Latest / Overwhelmed Working Woman: Boost Productivity, Master Time Management, Overcome Overwhelm & Stop People Pleasing / #128| The One Habit That Instantly Maximizes Your Workday Productivity
Transcript
- 0:00Michelle Gauthier: Instead of feeling scattered, you start the day knowing exactly what to focus on.
- 0:09Michelle Gauthier: You're listening to Overwhelmed Working Woman, the podcast that helps you be more calm and more productive by doing less.
- 0:16Michelle Gauthier: I'm your host, Michelle Gauthier, a former Overwhelmed Working Woman and current life coach.
- 0:21Michelle 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.
- 0:37Michelle Gauthier: Hi friend.
- 0:37Michelle Gauthier: Thanks for joining today.
- 0:38Michelle Gauthier: I have a serious question for you.
- 0:40Michelle Gauthier: When I open the podcast, I always say hi friend, and apparently last week I said hi friends because someone messaged me and said I noticed that you said hi friends, and I really liked it because it made me feel like I'm part of the community, versus like you were just talking directly to me.
- 0:57Michelle Gauthier: I literally want to know what you guys prefer, because I do think about it as a big community of people who I'm talking to.
- 1:03Michelle Gauthier: But do you prefer to think that I'm just talking to you or do you like being part of this community of overwhelmed working women?
- 1:10Michelle Gauthier: I'd love if you'd tell me.
- 1:12Michelle Gauthier: Send me a message.
- 1:12Michelle Gauthier: It's in the show notes.
- 1:14Michelle Gauthier: Okay, now that we have that super important piece of business behind us, let's talk about a habit that can instantly make your workday more productive.
- 1:24Michelle Gauthier: Now you know that I love all things about setting yourself up for success in the morning, so there's an episode that talks about a morning routine that you can have.
- 1:34Michelle Gauthier: There's an episode that I did just recently that talks about starting your day off with a mantra.
- 1:39Michelle Gauthier: In today's episode, we're going to talk about taking like three to five minutes at the beginning of the day, when you first sit down at your desk or wherever you start your day, and listing out your top three priorities for the day.
- 1:51Michelle Gauthier: None of these ideas.
- 1:54Michelle Gauthier: The morning routine, the mantra doing this none of them contradict each other.
- 1:58Michelle Gauthier: And, in fact, best case scenario, you're doing all three of them but, as we know, if you're overwhelmed, you don't want to add on three new things for the morning.
- 2:07Michelle Gauthier: So if you're feeling overwhelmed and you're looking for just one quick way to make yourself feel better, try this one and see how it changes your day.
- 2:16Michelle Gauthier: So today I'm going to talk about how to do this quick three to five minute daily plan, why it works, how to do it effectively and how it really helps to eliminate overwhelm, so that you can stay focused and in control of your time.
- 2:30Michelle Gauthier: I don't know about you, but sometimes when my mornings are a little bit hectic like getting up and going to work out and then I come back and make my kids breakfast and get them out the door and make sure everybody has what they need and then I always take a few minutes to clean up the kitchen because, even though I can't see the kitchen from my office, if it's messy it just like weighs on my brain.
- 2:47Michelle Gauthier: So sometimes getting to my desk especially if my desk is clean and organized, which I always try to have it be, but sometimes that's not the case.
- 2:56Michelle Gauthier: But if I get to my desk and it's clean and organized, and because I love my job, I have this feeling of okay, I made it.
- 3:03Michelle Gauthier: I made it to the part of the day that's going to be relaxing and great.
- 3:07Michelle Gauthier: And then, if I don't have a client right off the bat which there are two days a week, three days a week, I have a client at nine.
- 3:13Michelle Gauthier: Two days a week, I don't have a client first thing.
- 3:16Michelle Gauthier: So when I have those days, I think, okay, the world is my oyster.
- 3:20Michelle Gauthier: What should I do?
- 3:21Michelle Gauthier: And I always have a long to do list of things that I could do.
- 3:26Michelle Gauthier: There's always content to create podcasts, to record ideas for things that I can put together for my clients, etc.
- 3:33Michelle Gauthier: Etc.
- 3:34Michelle Gauthier: Etc.
- 3:34Michelle Gauthier: So you can really waste.
- 3:35Michelle Gauthier: Let's say, I've got two hours in the morning to work on things.
- 3:38Michelle Gauthier: You could waste that whole time just working on something random or, you know, starting on something that's not that important.
- 3:44Michelle Gauthier: And that's where this plan comes in.
- 3:48Michelle Gauthier: Instead of feeling scattered, you start the day, knowing exactly what to focus on.
- 3:55Michelle Gauthier: So let me tell you about one of my clients.
- 3:56Michelle Gauthier: We'll call her Sarah.
- 3:58Michelle Gauthier: Every morning she'd sit down at her desk and open her email first thing, because you know you have to check your new emails, or your brain tells you you have to check your new emails first thing in the morning, and then she would get sucked into responding to messages and then kind of try to work on tasks but then go back to answer those emails.
- 4:14Michelle Gauthier: So she ended up feeling like she was putting out fires all day instead of having any strategic work time.
- 4:20Michelle Gauthier: So by the time she got to the actual work she needed to do, the day was like half gone and she felt exhausted and unaccomplished.
- 4:28Michelle Gauthier: So I suggested that she just try this little shift that we're working out, where she would spend five minutes every morning, before she even opened her email, to map out her top three priorities, and within a week she started to feel more in control and less scattered and way more productive.
- 4:44Michelle Gauthier: So even if she did open her inbox after that, she knew that responding to emails wasn't her number one priority for the day, that maybe she would check in, but then she was going to get to her number one priority right away, and it made a big difference in her day.
- 5:00Michelle Gauthier: So here's how to do it effectively.
- 5:02Michelle Gauthier: If you sit down at your desk or maybe you have the kind of work where you're standing somewhere or arriving somewhere or whatever it is whatever indicates that you're at the beginning of your workday you can either set a timer for three minutes or five minutes, however long you think it will take, and then just look at your schedule, look at your to-do list.
- 5:20Michelle Gauthier: If you're telling me right now I don't have any place to look at those, everything's just kind of in my head or on my phone Do your best, find it wherever it is, think about it in your head and just ask yourself what are my top three things to do?
- 5:33Michelle Gauthier: Today I have another client we'll call her Rachel who always felt like her to-do list was never ending and it really was, because she'd write down way too many tasks and then get overwhelmed by all she had to do and end up procrastinating.
- 5:47Michelle Gauthier: Because that happens a lot when you have too much to do and you just get overwhelmed, you don't do anything at all.
- 5:52Michelle Gauthier: So she worked on this same idea of limiting herself to just three key priorities each day and at first it felt weird not writing that massive list.
- 6:01Michelle Gauthier: Now she did keep that massive list somewhere else, so it's not like she threw that list away.
- 6:06Michelle Gauthier: It made her feel secure to still have that list somewhere else, but she would write down her three tasks for the day.
- 6:12Michelle Gauthier: I put mine on a sticky note and stick it on the page of my planner.
- 6:15Michelle Gauthier: That's how I do it.
- 6:16Michelle Gauthier: You do it however you want.
- 6:18Michelle Gauthier: She realized that focusing on fewer things made her feel way more accomplished.
- 6:22Michelle Gauthier: It also helped her really identify where she was underestimating the amount of time that things would take.
- 6:28Michelle Gauthier: So even if she would get it down to a top three some days, she would only get to the top one, and that's really good for her to know that it's not realistic to plan to do three things in one day when she can really get one thing done in a day.
- 6:42Michelle Gauthier: The third example of real life people who have used this method is my client we'll call her Kelly who is a manager, and her whole day was just a marathon of meetings, literally.
- 6:54Michelle Gauthier: Sometimes she'd have like nine meetings in one day, and so by the time she had a minute to breathe it was like, okay, now it's late in the afternoon, I have 15 or 30 minutes to work on stuff.
- 7:05Michelle Gauthier: I don't even know what I'm supposed to work on because I've been in meetings all day.
- 7:09Michelle Gauthier: So I just suggested she spend this five minutes prioritizing, in her case, just one thing that she absolutely wanted to accomplish between meetings, and she started blocking off little chunks of time for those priorities and then she felt like she made progress besides the meetings.
- 7:26Michelle Gauthier: Also in that, that case, if that's you and you're in meetings all day, put on your priority list, attend and be present in all of the meetings on my schedule as one of your priorities, because that is what is taking up the majority of your day, and you need to acknowledge that most of that time has already been spent.
- 7:43Michelle Gauthier: So, in summary, if you want to boost your productivity and make your brain feel less overwhelmed so you can be more productive, just start each day with a five minute daily plan, clarify your top priorities before you dive into work, open your inbox, jump into a meeting and write down your one to three non-negotiables for the day, and then just use this plan as a guide to stay focused.
- 8:07Michelle Gauthier: So when you have downtime from meetings or other things and you're like, okay, I'm gonna do something right now.
- 8:12Michelle Gauthier: What should I work on?
- 8:13Michelle Gauthier: You'll know it's right there.
- 8:15Michelle Gauthier: If this episode helps you, or any of the episodes on this podcast have helped you, I would love if you would send this podcast to a friend and or do a review and a rating.
- 8:28Michelle Gauthier: Right now, this podcast is in the top two percent globally of all podcasts.
- 8:32Michelle Gauthier: There are 3.5 million podcasts and we are in the top two percent and my goal for this year is to get to the top one percent, and that is based on a listen score that is assigned and our listen score keeps inching its way up and our way to get to top 1%, which means when somebody searches for overwhelm or people pleasing, that our podcast is going to be the first one that comes up.
- 8:56Michelle Gauthier: The way to do that is by putting out great content that lots of people download, and then they also weigh heavily on how many reviews you get.
- 9:04Michelle Gauthier: So if you love it and you would write a review and leave me a rating, I would so appreciate it and so would all of the future women who don't even know this podcast exists today, but we'll start seeing it in their search results.
- 9:17Michelle Gauthier: Have a great week, see you soon.
- 9:24Michelle Gauthier: Thank you for listening to the Overwhelmed Working Woman podcast.
- 9:27Michelle Gauthier: If you want to learn more about my work, head over to my website at michellegothiercom.
- 9:33Michelle Gauthier: See you next week.