Guided Weekly Reset for Neurodivergent & Chronically Ill

If you are addicted to planning content but don't actually use your planner, this video is for you.

Watch the video below, or read on for the full transcript.

Hi, I'm Cas Winter. I'm a productivity and self care expert for those who are neurodivergent, chronically ill and disabled. And today I'm going to actually guide you through a weekly reset.

I myself am someone who is addicted to planner content online, both short and long form. It's the aesthetic, right? There's something soothing for the nervous system about watching someone else either do effective planning or artistic planning in a bullet journal. And the very popular keyword or tag plan with me has always annoyed me because I'm just watching someone else plan. Ever since the inception of my program, the Action Navigator, hosting a weekly reset inside the program has always been really important to me because spending the time and effort to do planning at either the weekly, daily or monthly, quarterly, yearly, all those levels, it can feel frustrating and even unproductive because you're not doing the things on your to do list, you're doing something about them, as it were.

And while yes, there is a point where too much planning can happen, I have found that for those who resonate with my work and who join and love my program, spending any time and effort on the planning is very, very difficult. So I wanted to introduce all of you to the magic of a guided weekly reset. And if you enjoy this, please let me know in the comments because I am curious to see what would happen if I did this regularly here on this YouTube channel.

The analogy I have started using in relationship to planning versus actually doing the things on your to do list is the difference between financial budgeting and spending. And for those who are neurodivergent and chronically ill, we tend to struggle with both, both the budgeting and the spending. A good example of that is struggling to do the time blocking. And if you manage to do the time blocking, then your calendar reminder goes off that you're supposed to be doing XYZ in 10 minutes and you don't actually initiate that task.

I originally built my program around that spending part, how to actually get yourself to spend the time and effort on the thing once the time arrives. But we need both. And so as my program grew over time, I have now incorporated instruction on how to do both if you are inside my program, the Action Navigator. As of the premiere of this here YouTube video, you now have access to the updated cheat sheets for building your own weekly reset and the template to use to build that.

In this video, if you are not a part of the Action Navigator program, I will be giving high level guided instructions on how to proceed. If you're interested in learning about the program, link is in the description box below. There are three pieces to an effective Weekly Reset or Daily Reset Monthly reset, whatever level you are resetting. The first one is to review, then we reflect and then we plan.

I've got my own personalized Weekly Reset template up here on my iPad, so that's why I'm referring to it. Let's dive into the review process, shall we? So this is the part of the weekly reset where we bring our system, whatever it is, Bullet journal, fancy to do list, Apple Notion, a system of multiple apps and analog solutions like I have. We're bringing our system back up to date so it's useful and the the primary thing that we do there is we process our inbox.

I like David Allen's "Getting Things Done" workflow for this and so I'll go ahead and put up a workflow for you, the one that I use and you are welcome to screenshot this and adjust it to meet your needs. But basically we're looking at the things that have been in brain dumps on Post it notes anywhere in our system where information may live and making sure stuff ends up where it needs to.

So for example, one of the things that I'm going to be doing right now is going through my personal and my business email accounts and if there are action items for me to do, I am going to be logging those in my to do list, for example. And then if there's information that needs to get archived, it gets put in its appropriate location. The idea is that once our system is up to date, it is therefore useful and we can use it to reflect and then plan.

So I am about to dive in to my inbox processing. I highly recommend you do this with me. So either go to or bring to you all of the various places where information may live in or outside of your system, Post it notes, your phone, apps, email, all that stuff and we're just going to do a bing bang boom review of all of that and making sure we're logging the information where it needs to be, either archiving things in our notes or putting things in our calendar or to do lists.

Sounds good. Let's go. Okay, I have now finished processing my various inboxes and as you can see I've been adding to my to do list. I've also Been updating some longer term to do list projects Inside Notion. The next step in our review now that our system is up to date and useful is to just purposefully adjust our scope to the past week. If you're doing a daily reset, you'll do yesterday, if you're doing a monthly reset, the past month, so on and so forth.

So I'm going to be looking at my last week specifically to see what I've been up to, to get a better lay of the land as it were. So that way I am preparing myself to reflect. In the next section inside my weekly reset template I have a little checklist of all the places information can live inside my structure. And this is language I'm trying to use purposefully.

Distinguishing between structure and system. Structure is just like organizing principle. What goes where it's static, has a basic rule set for what goes where the system are the actions that I take to keep that structure up to date and useful. Yeah, we're now reviewing our past week. Let's go. So I have less to review from last week than I normally would because I was on a trip like the first half and also the post exertional malaise.

I did a lot of sleeping last week so I've already like reviewed my calendar, I've reviewed my daily logs that I had. But now I'm looking at my symptom tracker and yeah, last week was rough. So now I'm going to move on to reflect. If you're following along with the Action Navigator cheat sheet, the the first section will help guide you to decide how much time and effort and energy from your three gas tanks you're going to be spending on this reflection section because it's entirely up to you.

You could do this for an hour or more if you want. For me right now I am feeling very tired. I did not get adequate sleep last night and I am feeling very P.O.T.sy. Which reminds me, I should mark that on my symptom tracker. So I think I'm only going to do two reflection questions. If you're following along with the Action Navigator cheat sheet, this is the part where you pick which reflection question or questions you're going to reflect on and also how you're going to do that.

I feel like doing some handwriting in my bullet journal so that's how I'm going to do it. But you can also just close your eyes and think to yourself or do a voice note or type. You do not have to write by hand. Yes, there are studies that writing by hand is very helpful for processing and integrating information you discover as you write. But I understand handwriting is not accessible to everyone for lots of different reasons.

So if that's not in the cards for you today or ever, that is morally neutral. It's okay. So I'm going to take a moment to review my menu of questions that I have and pick the two that I'm going to work on today and then I will share those with you. Okay. The first reflection question I am going to answer is what has been missing for me this past week.

I'm going to go ahead and journal on that a little bit. If you are following along at home, you can journal for any length of time. The sweet spot is 20 minutes. I do not have that in me right now, so I'm just going to try to answer the question relatively thoroughly. But it'll probably be just a few paragraphs on my page here. Once I'm done, I will check back in and let you know what the next question I'm going to reflect on is.

So in answering the question for me, what has been missing for me this last week, I had like an initial gut reaction answer, but it was unhelpful because it was coming from a place of should and not want or need. My should was dancing, but like I was recovering from lots of dancing so maybe not more dance. And I noted actually how proud of myself I am for resting.

Not necessarily adequately, well with post exertional malaise or P.E.M. (pem). No, it can take a lot to recover from that. But I have been doing a lot to recover. Lots of rest, lots of sleep, lots of other body work, using my yoga tuna balls, my vibration plate to help get my lymphatic flow going again, stuff like that. What I notice is like, "oh, that's been really helping me.

Is there something I can do to make it even more accessible for myself?" So I added to my to do list. Now that we've cleaned out part of our new living room, I can have like my yoga mat out all the time and have more of my tools at my disposal because right now they're kind of like inside the sofa sheds/storage place and that's not easily accessible to me.

So I want to make them more accessible. And then beyond that because I've been having to do so little to recover. I haven't been making like home cooked food and I would really like me some home cooked food. So I also put it on my to do list to get ingredients for a particular recipe that I love that's higher in protein. So that was my first reflection question.

I'm now going to pick my second one and I will let you know once I picked it up. All right. The reflection question I've chosen is what mindset shift would help me approach next week with more ease. I actually feel like verbally processing this one and then I will write down the highlights in bullet point form. If you would like to reflect on this question, go ahead and hit pause right now.

Reflect and then come back when you're done. This week for me, because I am filming this a week before you see it, so I'm a week ahead of you. This is essentially my first work week of 2026. I did like 1/8 of a workday last week. Just as I'm sure many of you are experiencing the social pressure to "New Year, New You". Yeah. And even if it isn't all external pressure, you may have a rhythm in your body.

"This is a new year. New things can happen. Change can happen." Awesome. But it's really important to make change sustainable. And that means, especially for those of us who are neurodivergent/chronically ill/disabled, accessible and within our capacity. One of the things I am wanting to change this year is the rhythm of my weeks. So 2025 was a very difficult year, which followed another very difficult year and as you can imagine, yes, followed another difficult year and it's compounded.

2025 was really, really difficult for me. And, also looking at what's going on in my country right now and therefore the world, it has felt, at best disingenuous to be a productivity and self care expert in these times. And at worst, what's the point? And then there's the, the personal need. I live in a capitalist society. I need money to survive. How I've been working on my business since the last time I put out a YouTube video is all of my time and effort has been going into caring for my clients inside my program, the Action Navigator, and, also working on version two of the program.

And I know that if I don't make YouTube videos, I do not get new students inside my program and therefore I do not earn a living. So this year I am not shifting my focus. I am redistributing my focus and my time and my energy. Last year I had a routine that every Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, I would do what I call "Butt In Chair Time" on version two of my program.

Then I would follow up with anything that needed to happen with my students. So either checking in with them in my private Discord community or hosting a Group Coaching call on Zoom, for example. And I'm really proud of the progress that I made on version two. Um, here's my habit tracker. Every X represents a day that I spent at least 20 minutes on version two of the program.

And I have made significant progress. And I'm really proud of myself that I was able to accomplish that in the face of what 2025 was. Now I want to, like I said, redistribute my focus. So I'm going to try a new structure to my weeks. I want to film a YouTube video on Mondays, and then this is the part I haven't decided. So going into this next week, it,

or this week, I'm going to be experimental. I am going to edit this YouTube video tomorrow, and again, I take Wednesdays off from this business. And then Thursday, Friday, I'm going to work on version two of this program and I'm going to, instead of make the goal 20 minutes, I'm going to try an hour. So I will do an hour Thursday, an hour Friday. So my mindset going into this next week is "Experiment".

And it's interesting. I wrote this in last week, but one of my favorite things to tell my students is "clarity comes from curious experimentation, not thought", which is a, uh, my own very important modification to that quote. "Clarity comes from action, not thought", which is not accessible to those of us who are neurodivergent, chronically, disabled. So "clarity comes from curious experimentation, not thought". I'm gonna write that again. My next structure for the week to try is to film Monday, do an hour of the working on the Action Navigator Tuesday, edit Thursday, the YouTube video, and then do another hour on Friday.

So it's basically figuring out if my work on version two of my program is best done and is most accessible to me, like, two days in a row. Like, if that helps me follow through or if I need a break in between those days. This week I'm gonna try putting them back to back, because I have a feeling that'll create just like, a little bit of momentum and help me follow through and stay in the headspace to do that work.

And which brings me to the next thing. And this is something that I explicitly ask in part three of the weekly reset in the template. But it's relevant to this question, so I'm going to skip ahead. Do you want to push yourself this week? To any degree. And there's, there's a lot to that. So, like, "what would pushing myself cost me in time, energy, symptoms, etc. Make an educated guess."

Time cost: just thinking about pushing myself this week after my still not recovered from PEM the past week, this week just becomes a black hole. Like, would I, would I get stuff done? Yes. But I feel like I would not be alive through it. And it would not be just bad, bad, bad news. Energy cost: I would just drive myself into more PEM. And health cost: yeah... So I don't think I have the budget to push myself this week. And then the next,

"are these tasks or projects worth the cost of pushing myself?" So the things that are on my to do list. And, uh, not right now, no. And then "do I truly need to push myself this week?" No, I don't need to. And then last, but most importantly, "do I choose to push myself this week?" No, I do not! So even though this is my first work week back for 2026 after the holidays and my trip that I went on, I choose not to push myself because I have a lot more PEM recovery to do.

Yeah. I need to drink water. I don't know if you can notice, but I'm out of breath just sitting here and my feet are up underneath the desk. They're not on the floor. So I am incredibly POTsy just sitting here and talking to you. That's great (please note the sarcasm). So, yeah, I will not be pushing myself. All right. Returning to the question, "what mindset shift would help me approach next week with more ease?"

This next part, it's important. Reminding myself how I tackle perfectionism. And the way I do that is I aim for a less than perfect grade. So here in the US we grade on a scale of A excellent to F fail. A, B, C, D, no E for some reason, F. And the way I tackle perfectionism is I aim for less than an A on purpose. Yeah. So in everything that I am doing this week, I'm going to aim for...

I was about to say B minus. But my perfectionism is all like, "you'll still work really hard for a B-". So I'm going to aim for C. And where that's really going to show up is in the editing of this YouTube video. Yeah. So if you see fancy, fancy things in the edit of this YouTube video, including titles that don't seem like canned out of Da Vinci Resolve, call me out.

Call me out in the comments. Be like, you, you did a B+. Why? Okay, together. So. And I can do that in working on version two of my program because I'm still in the first draft vomit phase. So when I'm working on polishing, that's when I'll be giving you A plus work, okay? All right. We have now reflected. We have reviewed. We have reflected. Next up, actual planning.

I'm gonna wake my laptop back up, it went to sleep. Part one of planning is usually mindset, but because I made that my reflection question. We've already done that. We cheated a little. It's fine. Next up is prioritizing. So it's going to your to do list or to do lists, if you've got more than one, and picking out your priorities. My three favorite ways of doing this are either the prioritizing grid, which I talked about in this video, the Pareto principle, or the 80/20 rule.

So basically, I will ask myself "which 20% of these tasks or projects would give me 80% of the accomplishment, stress relief, fulfillment?" And then the other one is by gas tanks. Like, "what do I have the capacity for right now?" And that one is great if you have an energy limiting chronic illness or disability. And yes, neurodivergence can count because pushing through executive function costs a lot of cognitive energy and can therefore take a lot of physical energy with it.

Okay, in the Action Navigator, I have more options, but those are the three that I have in my template because those are the ones that work for me the most. It's interesting. Before starting today, I had been planning to do the prioritizing grid, but, y', all, I'm tired. I've been going for almost an hour already, and I, I, I ain't got no, no spoons for that. So I think I'm going to Pareto this week.

So I am going to look at my, my to do list items here, and I'm going to pick out. Let's do some quick arithmetic. So we got 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11. Got 11. I'm gonna pick three or four that I'm gonna prioritize for this week outside of my schedule that I've made for myself. Okay, wish me luck. It is now your turn to prioritize using the prioritizing method of your choice.

And we're not scheduling anything right now. We're literally just prioritizing our tasks, projects. Okay, see you soon. All right. I did those in a different color pen, so sticks out a little bit better. Okay. We've done mindset. We have prioritized. We have decided to push or not to push, and I'm not pushing. So the next part, and I already wrote down my overall theme schedule for the week, but the next part is to actually do scheduling.

So if things have to go on your calendar for any reason, whether it's an actual appointment with someone or someones and maybe time blocking, light time blocking, or themed days. I will go ahead and put up one of my time blocking videos up here if you're interested in that. But I think I'm just gonna take a quick look at my calendar. Yeah, I'm just gonna stick with themed days this week because I have too much.

I'm actually gonna move something. So I just discovered I had way too much scheduled this week. So one of the calls I host for my students inside my program, I moved to next Thursday instead of this Thursday and that will give me a lot of breathing room that I require. Excellent. And I also have a doctor's appointment early in the day on Friday, so if I am unable to do my Butt in Chair Time on version two of the program because of that, that's okay.

I forgive myself in advance because as you all likely know, doctor's appointments can be far too much. Hopefully it'll be good. Let's never guarantee as it is. Okay, next up, I'm just going to start my daily log for today because I just did my weekly stuff and I'm going to move my tabs over real quick. So as you can see, a weekly reset or reset of any level involves three parts review, which includes getting your system, your structure back up to date and useful and then actually reviewing the past period of time that you're doing the reset for.

In this case, we did a week. Then you reflect and you can choose however many questions you want to reflect on as you have the time and capacity and ability for. I picked two this week and then it's the actual planning. So deciding what your priorities are, whether or not you're going to push what your mindset is going to be and getting it scheduled in a way that meets your needs.

This week, this week that took about an hour for me, having taken the time to do this work is going to make this week run so much smoother for myself and having done the mindset work is going to allow me to change the plan or shift my focus as I need to this week. So for example, if I were to have like a huge flare tomorrow, my mindset work would help me adjust accordingly to care for myself properly.

So yeah, I hope you enjoyed this. If this is something you would like me to do again and maybe do repeatedly going forward here on the YouTube channel, let me know down in the comments below. If you are interested in my program, the Action Navigator, there are links in the description box below. Anyways, my precious muses, I love and adore you. And I'm going to do my best to show up for you this year and to help you care for yourself in a meaningful way.

I'm not going to give up. And I invite you to join me.