S3 E9: 10 Compassionate Reframes for Limiting Beliefs About Productivity (Part 2)
Is your definition of “productivity” working for you? That word can be very loaded, and it has different meanings for all of us - what’s yours? If you’re stuck in a more conventional idea of what productivity means (like constant work and being rooted in "hustle culture") that isn’t working for you, I invite you to think about what it means for you now, and what you would like it to mean.
For those of you who tend to be hard on yourselves and have really high expectations for yourself and the amount you work, here are 5 more common limiting beliefs that might come up around productivity, and a mantra for shifting your mindset away from each of those beliefs in a compassionate way!
(And if you missed the first 5, you can go back and listen to last week’s episode right here.)
RESOURCES DISCUSSED IN THIS EPISODE:
Fuel Your Creative Work With Compassionate Productivity workbook
My Instagram (tag me when you post about what compassionate productivity looks like for you!)
TRANSCRIPT
Welcome to Season 3, Episode 9 of Being A Whole Person. I have some more compassionate productivity reframes for you today. If you didn't hear last week's episode, I mentioned five different limiting beliefs about productivity and how you can reframe them to be more compassionate to yourself. So if you haven't heard that, definitely go back and listen to that one. You don't have to listen to that one for today to make sense, but lots of good information there too.
I'll just say really quickly, in case you haven't heard that episode, that if you're not familiar with this term compassionate productivity, the quick definition is: working in the way that's best and most effective for you personally, not a “should” or a societal idea. Taking your own energy cycles into account, and prioritizing feeling your best, because feeling good and being productive work together. They're not enemies. You don't have to be productive in order to wait to feel good. I elaborate a whole lot more on that definition in Episode 7 of this season. I give you tons of examples of what compassionate productivity actually looks like in real life and ways that you can put it into practice, most of which are cheap or free and very simple. So that's a good one to go back to, if you haven't heard it, too. But let's get into the mindset shifts.
Limiting belief number 6: I have to perfectly manage my time and environment in order to feel and to be productive.
You can reframe that with: I will make the most of whatever situation so that I can still move forward. Even if I don't feel at my best.
Have you ever been like, “I'm tired today, there's no way I can do this,” and then you just don't really even start the thing that you know you need to do, or that would be good for you to do? Like, sometimes I make an excuse to not practice piano when I'm tired. Even though I don't have to make it a hardcore practice session. I could just show up at the piano and see what happens. You don't have to perfectly manage your time in order to get things done.
I know there's a lot of talk about productivity hacks and maximizing your time and optimizing. You know, you can really nerd out about that stuff, and, cool, a lot of those are really good tips. But you don't have to do it perfectly in order to get things done. I know those of you with a chronic illness probably know even more about this than what I'm talking about. You might not have a lot of energy for something, and you might just have a very short capacity that day, but you still want to do it, so you do. And we're in a pandemic, not a newsflash, but we're not an ideal situation right now. And spoiler, there is no such thing as an ideal situation.
Sometimes I find myself wanting to wait for that day when I feel really energetic, and that day just doesn't really come, or it takes a really long time. So maybe we don't have to wait for that. Maybe you don't need ideal conditions to get a lot done. It might surprise you. I'm all for creating the best environment to support your work. But if not having the conditions you want is making you discouraged, or it's leading to you making excuses about why you can't even start. Then, of course, that can hold you back.
Limitations can feel limiting, obviously, but they can also really help us hone our focus. Have you ever had a whole day to do something, and that activity just spreads out to fill the time that you have available, just because you have the time? Whereas maybe on a day when you have two hours before an appointment, and you're like, “I want to get this done in two hours,” you can magically get it done in two hours. I’m forgetting the name of this principle right now, but yeah, it's real. I know all of you parents out there, I am sure that you have learned to be insanely focused and productive during the little time that you have, because taking care of a child all day, it makes it very unpredictable how much you can actually do. I know I have friends who are like, I can really maximize naps, and it's amazing.
Yeah, there are lots of reasons why we might not have the ideal situation with our time, or how we feel in a day. But here are a few ways that you can improve productivity in those situations. You can just decide, I'm going to go slow today. I don't need to rush. Because sometimes when we enter the day feeling that exhaustion or like, “Ooh, I already feel like I'm behind because I already feel too tired.” Then you feel like you have to go faster, and that just stresses you even more, and kind of scrambles up your brain. Not very helpful.
You can choose to do things in smaller chunks of time, which doesn't always feel as satisfying, especially if you're doing creative stuff, and you have to stop. But things do still get done. Those small bits of time are going to add up, as long as you keep showing up for them. You might be surprised, even with creative stuff, even if you're like, “Oh, I really wish I had that few hours to sit down and I only have 15 minutes.” Who knows what might happen in those 15 minutes! Having that limitation might be a cool creative challenge, and something might come out of it that wouldn't have if you had that time to spread out.
Making sure you're taking frequent breaks, to pause and say, “Okay, what do I need, what's gonna make me feel my best today?” and then actually do it. Not sitting there, not getting that glass of water is not helpful.
You can always switch the type of work you're doing, also, depending on your situation and deadlines, and things like that, but maybe that focused, intense work that you were planning on doing that day. Maybe you switch and you do that tomorrow, but instead you do something kind of mundane like email or bookkeeping or, you know, admin type stuff that needs to get done anyway, and maybe you just don't need as much mental brainpower to do. That can be great.
If you want more instruction on how to put this into practice, my e-book, Fuel Your Creative Work With Compassionate Productivity is all about that. It walks you through how to create a to do list and schedule that doesn't make you feel bad about yourself, but more importantly, that adapts to days like this. Maybe you're doing the minimal version, but you can still create some structure around that, and you probably will accomplish more than you thought you would. Especially if it's the choice between trying and just kind of giving up on that day. I want to make sure to tell you I have a cool bonus going on in September, where you get a week of Q&A support when you buy the book. So you email me questions during that week, and I record you personalized video answers in Loom. If you haven't used Loom, you don't have to download anything, I basically just send you a link to a video. It's sort of like YouTube, you'd click on it, except it's private. I'll have a link to that in the show notes for you.
Limiting belief number 7: My future success depends on me working constantly.
You can reframe that with: My future success depends on my ability to pace myself, take care of myself, and work efficiently.
Really, your future success depends on you not working constantly. When you've been steeped in this hustle culture, like most of us have, it's easy to believe that you have to work constantly to get ahead, to achieve your goals, to survive, even. There's a lot of scarcity in that message. And that might make you fear losing opportunities. It might come in the form of comparison. A common way to control that situation for ourselves is to overwork, because we have control over what we do. We might not have control over the rest of it. Then we really get used to this overwork, and pretty soon it feels like it's not okay to take any time off. Then, welcome to Burnout Town! I've been to Burnout Town many times, and sometimes worse than others, but you don't want to go there.
As all of you who have also experienced burnout know, it is not sustainable to work constantly. And a lot of us have this story of just pushing, pushing, pushing, and then our breaking point where we could not push anymore. I don't want you to get to your breaking point before you slow down. I don't want you to feel worn down all the time. It's the kind of thing where you gradually adjust to more and more. You think that how you've been doing things is pretty normal and you're like, well, “I'm okay with that,” and it gets a little bit worse, a little bit harder, and then you adjust to that, and it's just been creeping up and up and up with the amount that you're expecting of yourself. Eventually, you realize, whoa, I did not even notice that I had gotten this anxious, for example. That's my example.
So I want you to be able to catch it before you get totally worn down. And when you are worn down, it also makes you less resilient to a lot of those thoughts you might be having about comparison and worrying about, being behind and not being able to do and achieve what you want to do. So that makes it hard to make decisions that are actually rooted in self care.
I know a common thing, too, is to kind of not realize that you're going so hard at work until you're super exhausted afterwards, like the Tuesday slump that can come after a Monday where you reentered the week feeling fresh, and you're like, “Oh, yeah, I can totally put in a 12 hour day today.” Then the next day, you're just wiped out because you realize, oh, that was actually too much. If you are able to set some boundaries before that happens, that's obviously really helpful.
There are definitely seasons in which we might need to work a lot, like launches, deadlines for big projects. But do your best to find space for rest, even within that, because if you say to yourself, I'll rest when that big thing is over, it's almost always a trap, because it's so easy for then, the vacuum of that new empty space in your schedule to get filled right back up with something. I know I’ve said, “I'll rest when [blank] is over for months.” And until your body forces you to stop, you keep doing it. But it's also really hard to stop being in that mode unless you're really intentional about it.
That's the good news - you can be intentional about it. You always have a choice during that point in the day when you get to, “Okay, I'm tired. Am I gonna push through or am I gonna let myself rest and replenish because I need that right now?” Your break doesn't have to be that long in order to make a difference. You might want to take a long one, and you might be afraid that, “Okay, once I take the break, am I even going to come back again?”
If you trust yourself to come back, you will come back. I think we really underestimate the quick power nap, or the five minutes spent outside, or the quick walk around the block. That can really have a resetting effect that is a lot larger than that small amount of time that you spend on it.
So if you can shift your mindset to believe that this success comes out of the self care and sustainability, even if it feels hard and counterintuitive at first, I think that'll relieve some of that pressure.
Limiting belief number 8: I have to figure out everything all at once in order to be productive enough.
You can reframe that with: I can figure things out bit by bit. That's how it's supposed to work. Also, there's a lot that I already know that I figured out.
It's definitely easy to get caught up in overwhelm when you are seeing everything that is not done. It's definitely a normal thing for humans to see what is lacking ,rather than what is okay. It makes a lot of sense when you think about it from a survival perspective. You have to notice that something is off about your environment, for your safety, you know, if you were one of those early humans, but now, that's not as deep of a problem. Noticing the things that are off is helpful, because then you can improve them, but if that's all we notice, then we're very self critical, and it's easy to just forget what we've already accomplished.
If you start to list out what you have already accomplished in a certain project, or in a certain day, I bet that it's more than you think. Or maybe you haven't done anything today - take the whole week. We tend to discount the small stuff, which is going to come up in number 10. But just writing it down, making a little list to be like, “Oh yeah, I did all that stuff.” Even if you put something on your to do list that you already did. That always feels like cheating, or silly, but you did it, you deserve credit for that! So I'm all for that.
Sometimes when you're in the planning phase of a project, and you're doing kind of a brain dump of everything that might need to happen in that project, that excitement can quickly shift in the overwhelm, because your metaphorical plate is suddenly really, really full. And you were like, “I was super excited a minute ago. But now I see 50 things I have to do, and whoa, that's too much. I can't do this.” Especially if you're an over-researching type of person or recovering over-researcher like I am, it can be easy to get really stuck in the weeds with all that stuff.
But if you start to notice, well, I'm kind of overwhelmed - stop and notice that. Actually observe that it’s happening, and that you don't have to blindly push through the overwhelm. You can say, “Why am I overwhelmed by this? What can I do differently? Do I have to do all of these things?” When I'm brainstorming, I really like to do it in a separate document than where I put my to do list, because there are a lot of “might do” kind of activities.
Maybe when you're brainstorming, your project has a really huge scope, that in real life, all that stuff's not going to happen, which is fine. But if you put all that stuff on your to do list, I know when all that is on my list, I feel like “Oh, I have to do all this. It's on the list.” Even though I'm the one who put it on the list, and I can just as easily take it off if I deem it not important anymore. There's something about putting it in there that makes it feel more obligatory.
So if you can break down, both break down into parts, but also only put the stuff on your to do list that you really intend to do, which might sound obvious, but how many of us have to do lists with stuff that we don't really intend on doing, we just feel like we should? Having that separate at first can really help with that.
Also, having some dedicated time to zoom out and really think about what your biggest priorities are, is so necessary, because when you're in that urgent, too many things, gotta go kind of mode, it's tough to really step back and remember what's important. You're just putting out fires, or you feel like you're putting out fires and reacting to the most urgent stuff, and then the most important stuff kind of falls by the wayside.
I like to do a monthly review where I ask myself some of these questions, and I have a worksheet for that. That is inside my free resource library, which I'll put a link to in the show notes, in case you find that helpful.
Also, remembering that humans are not really capable of doing multiple activities at once, at least, not ones that take focus. I know you can probably do something mindless at the same time you're doing something else, but we expect ourselves to divide our focus into many activities, even though that's just kind of not how our brains work. So maybe we can stop expecting that, and that will be very freeing.
Same with just thinking about each of those things at once. Do you ever look at your to do list and you're suddenly putting yourself in the real life situation of doing all those things, or you feel as if you are, and you're immediately overwhelmed? Sometimes just switching how you look at your list can help. I use Trello for my master to do list, so that's on my computer, but then I also make a paper to do list every day so that I can kind of pull away from that master list and just hone in on “Okay, what is happening right now? What order am I going to do it in?” maybe even if I need that extra boost.
Anything you can do to help your brain stay in a mono-tasking mode can be very helpful in that situation. Then you can use that to make your schedule, too, based on what's actually the most important, and make sure there's a lot of time for that stuff that is the most important. That's another thing I talked about in my ebook, too.
Number 9 is a short one: That's too hard.
The reframe for this one is: It doesn't have to be perfect. I can work on this and start to figure it out step by step.
This is one that comes up a lot for me. Anyone else who grew up being labeled as gifted or in like the gifted and talented program at your school, a lot of us have kind of a weird mental thing around things being hard, because maybe school came really easily to us, at that time. Then once we had to work harder, we kind of didn't know what to do. Or we felt like, “Oh, this is hard for me, am I not good anymore.” I think there's a lot of ingrained beliefs, which could probably be a whole episode of its own, but I just want to share that part of it, because that might be part of your experience.
Sometimes “that's too hard” shows up for me just as resistance to starting a project, because I anticipate that overwhelm that I was talking about in the last item. Anytime I get that resistance, if it is indeed something that I know would be helpful - sometimes your resistance is very justified and it's not just an excuse, and that's something you can look at too - but I'm talking about the kind of resistance that's not very helpful. I try to see, Okay, why am I feeling this resistance? What is behind this?” But that, in the moment doesn’t necessarily always make it easy to understand. It might be a gradually unfolding type of thing.
When it comes down to it, we're wired to avoid discomfort and frustration that might come easily if something seems difficult, especially if we are not accustomed to sitting with discomfort. And I don't want to be all like, “Kids these days...our modern society,” or anything like that. But I think with all of the devices and instant gratification that we have these days, we've become a lot less accustomed to sitting with our discomfort, because we just don't have to, in a lot of cases.
So, take a breath. Just take one breath, and notice, “Okay, I'm frustrated right now. I'm feeling discomfort,” and just sit with it for a second. I do literally just mean a second, if that's all you have, then figure out what the first tiny step would be, and just do that.
It might feel like that's not enough, but it is, because your goal at that moment when you're stuck is to get started, and getting started is more than half the battle.
Also, when you break things down into small pieces, you get to check more things off and feel more accomplished. And if you're like, “Oh, that's a delusion. Why should I just make myself feel good for no reason?” I think you know how I feel about that. Feeling good is fine, and great. But really, that momentum from crossing more things off can propel you to cross more things off and to keep going forward. So why wouldn't you want that? That's great.
If it's an “I don't know how problem that's making you feel like it's too hard, remind yourself that you can learn how. You have the capacity to learn how. Maybe you don't want to, but you're very able to. Of course, there's always delegating to someone else. Or, if it's something you really don't want to do, and it's not important to you, you can just dump it, too.
There's a great book called Mindset by Carol Dweck, and it's very groundbreaking, in this psychological research, she differentiates between fixed mindset and growth mindset. Fixed mindset is believing that the way you are is the way you are, and you can't grow, you're fixed to the way you are, not believing in your capacity for growth. Then, growth mindset, as you can guess, is believing that you can always grow and improve and change. Growth mindset is something you can cultivate, which is also growth mindset, how meta.
We always have this power - if you're a recovering perfectionist like me, I know, it's easy to forget that you have this power, because you want to do it perfectly. I know I've had many moments myself, where I decided, maybe subconsciously, if I wasn't going to be able to do something perfectly, that I'd rather not even try, or didn't feel safe to try.
The thing about that is, when you demand perfection from yourself, it actually is too hard, because it's impossible to achieve perfection. Which, of course, is not the thing you're thinking in that moment. But what's not impossible is taking that next step, and committing to growing at something. Then of course, perfectionism’s buddy procrastination comes in, and then lies to you, saying, “Oh, it's super hard right now, but tomorrow, it's definitely going to feel easier and you'll want to do it then.” Procrastination is such a liar.
So, the more we can kindly let go of that perfectionism, and just say, “I'm going to do my best and my best is truly good enough,” the better we're going to feel about ourselves, and the more we're going to be able to do, You can always figure it out.
The last limiting belief I have for you is kind of two in one: Achieving small goals isn't as important or significant as achieving big goals. Paired with, Only my results matter, not my effort.
You can reframe these kind of in the same way: Anything I do to move forward toward my goals is important and worth celebrating.
So often, we discount the small steps, as I kind of alluded to in a previous item. But the big stuff is always made up of a ton of small stuff. It's so easy to keep plowing ahead, and minimize our achievements - our small achievements, and sometimes our big achievements. If you end up doing something that doesn't work, it might feel like a failure. But even your so-called failure is going to give you so much information, so much knowledge, so much experience. That effort is the only way that you would gain all of that stuff.
For example, applying for a job or a grant that you don't get still lets you practice your writing skills. It helps you practice your interviewing skills, helps you clarify what you want, helps you clarify your thoughts on that idea that you're writing the grants about. There's a lot that you get out of going through a process, even if it doesn't end the way that you want it to.
Not to say that you don't want to be strategic about your efforts, but just make sure you're being compassionate at the same time. Then you can also measure your effort to see how it affects your results. It's not all about results, they're gonna work together, and growth isn't always measurable or apparent while it's happening. Except maybe in the form of, “Ooh, feels like a slog. This feels really hard right now.” But it’s worthwhile because we are learning something from it.
I know some of the hardest times in my life felt awful at the time, but I'm still grateful that I went through them, because I know that I'm a different version of myself, after having gone through that growth. When you are discounting all of those small steps that lead to something, that also just reinforces feeling like you're never enough, and you're never doing enough, but every time you count the small thing, you're saying, “Yes, I did this. I am awesome.” Maybe not in those words. That might feel cheesy to you, but It's about the overall message you're sending to yourself, a more positive one.
I know it can be hard to properly celebrate the big stuff, let alone the small stuff. And if you have this little thought in the back of your head that, my life is just gonna become one big party and I'll never get anything done again, if I'm celebrating every little achievement. I'm sure that won't happen to you, if you're worried about that. But also, there is really no harm in acknowledging the good things that you've done.
When I finish a coaching package with somebody, we spend the last five minutes as a mini party to celebrate all of the growth that they've gone through. We each reflect back what growth had happened over the either month or three months, depending on which package it was. I think it is so important to have those moments to just process, and also to give yourself credit, because you do a lot, and you deserve a lot of credit for it!
So that's the 10 reframes for you. I hope that they've been helpful, they really have been helpful for me. Just because you know one, intellectually, doesn't mean that you fully internalized it.
So like I said in the last episode, they're all in my free resource library in one handy PDF that you can print out, if you want them all in one place to reinforce them in your life.
Some quick ideas for that: write it on a post it note, and stick it in your workspace on your bathroom mirror, anywhere you'll see it is great. You can set a daily reminder on your phone with the mantra that you're trying to internalize at that time. You can make it your password if there's a password that you type often. So that way, you're actually forcing yourself to type it. You can make a cool background on your computer with it.
Then you can also look at your input on social media, like, what are you taking in every day? Does your feed match this idea that you're trying to internalize in your life? Maybe you follow a lot of very hustle oriented people who are giving you the message that makes you feel bad about yourself when you need to take a break. Maybe you want to unfollow those people, or at least mute them for a while. Maybe you want to add in some more compassionate messaging that encourages you to take care of yourself, so you have more balance in that direction. And my Instagram has lots of that stuff if you want to hang out with me over there.
So to finish up, I just want to say, I don't want you to do these mindset reframes just because I'm telling you to, or because you should, or because it's healthy. I want you to do it because it actually works for you, is meaningful for you, and feels aligned in your life. So ask yourself to make sure that’s the case.
If you need support around reframing any of these mindsets, or finding ways to restructure your workday to fit your needs, so you can get more done without depleting your energy, I'd love to talk to you about it. This is exactly the kind of thing I love helping people with - working on adjusting the mindset, but also backing it up with supportive, manageable, and sustainable in the long run action that really moves you toward doing more of the work that matters.
So if that sounds like something you want help with, I have a free discovery call, where we'll talk through where you're getting stuck, and you'll leave with at least one easy, tangible thing that you can put into practice right away. So I'll put that in the show notes and let me know - I would love to connect with you there, too.
I hope all this stuff has been helpful. And I will see you here next week for an interview with Brianna Christie, which was a really fun conversation. Have a great week and take care!