Latest / Overwhelmed Working Woman: Boost Productivity, Master Time Management, Overcome Overwhelm & Stop People Pleasing / #171| Eliminate Daily Overwhelm by Embracing “Good Enough” - Here’s How
Transcript
- 0:00Michelle Gauthier: You know that feeling, when your to-do list is overflowing and everything feels important, like if you don't give 100% to all of it, something's going to fall apart.
- 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.
- 0:40Michelle Gauthier: Hi, friend, thanks for joining today.
- 0:42Michelle Gauthier: Today, we're going to be talking about a great way to eliminate daily overwhelm by embracing good enough or B minus work, as I like to call it.
- 0:51Michelle Gauthier: This is an approach that I take in my own life and something that I teach all of my clients and has helped all of us so much, so I want to share it with you today.
- 1:01Michelle Gauthier: If you're listening to this show, I imagine that you're probably an overachiever who likes to do your very best on everything all the time Me too but that's not realistic.
- 1:12Michelle Gauthier: If you want to actually get a lot of things done sometimes, you have to choose good enough over a plus.
- 1:19Michelle Gauthier: When you listen to this episode today, you'll learn why identifying what good enough or B-minus work is is powerful, even if you still choose to go above and beyond.
- 1:28Michelle Gauthier: How doing A-plus work everywhere drains your time and your energy, and how prioritizing like ruthlessly prioritizing where you want to put forth your best effort, is the key to escaping this daily overwhelm that you're probably used to but don't love.
- 1:47Michelle Gauthier: Okay, so the first thing I want to talk about is defining the difference for things on your task list the difference between if I do this to an A plus level and a B minus level and thinking about what good enough would be for a task.
- 2:02Michelle Gauthier: And I'm not suggesting that you start doing B work everywhere, although you're welcome to give that a whirl and see how that works out for you.
- 2:09Michelle Gauthier: It could be great.
- 2:10Michelle Gauthier: But what I am saying is define what good enough even looks like, even if you still go above and beyond.
- 2:17Michelle Gauthier: At least now it's a conscious choice and not just perfectionism running the show without you even thinking about it.
- 2:23Michelle Gauthier: Because when everything gets your A plus effort, by default, you end up burned out or frustrated and resentful.
- 2:29Michelle Gauthier: But when you define good enough for some things and then do that and do A plus work for some things, you can feel good, like you're in control and you're choosing where to put your energy because, as you know, if you're exhausted by the end of the day, you know there's only so much energy that you have.
- 2:45Michelle Gauthier: So let's just think through some examples.
- 2:48Michelle Gauthier: What's the trade-off of doing A-plus work compared to B-minus work?
- 2:53Michelle Gauthier: I would say that doing A-plus work often takes like twice the time, maybe even more than B-minus work does, but it only delivers marginally better results, maybe 10% better at that.
- 3:06Michelle Gauthier: I'm making up these statistics but I think to illustrate the point that I'm talking about, all of us have at one point or another written an email and done this A plus version, where we do four different drafts and it's multiple paragraphs and we make sure our phrasing is perfect and maybe even we ask our best co-worker, bff, to take a look at it before we sent it.
- 3:27Michelle Gauthier: And then the B minus version is just clear, concise, done in one try.
- 3:33Michelle Gauthier: Let Outlook or whatever tell you when you spelled something wrong or grammatically done something incorrectly.
- 3:38Michelle Gauthier: And if you think about how much longer that first one took you let's say that took an hour or 45 minutes versus the second one, what two, three minutes at most and how the receiver received that email.
- 3:53Michelle Gauthier: Personally, I always like a short email better than a long one, but does it make a huge difference to the receiver when you do A plus versus B minus work?
- 4:04Michelle Gauthier: So take a look at your to-do list and things that you have on your list and just ask yourself what would it look like if I did B work on this particular thing?
- 4:16Michelle Gauthier: And am I open to that?
- 4:17Michelle Gauthier: Do I want to?
- 4:18Michelle Gauthier: Now?
- 4:18Michelle Gauthier: Lots of times when I work with clients, the idea of B just gives them a small heart attack.
- 4:23Michelle Gauthier: So you could even start with A if you want to, or B plus work, if you want to.
- 4:28Michelle Gauthier: Something I do every week is meal planning.
- 4:30Michelle Gauthier: A-plus version would be a full menu with new recipes and spending an hour every night cooking the meals and everybody absolutely loves them, and I pull my whole family about what's everybody's favorite, whatever.
- 4:45Michelle Gauthier: And then the B minus version would be like okay, we have three go-to meals that we do.
- 4:49Michelle Gauthier: We'll rotate those through, we'll have leftovers or ordered pizza the rest of the nights.
- 4:52Michelle Gauthier: Either way, everybody gets fed.
- 4:54Michelle Gauthier: And I don't know about your family.
- 4:56Michelle Gauthier: Now, I don't have a husband, so it's just myself and the kids, but they do not care.
- 5:00Michelle Gauthier: They do not care when I spend a ton of time and effort to make food.
- 5:05Michelle Gauthier: They do not care.
- 5:06Michelle Gauthier: So why?
- 5:06Michelle Gauthier: Why would I go to that A-plus version?
- 5:13Michelle Gauthier: I will say, though, this is a good example.
- 5:14Michelle Gauthier: I think if I have my girlfriends over for dinner which I do maybe like once a quarter or something I will have a few friends over for dinner.
- 5:19Michelle Gauthier: I absolutely love to go a plus on that.
- 5:22Michelle Gauthier: I love to find a new cocktail recipe.
- 5:26Michelle Gauthier: I love to make things that I know are different people's favorites.
- 5:30Michelle Gauthier: One of the things that I did last time I had my friends over is I made everybody a little individual flower arrangement in a small vase that was by their place setting.
- 5:39Michelle Gauthier: I make place cards.
- 5:41Michelle Gauthier: I love this.
- 5:42Michelle Gauthier: I go to full A plus because I get so much joy out of it.
- 5:46Michelle Gauthier: So when I know that I'm going to do that on a Friday night or a Saturday night, I think about it all week, I plan ahead for it and I love giving A-plus effort to that.
- 5:55Michelle Gauthier: I do not love giving A-plus effort to meal planning for my family.
- 5:59Michelle Gauthier: I just want something like quick and healthy, like, hey, here's a protein and a carb, maybe some veggies, here we go.
- 6:03Michelle Gauthier: Think about like a work report that you have to do every week.
- 6:07Michelle Gauthier: A-plus version would be like a polished deck with charts and animations and so beautiful, and the B minus version might be a bulleted list with key points and maybe you put it in a slide or maybe it's just in an email.
- 6:19Michelle Gauthier: So the difference is one gets the job done and the other goes above and beyond getting the job done, but at what cost?
- 6:27Michelle Gauthier: And the last point I want to make, which ties into that, is you can't choose to give that A plus work to absolutely everything or you will just lose your mind.
- 6:37Michelle Gauthier: So, just in the examples that we just talked about, imagine if every email that you write, you do four drafts and have perfect phasing.
- 6:44Michelle Gauthier: Every time that you plan a meal for your family, it's got three new recipes and it takes you like an hour, and Every time you do a simple report out at work, you're doing this full deck, etc.
- 6:56Michelle Gauthier: And you're taking so much time.
- 6:57Michelle Gauthier: If you do everything to that level and you may be a person who's trying to do this now it's just impossible.
- 7:04Michelle Gauthier: You're overwhelmed, you're exhausted, you can't get things done and then it really starts to take a toll on you.
- 7:12Michelle Gauthier: So, in order to, in order to be able to do A plus work on the things that really matter to you like for me and my business, a plus work goes into seeing my clients, goes into seeing my clients spending time with them preparing for their sessions, being a great listener, learning new coaching things, following up with them, etc.
- 7:33Michelle Gauthier: B minus work, my social media I definitely post stuff on social media, but it is not a huge priority.
- 7:38Michelle Gauthier: So you have to prioritize in your business, in your life with your kids, in everything.
- 7:44Michelle Gauthier: Where do I want to give the A plus work and where can I do B plus?
- 7:48Michelle Gauthier: So my challenge for you is just to take a look at your to do list for today and see what's on there.
- 7:55Michelle Gauthier: Take two minutes to glance at that list and say what would the difference be between doing A plus and B minus work on this, and which one do I want to do?
- 8:02Michelle Gauthier: Maybe even write an A plus or a B minus, or an A or a B plus, or whatever you want to write next to the item, so that you can gauge how much of your energy goes to that thing, because good enough is powerful, good enough gets it done, and when you stop trying to do everything perfectly, you'll have space to focus on stuff that matters most, like making special flower arrangements for your friends when they come over for dinner, or whatever it is that floats your boat.
- 8:29Michelle Gauthier: Okay, friends, if this episode felt like I was talking directly to you, I probably was.
- 8:34Michelle Gauthier: This is the exact kind of work I do with my one-on-one coaching clients just figuring out what really matters, setting boundaries that actually stick and learning to live without consistently feeling behind, which is the most amazing feeling If you're ready to feel less overwhelmed and in charge of your life again.
- 8:50Michelle Gauthier: I've got the cure for you.
- 8:52Michelle Gauthier: Just send me a message or click in the link in the show notes to learn more.
- 8:57Michelle Gauthier: You'll be able to set up a consultation call where you can tell me all about what's going on with you.
- 9:02Michelle Gauthier: I can explain what it's like to do one-on-one coaching with me, and then we'll see if it's a good fit.
- 9:07Michelle Gauthier: That's it for this week.
- 9:09Michelle Gauthier: I'll see you next week.
- 9:10Michelle Gauthier: Thank you for listening to the.
- 9:17Michelle Gauthier: Over working woman podcast.
- 9:18Michelle Gauthier: If you want to learn more about my work, head over to my website at michellegauthier.
- 9:22Michelle Gauthier: com.
- 9:24Michelle Gauthier: See you next week.