Self Awareness Challenge

The Self-Awareness Challenge is rooted in the idea that simply gaining a better understanding of your own behaviors can drive meaningful change. The digital workplace is packed with distractions, and many of us are unaware of how often we’re interrupted or sidetracked.

This 14-day challenge helps participants track their behavior related to the most common causes of distraction and time loss, and use a really simple approach to start regaining control of their focus and productivity.

So how does self awareness improve the workday? If we can start by showing you how often you check your email, open your team messaging app, how long you spend in meetings and the length of your workday, you will naturally do less of the things that are stealing your time and focus. If you set targets, and receive daily reminders, that you can start repairing the bad habits like FOMO checking email.

We’ll specifically aim to:

• Reduce the amount of time in unnecessary, or unscheduled online and offline meetings and calls.
• Reduce the number of interactions with your email and messaging tools
• Set goals for how long you want to spend working per day
• Track your end of day sentiment

At the start of this challenge, you will set specific goals to improve your workday by managing your time and interactions with collaboration and communication apps.

Over the next two weeks, you will focus on five simple metrics. Through daily reminders, we will help you become more mindful of your work habits.

At the end of the two weeks, we will show you how self-awareness can change your work outcomes. That’s your first win. But the journey does not end there. After that, you can start focusing on other Great Workday Challenges to configure email and messaging tools to make them less distracting.

A Precursor: Do the Great Workdays Kickoff for Individuals

Before you start the Self Awareness Challenge, complete the Great Workdays Kickoff for Individuals. Use the data you get from the kickoff to set goals in this challenge.

How the Self Awareness Challenge Works:

Everyone has different work habits and responsibilities, so the Self Awareness Challenge will be unique to each individual. However, we can break this challenge down into three core steps:

1. Start the Challenge

Select the Self-Awareness Challenge and click "Start This Challenge" to follow the instructions.

2. Create Goals in Produce8

This primary purpose of this challenge is about being more mindful about how long you spend doing the most common causes of distraction and outright time loss for knowledge workers. There are two ways to accomplish this. If you just want to use targets for the duration of this experiment, you can set them in the challenge. Or, if you want to always keep these numbers front and center in your daily report, you can also set them in our Goals feature and they will remain in place after the challenge is over. We recommend starting simple, and just use the challenge targets, and then once it’s over you can add them to your goals.

3. Measuring Impact of Self Awareness After Two Weeks

The objective of the Self Awareness Challenge is to see if setting goals can help increase mindfulness and reduce time lost to collaboration. This involves comparing the initial data from the first week with data from the second week. The challenge concludes with a review of your progress and results followed by making informed adjustments that lead to continued improvement.

Key Metrics in Produce8 Associated with This Challenge

This primary purpose of this challenge is about being more mindful about how long you spend doing the most common causes of distraction and outright time loss for knowledge workers. There are two ways to accomplish this. If you just want to use targets for the duration of this experiment, you can set them in the challenge. Or, if you want to always keep these numbers front and center in your daily report, you can also set them in our Goals feature and they will remain in place after the challenge is over. We recommend starting simple, and just use the challenge targets, and then once it’s over you can add them to your goals.

1. # of Daily (or Weekly) Interactions With Messaging Apps (Slack/Microsoft Teams)

• Objective: Reduce the number of times you view the app per day.
• Action: Set your in-challenge target to 10-50% below your normal number (we show you the current number).
• Benefit: Reducing unnecessary interactions can reduce context switching and improve focus on primary tasks.

2. # of Daily Interactions With Email App

• Objective: As with messaging, set a target for how many times you interact with your email app daily.
• Action: Set your target 10-25% below your normal number.
• Benefit: Limiting email interactions helps maintain continuous productivity and reduces context switching.

3. Time Spent in Meetings (or Internal Meetings) per Day

• Objective: Spend less time in meetings that run too long, are unplanned, or unnecessary.
• Action: Set a target 10-25% below your current number, you may find ‘internal meetings’ are the primary problem, and you can focus on those if you like.
• Benefit: Reducing time in meetings ensures more time is available for deep work and task completion.

4. Time in Calls

• Objective: Online video meetings and impromptu calls can take a toll on energy and time. What’s the right amount for you?
• Action: Set a target based on your historical average.
• Benefit: Reducing unnecessary calls frees up more time for essential tasks.

5. Workday Length (Maximum or Minimum)

• Objective: Combat overworking by setting targets for workday length.
• Action: Set a target that is a reasonable daily number for daily average working hours.
• Benefit: Managing workday length supports work-life balance and can help prevent burnout.

6. Focus

• Objective: In order to understand how mindfulness is reshaping your day, you need something to track over the duration of the challenge. Does you average focus increase from your baseline?
• Action: Set a target at your current baseline and see if you can improve on it.
• Benefit: Less distraction from email and messaging should translate into a greater degree of focus.

7. Daily Sentiment

• Objective: Did your workday start well? Did it go the way you want it to?
• Action: Check in with produce8 at the start and end of day and recorde your workday sentiment.
• Outcome: If you are making progress, and if the challenge is helping you, you should see your responses improve over time.

Outcome

The challenge ends with a review of your results. Did you make progress through self awareness? Start working on the next challenge. If you are not satisfied with the progress you have made with messaging tools, follow this up with other challenges on those subjects.