Latest / Overwhelmed Working Woman: Boost Productivity, Master Time Management, Overcome Overwhelm & Stop People Pleasing / #149| The Math of Overwhelm: Why You Feel Behind (Even When You’re Working Hard)
Transcript
- 0:01Michelle Gauthier: If you end up feeling frustrated at the end of every week thinking about the things that you didn't get done, you might have a math problem.
- 0:08Michelle Gauthier: You're listening to Overwhelmed Working Woman, the podcast that helps you be more calm and more productive by doing less.
- 0:20Michelle Gauthier: I'm your host, Michelle Gauthier, a former Overwhelmed Working woman and current life coach.
- 0:25Michelle 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.
- 0:37Michelle Gauthier: Hi, friend, I'm laughing at myself that I'm doing a podcast about math because it has traditionally not been my favorite subject, but this is a really important math equation that I need to teach you about.
- 0:51Michelle Gauthier: That will really help you feel less overwhelmed during and at the end of the week.
- 0:57Michelle Gauthier: In this quick episode, you'll learn a simple math problem that might be causing your overwhelm, why ignoring that sets you up to feel behind every single week, and how to fix it in under 10 minutes.
- 1:09Michelle Gauthier: Spoiler alert it's way easier than algebra and it might just change the way you plan your whole entire week.
- 1:15Michelle Gauthier: Here's something I see all the time: smart, capable women trying to squeeze in 60 hours of work into 12 available hours.
- 1:24Michelle Gauthier: It's like trying to fit a gallon of water into a coffee mug.
- 1:27Michelle Gauthier: It just does not work.
- 1:29Michelle Gauthier: So today I'm going to share with you how to evaluate yourself and see if you are doing this to yourself, and I'm going to use my schedule as an example.
- 1:38Michelle Gauthier: So this past week I'm recording this on Friday afternoon, which I'll get to the end of that story by the end of the episode but I'm recording this on a Friday afternoon and this week, when I was planning my week, I looked at what I had to do, my to do list, and I added up all the time that that was going to take me.
- 1:55Michelle Gauthier: I'm pretty good at estimating it now.
- 1:56Michelle Gauthier: At first I wasn't great at estimating it, so just give it a whirl and estimate high.
- 2:00Michelle Gauthier: If you need to estimate in any direction, estimate high.
- 2:03Michelle Gauthier: And then I looked at my schedule and saw where I already had client appointments, things I need to do for my kids I always schedule my workouts in and I saw how many hours I had available.
- 2:14Michelle Gauthier: So for me this week I had 12 hours of stuff that I needed to get done 11 work and one personal and I had 14 open hours on my calendar to do it.
- 2:25Michelle Gauthier: When I do that math 14 hours of open time minus 12 hours of to-do I'm golden.
- 2:30Michelle Gauthier: I've got two extra hours in there somewhere where I could take a rest or get something else done.
- 2:35Michelle Gauthier: I'm good to go.
- 2:37Michelle Gauthier: But I'll tell you, what I normally see, especially with a new client, is that when I have them do this exercise of adding up everything on their to-do list and then seeing how many free hours they have and by free hours I mean working hours where they don't already have something on their calendar at that time, it really truly can be a ratio, like I said at the beginning, 60 hours of to-dos on their to-do list into 12 open available hours or 50 hours and five open hours to do that.
- 3:07Michelle Gauthier: So when you do the math in that direction let's say we use the example of my client, jenny, who I mentioned on episode 148, she really truly did have five hours of open time on her calendar and 50 hours of to-dos on her to-do list.
- 3:24Michelle Gauthier: So what that means if we do that math 5 minus 50, negative 45.
- 3:28Michelle Gauthier: She needs 45 additional hours in the week to get everything done on her to-do list.
- 3:34Michelle Gauthier: And so at the end of the week, what that causes when you don't do this math, first to understand oh, okay, I'm reasonably not going to get anywhere close to getting those things done.
- 3:45Michelle Gauthier: What was happening is that every week she was feeling like a failure this stuff is still staying on my to-do list, I'm not getting anything done.
- 3:52Michelle Gauthier: And then you just get into this time deficit where you're always behind on what you have to do.
- 3:58Michelle Gauthier: So if this is resonating with you and you're like, okay, yep, that's me, I'm absolutely doing that.
- 4:04Michelle Gauthier: A couple things that I want to encourage you to do.
- 4:06Michelle Gauthier: Number one actually do this math.
- 4:08Michelle Gauthier: If you go to episode 148, you'll get all the details on exactly how to do the calendar clean out process that I use every week.
- 4:15Michelle Gauthier: There's even a worksheet that goes with it.
- 4:17Michelle Gauthier: So do the math and figure out what your number is.
- 4:20Michelle Gauthier: And if your number of to do's is higher than your number of available hours to work, then just start prioritizing.
- 4:28Michelle Gauthier: Pick what's most important for this particular week, just number them one, two and three and see where you can fit them in.
- 4:36Michelle Gauthier: So that example I gave you for me of having 12 hours of to-dos this week is because I know ballpark what I can get done in a week If I had no clients for the entire week and I had 40 hours or 35 hours to work on, just work stuff.
- 4:53Michelle Gauthier: I could absolutely fill that up, but because I sort of know what my budget for time is, I make my to do list accordingly.
- 5:00Michelle Gauthier: If you have a job where you like to plan way out in advance the things that you have to do, it's great to keep a huge to-do list with absolutely everything on it.
- 5:10Michelle Gauthier: But when you go to planning your week, use this math problem to figure out which ones are actually going to make it on your list this week and make that your to-do list for this week.
- 5:21Michelle Gauthier: Keep that other big old list and then the next week go pick some stuff off that or add things on throughout the week.
- 5:28Michelle Gauthier: And I'll tell you what ended up happening with me this week, even though when I looked at my plan I was like, good, I'm good, two hours in the good, I should be able to get everything done.
- 5:38Michelle Gauthier: What happened because my kids finished school this week is I spent unplanned time during the day taking my daughter places and running some errands that I hadn't planned for.
- 5:50Michelle Gauthier: So what happened is I got to the end of the week and I saw my last client on Friday afternoon.
- 5:56Michelle Gauthier: I finished at one, which is the time that I usually finished working, but I still had three hours of work left to do.
- 6:01Michelle Gauthier: So my options for that when that happens to you if you underestimate my options for that are to take those three hours and kick them over into the next week and try to fit that to do in there.
- 6:14Michelle Gauthier: But in this case, I really wanted to get it done this week so that I could put the podcast out on time.
- 6:19Michelle Gauthier: So I decided that I was just going to keep working.
- 6:22Michelle Gauthier: I didn't have other things planned.
- 6:24Michelle Gauthier: I just normally don't work that late on Fridays, so I'm just working and getting it done, and I do this every week and I still make mistakes.
- 6:30Michelle Gauthier: So it's not going to be perfect, but I promise you, if you manage your time in this way, you will feel so much better.
- 6:37Michelle Gauthier: Because what happens as humans and you can learn all about this in episode number 20 about setting our expectations is when you have an expectation, even an unconscious one, of I'm going to get all this stuff done this week, or I should get all this stuff done this week, and then you don't.
- 6:53Michelle Gauthier: You're suffering because of the expectation that you made up, right?
- 6:58Michelle Gauthier: So the to do list isn't the problem.
- 7:00Michelle Gauthier: It's the expectation that you had that you were going to finish it all.
- 7:02Michelle Gauthier: That's the problem.
- 7:03Michelle Gauthier: So if you do the real numbers and look at the real math, your expectation is a really good, educated guess instead of a totally random, unconscious expectation that you're going to get it all done.
- 7:17Michelle Gauthier: Okay, you got this.
- 7:19Michelle Gauthier: If this podcast has provided you with any value today or any other day that you listen to it, I would love if you would leave a review.
- 7:27Michelle Gauthier: It means so much.
- 7:28Michelle Gauthier: It really helps the podcast get shown to more people and our audience keeps getting bigger and bigger, and I would really appreciate if you would just take a minute to do that.
- 7:37Michelle Gauthier: Have a fantastic week.
- 7:38Michelle Gauthier: Hope your math problem works out.
- 7:40Michelle Gauthier: Thank you for listening to the Overwhelmed Working Woman podcast.
- 7:48Michelle Gauthier: If you want to learn more about my work, head over to my website at michellegauthier.
- 7:52Michelle Gauthier: com.
- 7:54Michelle Gauthier: See you next week.