Latest / Overwhelmed Working Woman: Boost Productivity, Master Time Management, Overcome Overwhelm & Stop People Pleasing / #154| 5 Ways Self-Criticism Sabotages Your Productivity & How To Overcome It For Better Productivity & Success
Transcript
- 0:00Michelle Gauthier: No matter how much you do or how much you succeed, there's a voice in your head telling you somehow it's not enough.
- 0:06Michelle Gauthier: You're listening to Overwhelmed Working Woman, the podcast that helps you be more calm and more productive by doing less.
- 0:18Michelle Gauthier: I'm your host, Michelle Gauthier, a former Overwhelmed Working Woman and current life coach.
- 0:23Michelle 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.
- 0:34Michelle Gauthier: Hi friend, thanks for joining today.
- 0:39Michelle Gauthier: Today we're going to talk about our own worst critic, our own self-criticism and the five ways that your inner critic hijacks your time and just makes your productivity take a hit.
- 0:50Michelle Gauthier: It also steals your energy and probably causes you to feel even more overwhelmed.
- 0:54Michelle Gauthier: When you listen today, you will learn the five ways that self-criticism is really impacting what you're getting done, not in a good way.
- 1:04Michelle Gauthier: I will give you some relatable examples and some tips, of course, on how to stop that, so you can gently talk back to that inner critic and think about yourself in a better, more positive way, in order to be more productive and manage your time better and feel less overwhelmed and, honestly, just feel overall happier.
- 1:23Michelle Gauthier: But before I do that.
- 1:24Michelle Gauthier: I want to remind you that on my website I have a free quiz, and that quiz helps you get to the bottom of why you're feeling overwhelmed.
- 1:32Michelle Gauthier: I've been a coach for eight years and I coach specifically on this topic, and I noticed that there are about four things that are usually the main cause of overwhelm.
- 1:40Michelle Gauthier: So when you take the quiz, you'll find out which one is most prominent for you and what to do about it.
- 1:46Michelle Gauthier: So at the end, when you get your result, you don't just get your result.
- 1:49Michelle Gauthier: You also get a tool that you can use to make some improvement in whatever area is causing the overwhelm for you.
- 1:55Michelle Gauthier: So, for example, you might be overwhelmed because you have a habit of people pleasing self-criticism or self-sabotage.
- 2:02Michelle Gauthier: You might be overwhelmed because of time management and productivity issues.
- 2:06Michelle Gauthier: No matter what the answer is, you'll find out more about that particular problem that's causing your overwhelm and I will give you some tips on how to start feeling better, no matter what the answer is.
- 2:16Michelle Gauthier: I made this quiz because I found it so fascinating that, after talking to hundreds of people, there are really just a few things that tend to be the cause of overwhelm.
- 2:27Michelle Gauthier: So I took that and I combined that with my previous love of taking fun quizzes in like Teen Magazine and Cosmopolitan, etc.
- 2:35Michelle Gauthier: This is kind of like that, except you're not going to get your dream man.
- 2:38Michelle Gauthier: At the end you're going to figure out what's causing your overwhelm and what to do about it.
- 2:43Michelle Gauthier: Anyway, the link will be in the show notes.
- 2:45Michelle Gauthier: Check it out.
- 2:46Michelle Gauthier: Let's dive into today's topic.
- 2:48Michelle Gauthier: So what you'll learn when you listen today is the five sneaky ways that your inner critic is totally taking control and wasting your time and your energy and probably making you feel more overwhelmed than you already were.
- 3:01Michelle Gauthier: You will also learn what to do about these.
- 3:04Michelle Gauthier: Let's dive in and look at the top five ways that self-criticism is ruining your productivity.
- 3:11Michelle Gauthier: The first one is perfection analysis.
- 3:14Michelle Gauthier: If you're a perfectionist or a recovering perfectionist I'm raising my hand you might be very well aware that this is the idea that you can't share anything until it's flawless, that everything has to be perfect, and what that means is you would avoid something like launching a new business idea or finishing a pitch instead of working on the slides for an extra two to three hours or really finishing anything, because if it's not perfect, it's never finished, and that means your to-do list just keeps getting bigger and bigger.
- 3:47Michelle Gauthier: You think no, I need to spend a couple more hours working on this before it's good enough.
- 3:51Michelle Gauthier: I think it's obvious why this one really harms your productivity because you spend so much longer than necessary, because you're trying to get it to perfection.
- 4:00Michelle Gauthier: And the reason why you're trying to get it to perfection is because you're trying to control the way that other people are thinking about you and the way that they see you.
- 4:09Michelle Gauthier: Sometimes I'll say to my clients what would B minus work look like in this particular situation?
- 4:15Michelle Gauthier: Try asking yourself that question.
- 4:16Michelle Gauthier: If you're really hesitating to call something good enough, ask yourself what would B minus work look like.
- 4:22Michelle Gauthier: Sometimes I'll say that to a client and they look like they're about to faint and say, no, I can't do that.
- 4:28Michelle Gauthier: So if you can't do B minus work, can you do A minus work as a start, b plus work as a start, and what does that look like for you?
- 4:35Michelle Gauthier: Ideally, instead of having a thought like I can't share this until it's perfect, you can think a thought like I have done really good work on this project and I'm ready to share it.
- 4:45Michelle Gauthier: It's okay to know that it isn't your absolute best work, because you simply can't do your absolute best work on everything at all times or you're going to get like one thing done per day.
- 4:57Michelle Gauthier: Number two on the list of things that sabotage your productivity is overthinking.
- 5:03Michelle Gauthier: Overthinking can definitely ruin your productivity because it wastes so much time.
- 5:08Michelle Gauthier: Let's say, for example, you've got a 15-minute Zoom call and you take like 20 minutes to decide what to wear for it.
- 5:14Michelle Gauthier: If you're a person who's an overthinker, you probably struggle with making decisions, and the longer you put off a decision, the more time you're wasting.
- 5:22Michelle Gauthier: Once you make the decision and just start going in that direction, you're getting back to productivity.
- 5:28Michelle Gauthier: What I would recommend that you do instead for this particular one is to literally set a timer for small decisions.
- 5:35Michelle Gauthier: Give yourself two minutes I'm not joking.
- 5:37Michelle Gauthier: Set a timer on your phone.
- 5:39Michelle Gauthier: Give yourself two minutes to make a decision and then move on.
- 5:42Michelle Gauthier: I'm not talking about the decision to like take a new job or move to a different state or some big thing.
- 5:47Michelle Gauthier: Just give yourself two minutes, make a decision and move on.
- 5:51Michelle Gauthier: Literally, set that timer and move on and let yourself out of that decision jail.
- 5:55Michelle Gauthier: Giving yourself less time to make decisions doesn't mean you're careless.
- 5:59Michelle Gauthier: It frees up that mental bandwidth to do the actual work for what actually matters.
- 6:05Michelle Gauthier: The third way that the inner critic can sabotage your productivity is fear of failure.
- 6:10Michelle Gauthier: When you have fear of failure, you are very likely to take no action.
- 6:15Michelle Gauthier: Let's just imagine that you have heard me say over and over that planning your week is the way to feel calm and you go to plan your week and you open up your planner and you leave it blank because committing to a plan feels risky, because you know you might not follow through.
- 6:31Michelle Gauthier: And if you write it all down and you don't do it, then you have failed.
- 6:35Michelle Gauthier: So your inner critic just says forget it, it's better to be overwhelmed than to try and fail.
- 6:41Michelle Gauthier: So what to do instead on this is to embrace imperfect action.
- 6:45Michelle Gauthier: Make a plan, flexible plan with room to adjust and remind yourself I even have a sticker that says this progress over perfection always.
- 6:55Michelle Gauthier: These first three that we have talked about, all three of them really keep you completely stuck for perfectionism and overthinking and fear of failure.
- 7:06Michelle Gauthier: They all just keep you stuck where you are.
- 7:10Michelle Gauthier: Number four is comparing yourself to others.
- 7:12Michelle Gauthier: This is totally human nature to do this.
- 7:14Michelle Gauthier: So if you have, let's say, the person who has an office next to you, for example, and does the same job as you.
- 7:20Michelle Gauthier: She seems super on top of it.
- 7:22Michelle Gauthier: She does great work.
- 7:23Michelle Gauthier: She seems like an awesome mom too, and even though you're doing fine at work, you kind of assume that you're failing or doing less because she's doing so much better.
- 7:32Michelle Gauthier: Air quotes and your inner critic says that she's better than you and that you're behind or not doing something right.
- 7:38Michelle Gauthier: What I suggest that you do in this situation is just to remind yourself to stay in your own lane.
- 7:44Michelle Gauthier: I like to think about it as run your own race, celebrate your own wins.
- 7:48Michelle Gauthier: Remind yourself that you don't know the full picture behind everyone's highlight reel or what they're posting on Instagram.
- 7:54Michelle Gauthier: I can tell you, as a person who hears, over the course of the week, many, many people telling me what they're struggling with.
- 8:00Michelle Gauthier: We all have struggles.
- 8:02Michelle Gauthier: If there's anything that being a coach has taught me, it's you just never know.
- 8:05Michelle Gauthier: Somebody who seems like they have it all together can really be suffering on the inside too.
- 8:09Michelle Gauthier: It's probably not even true.
- 8:11Michelle Gauthier: Even if she seems like she's doing such a better job than you, it's probably not true.
- 8:16Michelle Gauthier: And second of all, let's assume she is, let's assume she's.
- 8:19Michelle Gauthier: You know, you're making 90 sales and she's making 100 sales, or whatever the metric is that matters in your job.
- 8:27Michelle Gauthier: Even if she is, it's really irrelevant.
- 8:30Michelle Gauthier: It has nothing to do with your performance.
- 8:32Michelle Gauthier: Stay in your own lane, celebrate your own wins.
- 8:36Michelle Gauthier: Then the last one another one that I see very often is setting unrealistic expectations for yourself.
- 8:41Michelle Gauthier: Let's go through an example of setting unrealistic expectations and how that really sabotages your productivity.
- 8:49Michelle Gauthier: Okay, so let's say today's Monday.
- 8:51Michelle Gauthier: Let's say that you are sitting down to your desk in the morning and you write down a list of 18 things that you have to do and by the end of the day you've gotten through like three of them and you feel like a complete failure and your inner self critic says you should be able to do it all.
- 9:07Michelle Gauthier: Why can't you get more done?
- 9:09Michelle Gauthier: The problem here is not that you got three things done, but that you had the expectation of getting 18 things done.
- 9:14Michelle Gauthier: So when you set yourself up with unrealistic expectations, you will definitely be disappointed in what you actually do get done, and when that happens, it makes you not productive because you're not motivated to try to keep going.
- 9:29Michelle Gauthier: So when you are getting ready to do something, whether that be, sit down and make your to-do list for the day, or just about to go on a vacation with your family, be sure that you're setting reasonable expectations.
- 9:41Michelle Gauthier: Let's just use the family trip one.
- 9:43Michelle Gauthier: So if you're going on a trip and you're like the weather's going to be amazing, our travel should be smooth, my children should pack on their own and not forget anything.
- 9:52Michelle Gauthier: All the food's going to be wonderful, everyone's going to be happy the whole time.
- 9:55Michelle Gauthier: You know whatever it is and I know that nobody listening would actually write down those as realistic expectations, but often our brain creates those, even unconsciously sometimes.
- 10:05Michelle Gauthier: So actually check your expectations.
- 10:08Michelle Gauthier: A great way to make realistic expectations is to think.
- 10:11Michelle Gauthier: If I was a betting person, if I was betting on what would happen, what would I predict will happen?
- 10:19Michelle Gauthier: So if I think about a trip with my family, I would say probably there will be some troubles with the travel.
- 10:24Michelle Gauthier: Maybe the flight's delayed or we can't check into our hotel room right away or whatever other minor inconvenience might happen.
- 10:32Michelle Gauthier: I definitely would predict that of the three of us, one of us would be unhappy at least once on the trip, or frustrated or bored or whatever, and that probably none of the three of us will agree on the restaurant where we want to eat, etc.
- 10:47Michelle Gauthier: Etc.
- 10:48Michelle Gauthier: And it's not being negative, it's just being realistic.
- 10:51Michelle Gauthier: So when I say, hey guys, where should we go eat dinner and I'm the only one who wants to go somewhere, or two of us want to go somewhere and the third doesn't, I know, I'm expecting that.
- 10:59Michelle Gauthier: And when you have realistic expectations and those things happen, you don't suffer because you're like yep, I thought that's what was going to happen.
- 11:07Michelle Gauthier: So, in summary, all five of these are common.
- 11:11Michelle Gauthier: They happen to all of us all the time, and self criticism might feel like it's pushing you to do better, like negative self-talk is going to motivate you somehow, but it's really not.
- 11:22Michelle Gauthier: It's a waste of your brain time, of your thinking time, a waste of your energy.
- 11:27Michelle Gauthier: It really slows you down and stops you from being productive.
- 11:32Michelle Gauthier: Sometimes people think, well, I have to talk to myself like that in order to speed myself up or get myself to keep working.
- 11:39Michelle Gauthier: But it's really slowing you down when you are overthinking, being perfectionistic, comparing yourself to others, giving yourself unrealistic expectations all those things is when you notice you have a negative thought about yourself.
- 11:59Michelle Gauthier: Do the best friend check.
- 12:00Michelle Gauthier: What would I say to my best friend if she were in the exact same situation as I am now.
- 12:02Michelle Gauthier: So let's go back to that example of making our list of 18 things to do on a Friday and getting three of them done.
- 12:08Michelle Gauthier: If your best friend told you that would you say you're such a loser, why can't you get more done?
- 12:14Michelle Gauthier: You would not say that to her, you'd be like good job you got three important things done.
- 12:18Michelle Gauthier: That's awesome.
- 12:19Michelle Gauthier: Cheers to you.
- 12:20Michelle Gauthier: So just check in with yourself and see what you might say to your very best friend if she was in the same situation.
- 12:27Michelle Gauthier: All right, friends, try to be kind to yourselves today and don't forget to take that overwhelm quiz.
- 12:32Michelle Gauthier: Have a great week.
- 12:33Michelle Gauthier: Thank you for listening to the Overwhelmed Working Woman podcast.
- 12:42Michelle Gauthier: If you want to learn more about my work, head over to my website at michellegauthier.
- 12:46Michelle Gauthier: com.
- 12:47Michelle Gauthier: See you next week.