From Frantic to Focused:

A guide to sustainable productivity

The 21st Century workplace brings new and varied challenges. This means we need a new approach to work, but without the gimmicks or ‘one size fits all’ approaches. ‘From Frantic to Focused’ is just that.

A new kind of productivity training for professionals. No inflexible rules or systems, just a pragmatic approach to getting more of the right things done, in the right way, at the right time.

Why ‘sustainable productivity’?

Google ‘productivity’. Or rather, don’t. The word has become a phenomenon and the phenomenon has become an industry, spawning books, apps, lectures, video guides and intricate systems.

Add to this list the many very confident ‘thought leaders’ and ‘gurus’ in this space who make quite extravagant claims as to how their product will impact your ability to get everything done.

Modern working life often involves over- flowing email inboxes, colleagues and clients across multiple time-zones, flexible working arrangements, far too many meetings for anyone’s liking, and the need to invest and manage a plethora of internal and external relationships.

Many of the things we initially found to be useful tools (e.g. email) have revealed their darker side and become more of a nuisance. The flexibility that some employees enjoy can mean more work for others. The 24/7 operation of so many businesses means the boundaries between work and home are becoming ever more blurred.

It’s time to take another look at how we work.

Who is this designed for?

This programme has been designed with the modern professional in mind. Anyone who feels they have too much to do, too little time to do it, but a burning desire to do something about this.

Perhaps you recognise yourself in the following descriptions:

You struggle to keep your inbox in order, starting and finishing your day battling with email.
You find yourself working longer hours and even regularly using weekends as ‘catch up’ time for work.
You leave work tired but with little sense of accomplishment, despite all the effort you’ve put in.
You regularly find yourself overwhelmed by your workload, firefighting and racing towards deadlines.
You find yourself thinking about work even when you don’t want to, while your personal life and relationships suffer as a result.
You’ve read the productivity books and blogs and watched the videos, but none of the ‘life hacks‘ seem to work for you.

The programme has been designed with these and other common productivity challenges in mind. Its goal is to bring you a sense of purpose, a renewed clarity on your priorities and the skills you need to deal with setbacks and challenges along the way.

How does it work?

The programme is based on a set of eight principles which you interpret and put into practice in your own environment and with your own work requirements in mind.

‘One size fits all’ solutions rarely work when it comes to the workplace, so this programme has been designed to be as flexible and context-sensitive as possible.

In other words, you take from each principle what you need, create helpful new habits associated with it and explore the positive impact they have on your focus, your output and your satisfaction.

Are you office-based and live by your Outlook calendar? This could work for you. Are you always on the road and dashing between client meetings? Or are you a freelancer or home-worker with little in the way of organisational support but a need to focus on what’s most important? These principles could make a real difference.

Here’s a free downloadable overview of the principles, to give you an insight into what’s covered.

The principles are divided into four themes:

Part one: Get the fundamentals right

Clarifying your context and motivation for getting productive. Figuring out what’s really important to you and what it will mean for you to be more productive. Reviewing and clarifying the various demands on your time, attention and energy and investing in your life’s roles with intent.

Part two: Build focus and efficiency

Developing mindful focus and a system to keep you on track. Learning how to ensure your attention goes where it needs to be and creating a productivity system built around you, your job and your own preferences.

Part three: Maintain your momentum

Dealing with the inevitable bumps along the way. Learning how to persist through discomfort, minimise procrastination and adapt flexibly to the inevitable changes and setbacks you’ll experience in the real world.

Part four: Invest in yourself and others

Understanding the ‘personal’ in personal productivity. Reflecting on your perspective on the world and learning more about the people around you, to facilitate cooperation. Learning how to disconnect from work and engage in your non-work life with passion.

How you can complete this programme

There are several ways you can learn how to implement these productivity principles in your everyday life. Given the hectic lives so many of us live, we’ve created several training routes, to make it as accessible as possible.

Regardless of the route you choose, you’ll cover the same material, complete the same reflections and exercises and have opportunities for one-to-one time with a member of the WorkLifePsych team.

To get you started, here’s a free summary of the principles of productivity we cover on the training.

A one-day in-house workshop

We can run a one-day workshop at your organisation, covering all four themes and eight principles, through a series of interactive exercises and discussions.

This gives everyone the opportunity to immerse themselves in the content and really focus on making the principles work for them. We can accommodate up to twelve delegates in a group and our team members can work globally.

Our one-day workshops can be augmented by one-to-one coaching sessions in subsequent weeks, to trouble-shoot and clarify as delegates implement their learning and deal with real-world obstacles.

A series of online sessions

If getting everyone together for an entire day is a challenge, we can cover the programme across four, two-hour online sessions.

Delegates complete pre-reading and some reflective exercises before joining a webinar to discuss the topics in more detail and learn about their application.

In each session, we cover one theme and two principles, giving delegates an opportunity to implement them and reflect on this in between each session. While minimising time away from work, this approach also gives everyone the opportunity to review progress, discuss their wins and challenges and experiment with ongoing feedback and input from one of our team.