Personal Playbook: Shiny Keys Mindset 

I thrive where challenge, novelty, and passion meet. 
I learn visually and by doing things myself. Engagement is key for me – if my brain isn’t bought in, it can’t focus on the task. 
Guide me with clarity of purpose, insight, novelty and challenge and I’ll deliver energy, creativity, and continuous improvement. 

🧩 How I Work Best 

  • Interest-driven: I engage deeply when work is interesting to me, novel, and I have a passion for it. 
  • Good with Urgency: I’m great in a crisis or if something needs to be done fast. If this is the case, I need SMART requirements. 
  • Challenge: If I’m told something can’t be done, I will find a way to do it. 
  • Dedicated Days: A week with meeting days and focus days works better for me than bits of both every day. 
  • With Autonomy: I need to be able to decide what I work on when. 

💪 Strengths I Bring 

  • Creative problem-solving, fresh perspectives and out-of-the-box thinking. 
  • High adaptability when things change 
  • Developing the future vision and seeing things holistically. 
  • Strong ability to spin lots of plates at once. 
  • Great with people, understanding need, adapting my working style to accommodate others. 

⚠️ Things I Need to Guard Against 

  • Taking on too much: I love to do more but need to be careful not to do so much it causes stress or more work than my working hours can cover. 
  • Waiting Mode: schedule meetings all together to ensure I don’t have small gaps of time before the next meeting.  
  • Chasing shiny new things before finishing existing work. 
  • Blurring the lines of my boundaries: Saying ‘just this once’ to weekend working or using my development time to work on other things is never really ‘just this once’ with me. 

🛠️ My Self-Management Strategies 

  • Offer myself a reward for completing dull tasks. 
  • A self-built planner that captures my to-do list in a new way each week and adds little dopamine boosts throughout the day. 
  • A desk set up at home which is visually stimulating, quiet music in the background and multiple items to handle/fidget with when needed. 
  • Work on multiple projects at once – if my brain can’t focus on one, I can do another. My brain is satisfied with not doing the first task, meanwhile the second gets completed so there is no drop in productivity
  • Being kind to myself. If something out of my control meant I couldn’t complete a task, I don’t internalise that. 

🤝 How You Can Get the Best from Me 

  • Give me context: Tell me what the process is now, what isn’t working and why. 
  • Give me space to innovate: Specific requirements are great, but if you can allow me freedom within or around these, it means I can get really invested. 
  • Consider when we meet: I work best when all my meetings are together and I have large amounts of work time. If you’re organising a meeting, put it around my other meetings in a free gap, and not in my blocked out working time. 
  • Understand my need for movement: If I’m fidgeting and/or looking all over the place in a meeting, it’s allowing me to concentrate and be really involved in our discussion; be assured I’m not distracted.  

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