You’re Not Bad at Planning | You’re Skipping the Reset

If you work from home and are overwhelmed and struggling with procrastination, one of the most powerful things you can do is a weekly reset, setting aside dedicated time every week to plan your week in a detailed, reflective way. When I don't do this, my life just disintegrates at the seams.

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.

In my signature program, The Action Navigator, I help individuals just like you learn how to spend their precious time and energy the way they want and need to, while supporting themselves and caring for themselves. You can learn more at the link in the description box below. A weekly reset has three main parts. First we review, then we reflect, and then we plan. I've written down a purpose for my weekly reset that helps me navigate this process with purpose.

First, I want to understand what my true priorities are for this week. Two, I want to be able to focus on action and three, I want to be able to make faster progress in growing this business. We're going to dive into the first section review right now and the first step of that is processing our inboxes. I will go ahead and show the flowchart I use to process my inboxes.

So that's what I'm going to do right now and I invite you to join me. Go find all the places where information can live. Be they in notebooks, in apps, in post it notes, in journals. You want to get those all in one place and process them all in one go so that information ends up where it needs to be. Let's get started. Doing this when you're foggy can be so difficult, especially when most of what's in your inboxes is meaningless.

I'm in particular referring to my email inboxes right now. I just deleted so much stuff which feels great, but oh man, when I'm foggy I'm like, did I delete something I shouldn't have deleted? Very unhelpful thoughts. I'm going to trust that I did a sufficient job and move on. Now that we have processed our inbox, the next part is to dive into our system and get a lay of the land for what is on our plate.

Checking projects to do lists, calendar and anywhere else things might live. So if you have a planning ecosystem that spans across digital and analog like I do, you want to be touching in with each point in your system. So I actually have a list in my weekly reset cheat sheet of all the places for me to go kind of like with my inbox processing workflow. I have a list at the top of places to check.

This isn't about making any sort of decisions. This is just clarifying what is going on so that we can then reflect and then plan. Let's dive in, shall we? Okay, I am feeling really foggy. So before I dive into reflection, I'm going to write down the big things for this week. Getting this YouTube video finished so I can upload it this coming Monday. That's number one. I have to take my car in for an oil change tomorrow and then I've got a a two night plane trip that I'm going on.

It can be so hard to do this with brain fog. And I realize I am increasing the difficulty by also filming a YouTube video about this process at the same time. Instead of just being inside my own head and verbally processing on occasion if and when I need it, I'm having to guide you through this process with me and also speak to what's coming up for me in case that might be helpful for you to hear about.

So this short tangent is just going to be about brain fog. All of my clients deal with one or more of the following things. Executive dysfunction, brain fog, reduced capacity. They might identify with being a Spoonie, but I know plenty of people with chronic illness and reduced capacity do not identify with that language. And that's fine. One of the primary ways I help my students is not just teaching them how to think, but providing cheat sheets like the weekly Reset cheat sheet.

That is an external thinking aid. It's a process they can follow and return to to guide themselves. Instead of having to generate those processes from scratch inside their own heads in the moment, they have to do something. If you've gotten my free Anytime Reset, which you can access by signing up the link in the description box below, that's an example of a thinking aid. Upon first glance, you might be like, this is pages long.

That is overwhelming. I'm not going to do that. It is important to understand that that is executive function and thinking I have done for you so you don't have to do it. The length and detail of any of the thinking aids I provide, either for free or inside my program, are as detailed as they are because that is me doing the work for you so that you don't have to do it.

So all this is to say the thing that I need to remind myself in this moment that I'm experiencing so much brain fog. Like it feels like I just kind of disappear for A bit. If I have the capacity to while editing this video, I will include one of those here because I bet it's on camera. I need to remind myself to return to the cheat sheet. So here I go, opening the cheat sheet.

So while I have written down my big things for this week, that is just to, like, get them out of my head because I feel like my brain is trying to work really hard to hold on to them, and that is unhelpful and exhausting. So I have gotten them out of my head onto a piece of paper so I can use them later because those will be more relevant in the planning section.

But first, we must get to reflection. That is next. The goal of reflection is to compassionately assess what worked and what didn't work over the past week so that you can make improvements the next week. Remember that something having worked or not worked is morally neutral. It's really important that as we reflect, we're not using the information we discover or uncover to beat ourselves up in any way, shape or form.

If we notice ourselves doing that, we gently redirect ourselves back to the intention for this part of the process. We are just gathering more information in order to make more informed decisions in the next section. Part one, Review was about getting our system, whatever kind of planning, task management, time management system we've got up to date and accurate. Because if the information inside the system is not up to date and accurate, we're not going to be able to make informed decisions about how to spend our precious time and energy going forward.

Reflection is about digging deeper into our relationship with the information in our system. What has happened, what hasn't happened, what we think about that. In section 3, we use all the information that we have made sure is up to date and accurate and reflected on in order to make informed decisions about our next week. That is the weekly reset process in a nutshell. And you can do a reset for any scale of time.

You can do a daily reset, you can do a monthly reset, you can do a yearly reset, so on and so forth. The scope is the only thing that's changing, but the process of review, reflect, plan is the same because it can be easy to fall into a black hole upon reflection. In my cheat sheet, I have some questions to ask ourselves in order to set boundaries around how much reflection we're going to do, what kind of reflection that we're going to do.

So question 1. How much time and energy do I have to reflect right now for this reset? Hmm. I have lots of time, but I do not have lots of energy. I am so, so foggy. Yeah, I just did the thing where my eyeballs were pointed at the screen, but nothing was happening in here. Okay. So that's indicative that my reflection needs to be very simple and short.

Today. I would love to be able to do a deeper reflection, like a full 20 minutes of Anytime Pages, but I do not have that in me, and that's okay. Next question is based on my capacity, which reflection method works best for me right now? Journaling, thinking out loud, thinking quietly to myself. I think I will just short circuit if I try to think quietly to myself. So I think I do want to do some journaling.

I'm just not going to journal for a long time. And I will journal by hand instead of typing. Do I want to set a timer to help me stay within my capacity right now? Yes. Yes, I do. Past me with the smart questions. Allow me to acquire my timer, Time timer, visual timer. How long will I set the timer for? I think I'm gonna go with five minutes.

Okay, then I need to pick reflection questions. I'm gonna pick one or two reflection questions, and once I have them chosen from my cheat sheet, I will let you know what they are. All right, the first question I'm going to reflect on is, what one thing could I change to make next week better? Okay, I'm going to set my timer for five minutes. I invite you to either journal on this same question or a journaling prompt of your choice.

Here we go. Okay. I have now reflected on the question, what one thing could I change to make next week better? I ended up journaling about how last week felt like it just disappeared to me. So, a week ago Sunday, I taught a couple of dance workshops at the Seattle Swing Dance Club here in Seattle, Washington. And they were wonderful. And I stuck around for the social dance afterwards, but I basically sat the whole time.

But just two hours of teaching, plus the commute and sitting in a chair. And then I think I danced two social dances at the end of the night. Sent me into a horrendous flare in my chronic illnesses. I not only did not sleep that night, but I was awake all night, tremoring and with chills because my body wouldn't stop dumping adrenaline into my bloodstream. It was a nightmare.

So I did a whole bunch of nothing on on Monday, trying to recover. And then I had. I had things to do. So on Tuesday, I. I tried to balance more recovery with doing stuff. I kind of just went through the whole week that way. And honestly, as of right now, eight, nine days later I am, I would still say I am in a flare, so that's not fun.

But I don't like how I cannot in my mind get a, get a grasp on last week. It's just a complete blur. And looking at my bullet journal from last week, it's less than a page and a half and it's basically to do lists and that is not helpful for me to be doing this weekly reset today. I need more information. The thing that I would like to change going forward is being more purposeful and proactive with my rapid logging, as Ryder Carol calls it in the original bullet journal system.

And so yes, having to do lists is important, but I want to also be documenting my days better so that I have a linear story of what's going on to make it easier for me to do my weekly reset planning, to make better decisions going forward. What that's going to look like, I don't know. I am going to experiment and this week is going to be interesting because I'm going to be traveling, so that's going to complicate things more.

I think the solution is to add a like a Google keep note on my phone. So that way it's easy for me to rapid log when I'm away from my physical notebook and then I can transfer things to my notebook when I get around to it. Yeah, considering how drained I am, I think I'm not gonna do another reflection question. I think that is enough for now. One of the things I said on a recent video really hit home for a lot of people.

So I'm going to repeat it here. I invite you to offer yourself the grace to iterate gradually over time, making small 1 degree course corrections that when compounded over time result in bigger, more profound change. The kind of change that you may be looking for. But instead of trying to get there all at once, which doesn't work for a million different reasons, making tiny 1 degree changes as we go is the sustainable way to do it.

So I invite you to join me on that course. Now we are done with reflection, it is on to planning. The goal of planning is to schedule your time and energy for the coming week in a way that supports you. Keep in mind that the plan you make during this weekly reset is a first draft and you will likely need to make adjustments as you go. Step one of planning Mindset Based on my reflection, what mindset do I want to carry with me this week?

Where do I want to add reminders so I'm more likely to remember this mindset? Because of how foggy I am and I'm still in a flare and I've got a big week ahead of me. I think instead of a strict mindset, I'm just going to make the focus to be that more detailed logging of my days. So I am going to write that next we have prioritize of the things that are on my plate next week.

What are my priorities? Choose a prioritization method from the ones below. My three favorite prioritization methods are the prioritizing grid, which you can learn about in the Anytime Reset or in this blog post, the Pareto principle or the 80/20 rule, and using my gas tanks. But since this week really only has three things that I wrote down earlier because I didn't want to forget, that's that's basically my priorities.

And they're already more or less scheduled. So the oil change tomorrow is an appointment at the dealership. And then obviously my my plane trip is scheduled. So those are just going to happen. I have to work around them. And then this YouTube video is kind of like filling in the cracks. I don't have to do any explicit prioritizing work this week, thank goodness, because I do not have two brain cells to rub together right now.

But if you do have prioritizing to do, this is the point where you would pause, do that work, and then come back. Yeah. Sound like a plan? All right, next important question. To push or not to push? Be wary of hyper vigilance and perfectionism telling you that you need to push yourself. What would pushing myself cost me in time, energy, symptoms, etc. Make an educated guess. I just know that pushing is a bad idea this week because of aforementioned flare.

So I already know I'm not going to push. But I will read the rest of these questions for you in case that is a decision you're trying to make. So you would figure out what the approximate time cost of pushing yourself and that isn't necessarily like this week. What would you be paying in the future if you pushed this week? Energy cost? Health cost? What are the costs of pushing yourself?

Next question. Are these tasks or projects on your plate, your priorities, worth the cost of pushing yourself? Do you truly need to push yourself? And then lastly, do you choose to push yourself? We now have mindset. We prioritized. We've decided whether or not we're going to push ourselves. Okay. Next up is scheduling, planning and you can choose the kind of planning method that works best for you. The options I give myself are time blocking, light time blocking, or themed days.

The difference between those three things is how granular my schedule is at this point in time. The less capacity I have, the less granular, less specific. My scheduling is for myself during a weekly reset. The more capacity I have, the more granular I can get. So I'm going to do some really light time blocking right now, so I invite you to join me. Open up your calendar and let's get to planning our time based on our priorities, our capacity, and whether or not we are choosing to push ourselves this week.

Because of my trip, I have less time to spend so my time blocking is done. But what I am going to do right now is my packing list. So I have a template that I use but I need to edit it specifically for this trip. I'm going to do that now. You are welcome to continue planning your schedule. See you soon. Okay, my packing list is done so that'll make packing on Wednesday a lot easier Quick recap of what we accomplished today.

1. We reviewed. We got our time task management system up to date and accurate. 2. We reflected. We took all that information inside of our system and thought about our relationship to it. What are the things that we could improve or change going forward? Seeking a small change, a 1 degree change to gradually iterate that we could experiment with this week and see how it works and if it's up and if it works, awesome,

we continue with it or we make it better. If if it doesn't work, that's just information and we change our experiment. That's all. And lastly we planned. We decided what our mindset was going to be, what our priorities were, and scheduled our time for the week. I hope you enjoyed doing this with me. As you can see, even if you are disabled in any way, you struggle with executive function Brain fog.

If like me, your brain just cuts out on you repeatedly as you do this process and can sometimes take a whole minute or minutes to come back online. It's still possible, especially when you have an external thinking aid such as this video or the weekly reset cheat sheet if you're inside my program, The Action Navigator. If you enjoyed this process, I highly recommend you check out my program.

There's a link in the description box below and I will be back soon with another video. Thank you for spending this time with me. Talk to you soon. Bye.