dedicating a whole day to self-reflection. But investing significant time in your personal development is rarely something we manage to fit in.

The holy grail of a work/life balance is something we’re all seeking. Getting it right doesn’t just happen – it involves taking a long hard look at a typical week in your life, seeing how you’re allocating your time, and being brutally honest about how you’re spending it. 

This is also where self-awareness comes in. Optimising your daily routine isn’t about forcing yourself to start the day with a superfood smoothie, or using your lunch hour to learn a new skill – not unless these are things that genuinely motivate you as an individual. It’s really about assessing how well you current behaviour patterns are working for you.

How happy are you with the amount of social interaction you have each day – and are you finding enough time to see loved ones? Which are your most productive working hours – and how can you organise your day to really make the most of these? How much stress do you experience on a daily basis – what’s the specific source of it, and what strategies could help you feel more in control? 

Evaluate Your Life Day is about really sitting with yourself and asking these questions. Make notes about your responses, and identify small actions you can take – whether it’s calling a friend on your lunch break, or ringfencing 9am-11am each day for tasks that require the most brainpower (if you’re an early bird), or outsourcing a specific part of your workload to free up your time for other things (even if it’s just some well-deserved breathing space).

How about your daily working environment? How much do your surroundings inspire creativity? What’s holding you back from being more productive and feeling more fulfilled? Do you need more technical support? Would a more professional set-up help you attract more clients? What’s stopping your business from growing?

If, upon reflection, you decide it’s time for a change, flexible office space (sometimes known as “flexspace”) and coworking hubs are engineered to provide optimum conditions for a good day’s work. You can make use of flexible meeting rooms meet likeminded people and develop contacts for potential collaborations, and immerse yourself in a high-quality, stimulating office environment on a daily basis. Unlike conventional office leases, flexspace offers different packages depending on your requirements, so you can access the space as and when you need. 

If, by the end of Evaluate Your Life Day, you’ve identified even one tweak you can make to your daily working life – and decided how you’re going to make it happen – you’ve taken a step towards being more intentional about your working day. Rather than reacting to everything that gets thrown at you, by knowing yourself and how you work best, you can feel readier and more capable of taking on challenges.

 

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