My top 5 Weekly Refl ecti ons:

1) This week, I learned a lot about how personality and values can affect work relationships and
environments. I also really benefited from learning how to set goals using the SMART method. I
hadn't realized how vague a lot of my goals were, but now I feel more comfortable with my
goals, as they are a bit more attainable and measurable. I look forward to using these things in
my personal life now, especially the idea of being flexible in my goals and acknowledging that
there may be trade-offs in order to accomplish certain things. I am also excited to share some of
the topics of self-image and self-efficacy and how they affect us working, as I realized almost
immediately that I could use these newly learned concepts at work to help me and my co-
workers better succeed.

2) As someone who has struggled with finances most of my life, I benefited a lot from this weeks
topics and assignments. I found the tips about how to spend less very helpful. I work in a cash
business and most of my income is in cash and as the book said, cash can be easier to spend and
that is definitely true for me. I am going to try a new spending method of depositing all my cash
into my bank account and use my card to make purchases, hopefully making it easier to not
spend as much while also tracking spending better. I have recently been tracking my finances via
an app on my phone and although it's helpful to see where and how I spend my money, this
week's chapter made me realize that tracking isn't the same as having a budget. The financial
planning assignment was good practice and definitely made me feel more comfortable in
creating my own monthly budget. I plan on making myself a monthly budget that includes
allocating money towards my financial long-term goals (paying off my car and saving for
retirement).
3) I benefited this week by being reminded of the importance of stress management and how
stress can effect my work, my mental health, and even physical health. I often let stress take
over my mind and it can really reduce my quality of work. I also benefited from learning tips on
time-management. I have always struggled with procrastination and letting stress from it effect
my productivity, so learning new tricks like the one-touch policy and discovering how being
organized can save time was very helpful for me. I plan on using better organization in my work
spaces, as well as better planning of big and/or long-term projects by breaking them up into
smaller tasks.
4) I benefitted this week from the leadership style assessment and reflection. Not only did the
assessment get my leadership style correct but I also found reading the pros and cons about it
very helpful. It makes sense that certain styles would be helpful in specific situations, so I ended
up going a bit further and read about the other styles and their benefits as well. Moving
forward, I will definitely be using these newly learned styles at work and will try my best to
recognize when certain leadership methods are best.
5) This week I benefitted from some of the new things I learned about email etiquette, like the CC
rule, and appropriate greetings in email threads. The CC rule of if you're a 'To:' recipient, it
generally means a response is needed, whereas if you are a 'CC:' recipient, you generally are not
expected or required to reply. I have always been a bit iffy on when to use CC, and this rule
really cleared that up for me. Another thing that I found useful from the video was how to apply
greetings in an on-going email thread. I always thought it felt awkward to keep saying hi, but
also thought that was what was appropriate. I will be applying her 'sunrise' rule of only saying hi
again if it’s a new day. I like the idea of minimizing emails and not wasting peoples time, so I
plan to use these things to write more efficient emails.