Why you suck at being productive.
The honest truth to why you always derail your own plans.
Let me paint you a little picture, and if you can relate please continue reading…
You decide enough is enough, you can’t handle feeling so out of control anymore, you want to get some direction, get your life back in order so you can do what’s really most important to you [insert create art/journal/exercise/project X/learn new skill/make X money/etc].
With your newfound motivation & energy, you go and buy a sparkly *new* notebook, you spend a few hours daydreaming of the beautiful life you want to live and you write down some goals to get there in the next few months and maybe you even write down a new morning routine that you saw “that girl” is doing and I mean her life is amazing right?!
Day one — you’re doing GREAT. You’re getting things done… day three — life happens [your dog vomits all over your new carpet/your child is sick and needs to be at home for a week/your boss puts you on a new urgent project OR you just overslept and can’t do any of your morning routine] — whatever it is usually for you, life inevitably throws a spanner in the works when you’re trying to create a type of renaissance in your life.
And 9 times out of 10 your motivation drops so drastically that you can never seem to bounce back to your “new life plan” and you just end up feeling guilt & shame because “my life is just out of control”, “there’s never enough time in a day, “I’m just always so overwhelmed” or “these things never work for me”.
Some version of this story has been a part each one of our lives at some point! We want to gain a sense of control when our life feels like a mess, and all we end up doing is sticking a bandaid on it to “fix” it, but rarely does it actually SOLVE the real problem.
We always start out on some kind of emotional “high” when we say this “time will be different”, but it derails at the first bump in the road or we just get on the struggle train again and guilt trip ourselves for not being able to be productive and make these “simple tools” work.
I say these things because I have been here an embarrassingly amount of times.
But then HOW? — The issue is actually rooted much deeper in our souls, my friend.
Productivity is not a surface-level job.
You need to do the deep work of retraining your brain.
We’ve all inherited a set of negative beliefs around what we’re capable of, how we deal with life when it gets hard, and how we talk to ourselves about what we do that really doesn’t help us get very far when we’re trying to be more intentional with our time. It’s definitely not something we got taught in school — which quite frankly should trump learning about HIV year after year — 🙋🏼♀️ anyone?
You’ve probably spent how many ever years you’ve been alive training your brain to think in a certain way and we reinforce “bad” behaviours literally every day! Taking control of your mindset is the first non-negotiable step to success.
start to uncover the negative beliefs that have kept you from really mastering your relationship with time
take notice of your self-talk when you’re in a stressful situation or you’ve been crunching for 3 weeks straight and you just can’t cope anymore
Some beliefs about yourself, about time & money, about your career, can be very deeply ingrained. I know I had the belief that procrastination is just part of my DNA, something I inherited. I call BS on that!
Now start to rewire those beliefs. They simply aren’t true — and you can rewrite each one of them and start re-training your brain. Even if it feels silly and you don’t really feel it yet, keep catching yourself when you say one of your negative little rhymes and replace it with your new positive beliefs.
Here are a few examples to get you started:
“there’s never enough time” → “there’s always time for what’s most important”
“It’s selfish to take time for myself when so many people depend on me.” → “self-care is crucial to be the best person/mom/wife/boss I can be”
“I was born a procrastinator” → “I know what is important in my life and I prioritise it”
Get behind yourself
You are your own worst enemy.
The journey to being more intentional with your time or more “productive” can easily become the parent telling you you aren’t good enough, fast enough or smart enough when you’re still learning or when you don’t get it right the first few times. Remember that it’s always a process. There are A LOT of things you need to unlearn first before you get to the place where you feel in control of your time.
Being productive or getting important things done is something that you do for you. Doing the deep work to get yourself off of the hamster wheel and in control of your time and resources is a skill that you honour your own life with. You’re being a good steward of what you’ve been given here on earth — and there’s no angry man in the sky pointing fingers at you.
Don’t implement things or create plans that you’re only going to use to judge yourself — learning this skill is a way of celebrating your life, enjoying it, and learning more about yourself. It’s not a ruler checking whether you measure up or not — this life is your life and you might as well do it in a way that you have the time & energy to actually have fun.
There’s always time for what’s most important
When you know what’s most important you can ignore what’s not.
This right here has become a compass for me. When you get clear on what’s really important on every level you realise that you have more time than you think you do AND the unimportant things start falling off a lot easier!
What’s most important to you? What do you spend your precious time on that’s really just not that important and how can you make a shift? Remember only you can do this, you have to take ownership of the way you manage your days.
We all get the same amount of hours — are you going to let those hours go to waste rushing through “life”, jumping between a million things all at once, scrambling to get things done that you really don’t enjoy doing, being controlled by all the bings & beeps screaming for your attention OR are you going to make time for what’s most important and actually do it.
Yeah but seriously, it’s not that easy.
Sure, there are more strategies that can help you along the way and make things easier, but it really does start here: what is the ONE most important thing that you need to work on in this stage & season of your life?
And with that dear friend I want to encourage you that you’re doing so well — choosing to live life more intentionally is always going to come with sacrifice, and resistance but I know you have it in you to push through and create the life you’ve envisioned. We’ll be getting into more practical solutions & strategies soon — but go and do the deep work first!