Latest / Overwhelmed Working Woman: Boost Productivity, Master Time Management, Overcome Overwhelm & Stop People Pleasing / #297| Why You Waste Your Best Productivity Hours and How to Stop
Transcript
- 0:00Michelle Gauthier: When you listen today, you'll learn why you waste your best productivity hours and how to stop doing that.
- 0:10Michelle Gauthier: You're listening to Overwhelmed Working Woman, the podcast that helps you be more calm and more productive by doing less.
- 0:17Michelle Gauthier: I'm your host, Michelle Gauthier, a former Overwhelmed Working Woman and current life coach.
- 0:22Michelle Gauthier: On this show, we unpack the stress and pressure that today's Working Woman experiences.
- 0:27Michelle Gauthier: And in each episode, you'll get a strategy to bring more calm, ease, and relaxation to your life.
- 0:37Michelle Gauthier: Hello, friend.
- 0:38Michelle Gauthier: Thanks for joining today.
- 0:40Michelle Gauthier: It's good to have you.
- 0:41Michelle Gauthier: Okay, picture this and see if you've ever been in this situation.
- 0:44Michelle Gauthier: A meeting gets canceled, and all of a sudden you have an open hour that you weren't expecting, and you'd been wishing for this all week.
- 0:50Michelle Gauthier: So you sit down and you're like, oh, I'm gonna get so much done, and you open your to-do list and you have no idea what to work on because there's so much and everything feels like the same priority.
- 0:58Michelle Gauthier: You need to do that report and the email you've been avoiding, that thing you need to do for your kids' school, the projects that you keep saying you're gonna get started on when you have time.
- 1:06Michelle Gauthier: And then 20 minutes later you look up and you're answering emails or ordering something random from Amazon, and the hour you were so excited that you won like a tiny little lottery is just gone.
- 1:18Michelle Gauthier: That is what we're gonna be talking about today.
- 1:20Michelle Gauthier: When you listen today, you're gonna learn why everything on your list feels equally important and why that is exactly what keeps you stuck.
- 1:28Michelle Gauthier: I'm gonna teach you the two to three priority rule, why making the decision before your free time shows up changes everything, and what to do when your priorities still feel like a tie.
- 1:38Michelle Gauthier: So if you truly can't rank them, what to do instead.
- 1:42Michelle Gauthier: I host a group called Your Best Year, and at the beginning of the year, everyone sets goals for themselves and we meet once a month and everyone reviews their previous month and plans their next month.
- 1:54Michelle Gauthier: I teach a lesson within the group and we have particular focuses.
- 1:59Michelle Gauthier: Last week's focus, we were talking about productivity killers.
- 2:02Michelle Gauthier: So I sat down and thought about what do I see all the time with my clients when they're just not being productive?
- 2:08Michelle Gauthier: What are the things that are holding them back?
- 2:10Michelle Gauthier: And one of those things is making the decision too many times.
- 2:14Michelle Gauthier: One of the biggest decisions that people make is, okay, I have time now.
- 2:18Michelle Gauthier: What do I work on?
- 2:19Michelle Gauthier: One of the clients in the group shared that she did have a half hour open up that she wasn't expecting, and she decided she was gonna get some work done.
- 2:27Michelle Gauthier: And she said, I realized after 30 minutes that I'd been sitting there for a half an hour just trying to decide what to spend my time on.
- 2:35Michelle Gauthier: And the half hour was all she had.
- 2:36Michelle Gauthier: So it's not that she didn't have the 30 minutes, she just spent it deciding things.
- 2:41Michelle Gauthier: And this woman has a lot going on.
- 2:43Michelle Gauthier: She's got a big event coming up, a couple of major projects, a presentation, a grant application that she's writing, she's planning for next year, she has banking stuff that she needs to do for her business.
- 2:56Michelle Gauthier: So you can see why, in theory, everything feels urgent, everything on that list is really important.
- 3:02Michelle Gauthier: But when everything feels equally important, your brain just doesn't have a way to pick.
- 3:07Michelle Gauthier: There's no front of the line.
- 3:09Michelle Gauthier: So when you look at that big list of 12 things that all feel like they're on fire, your brain is just completely overloaded and it can't weigh them all against each other.
- 3:18Michelle Gauthier: So it just does the next best thing, which is I don't know, open up Amazon and start searching for cute new fall jackets or something.
- 3:24Michelle Gauthier: Something totally unproductive and that it's just another distraction.
- 3:29Michelle Gauthier: This isn't a flaw in you, if this sounds like something that you do.
- 3:32Michelle Gauthier: It's just a little shift you need to make in order to manage your time better.
- 3:37Michelle Gauthier: So here's a great way to prioritize your list if your to-do list is huge.
- 3:42Michelle Gauthier: This is where the two to three priority rule comes in.
- 3:45Michelle Gauthier: Within that group coaching group, there was a woman in there who was using this method.
- 3:50Michelle Gauthier: She says she sits down at her desk every morning with her cup of coffee and she looks at her running to-do list, which is very long because if she doesn't write it down, she doesn't remember it.
- 3:59Michelle Gauthier: Exactly.
- 4:00Michelle Gauthier: Me too.
- 4:00Michelle Gauthier: And then she asks herself, what are the two or three things I need to prioritize for today, or else they're gonna run me over?
- 4:07Michelle Gauthier: And she puts a little star next to the one that matters most or highlights it or something to make it stand out for her.
- 4:13Michelle Gauthier: So later in the day, when she has that spare half hour, she doesn't have to decide anything.
- 4:17Michelle Gauthier: She already did that in the morning when she was having her coffee and she just looks at the star and gets to work on one of those two to three priority items.
- 4:26Michelle Gauthier: If doing that first thing in the morning doesn't sound appealing to you, you could also do it at night before you go home.
- 4:31Michelle Gauthier: So you know your top two or three for the next day.
- 4:34Michelle Gauthier: I use to-doist to track my to-dos.
- 4:37Michelle Gauthier: It is a very like basic, non-fancy app, and I just have a list that is absolutely everything that I have to do.
- 4:44Michelle Gauthier: And I like to color code them by personal and work, but they're all in the same list.
- 4:49Michelle Gauthier: And then I have another column that's called today, and every day I look at the whole list.
- 4:54Michelle Gauthier: I drag two or three things over to today.
- 4:57Michelle Gauthier: Sometimes when it works with my schedule, I even schedule those particular things onto my calendar so that I can do them.
- 5:04Michelle Gauthier: But you don't have to do that.
- 5:05Michelle Gauthier: You can just have the priority and pick it up whenever you get a chance.
- 5:09Michelle Gauthier: So look at your whole list once, choose the top two or three things, star them, or in my case, drag them over to another list.
- 5:16Michelle Gauthier: Or if you'd rather not see the whole big list, just write a tiny list, put it on a post-it or something, and just have that be the only thing that you look at for the day.
- 5:24Michelle Gauthier: And then when you have that time to work, you will actually do work.
- 5:28Michelle Gauthier: Back to the first woman who I was talking about.
- 5:30Michelle Gauthier: One of the fun things we do within group coaching is I'll say, okay, who has solved this problem?
- 5:35Michelle Gauthier: Who has something that works?
- 5:36Michelle Gauthier: And somebody shared that they were doing this two to three priorities list, which was great.
- 5:41Michelle Gauthier: And what she ended up saying is, I still don't know.
- 5:44Michelle Gauthier: I can't decide those top two or three.
- 5:48Michelle Gauthier: So if this is you and really truly everything feels like a tie, here's what I say to that.
- 5:53Michelle Gauthier: If they're all truly equal, let's make the assumption that they're all truly equal, then working on any of them is better than working on none of them.
- 6:01Michelle Gauthier: Because working on none of them is what's happening when you're just thinking about which one do I want to pick up.
- 6:06Michelle Gauthier: So just pick one at random, literally, pull one out of a hat, go in alphabetical order, pick the first one you wrote down, pick the middle one you wrote down, close your eyes and point.
- 6:15Michelle Gauthier: Whatever it is, if they're really equal, it doesn't matter which one you choose.
- 6:19Michelle Gauthier: What matters is that you are making progress on at least one of those items.
- 6:24Michelle Gauthier: It will make your brain feel so much calmer if you just get one of those things done.
- 6:29Michelle Gauthier: So give this a try.
- 6:30Michelle Gauthier: Put together your whole entire list, make a tiny list of the top two or three things and see how that impacts your productivity.
- 6:37Michelle Gauthier: I'm telling you, the impact is going to be positive.
- 6:41Michelle Gauthier: Remember, you don't necessarily need more time.
- 6:43Michelle Gauthier: All you need is for the decision to be made before the time shows up, before all of a sudden you have that free hour or half hour.
- 6:50Michelle Gauthier: Pick your two or three priorities a day, star the one that matters most.
- 6:54Michelle Gauthier: And when it feels like a tie, remember that any of them is better than none of them.
- 6:58Michelle Gauthier: If you feel like you're struggling with your productivity because you have so much to do, this is exactly what I help my one-on-one clients with.
- 7:06Michelle Gauthier: If you book a free consultation slash discovery session with me at the link in the show notes, we can figure out what your top two or three really are.
- 7:15Michelle Gauthier: Have a great week.
- 7:16Michelle Gauthier: Thank you for listening to the Overwhelmed Working Woman podcast.
- 7:24Michelle Gauthier: If you want to learn more about my work, head over to my website at MichelleGauthier.com.
- 7:30Michelle Gauthier: See you next week.