Latest / Overwhelmed Working Woman: Boost Productivity, Master Time Management, Overcome Overwhelm & Stop People Pleasing / #176| The Real Reason You Can’t Stay Focused (And How to Say No to What Derails You for More Productivity)
Transcript
- 0:00Michelle Gauthier: So picture what is in your overachiever's backpack.
- 0:03Michelle Gauthier: What do the bricks say and how heavy are they to carry around?
- 0:14Michelle Gauthier: You're listening to Overwhelmed Working Woman, the podcast that helps you be more calm and more productive by doing less.
- 0:21Michelle Gauthier: I'm your host, Michelle Gauthier, a former overwhelmed working woman and current life coach.
- 0:26Michelle Gauthier: On this show, we unpack the stress and pressure that today's working woman experiences, and in each episode you'll get a strategy to bring more calm, ease and relaxation to your life.
- 0:42Michelle Gauthier: Hi friend, thanks for joining today.
- 0:44Michelle Gauthier: Do you ever feel like you just cannot focus or concentrate?
- 0:48Michelle Gauthier: That is sort of a hallmark of feeling overwhelmed and stressed.
- 0:51Michelle Gauthier: That's very hard to think clearly.
- 0:53Michelle Gauthier: Today, I'm going to tell you a story about one of my clients and how she was able to set down her backpack full of responsibilities, so to speak, and be able to do some very good, clear thinking for better productivity.
- 1:08Michelle Gauthier: Before I jump into that, though, I want to remind you that the declutter challenge is next week.
- 1:13Michelle Gauthier: It starts on Monday and it ends on Friday, every day next week.
- 1:17Michelle Gauthier: It will take you well, it depends how much time you have, but if you join, you can expect to spend at least five minutes, which is listening to the podcast episode of the morning that will explain to you which area you'll work on decluttering that day, and then around 30 minutes to do the actual decluttering project.
- 1:36Michelle Gauthier: By the end of the week, you will feel so much lighter and you will have made progress on decluttering your digital life like think about your email inbox, your calendar, all of your responsibilities, a couple places in your house or your car some kind of physical space and your mind.
- 1:55Michelle Gauthier: So you're going to get a taste of all different types of decluttering and notice how they make you feel.
- 2:00Michelle Gauthier: The cost for this is $17.
- 2:03Michelle Gauthier: You can register at the link in the show notes and when you do, you will get an email that has the workbook that goes with it.
- 2:09Michelle Gauthier: So in case you want to print it out before you get started, or if you're more of a person who wants to just keep it on your phone, whatever it is, you will get it immediately upon registration.
- 2:19Michelle Gauthier: I hope to see you there next week.
- 2:21Michelle Gauthier: We're actually going to do some fun prizes.
- 2:23Michelle Gauthier: If you listen to the episode on the Sunday basket and organizing system, that's going to be one of the prizes.
- 2:29Michelle Gauthier: A label maker is going to be one of the prizes, which is like the best thing ever.
- 2:34Michelle Gauthier: If you don't own one, you need one Definitely.
- 2:36Michelle Gauthier: I feel like everything in life needs a label.
- 2:39Michelle Gauthier: And the last prize is a coaching session with me, which, if you do a 30 minute coaching session with me, normally that would be $150.
- 2:47Michelle Gauthier: So it's $150 value for free.
- 2:50Michelle Gauthier: The way to enter is to just give me feedback throughout the challenge about what your wins are or any questions that you might have, and I'm going to be featuring some of your questions and comments on the podcast next week.
- 3:01Michelle Gauthier: So, as we're going through the challenge, I'm going to be sharing wins on the podcast every day.
- 3:05Michelle Gauthier: It's gonna be fun, you're gonna feel good.
- 3:09Michelle Gauthier: I'm going to be doing it right alongside you, so please join me.
- 3:13Michelle Gauthier: Okay, back to the inability to concentrate or focus.
- 3:17Michelle Gauthier: I don't even know that I need to go over why that's bad for your productivity.
- 3:21Michelle Gauthier: Right, it just makes sense.
- 3:22Michelle Gauthier: If you can't concentrate and you can't focus, then you can't really get anything done.
- 3:28Michelle Gauthier: You just get kind of that spinning, paralyzed feeling that comes often with overwhelm and stress.
- 3:34Michelle Gauthier: So today, when you listen, you'll discover through hearing about my client Priya's story, why focus problems aren't necessarily your phone or your environment, and how treating every request like an emergency really drains your productivity.
- 3:51Michelle Gauthier: And then a quick three-step process to lighten the load and help you be able to focus your attention to be super productive during the times when you want to be productive.
- 4:01Michelle Gauthier: My client, Priya, came to me basically saying, my to-do list keeps getting bigger, I can't get a handle on it, my calendar is out of control, I feel like I never have time to do anything fun and I just can't focus.
- 4:14Michelle Gauthier: This is very common.
- 4:16Michelle Gauthier: If this, if you're like, yes, I feel like that, this is very common.
- 4:19Michelle Gauthier: Almost every client who I work with has this same type of issue, and so the first thing we want to do is get into it Like why, what is going on there?
- 4:30Michelle Gauthier: Why is your to-do list never ending?
- 4:31Michelle Gauthier: Why is your calendar jam packed?
- 4:33Michelle Gauthier: Let's get underneath it.
- 4:35Michelle Gauthier: And what I realized while working with her is that Priya had two main problems that were causing this inability for her to concentrate, and I like to think about them like a metaphor of a backpack.
- 4:48Michelle Gauthier: So she had this heavy backpack that she was carrying around, and inside that backpack I picture bricks with words written on them like I have to say yes or I'll let people down.
- 5:01Michelle Gauthier: Everything has to be perfect If I don't handle it.
- 5:05Michelle Gauthier: No one else will.
- 5:06Michelle Gauthier: And if you've ever had any of those thoughts, consciously or unconsciously, those weigh on you.
- 5:13Michelle Gauthier: So picture what is in your overachiever's backpack.
- 5:16Michelle Gauthier: What do the bricks say and how heavy are they to carry around?
- 5:22Michelle Gauthier: If you, for example, are carrying around that heavy brick of I have to say yes or I'll let people down, that means you're always going to say yes and you're worried about what people are going to think about you.
- 5:33Michelle Gauthier: And when you always say yes, that shows up on your to-do list, that shows up in your calendar.
- 5:38Michelle Gauthier: It shows up as a lack of energy and a lack of concentration.
- 5:41Michelle Gauthier: So she had that.
- 5:43Michelle Gauthier: That was the number one thing.
- 5:45Michelle Gauthier: And then the other thing that she had is I like to think of it like a pair of AirPods that were stuck in her ears, that were whispering to her every time she got a notification.
- 5:56Michelle Gauthier: Okay, you know when you're.
- 5:58Michelle Gauthier: I just got a new set of AirPods because I lost mine, which I found, I seem to.
- 6:03Michelle Gauthier: I think I'm on like my fourth or fifth pair, and every time I buy the replacement ones, I find the old ones.
- 6:08Michelle Gauthier: It's kind of my way to do it, but anyway, I've got the new ones, so they're way fancier than the previous ones that I had, that I lost and found.
- 6:15Michelle Gauthier: And when you put them in your ears they automatically go to noise canceling mode so you can only hear, like what's coming out of the AirPods.
- 6:24Michelle Gauthier: You can't really hear the noises around you, which is amazing, like on an airplane or something like that the noises around you, which is amazing, like on an airplane or something like that.
- 6:32Michelle Gauthier: But if you think about that, Priya had these in and every single time she would get a notification on her phone, or she would get an email or her phone would ring, she would be notified, and it's like as if this is a metaphor she's not really wearing these AirPods around, but it's as if she heard nothing else except this voice coming into her head saying you got a text message, you need to respond to it right now.
- 6:56Michelle Gauthier: It's like a 911 mindset.
- 6:59Michelle Gauthier: There's no prioritizing or no way to think about things as like I can wait until later to do that.
- 7:06Michelle Gauthier: So every time a text message it doesn't even have to be an important one a phone call, an email from her boss, or even someone who works for her, or even just a friend If she didn't answer it right away, it would.
- 7:19Michelle Gauthier: Just, it's like those AirPods would keep playing the message of like you got to get back to that, there's somebody waiting on you.
- 7:25Michelle Gauthier: You've got to get back to them.
- 7:27Michelle Gauthier: So if you think about the combination of her wearing those noise canceling AirPods, where she could just only hear that voice telling her to immediately get back to everyone, and wearing that backpack with all the bricks in it with all the messages of I have to say yes or I'll let people down.
- 7:44Michelle Gauthier: Everything has to be perfect.
- 7:45Michelle Gauthier: If I don't handle this, no one else will Imagine what her concentration level was Exhausting, right, like, how can you concentrate?
- 7:55Michelle Gauthier: If I could only concentrate when I'm not getting messages like no texts or phone calls or emails I would never be able to concentrate.
- 8:05Michelle Gauthier: As you're hearing her story, maybe you're thinking, yeah, me too.
- 8:09Michelle Gauthier: I think that this is really common, especially for women, that we're really taught that we need to be available, get back to people.
- 8:16Michelle Gauthier: Everybody's relying on us.
- 8:17Michelle Gauthier: We can't make anyone else upset.
- 8:19Michelle Gauthier: So this is super common and discovering that she was feeling this way, carrying around this backpack and wearing these AirPods, was actually super helpful, because as soon as you discover what it is that's causing this inability to concentrate and this stress and this overwhelm, you can get busy on doing something different.
- 8:37Michelle Gauthier: So here's what we worked on.
- 8:40Michelle Gauthier: We started with the 911 emergency mindset.
- 8:43Michelle Gauthier: So when her brain yelled emergency when a text came in, she learned to take a breath and ask, is this actually urgent?
- 8:52Michelle Gauthier: So the process that you want to do if you feel like this one applies to you is, just when you get a message, make a new rule for yourself that you actually can't respond until you put your hand on your chest and take a breath and ask yourself is this actually urgent?
- 9:11Michelle Gauthier: I'm doing it to myself right now and I feel calmer just putting my hand on my chest.
- 9:16Michelle Gauthier: So put your hand on your chest and say is this actually urgent?
- 9:20Michelle Gauthier: And if the answer was yes, which it sometimes is then she would answer.
- 9:26Michelle Gauthier: And if it wasn't urgent I mean, how often is something actually really super urgent?
- 9:33Michelle Gauthier: She would check the thought that was really weighing her down, like I have to do this right now or I'll look bad, or people are expecting me to get back to them right away.
- 9:43Michelle Gauthier: And then she replaced it with lighter thoughts, like it's safe to respond when I'm ready.
- 9:49Michelle Gauthier: I'm allowed to focus on one thing at a time Even a thought like this is not an emergency and I can reply when I have time.
- 9:57Michelle Gauthier: And just by doing that she learned to train her brain that it was okay if she didn't respond to things right away.
- 10:06Michelle Gauthier: Sometimes things are urgent and you respond to them right away, but I would say 95% of things are not that urgent, and learning to give yourself that time and space to just put your hand on your chest, take a deep breath and ask is this urgent?
- 10:20Michelle Gauthier: Will help you break that habit.
- 10:22Michelle Gauthier: It's like you take those noise canceling AirPods that are talking in your ears, out of your and I don't know what.
- 10:32Michelle Gauthier: You don't want to throw them to the bottom of the lake.
- 10:33Michelle Gauthier: Maybe you just want to put them in a different room so that you can think on your own without having that message coming in.
- 10:46Michelle Gauthier: So once we calmed her brain from that emergency, emergency mindset mindset.
- 10:51Michelle Gauthier: So once we calmed her brain from that everything's an emergency mindset, it got so much easier to address the backpack.
- 11:09Michelle Gauthier: So the backpack, remember, is her carrying around these bricks that have beliefs written on them, like I have to say yes or I'll let people down.
- 11:14Michelle Gauthier: Everything has to be perfect.
- 11:15Michelle Gauthier: If I don't handle it, no one else will.
- 11:17Michelle Gauthier: And what we agreed is that when she got to work in the morning, she would take off that metaphoric, she would take off this invisible backpack and set it next to her so she wasn't carrying it around.
- 11:31Michelle Gauthier: And then, if one of those thoughts came up that are on the bricks, she would do exactly the same practice that I just described.
- 11:38Michelle Gauthier: So she would pause.
- 11:40Michelle Gauthier: Let's just say someone asked her to do something that she doesn't want to do or isn't her responsibility, or that she can delegate to her team.
- 11:49Michelle Gauthier: The heavy brick of I have to say yes, or the heavy brick of if I don't handle it, it won't be done right.
- 11:58Michelle Gauthier: We know that that was weighing her down.
- 12:00Michelle Gauthier: So she can put her hand on her chest and ask herself is it true that if I don't do it, it won't be done right?
- 12:08Michelle Gauthier: Could it be true that someone else could do this job, even if it's not exactly the way that I would do?
- 12:14Michelle Gauthier: It else could do this job, even if it's not exactly the way that I would do it.
- 12:18Michelle Gauthier: And then she would try to choose a new thought like I'm going to delegate this to my team and I'll tell you when you start doing this and you start kind of talking back to those bricks.
- 12:26Michelle Gauthier: You will feel uncomfortable, and that's okay.
- 12:29Michelle Gauthier: Change always feels uncomfortable, but she was able to, brick by brick, come up with a replacement thought notice, when she was having that pressure of everything has to be perfect, or I have to say yes, or I'll let people down.
- 12:42Michelle Gauthier: And putting that pause in putting her hand on her chest, taking a deep breath and then asking herself is it really true that I'll let people down if I don't do this?
- 12:52Michelle Gauthier: Can I know that's for sure, true?
- 12:54Michelle Gauthier: Is it okay to let people down?
- 12:57Michelle Gauthier: Even if people are let down, let them, as Mel Robbins would say.
- 13:00Michelle Gauthier: So if you feel like you've been carrying around a backpack full of bricks with old beliefs, or you've got those airpods in that are whispering in your ear that everything is a 911 emergency, try this technique and help settle yourself down, and that will totally enable you to be much more productive and focused.
- 13:23Michelle Gauthier: Okay, have a great day.
- 13:24Michelle Gauthier: Don't forget to sign up for the declutter challenge.
- 13:27Michelle Gauthier: It's going to be so much fun and I think you are going to love the results.
- 13:31Michelle Gauthier: The people who did it last year I got tons of great feedback.
- 13:35Michelle Gauthier: It's so much fun knowing you're not doing it alone, that you've got this whole group of people, all these internet people and podcast people doing it alongside you.
- 13:43Michelle Gauthier: Have a great week.
- 13:44Michelle Gauthier: Thank you for listening to the Overwhelmed Working Woman podcast.
- 13:52Michelle Gauthier: If you want to learn more about my work, head over to my website at michellegauthier.
- 13:56Michelle Gauthier: com.
- 13:58Michelle Gauthier: See you next week.