Latest / Overwhelmed Working Woman: Boost Productivity, Master Time Management, Overcome Overwhelm & Stop People Pleasing / #165| Why the 5AM Club Won’t Save You — Plus What Will *Actually* Increase Your Productivity
Transcript
- 0:15Michelle Gauthier: If you've ever tried them and felt like a failure.
- 0:17Michelle Gauthier: When they don't stick, you're not the problem.
- 0:19Michelle Gauthier: The system just wasn't made for you.
- 0:21Michelle Gauthier: You're listening to Overwhelmed Working Woman, the podcast that helps you be more calm and more productive by doing less.
- 0:33Michelle Gauthier: I'm your host, Michelle Gauthier, a former Overwhelmed Working Woman and current life coach.
- 0:38Michelle 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.
- 0:53Michelle Gauthier: Hi friend, today we're talking about productivity and why the 5am club won't save you.
- 0:58Michelle Gauthier: If you don't know what the 5am club is, it's essentially the concept that if you want to be at all successful in life, you need to do it by getting up at 5 AM every morning and doing very specific things.
- 1:08Michelle Gauthier: Now I'm not saying that that doesn't work.
- 1:11Michelle Gauthier: That may very well work and I think, does work for lots of people, but if that doesn't work for you personally, then it's a waste of your time and energy to try to implement something like that.
- 1:23Michelle Gauthier: So today you're going to learn why no productivity method works for everyone, why copying someone else's routine usually backfires, and then I'm going to give you some key questions to ask yourself to find out what actually works for you and how to stop forcing yourself into a system that doesn't fit your life or your energy.
- 1:41Michelle Gauthier: Why doesn't this concept of the 5am club work for everybody?
- 1:46Michelle Gauthier: Every system, any system out there you pick one, works for some people with a certain kind of brain.
- 1:54Michelle Gauthier: If you've ever tried them and felt like a failure when they don't stick, you're not the problem.
- 1:59Michelle Gauthier: The system just wasn't made for you.
- 2:01Michelle Gauthier: It doesn't take into consideration what kind of brain you have.
- 2:05Michelle Gauthier: Do you have a neurotypical brain?
- 2:07Michelle Gauthier: Are you super creative?
- 2:08Michelle Gauthier: Do you need more structure?
- 2:10Michelle Gauthier: When do you have the most energy?
- 2:12Michelle Gauthier: Are you a morning person?
- 2:13Michelle Gauthier: Are you an evening person?
- 2:15Michelle Gauthier: Two of the clients who I worked with in this past week were feeling sort of defeated and overwhelmed and feeling like they weren't getting up early enough and just weren't getting enough done.
- 2:24Michelle Gauthier: So I'm going to give you a couple questions that you can ask yourself to figure out what works for you.
- 2:30Michelle Gauthier: Question number one is when do I naturally have energy?
- 2:35Michelle Gauthier: So, for example, you will know right off the bat if you are a morning person or an evening person.
- 2:41Michelle Gauthier: Earlier this week, my client was telling me that her most energetic time of the day is 10 pm, and I almost fell out of my chair because if I had to do anything that required my brain at 10 pm, it just absolutely would not work.
- 2:53Michelle Gauthier: I naturally have energy in the morning I'm a good fit for the 5 am club, in fact and she was saying, oh, I probably should get up earlier.
- 3:02Michelle Gauthier: But no, what we ended up deciding is she should not get up earlier.
- 3:05Michelle Gauthier: She should take better advantage of the time at 10 pm when she does naturally have energy.
- 3:11Michelle Gauthier: So think about that when is your best energy?
- 3:14Michelle Gauthier: And then plan your hardest tasks where you need to use the most creativity or the most brainpower around when you do have that energy.
- 3:23Michelle Gauthier: The next question to ask yourself is what is working about my current routine?
- 3:28Michelle Gauthier: So, even if you're feeling frustrated like you're not getting enough done, it's very unlikely that you're literally getting nothing done during the day.
- 3:36Michelle Gauthier: So what is working and what should you keep during your day?
- 3:42Michelle Gauthier: So, for example, one of the things that I do I have a whole system for managing my email, which I will tell you about in a separate episode, because it's something that I've been talking to my clients a lot about too, and I want to talk about that specifically.
- 3:53Michelle Gauthier: But, for example, I go through my email inbox on Mondays and I have a whole process that I go through and that really works for me.
- 4:02Michelle Gauthier: So that is totally working.
- 4:03Michelle Gauthier: Another thing that really works for me is that I schedule my clients.
- 4:07Michelle Gauthier: When you're my client, you have a specific time that we meet every week.
- 4:11Michelle Gauthier: So you know every Wednesday at 10 o'clock you're having a meeting with me and if that needs to change you can text me and we'll move it.
- 4:18Michelle Gauthier: But that level of structure works for me, you know, with the exception if we need to change things.
- 4:24Michelle Gauthier: So when I think about those things, I really have the vast majority of my week is already in the working no-transcript.
- 4:32Michelle Gauthier: As you're trying to figure out what type of routine works for you, focus on what is already good and what you should keep.
- 4:40Michelle Gauthier: And then the last question to ask yourself is how much flexibility do I need?
- 4:45Michelle Gauthier: And what I mean by that is I think people need a certain amount of structure.
- 4:52Michelle Gauthier: When I have tried in the past to do a complete time blocking, where every single thing on my to-do list has a time on the calendar very specifically and I can break it down by 15 minutes, that is too much structure for me, but I really like and need structure.
- 5:09Michelle Gauthier: So for me I would say I'm about like an 8 out of 10 on the structure scale, but I want to have some flexibility built in there.
- 5:16Michelle Gauthier: I had a client named Kari.
- 5:17Michelle Gauthier: There's an episode that she recorded on the podcast.
- 5:20Michelle Gauthier: We'll link that in the show notes.
- 5:21Michelle Gauthier: She's an artist, she's a graphic designer, so she has a very creative mind.
- 5:26Michelle Gauthier: So when she came to me she was feeling stressed about how much work she was and how much more work she wanted to get done, but feeling resistant to the structure.
- 5:36Michelle Gauthier: And what we figured out was, even though she's an artist, it was good for her to have about a five out of 10 structure.
- 5:43Michelle Gauthier: So we came up with rules for what time she should get to her office in the morning.
- 5:46Michelle Gauthier: The first thing she did was a morning routine.
- 5:49Michelle Gauthier: When she gets new clients and they want an estimate from her, she puts an hour on her calendar to get started on that, because the getting started part was hard.
- 5:58Michelle Gauthier: So she implemented structure to the level that felt good to her.
- 6:03Michelle Gauthier: So are you a 2 out of 10 structure person?
- 6:06Michelle Gauthier: Are you a 10 out of 10 structure person?
- 6:09Michelle Gauthier: Another client who I was talking to just today said I really have always wanted to be a 10 out of 10 structure person, but I think I'm actually a 5.
- 6:16Michelle Gauthier: So I spent all this time trying to create this structure, but I really crave just a little more freedom in my day.
- 6:23Michelle Gauthier: So think about for you, if a 10 is the ultimate totally structured and a one is no structure whatsoever, which one actually works for you in terms of productivity, and then what does that mean for the kind of work that you do in the kind of life that you lead?
- 6:38Michelle Gauthier: The moral of the story today is that the 5am club totally works for some people and that the 9am club also totally works for some people.
- 6:49Michelle Gauthier: There is a structure out there that works for you, and it starts with you knowing a couple things about yourself.
- 6:55Michelle Gauthier: When are you naturally most energetic, how does your brain work best and how much structure do you feel like you need?
- 7:03Michelle Gauthier: I help my one-on-one clients with this all the time.
- 7:05Michelle Gauthier: If this is something that you feel like you're struggling with, set up a discovery session with me to learn more about one-on-one coaching.
- 7:11Michelle Gauthier: Thanks for listening today and don't forget, by the way, that I have a quiz.
- 7:16Michelle Gauthier: The link is in the show notes.
- 7:18Michelle Gauthier: I have a quiz that will help you figure out why you're feeling overwhelmed.
- 7:25Michelle Gauthier: Time management may be the reason why you're feeling overwhelmed.
- 7:27Michelle Gauthier: Take the quiz and find out more.
- 7:28Michelle Gauthier: Not only does it tell you what the problem is, but it gives you some potential solutions worksheets, videos.
- 7:34Michelle Gauthier: You can watch podcast episodes that I recommend to solve your problem.
- 7:38Michelle Gauthier: Thanks, and have a great week.
- 7:39Michelle Gauthier: Thank you for listening to the Overwhelmed Working Woman podcast.
- 7:47Michelle Gauthier: If you want to learn more about my work, head over to my website at michellegauthier.
- 7:51Michelle Gauthier: com.
- 7:53Michelle Gauthier: See you next week.