Latest / Overwhelmed Working Woman: Boost Productivity, Master Time Management, Overcome Overwhelm & Stop People Pleasing / #107| Does Your Productivity Strategy Ignore the Signs of Overwhelm? Fix It Today!
Transcript
- 0:01Michelle Gauthier: Raise your hand if your to-do list is already too long and it's only Monday.
- 0:05Michelle Gauthier: I see you! But what if I told you that doing less could actually help you accomplish more?
- 0:11Michelle Gauthier: You're listening to Overwhelmed Working Woman, the podcast that helps you be more calm and more productive by doing less.
- 0:24Michelle Gauthier: I'm your host, Michelle Gauthier, a former overwhelmed working woman and current life coach.
- 0:28Michelle 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 to your life.
- 0:46Michelle Gauthier: Hello friend, I'm so happy to be here with you today.
- 0:48Michelle Gauthier: You know, when I say that I really mean it so sincerely.
- 0:55Michelle Gauthier: I feel so happy when I sit down to record a podcast and I love thinking about everyone who's listening and how I'm hopefully helping to make your day better.
- 1:01Michelle Gauthier: I'm actually recording this on a Saturday morning and there's lots of snow outside and my house is nice and warm and I'm drinking a lovely cup of coffee, and it's super quiet in here, except for my dog who's sitting next to me and might bark at any second.
- 1:16Michelle Gauthier: But I don't usually work on weekends.
- 1:19Michelle Gauthier: In fact, that's one of my rules of things that I don't do.
- 1:22Michelle Gauthier: But the reason why I'm choosing to do it today is because I have really been off my normal schedule this week due to circumstances beyond my control, aka snow days.
- 1:32Michelle Gauthier: Let me set this up first by saving that I absolutely love Mondays.
- 1:45Michelle Gauthier: And I love January.
- 1:45Michelle Gauthier: I love the fresh start of things.
- 1:46Michelle Gauthier: They're just so exciting to me.
- 1:47Michelle Gauthier: I could not wait to have an empty house where my kids had gone back to school and then get to my desk.
- 1:49Michelle Gauthier: I cleaned my office.
- 1:51Michelle Gauthier: I had it super organized.
- 1:52Michelle Gauthier: I even did like the Palo Santo wood and cleansed all the energy in here, had all my green plants set up and, oh my gosh, it just felt amazing in my office and I thought I can't wait to get till Monday.
- 2:04Michelle Gauthier: I had the greatest break with my kids.
- 2:06Michelle Gauthier: I had so much fun with them and also it's time to like get down to business and get to working on the new year.
- 2:13Michelle Gauthier: And what happened instead was we seriously got like a foot of snow in St Louis which is a lot of snow for St Louis and my kids ended up not going to school for basically the entire week.
- 2:26Michelle Gauthier: They went for like part of one day because we had two separate snowstorms.
- 2:30Michelle Gauthier: So what happened is, instead of me having this glorious week where I got to reconnect and see all my clients and teach this Your Best Year 25 class and help people plan their new years and just spend as much time as I wanted on planning out my own 2025, I was thinking, I'm not going to get anything done this whole entire week and I'm barely going to survive this.
- 2:56Michelle Gauthier: So there was a big shift that happened and, whether you live somewhere where there's snow or not, you've probably had the situation in your life where what you were thinking was going to happen and what actually happens turned out to be completely different.
- 3:12Michelle Gauthier: Maybe if you have the kind of job where you could walk in on a Monday thinking, all right, I'm finally going to get a chance to do all this stuff and some emergency comes up, or you get assigned something and you're actually not working on that at all.
- 3:23Michelle Gauthier: You know what I'm talking about here.
- 3:25Michelle Gauthier: So what I want to do is I want to tell you a strategy that I use with myself and my clients that is super effective when you have something like this.
- 3:35Michelle Gauthier: I'm going to tell you about how you can reframe the way that you were thinking about what was going to happen.
- 3:41Michelle Gauthier: I'm going to tell you about how you can change your mindset, because when we have to change things, our brain is like, what?
- 3:49Michelle Gauthier: No, we had a plan, we're doing this other thing.
- 3:51Michelle Gauthier: So I'm going to tell you how you can change your mindset and then I'm going to tell you some really practical tips on how you can prioritize the things that you actually can do.
- 4:02Michelle Gauthier: Okay, let's dig in.
- 4:04Michelle Gauthier: So, again, like I said on Monday, I'm already all geared up with a million things that I want to get done, and I realized because by that point, we had had a foot of snow and school was canceled and I sort of could just see that it was very unlikely that I was going to have much time by myself to do the work that I wanted to do.
- 4:23Michelle Gauthier: So that's when I realized I need to pivot.
- 4:27Michelle Gauthier: So the first question is like how do you realize when you need to pivot?
- 4:30Michelle Gauthier: This is really key, because if you're a person who accomplishes a lot which I suspect you are if you're listening to this podcast if you're a person who accomplishes a lot, you're like okay, fine, my kids are home.
- 4:43Michelle Gauthier: This is a different week than I thought.
- 4:45Michelle Gauthier: I'm still just going to have to get all this stuff done.
- 4:47Michelle Gauthier: I'm going to have to stay up really late.
- 4:48Michelle Gauthier: I'm not going to be able to have a lot of fun with my kids, blah, blah, blah.
- 4:53Michelle Gauthier: So the key is catching it and knowing when you're just on the verge of feeling overwhelmed.
- 4:59Michelle Gauthier: For me, that feels like almost a scrambled feeling in my brain.
- 5:03Michelle Gauthier: So think about what it feels like for you.
- 5:04Michelle Gauthier: Do you feel it in your head?
- 5:05Michelle Gauthier: Do you feel it in your chest when you're just right - I'm literally picturing someone like standing on the edge of a cliff right now - when you're just on the edge of the cliff of overwhelm.
- 5:15Michelle Gauthier: So I realized that I was there on the edge of the cliff with the scrambly feeling in my brain.
- 5:20Michelle Gauthier: I thought, okay, I'm going to apply my method here to make sure that I can get through this week without feeling overwhelmed, because for me, feeling overwhelmed is just an option that I'm never going to choose.
- 5:35Michelle Gauthier: I have to consciously work to say no to things, to do less, in order to not feel overwhelmed and, by the way, it's totally, totally worth it.
- 5:45Michelle Gauthier: So the first question that I asked myself is how can I reframe my perspective on what I thought was going to happen - and I've talked about this before - as far as what expectations you have.
- 5:59Michelle Gauthier: So my expectation was I'm going to get a million things done.
- 6:02Michelle Gauthier: I'm going to kick so much butt this week.
- 6:03Michelle Gauthier: I'm going to do such great planning.
- 6:06Michelle Gauthier: It's going to be wonderful, and when I reframed that, what I reframed was okay, I'm going to have an opportunity to do some probably fun things with my kids and hang around with them a little longer than I thought.
- 6:16Michelle Gauthier: I'm going to prioritize the top three things that I need to get done this week from a business perspective and I'm going to let everything else go.
- 6:27Michelle Gauthier: So if you had to do that you know, if you're sitting here on this Monday and thinking, oh my gosh, I have 1 million things to do and if you had to reframe it and ask yourself what are the top three things, if I were to get to Friday, I would feel the biggest difference, the most amount of progress.
- 6:46Michelle Gauthier: If I did these three things, what would they be?
- 6:49Michelle Gauthier: So my answer for last week was I want to see all my clients.
- 6:54Michelle Gauthier: I want to teach this class that I already have a bunch of people signed up for.
- 6:59Michelle Gauthier: That was the year best year 2025 class.
- 7:01Michelle Gauthier: I want to help people plan their new year.
- 7:05Michelle Gauthier: And then I'm teaching my group coaching at a corporation that is in St Louis, where I live, and so I needed to bring them their workbooks so that they could get started, because we're starting next week.
- 7:16Michelle Gauthier: So those were the three business things that I needed to do and as soon as I prioritized those, they were all already on my calendar.
- 7:25Michelle Gauthier: I knew if I could get nothing else done that I could for sure do those three.
- 7:29Michelle Gauthier: The scrambled feeling went away.
- 7:32Michelle Gauthier: So when you do that, if you're already started thinking about what are my top three things for the week, start noticing what comes up in your mind.
- 7:42Michelle Gauthier: So I'm practiced at this.
- 7:45Michelle Gauthier: So for me there was shoot, I really wanted to work on this, or what's going to happen if I don't work on that?
- 7:51Michelle Gauthier: But I am able to let those things go.
- 7:54Michelle Gauthier: If you are not practiced in this, your brain will probably offer a few suggestions like, you have to get this stuff done, you're just being lazy, you need to push yourself harder, you're going to disappoint people, etc.
- 8:08Michelle Gauthier: Etc.
- 8:09Michelle Gauthier: And, as always, same strategy that I talk about with our thoughts.
- 8:12Michelle Gauthier: Just remember, those thoughts come into your brain as suggestions.
- 8:16Michelle Gauthier: You can't control that.
- 8:17Michelle Gauthier: They're there, but you can control if you listen to them, follow them, believe what they're saying.
- 8:23Michelle Gauthier: So in this case, if a thought comes up like you're just being lazy, you can do more.
- 8:30Michelle Gauthier: You can say, I'm working to prioritize and do the most important things so that I can maximize the impact that I'm having.
- 8:38Michelle Gauthier: Come up with some response to your brain's, Oh, you can do more than this.
- 8:43Michelle Gauthier: And I'll tell you what happens when you do this.
- 8:53Michelle Gauthier: I just let out a big sigh and I got to work and I really focused on being with my clients and I really focused on teaching that class.
- 8:58Michelle Gauthier: I got those workbooks delivered, even though I needed to borrow the handsome man friend's four-wheel drive car because my car would definitely not have made it in the snow.
- 9:11Michelle Gauthier: I got everything done that I needed to do and I also did some fun stuff with my kids.
- 9:15Michelle Gauthier: My daughter and I watched a movie.
- 9:17Michelle Gauthier: We decided to make homemade pretzels.
- 9:19Michelle Gauthier: They actually tasted pretty good, but they were really - I don't know how they make pretzels look pretty like ours were just pretty much blobs.
- 9:28Michelle Gauthier: But we had a lot of fun doing that.
- 9:30Michelle Gauthier: All three of us went sledding, so it was just really nice.
- 9:36Michelle Gauthier: I got the things done that I wanted to do.
- 9:39Michelle Gauthier: I was able to have some fun times with my kids.
- 9:42Michelle Gauthier: And what happens when you - let's just say that my to-do list was originally 20 things and if I would have tried to do those instead, I would have not only missed out on doing fun things with my kids, but also have resented them, because when you're trying to do things and someone's getting in your way, you're just annoyed with them all the time, even though it's not really their fault.
- 10:03Michelle Gauthier: So I was able to just keep my feeling, the way that I was feeling, and my energy and my vibration all at a neutral to good level, instead of, where I have been on snow days in the past, of just annoyed and short and cranky.
- 10:23Michelle Gauthier: I'm just going to review what those three steps are: Reframe - think about reframe your week or your day or whatever it is.
- 10:32Michelle Gauthier: Ask yourself, what are the top three things that would have the most impact.
- 10:36Michelle Gauthier: Write those things down, choose those things, schedule those things.
- 10:41Michelle Gauthier: And then, number three, just check your brain and see if your brain has anything to say about that.
- 10:45Michelle Gauthier: If your brain is giving you negative feedback on that, feed it a new thought, which is I'm choosing the things of the highest priority to make the most impact.
- 10:55Michelle Gauthier: Last night - I'm going to give you another example of how I used this method.
- 11:02Michelle Gauthier: One of the things that didn't make it on the to-do list for this week was setting up my planner for the new year.
- 11:08Michelle Gauthier: That's seriously one of my favorite things to do, so last night, I had to clean the whole kitchen.
- 11:14Michelle Gauthier: You know how you can't do anything without a clean kitchen or at least I can't so I cleaned my whole kitchen.
- 11:19Michelle Gauthier: I lit a candle, which can only be done once the kitchen is clean.
- 11:25Michelle Gauthier: I would never have a candle burning if my kitchen wasn't spotless.
- 11:28Michelle Gauthier: I lit a candle.
- 11:30Michelle Gauthier: I love having a glass of wine, so I had a glass of wine.
- 11:33Michelle Gauthier: I got all my planner stickers and colored pens and all that stuff and got busy working on my new planner for the year.
- 11:43Michelle Gauthier: This is an area where I love to spend generous amounts of time, so if you're a person who who keeps a digital calendar and does all of your planning that way and tries to spend, you know, very little time doing it, you're probably not going to understand this, but for me, this brought me a ton of joy and I started writing down -
- 12:05Michelle Gauthier: if you took my your best year 2025 class, you know that the rule that I talk about is to try to only make changes in three areas of your life.
- 12:14Michelle Gauthier: So the first thing that I did is I was thinking about my own goals was just to brainstorm for every single area of life.
- 12:21Michelle Gauthier: So when I'm talking about areas of life, I'm talking about my relationship, my parenting, my business, my physical health, my mental health, fun and adventure, friendships, all that stuff.
- 12:34Michelle Gauthier: So I wrote down, just brainstormed goals that I could have for each one of those areas and when I look back at them I think, oh fun, I want to do all these.
- 12:44Michelle Gauthier: I mean, some of them aren't as fun, but I wanted to do all of them.
- 12:48Michelle Gauthier: And I thought, okay, here we are again, because as soon as I was on that, I started to get on that cliff of overwhelm and feeling scrambled in my brain and I realized, oh yep, here I am again.
- 12:59Michelle Gauthier: Let's reframe this.
- 13:01Michelle Gauthier: We're going to follow our own rule.
- 13:04Michelle Gauthier: This is the rule that I taught in my class on Tuesday: we're going to choose three areas of life and within those three areas of life, we're going to choose two goals.
- 13:12Michelle Gauthier: So I totally reframed what my brain was suggesting.
- 13:16Michelle Gauthier: I chose the top three.
- 13:18Michelle Gauthier: I chose the top one to two goals in each one of those areas, and then I felt so much better.
- 13:25Michelle Gauthier: And you know how - the last step is thinking about noticing the thoughts that come up.
- 13:30Michelle Gauthier: And the thoughts that came up for me were, really you could probably do all 17 of these things that you wrote down.
- 13:37Michelle Gauthier: And what I said back to my brain was, I'm sure I probably could, but I would have to feel overwhelmed to do that and I am not willing to feel that way.
- 13:45Michelle Gauthier: Okay, so remember, reframe, prioritize the top three, and then talk gently and nicely back to your brain and let it know why you're making those choices.
- 13:58Michelle Gauthier: Okay, friend, I hope you have a fantastic, easygoing week.
- 14:02Michelle Gauthier: If this podcast was helpful to you, I would love if you could do one of two or both things, if you could leave a rating and review, or you could forward this podcast on to a friend who you think might enjoy it.
- 14:16Michelle Gauthier: That would be wonderful.
- 14:18Michelle Gauthier: It would help me continue to get the word out about how we have the option always to choose if we want to feel overwhelmed or not.
- 14:27Michelle Gauthier: And now my do less for more success tip.
- 14:30Michelle Gauthier: Here's my do less for more success tip for this week when you finish doing something, put it away.
- 14:36Michelle Gauthier: It takes 30 seconds or less.
- 14:40Michelle Gauthier: I personally have a habit that I don't love of if I brush my teeth, I leave my toothbrush on the sink and I leave the toothpaste out.
- 14:51Michelle Gauthier: If I put my makeup on, I leave the makeup on my makeup desk.
- 14:55Michelle Gauthier: If I get something out of the cabinet, I'm likely to leave the door open and what this creates is stress when you come back into the room.
- 15:03Michelle Gauthier: I know it's not a huge deal, but it's like oh, it's messy in here, yuck.
- 15:06Michelle Gauthier: So my do less for more success tip for this week is just take the 30 seconds and put the thing back where it came from.
- 15:15Michelle Gauthier: I have to actually think that thought in the moment of let's finish this task before we move on to the next one, because, saving those 20 seconds it would take for me to put my I'm thinking of my makeup drawer.
- 15:28Michelle Gauthier: All I have to do is open the drawer beneath the makeup desk that I have, and there's little sorted bins, so everything has a place to go.
- 15:37Michelle Gauthier: It would take me 30 seconds, but sometimes I'll think, okay, I don't have time to put that away right now.
- 15:41Michelle Gauthier: Make the time up front to save yourself the overwhelmed brain time later, and if you already do this.
- 15:50Michelle Gauthier: That's awesome, good job.
- 15:52Michelle Gauthier: Your do less for more success.
- 15:53Michelle Gauthier: Tip is you already do this and pat yourself on the back.
- 15:57Michelle Gauthier: I will see you on Thursday for Quick Hit Thursday.
- 16:00Michelle Gauthier: If you're just a Monday listener, by the way, you should definitely subscribe, because on Thursdays I do a very quick five to eight minute podcast where I give you a tip or a practical tool or tell you about something that I recently learned that I really love.
- 16:16Michelle Gauthier: So tune in on Thursdays too.
- 16:18Michelle Gauthier: Ok, have a great week.
- 16:19Michelle Gauthier: See you soon.
- 16:20Michelle Gauthier: Thank you for listening to the overwhelmed working woman podcast.
- 16:32Michelle Gauthier: If you want to learn more about my work, head over to my website at michellegauthiercom.
- 16:35Michelle Gauthier: See you next week.