A Focusologist’s Three-Step Process for Finding Your Reset Mindset

While you’re working at a fast-paced manufacturing plant with multiple demands on your time and energy throughout the day, it can feel impossible to find a moment to focus! When this happens, you might feel like you’re losing track of what matters most to you and your team, like improving safety, boosting productivity, and strengthening the culture of your plant. But with a busy schedule and dozens of responsibilities, how are you supposed to find the time to focus?

According to “Focusologist” Penny Zenker, it all starts with building a reset mindset. Penny is one of America’s leading experts on the psychology of productivity, and has been featured on NBC, Forbes, and ESPN. She is also a bestselling author, international speaker, and business strategy coach who works with organizations to maximize results by eliminating perfectionism, distractions, and self-sabotage.

Penny recently came onto the Mindfulness Manufacturing podcast, where she shared more about reset mindsets and her three-step process leaders can use to focus and realign themselves with what matters most to them, their team, and their organization.

The Focusologist’s Three Steps for Building a Focus Mindset

According to Penny, focus always comes back to setting objectives and aligning your actions with those objectives. When you lose track of these objectives, it’s time to reset your mindset. You can do this by:

Recognizing the need for a reset
Taking a pause or step back
Finding a way to realign and reset your objectives and actions

It’s that simple!

Extra Tips for Practicing Your Focus Mindset

While Penny’s process is simple, building your reset mindset can take time and practice. If you’re struggling with building a reset mindset and finding time to focus, Penny shared some great tips in her podcast episode.

Tip #1: Give Yourself Permission for Small Breaks

A total mindset shift doesn’t happen overnight. To create your own reset mindset, start with smaller reset moments. This might mean taking small breaks in your busy schedule or taking a brief pause to reflect after a tense interaction with a team member. By giving yourself permission to take pauses and small breaks, you set yourself up for building a strong reset mindset. Overtime, it will start to feel more natural.

Tip #2: Are You Focusing on the Right Objectives?

In some cases, practicing a reset mindset involves thinking about if you’re focusing on the right objectives. For example, you might focus on ways to control your team, which can actually backfire and lead to micromanaging and higher stress for you and your team. In a situation like this, take a moment to pause and reflect. Stay curious about your role and goals. Then, you can reset your mindset to find the most productive outcomes for yourself and your team.

Tip #3: Don’t Be Afraid to Step Back

If you’re in a leadership role, it can be hard to step back and give up control. For instance, you might find yourself spending valuable time in a weekly meeting team, even though you don’t need to be there. To practice a reset mindset, think about if it would be productive for you to step back or delegate certain responsibilities. While it can be challenging to give up control over certain areas, it will free up time and allow you to focus on your objectives. Stepping back also creates a stronger culture of trust and autonomy throughout your entire organization.

Learn More on the Podcast

To learn more about finding your focus and building a reset mindset, listen to Penny Zenker’s episode of the Mindfulness Manufacturing podcast, which you can find here.

At Manufacturing Greatness, Trevor Blondeel works with manufacturers to connect the top to the shop. If you’re ready to improve your own organization, contact Trevor to learn how Manufacturing Greatness can help you build stronger leaders and develop a dynamic, high-performing workplace.

Mindfulness Manufacturing

Our show is about providing listeners with real stories that come from a place of experience, transparency, and authenticity. Most importantly it’s about what we learn from these stories and applying Mindfulness in our everyday work and personal lives.
Our intention is to create an environment where people can learn through open honest discussions on how we apply Mindfulness. Although our experiences and stories come from time in a manufacturing environment hence the title “Mindfulness Manufacturing”, we still see our discussions and topics relatable to any organization or profession.

When a mistake occurs on the plant floor, your mind might jump to one question: who caused this issue, and should I write them up for their mistake? But there’s a more productive approach you could be taking—and in this episode of Mindfulness Manufacturing, guest Dr. Jake Mazulewicz breaks it all down!

With a background as a firefighter, EMT, and military paratrooper, Jake knows the challenges of high-hazard industries, and works with organizations to reduce errors and create safer, more reliable workplace environments. In this episode, Jake shares why you can’t procedularize everything, including the way you handle errors and accidents, and offers great insights and stories about how to use connection and curiosity to improve safety, address errors, and strengthen your organization.

3:35 – Procedures and policies are the work that is imagined, and on the floor is how the work actually gets done

4:19 – The work as-done is almost always radically different than the work as-imagined

5:20 – Even when you have standards and people show up wanting to do a good job, you can still see issues that need to be addressed

6:44 – There will always be areas that absolutely need to have procedures in place

8:02 – There are also adaptive jobs, which leans less into procedures and more intro troubleshooting and tacit human knowledge

10:56 – In an ideal environment, both mechanistic and adaptive models are used and respected and needed

12:11 – There are four levels, ranging from strict procedurals to looser guidelines that show what to do, but not how to do it

15:36 – Tacit knowledge gets shared through conversations

16:22 – A way to share important information is to have frontline experts record videos sharing their insights to problems, especially those that are not covered in procedures

19:44 – Through conversation and connection, more knowledge is shared

21:58 – Debriefing also plays a central role

23:45 – If you have strong discipline, you’ll find more freedom

25:31 – In most situations, errors are signals, not defects

27:07 – When an error occurs, be curious and find the deeper cause of the problem

Connect with Jake Mazulewicz

Find him on Linkedin

Visit his website