Latest / Overwhelmed Working Woman: Boost Productivity, Master Time Management, Overcome Overwhelm & Stop People Pleasing / #120| How Prioritizing LESS Is The Key To Your Most Meaningful Productivity and Overwhelm-Free Life
Transcript
- 0:00Michelle Gauthier: We have always been taught that success means hustling harder.
- 0:02Michelle Gauthier: But what if the real key to an overwhelm-free life is simply prioritizing less?
- 0:12Michelle 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.
- 0:22Michelle 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.
- 0:44Michelle Gauthier: Hey friend, thanks for joining Quick Hit Thursday.
- 0:46Michelle Gauthier: Today I'm going to tell you a story about a woman named Amy, and when you hear Amy's story, listen and see if you hear some parts, bits and pieces of her story that could apply to you.
- 0:53Michelle Gauthier: When you listen to today's episode and you listen to this story and the things that Amy learned throughout her coaching, you will learn that constantly pushing yourself isn't the answer.
- 1:03Michelle Gauthier: You'll learn the power of cyclical living or an energy management.
- 1:08Michelle Gauthier: You'll learn the power of managing your own energy and how to identify what really matters to you so that you can let go of the rest instead of trying to do 100% of everything all the time.
- 1:19Michelle Gauthier: So by the end of this short episode, you'll walk away with a little mindset shift that will help you feel lighter and more present and more in control of your time.
- 1:28Michelle Gauthier: So let's get started.
- 1:30Michelle Gauthier: Let's talk about Amy.
- 1:32Michelle Gauthier: So Amy had a to-do list that never seemed to end.
- 1:34Michelle Gauthier: She woke up every day with a plan get the kids to school, crush her work deadlines, squeeze in a workout, make dinner, clean up the house, put the kids to bed, respond to emails and if she was lucky and her body cooperated with her, get five hours of sleep before doing it all over again the next day.
- 1:52Michelle Gauthier: She felt like she was running on a hamster wheel, in constant motion, with very little progress and an overwhelming sense that she was always behind.
- 2:00Michelle Gauthier: So she was constantly moving but never felt like she was getting ahead.
- 2:04Michelle Gauthier: It was just Groundhog Day, every day, every day, and one night in the middle of the night when she couldn't sleep and she was scrolling Instagram, she came across a post from a life coach who suggested that maybe the solution to not feeling overwhelmed was actually to do less.
- 2:21Michelle Gauthier: She thought this was complete BS and that this person must be totally crazy.
- 2:25Michelle Gauthier: But she was so miserable that she started following her and looking at what she said and thinking hmm, maybe I need to talk to this person.
- 2:35Michelle Gauthier: Eventually, she decided that she was going to set up a time to talk to this life coach.
- 2:39Michelle Gauthier: We'll just call her Michelle for the sake of example.
- 2:42Michelle Gauthier: She reached out to Michelle and ended up saying you know what?
- 2:46Michelle Gauthier: I don't really know that I believe that this is going to work, but I'm so miserable I'm going to give it a try.
- 2:52Michelle Gauthier: So the first thing that Michelle and Amy worked on is the idea that more effort giving A plus effort across the board and absolutely everything in your life doesn't always equal more results.
- 3:04Michelle Gauthier: And she asked Amy to look for places in her life where she was going all out and to see what would happen if she backed it off a little.
- 3:14Michelle Gauthier: So, instead of going from A plus work all the time, if she went to A work or even A minus work, with a goal of getting to B minus work and Amy was very resistant to this idea, but again, she was so miserable she was willing to give it a try and during her next session she came back and told Michelle's story about how, just last week, she stayed up until two in the morning working on a pitch for work.
- 3:35Michelle Gauthier: She wanted every single slide to look beautiful and be super clear and have beautiful graphics and to make sure that she could articulately explain everything.
- 3:45Michelle Gauthier: So she practiced a bunch of times and she stayed up until two in the morning and the next day she turned in the pitch.
- 3:51Michelle Gauthier: She gave the presentation and the feedback she got was great work, thanks, that was.
- 3:56Michelle Gauthier: It spent half the night practicing and perfecting this pitch and it started to make her wonder what would happen if I would have stopped working on that at like 11 pm or 10 pm, or maybe even just worked on it during work hours.
- 4:10Michelle Gauthier: Would the results have been that different than the great work?
- 4:14Michelle Gauthier: Now that she had her mind open to that idea, she was continuing to look for areas in her life where she could maybe just do a little less work, hustle a little less harder than she had been before.
- 4:27Michelle Gauthier: Next up, michelle queued up the idea of managing her energy, just like you would manage your time.
- 4:33Michelle Gauthier: So she started talking to Amy about where in your typical day do you have the best energy?
- 4:40Michelle Gauthier: What kind of tasks should you do?
- 4:42Michelle Gauthier: And for Amy it was the mornings.
- 4:44Michelle Gauthier: What should you do when you're full of energy?
- 4:46Michelle Gauthier: What should you say for the afternoons, when you're feeling a little bit more sluggish?
- 4:51Michelle Gauthier: And then what would really help you out in the evenings?
- 4:54Michelle Gauthier: And what she found out was that Amy was really tired in the evenings and she was forcing herself to work.
- 4:59Michelle Gauthier: So, for example, the work that she could have done maybe in an hour or two in the mornings when she was doing it in the evening was taking her much longer.
- 5:07Michelle Gauthier: Plus, she had lots of distractions.
- 5:09Michelle Gauthier: So they talked about how to strategize her days so that she could work with her own energy and they even talked about over the course of a month how her energy ebbs and flows and what she could do, what she could allow herself to not do when she was in the time when she wasn't feeling super energetic.
- 5:29Michelle Gauthier: So that week she experimented a little bit.
- 5:31Michelle Gauthier: Instead of pushing through afternoon brain fog, she took a 20 minute walk.
- 5:35Michelle Gauthier: Now everyone in her office was like what are you doing?
- 5:38Michelle Gauthier: Where are you going?
- 5:39Michelle Gauthier: Why are you going outside?
- 5:41Michelle Gauthier: But she shifted her creative test to the morning, when she felt the sharpest.
- 5:45Michelle Gauthier: She took a 20 minute walk in the afternoon and even though that 20 minutes was away from her desk and she wasn't accomplishing anything air quotes she got so much more done when she got back to her desk because she was present and she was focused and less exhausted.
- 6:00Michelle Gauthier: She also found she had a ton more energy during the day when she didn't work at night.
- 6:05Michelle Gauthier: Now that Amy was kind of getting in the groove of these two concepts of managing her own energy and not doing A plus work all the time, she started to think all right, I'm going to look at my planner and say what can I let go of?
- 6:19Michelle Gauthier: When she looked down the list, her first response was I don't know what I can let go of.
- 6:25Michelle Gauthier: I have to do everything on this list.
- 6:27Michelle Gauthier: But she pushed herself.
- 6:29Michelle Gauthier: Do I really need to attend every unnecessary meeting?
- 6:32Michelle Gauthier: Anybody who's worked in corporate can imagine.
- 6:35Michelle Gauthier: You know those meetings where you just have to show up and you don't even really have to pay attention, but it definitely takes away your attention from doing anything else.
- 6:43Michelle Gauthier: She started to really question those things and Michelle challenged her to think about the 80-20 rule that 80% of her results came from just 20% of her efforts.
- 6:52Michelle Gauthier: Could she just apply that to her life?
- 6:54Michelle Gauthier: So she started like getting rid of stuff that she didn't need to pay so much attention to.
- 7:00Michelle Gauthier: She unsubscribed from emails that she never read.
- 7:03Michelle Gauthier: She said no to social plans if she really didn't want to go.
- 7:06Michelle Gauthier: I'm just saying that as one sentence, but that was a big shift for her, because it was tough at first for her to say no, but she learned how Letting go of the pressure to be perfect at work so to sometimes miss a meeting or to sometimes do a pitch that's a B minus instead of absolutely perfect, and every time she made the choice to let go of something, she started feeling lighter.
- 7:31Michelle Gauthier: A couple months later, after working on this consistently, she came to her session and told Michelle I feel better, I feel lighter, I feel better.
- 7:42Michelle Gauthier: It's not the kind of better where it's gone forever and everything is magically solved.
- 7:47Michelle Gauthier: It's the kind of better where, every single week, she's making little choices that are making her own life better.
- 7:53Michelle Gauthier: She said my workload hasn't changed, my boss hasn't changed.
- 7:57Michelle Gauthier: I still have tons of responsibilities at work, but she had changed, and that made her feel in control of her time and more focused and more present and more alive.
- 8:06Michelle Gauthier: So all of that more that she got feeling more focused, more present and more alive came from doing less.
- 8:14Michelle Gauthier: She finally understood the truth that more doesn't equal better and that prioritizing less makes room for what really matters.
- 8:23Michelle Gauthier: So, in summary, be like Amy.
- 8:26Michelle Gauthier: Open your mind to the idea that doing more does not equal better results or achieving more, and that you have the option to manage your own energy and use it where it's best spent, and that you too can let go of unnecessary things when you let go of just little things over time.
- 8:46Michelle Gauthier: Let go of little things that you don't need to do.
- 8:48Michelle Gauthier: You create all this space in your mind for more meaningful, overwhelm-free life.
- 8:54Michelle Gauthier: That's it for today.
- 8:56Michelle Gauthier: If today's episode resonated with you, I would love if you would share it with a friend who needs to hear it.
- 9:01Michelle Gauthier: And if you heard this episode and you're thinking I'm Amy, that's okay.
- 9:06Michelle Gauthier: I know exactly how to help you reach out to me.
- 9:10Michelle Gauthier: There is a link in the show notes for you to send me a message.
- 9:13Michelle Gauthier: Tell me.
- 9:14Michelle Gauthier: I feel like I'm Amy and I want what you're talking about.
- 9:17Michelle Gauthier: That Amy got and I would love to set up a free consultation to work with you one-on-one and, as always, if you could rate and review and subscribe to the podcast, that would be amazing.
- 9:29Michelle Gauthier: The way that it works is when we get better ratings and more subscriptions.
- 9:34Michelle Gauthier: When a woman opens up her podcast app in types like I feel overwhelmed or I'm a people pleaser, this podcast is what will come up as a solution for her.
- 9:44Michelle Gauthier: So the more that you do that, the more the podcast gets shown and the more we can help more women feel less overwhelmed, just like you're hopefully feeling today after listening to this episode.
- 9:54Michelle Gauthier: Have a great week.
- 10:00Michelle Gauthier: Thank you for listening to the Overwhelmed Working Woman podcast.
- 10:03Michelle Gauthier: If you want to learn more about my work, head over to my website at michellegothiercom.
- 10:09Michelle Gauthier: See you next week.