Podcast

Episode 626: Making Time To Do Nothing + See No One

If you constantly rebel against your plans or just wish you could finally get a proper break from the demands of your life, this episode is for you.

I’m sharing the concept of Do Nothing See No One Time including why I created it, the value of regular pressure-free time during your waking hours and how it will help you to follow through with your business plans. 

I also share lots of ways this can look, including if you’re in a very demanding season of your life where it’s incredibly hard to get any time to yourself. And I give you a bunch of different ideas for how to get some Do Nothing See No One time in your calendar – and actually follow through on it.

If you’re ready to get out of your own way in your business, you want to join the community of perfectionist entrepreneurs inside my coaching program Perfectionists Getting Shit Done (PGSD). Sign up now at samlaurabrown.com/pgsd.

To learn how to plan out your week in a way that works with your perfectionist brain, sign up for my free 5-Part Planning Series here: samlaurabrown.com/planningseries.

To get a little motivational boost from me in your inbox every day, sign up for my popular daily Perfectionist Power-Up emails: samlaurabrown.com/ppu.

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FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Introduction
This is the Perfectionism Project, the only podcast created specifically for perfectionists who are building businesses. I’m your host, Sam Laura Brown, perfectionism expert and entrepreneur. I teach perfectionists how to plan properly, consistently follow through and rest without guilt so they can build profitable and fulfilling businesses without burning out.

I’ve helped over a thousand perfectionist entrepreneurs do exactly that inside my program, Perfectionist Getting Shit Done. If you’re tired of procrastinating, overthinking and half finishing your ideas, you’re in the right place. Now, let’s dive in.

Sam Laura Brown (Start of the episode)
Okay, I am really excited for today’s episode. So I am fresh off a coaching call inside Perfectionist Getting Shit Done and today’s topic is a topic that came up on that call and I realized I haven’t done an episode on it. I don’t think I’ve mentioned it, maybe I have in passing, but this is something that is going to be so helpful for you and I want to have a whole episode about it that I can point people to to share about this concept and how it can help you.

So this episode is for you if you have pressure all day, if your eyes are open, there is pressure from your Perfectionist self to be productive, to be doing something useful, to be catching up on the things you’re behind on, to be making progress, to be just doing all the things and especially if you tend towards that revenge bedtime procrastination where you will stay up past your bedtime that you had decided for yourself because after that time you just allow yourself to do nothing and see no one. The pressure is off, you’re not expecting yourself to be productive, it’s basically like spare bonus time that you had no plans for.

So you finally feel like you can just breathe, you can just do whatever you want but then you stay up really late, you have a hard time waking up when you want to wake up and it just has these not so positive ramifications from that. What I’m going to be talking about in this episode is something you can proactively do that if you are a revenge bedtime procrastinator is going to really help with that but even if you’re not, this is going to help you have time in your week regardless of if you have little ones like me, I’m going to talk about it in this episode what to do, time in your week where you have permission, full permission from yourself to do nothing and see no one, to not be productive, to not have to catch up on things, to just be able to breathe, to just do whatever you want to do.

So how this came about this and I’m calling it do nothing see no one time because that is literally what I used to put in my power planning, I would write do nothing see no one and I’d often abbreviate it to just DNSN, do nothing see no one. It was time I planned to not have any plans during the daylight hours often or like in the evening but within my wake time, it wasn’t time that I planned after my bedtime that I was going to do nothing and see no one, it was time that I gave to myself to not have any pressure on or expectation around what I needed to do.

And this is something I really developed in 2021. I remember when I was pregnant with my daughter Lydia at the time and we didn’t have any other kids yet and we just had Cotton, our fluffy boy and Steve would work on the weekends and I would have at least one of those days each weekend that I had put aside in my power planning as a DNSN day.

So if a friend said to me, hey like are you free on the weekend to get brunch or whatever, I’d say no it’s actually a do nothing see no one day for me. Like for my close friends I would say it is a do nothing see no one day and I shared about the concept and they’re like oh my god that’s so good I’m going to do that too and if it wasn’t someone I was close with I’d just say sorry I’m not available that day, is there another day we can do?

So I’m going to talk about in this episode how to get the do nothing see no one time even if you’ve got a super busy packed life or like you’re like me and you have your little ones with you a lot of the time if you’re not working and just like the process to go through to be able to have more connection with yourself and less pressure on yourself so that when it is time to do things and to have plans and follow through on them you have more energy to do that. I also want to mention as well that I see do nothing see no one time as a subset of clean rest.

So I want to mention this because I think depending what you’ve listened to when I talk about clean rest or if you’re inside perfectionist getting shit done or not where I teach about clean rest specifically in the program that’s one of the core things that we do resting without guilt and learning the skill of that and how to do that when your perfectionist brain is like we can’t we’re so behind but clean rest isn’t just the do nothing see no one time that you’re just relaxing clean rest is more specifically time that you’re not working on your business.

So it’s essentially every minute of every day except for the time that you’re working on your business and the way that clean rest came about and why it exists is because I noticed for me it’s kind of solving the same problem in a way that this do nothing see no one time solves that if I didn’t decide when I was going to be working in my business and when I wasn’t and at the time when I was going to be studying and when I wasn’t I felt guilty all the time if I wasn’t studying or if I wasn’t working on my business like if I see my friends seeing family if I was doing things I literally planned to do and chose to do that weren’t related to study or to doing my business I would still feel guilty even though I’d plan not to.

And I would often feel resentful as well that like whatever I was doing was stealing time away from my business and like stealing away productive time so I needed a way to be able to say I’m even if I wanted to work on my business I’m not going to do it in that time like that is time that is I’m not allowed to work on my business now I’m a lot more flexible with my clean rest time and like it’s not this as a rigid thing but in the beginning it needed to be because I just constantly would default to trying to put pressure myself all the time to be productive so I just had to literally say to myself even if I wanted to write a blog post at the time where I was a blogger even if I wanted to write a blog post I’m not allowed to this is my clean rest time and there were so many benefits I’ve talked about it in other episodes about all the benefits of clean rest.

A massive one was just having that time where I wasn’t allowed to work really increased my motivation to follow through within my business time or within the time that I had planned to study I was a student at the time doing my law and finance degree and because I couldn’t just kick the can down the road I’ll do it tonight I’ll do it tomorrow I’ll do it tonight I’ll do it tomorrow like I couldn’t do that anymore when I had actual time off that I wasn’t going to be allowed to work so I also had a lot more energy a lot more clarity there were so many upsides to it so clean rest is just time that you aren’t working on your business and in your clean rest time you can like a lot of my clean rest time I’m looking after our four little ones.

We have four under six I’m spending time with them solo parenting taking care of them I am doing other things in my clean rest time I’m not just lazy around doing nothing but I do like to have do nothing see no one time even as a parent it is possible to have that even as the main parent and if you’re solo parenting it is possible to have do nothing see no one time so I’ll talk about that but this is with a subset within clean rest that having do nothing see no one time allows you to take that pressure off and just let yourself be be more connected to yourself have more energy have less resentment and also allows you to not need to stay up late in order to get that time like there are other sneaky ways that if we don’t actually allow ourselves this do nothing see no one time this is when you’ll find yourself scrolling because you don’t allow yourself to be productive so you have to just like get this incidental do nothing see no one time and then we do it in a non-energizing way.

We want to be intentional with it and then we can do it in a way that is actually energizing and then we get the full benefits of it instead of just procrastinating as a way to get do nothing see no one time or burning ourselves out so we finally take the pressure of ourselves to be productive because we literally can’t carry on and then we allow ourselves to have the do nothing see no one time let’s just plan to do nothing see no one without having to be burned out without having to do it, I get that by procrastinating.

So I’m going to be talking you through the process to have and honor your do nothing see no one time so first of all you want to be power planning so power planning is a flexible planning method for perfectionist building businesses that i developed just out of sheer need for having a way having a flexible structure for myself where i could be clear on what i needed to do and what i wanted to do but without the rigidity of if i fell behind and it was a wash and i wasn’t going to be able to follow through at all and i have to wait till monday i love working from a calendar but then i just would constantly overpack that calendar with way too many tasks no time for lunch no time for commuting it would just be so overbearing when i would calendar things in that i just have to completely disconnect from it and either forget to look or abandon the whole thing and start again the next week.

But i wanted a way to have structure with flexibility i’m a creative person i like working in a flowy intuitive way but i love knowing what i need to do what i’m planning to do i love having a clear end to my day i love being able to create a feeling of completeness even when everything isn’t done when i work from a long to-do list; my perfectionist brain just puts on every single thing you can think of onto that to-do list in a really unhelpful format even if i’ve highlighted priorities and i end up with a longer to-do list at the end of the day when i started it constantly looms over me and i just wanted a way to have to be able to work from a calendar a color-coded calendar without it having to be overbearing.

So that’s what power planning is and also what i have put together is a five-part planning series to teach you all about what power planning is why it works for perfectionist what it looks like all of that so you can go to samlaurabrown.com/planningseries. I will also put the link in the show notes for you so you can go there sign up it’s free and then you can learn all about how planning and how that’s going to be so helpful if you aren’t already familiar if you’re in pgse you already be power planning but that really is the starting point because you want to have a plan for your week where you are clear on what you’re doing that it’s realistic that it’s workable that it’s going to help you get to your goals.

If you don’t have that as a starting point it is going to be a lot harder to have do nothing see no one time and really reap the benefits of that because if you’re working from a long to-do list or just from what’s in your brain you have the to-do list in your head or a really overpacked calendar then you aren’t going to be able to have the feeling of completeness that allows you to have do nothing see no one time and have that really be time where you feel no pressure and such an important piece of power planning is the ability it gives you to be able to have that feeling of completeness even when everything isn’t done.

If you are an if you’re listening to this i’m assuming you are because this is a podcast for perfectionists who are building businesses there is always more to do no matter how successful you are you have to have a way of creating a feeling of completeness even when everything isn’t done and that is power planning that’s one of the real benefits of power planning so you want to have power planning as your starting point so that you can then from that when you’re doing your power hour at the start of the week or whenever you do it within the week when you’re doing your power hour and planning out the next seven days that you can decide when your do nothing see no one time is going to be.

So once we’re power planning then what we want to do is put in that do nothing see no one time so i want to talk about a few different ways this has looked for me over the years because it has evolved so as i mentioned i started doing this in 2021 and didn’t have any kids at the time i had lydia but she was in my tummy so she there was no like things that i was needing to do to tend to her so to speak except like pregnancy appointments and things like that so when i was by myself i was by myself so what i did i had that day on the weekend typically do nothing see no one.

And for me as well that do nothing see no one time and you’ll have to just tune in for yourself what and you can reflect on this like what has in the past felt really great to you you’ve had do nothing see no one time before even if you haven’t called it that like what is that time for you that really feels great for me my do nothing see no one time my ideal situation is if no one else is in the house at all love my husband steve but my ideal situation for do nothing see no one time is no one else is in the house there’s no one for me to talk to there’s no one basically wanting anything from me i’m not wanting anything from myself, I can just flit about and do whatever I want, so that’s my ideal and it doesn’t mean that if Steve’s home or the kids are home that i can’t have do nothing see no one time but my ideal that I love to have is if no one else is in the house at all.

So for me one of the ways i have do nothing see no one time now as a parent of four little ones is that i have clean rest weeks throughout the year so a really big value of mine that i have with my business is i guess one of them is practicing what i preach and actually living what i teach which is the value of clean rest and also the reason i teach that is because it is so valuable for me to have time away from my business. I love working but I find having that chance to really zoom out have like pour into my personal life have perspective on things as well i find i have the best ideas like after i’ve gotten back from a clean rest week because i’m not in the weeds of everything i’ve just had time to not be thinking about it or just be like thinking about it in the background i often will have a little momentum project within a clean rest week that will emerge as the week goes on sometimes not though but i will have i will be active in my personal life like engaging with my personal life.

And in that time that clean rest week typically unless we’re going away on vacation on holidays then i won’t make any plans for myself during that clean rest week and at the moment Liddy’s studying school next year but at the moment our four little ones go to daycare on certain days of the week and so on those days when they’re out of the house if i’m having a clean rest week and i have maybe about like six to eight clean rest weeks throughout the year at least four of them for sure i’d say more like six to eight i have to go and count but in those clean rest weeks if everyone’s healthy and there have been times where i’ve had a clean rest week there’s been many times i’ve had a clean rest week planned and then at least one or two of the kids are home sick and then that means that it isn’t going to look how I had imagined it to be because I will also be parenting.

But it doesn’t mean like oh my god then i can’t rest at all it just changes how it looks if someone is home sick so it’s really important not to go into that all or nothing mindset or like well there’s no point even planning anything because i don’t know what’s going to come off so i’m not going to be able to follow through on it i did a whole episode on the clean rest week maybe three months ago now if you go have a look um so i did an episode about that if you were interested in that and it is so worth planning a clean rest week or a clean rest day regardless of if you think it’s going to be interrupted because i don’t have the certainty that it’s not going to be the plans won’t change and not many people have that certainty either so if you’re like i just don’t have enough certainty in my life to be able to do that you don’t need it you don’t need the certainty so for me a clean rest week is essentially like the days the kids are at daycare or out of the i have at the moment they’re now out of the house four days a week it used to be three i have four days of the week where in the clean rest week where i don’t make any plans i try not to make any appointments during that time if i have to like if there’s certain appointments where they give you a set day and time and it’s really hard to change it and you have to wait a few months.

I might decide to do it then if so i’d rather do it right at the start of the day or right at the end of the day before pick up for daycare rather than doing it in the middle of the day if that happens so i i manage my thoughts around it and choose to think differently about it as much as i can but i won’t make friends with plans with friends i won’t really plan personal projects sometimes i’ll have like i think the last one or the one before i with our twin boys jack and james we’re doing up there it’s still actually a work in progress there’s a couple things left to do but we’re doing their big boy room there’s now cool monkey bars in there and a slide steve has done such an awesome job with that we painted the room well Steve painted the room i picked the colors he did a lot of the work for it but i knew that week i really wanted to make progress with that and have some time to focus on that.

So sometimes i’ll have things like that that i have like my eye on during that week but like say the one that i have coming up in a few weeks time i don’t have anything planned i’m purposely not planning anything or avoiding plans i’m not saying like i’m free during that time because then it’s just so easy to fill up that time with just like random things and i really want to have some do nothing see no one time and i’d rather have appointments on mondays our um like family day that we’re all at home and having appointments on that day is the easiest day to do it or even have to go on the weekend I’d rather do that than having it during my do nothing see no one time so you can tell from the way i’m talking about it i take this time seriously i protect it i have noticed a very clear correlation for my mental health with how much do nothing see no one time i’m getting.

And it’s not about and this is particularly the case over the last five years with pregnancies and postpartums and periods where like when the kids weren’t in daycare yet are like not old enough that they’re going that there’s not time when no one’s out of the house like there’s no time when no one’s all out of the house and i’ve had to really proactively get it even if it’s just like i’m gonna go on a walk to get that time and there’s been times where i haven’t had my eye on the do nothing see no one time and it has been a lot harder for me mentally during those periods of time.

And so I just have felt a lot less myself the do nothing see no one time is time that i really am able to just do what i want have the pressure off and feel more connected and in tune with myself and i find it very valuable so i really protect it when i have that time so at the moment in this season of life for me i have the clean rest weeks i have do nothing see no one time sometimes just by going for a walk like on monday.

I went for a solo walk the kids wanted to come and part of me wants to be like yeah everyone come and also i’m like and i just also really want time to just be to just be able to go for a walk in nature and not have anyone else and it’s not like a fast walk or a productive walk it’s just like i’m gonna go listen to something like listen to a coaching call replay from the mastermind I’m in and just get out of the house and just have nothing that I need to be doing. Other times i have also done it during nap times when the kids are down for their nap and i’ve also this could be a whole separate thing the mind management required when your kid’s nap time is your do nothing see no one time and then they won’t go to sleep i have had to work like really work to be able to not feel so irritated by my thoughts about that.

And just have such irritating thoughts that, like, why are you, especially, especially when Jack and James, it was really hard to get them down. It would have been, like, they’re a lot easier now and they don’t nap during the day anymore, but their middle of the day nap, maybe they were, like, Liam was, Liam was born, so they must have been about two and a half or so, and they just wouldn’t go to sleep. It was just, like, monkeys in a cage that just, like, wind each other up because they’re in the same room and they weren’t in a cot anymore, so they could just jump about, and then it would take me, like, over an hour to get them down.

It’d be so frustrating, and my thoughts about it would be so frustrating, and then Liam would wake up as soon as they went to bed, and that was really, really challenging when the rest of the day is so demanding. And also, what I have learned is, even when that happens, there are ways to get pockets of time within a really demanding solo parenting situation where you can have the experience, even if just for a few minutes, of doing nothing and seeing no one, even if you’re literally supervising them, but just, like, I had to figure out all kinds of creative ways to be able, and whether that’s turning the TV on so that I can just go and sit out on the deck or read my book or, like, depending on, obviously, what’s safe for everyone physically.

But you can be really creative. Like, you don’t have to, I think we can go into this, and I mentioned TV, because we can go into this, like, I have to be a good mum and any of that kind of stuff, and, like, just I could do a whole separate thing, all of that, but really examining this is really important time, this do nothing, see no one time, and it is worth prioritizing and weighing against other things, and it really matters, and you’re not the bottom of the list.

So it’s something that I, especially over the years, have really come to protect a lot of time for me as well. I will, for me, reading fiction is something I like to do in do nothing, see no one time, and if I’m literally around others, just reading a fiction book will help me have that experience, even though, even though other people are physically there, and lately I’ve been loving Kristin Hannah’s books, I just read The Great Alone, I’m reading Firefly Lane at the moment, which I’m really enjoying, and I’ve read The Women, and The Nightingale, and Night Road, and On Mystic Lake, I’m really loving all of her books, so highly recommend.

So you can also think about what are activities that you do, for me, going for a bushwalk, or reading a fiction book, are things that kind of like transport me into do nothing, see no one time, even if I am technically doing something, and I am technically around other people.

So also, in terms of nap times and things like that, this is, and I know I’m understated, you listening to this might not be a parent and have any of these circumstances that are the same, but I’m just giving you a bunch of ideas for how to think about it, and that even if you have a lot of demands on you, that you can figure out a way to have do nothing, see no one time. It doesn’t have to be a full day, it definitely doesn’t have to be a full week of it, even on my clean rest weeks, I’m still parenting a lot in that time, but I do intentionally have pockets of time where I am doing nothing, seeing no one, not making any plans, and what else was I going to say? Let me just read my little notes that I had.

So one thing that I have written down is, this is kind of a way I just like to think about it with myself, and then I’m going to share with you a couple of guiding questions that I love for my do nothing, see no one time, two really powerful questions that I like.

So when it is my do nothing, see no one time, especially if I’m at home for that time, which I typically will be, that what I like to think about is, you know, when you’re on holiday or vacation, as you might call it, and you’re at, so say you’re at an Airbnb or a hotel, we typically would go to an Airbnb, or we go camping, but when there’s like nothing to do, there’s no housework to be done, there’s no like home projects that are half finished, I’m sure you can maybe call and make some appointments, but typically like when we go to the coast each year, we go around November to the Sunshine Coast and stay in an Airbnb for a five days. And during that time, especially like when the kids were all napping and there’d be nap time, that I was like, there’s nothing to do, there’s no one to see, especially in that situation. Like we, at least one of Steve and I had to stay home because you have to be in the house where the kids are asleep.

And so it was like, okay, well, I’m here, but there’s nothing to do, I’m not going to like, there wasn’t any real tidying. Do you know what I mean? Like there just wasn’t stuff to do. If I did need to tidy stuff up, it wouldn’t take long, but also I know not to prioritize that in the time they’re asleep.

I’m going to do that as best as I can when everyone’s awake. So just thinking about for you, when you’re on a holiday like that, what do you do in that time? And I think about it like that at home. I hope that makes sense.

But I think about almost like if this was someone else’s house that I was staying in and I didn’t have, like I didn’t look at the bathroom and be like, oh my God, I need to go and organize my drawer and like all of that chatter we can have just literally by looking around your house. What would I do if this was someone else’s house and I didn’t have any of that stuff to do? And that can also help guide me to like, typically I’d be like, well, I’d have a book and I’d also, and I’ve done an episode on this too. It would have been at the end of early 2025 or end of 2024.

And when I started reading a lot more again and just like knowing what book I’m reading, super important. The episode, I can’t remember what it’s called, something about like how I started reading again or reading more. And I realized to me something that stopped me from really making the most of my do nothing, see no one time is that I didn’t actually know, like I love reading, but I didn’t know what book I’d be reading.

I had like four books. They were half finished. I wasn’t really committed to finishing them.

I hadn’t read them for a few months. And so when I had time to read, I wasn’t reading because I didn’t know what book I was reading. And there was decisions in the way that we’re creating friction or indecision.

And so something that’s really helpful and helped me a lot now, like how I said, I’m reading Firefly Lane by Kristin Hannah is I know for me what book I’m reading. So it’s so much easier to make time for reading when I know what I’m going to be reading. And this is the other thing we will gravitate towards anywhere where there’s like structure, decisions made, progress to be had.

And so if you haven’t decided like some things that you like to do in your do nothing, see no one time, you are probably going to gravitate towards getting something done because you have already made decisions about what you’re going to get done and you can do that. So there might be indecision that stops you from really having that do nothing, see no one time. And I’ll share the two questions in a second to help.

So you just want to notice that and clean that up, which means make those decisions, make the decisions so that if you’re like, I’d love to read, like have the option of reading and do nothing, see no one time, then know what book you’re going to be reading or which two books you’re going to choose between instead of having no idea. Or like, I really love to be able to go for a walk. But if you’re like, but I don’t have any clothes that are appropriate for the weather, like get some clothes or figure out what you wear so that you do have that as an option.

Sometimes indecision, literally we just don’t have rest because we haven’t made decisions that allow us to have the rest time. And we love going towards where decisions are made or like where we know what to do. So if you find yourself scrolling, it’s because you know what to do when you’re scrolling.

Like there’s that, there’s lots of reasons why we do it as well. But like one of them is we know what to do. We don’t have to make decisions.

All the decisions are made. You just open the app and you scroll. And if you’d like something, you might like it and tell the other person, you might just say that in your head and scroll on, but we’re going to gravitate towards where there is structure and decisions made.

So you might need to set some of that up with your do nothing, see no one time. So I’m going to wrap up just by sharing the two questions that I love as guiding questions. And so I’ve talked about as well, protecting the time, not making any plans for that time.

That’s an important step. These are the guiding questions. Like when I’m in that time that really helped me to have it.

I want to say like make the most of it, but that can really turn out perfectionist man breaks on and try and make it optimal. It’s not about optimal and having optimal do nothing, see no time. That is not the premise.

So the questions I love to ask myself, and I will literally like say these in my brain is what do I want to do? And sometimes nothing will immediately come up. And so the other question is what wants to be done? Not what needs to be done, what should be done, what I’m behind on, but the keyword in each of those questions is want. What do I want to do? And what wants to be done? And I got this line of questioning from Byron Katie in her book.

I believe it’s in loving what is where she talks about the four questions and the turnaround and like just her core philosophy. And she talks about, I think the concept is called doing the dishes, but essentially this idea that like you can just kind of like be in tune with yourself and trust with yourself and just know that everything that does need to be done will eventually get done. If you just allow yourself to be.

That’s me like paraphrasing what I remember reading from, I read that in 2024. So which was around the time I really started to do do nothing, see no one time again and really change the thoughts I had about why it wasn’t possible for me because I only had mom time and work time and nothing else. I actually started to see like, wait, I could have do nothing, see no one time and I could have these questions.

I think her, I can’t remember if there was a key question she had, but for me, the questions that emerged from her presenting that idea, her concept around doing the dishes and just like waiting until you want to do them and then doing them instead of forcing yourself to do it. And all of that was just, what do I want to do? And what wants to be done? And I find that what wants to be done question a really interesting question. Because when I ask myself that, I just get very different answers from all the shoulds and like all of that.

I’m like, what do I want to do? What wants to be done? And then I let that be the guide. And I just keep asking myself those questions. And then I don’t, and this is really the final step.

I don’t judge myself for how that time is spent. And I don’t judge whether I’ve spent that time well or not well, or whether it was good or bad. Those all or nothing judgments are perfectionists brain can have that just wants to criticize us all the time.

I am not on my own back in do nothing, see no one time. That is part of the power of it. It is time when you are not on your back.

You are not nitpicking yourself. You are not criticizing yourself. You’re not in the shoulds and the have tos and the musts and I’m behind and I need to catch up.

You’re in want and desire and connection and having no pressure so that you have like these kind of like release, release valve times, if you will, throughout the week. Ideally there’s some happening throughout the year so that you don’t need to resort to procrastination as a way to get the do nothing, see no one time and have a break from yourself. I have noticed for me, whenever I’m in thought of like, I just really need a break and I’ve studied it and I’ve gotten to like, what’s the hidden end of that sentence? This is also a concept I need to do an episode on because I talk about this a lot inside perfectionist getting shit done, that the thoughts we think there’s a hidden end to that sentence, to that thought, that is really powerful to notice that and to understand what that hidden end of the sentence is.

And for me, whenever I was in that thought of, I just need a break, like often to the point of tears of, I just need a break, the hidden end of that sentence was, I just need a break from myself. I just need a break from the pressure. I just need a break from the relentlessness, not of my circumstances, even though sometimes the circumstances really did feel relentless, like breastfeeding, like for Liam, he demanded a feed every two hours for like the first six months and that is, and breastfeeding the twins as well, just felt particularly relentless.

I had to be on the cat, under the twin pillow, like I could have just feed them anywhere I went. And also that wasn’t what I needed a break from, what I needed a break from was me. I’m the problem, it’s me, the pressure, the self-criticism and lately I’ve really been thinking of it as being on my own back, like I’ve really, especially the last month in particular, I have not been on my own back business-wise and I’ve achieved so much and I feel such high levels of self-trust and I’m getting so much done.

And I have had times where I’ve been so on my own back, it has just frozen me right up. And it’s also very draining to be feeling like we’re just being constantly criticized and nitpicked and just like feeling so unseen by ourselves because we’re being so hard on ourselves that we feel so unappreciated by ourselves, so unrecognized by ourselves, like nothing’s ever good enough. So what’s the point anyway? So for me, when I’ve looked at like, when I, if I do get to a breaking point, it’s from this sort of like, I just need a break from myself.

And so I need, it’s really important for me, I need to proactively give myself that so I don’t get to that point to then be like, okay, let me just do nothing to no one. No, I, I bake that in to my week, to my day. The PGSDer is talking about it with, on today’s call, that for her, she was wanting to, and I coached her last week on this as well, on like waking up early so she could start a day.

She works a job and she’s got like busy life circumstances, like most of us do. And she was just finding, she kept seizing her alarm and we were really understanding like, what’s the thinking that is having you snooze the alarm and like really approaching it from the root cause and not just trying to have these different tactics. So we did talk about a lot of practical things on that call as well.

But when we were going over it today and I was coaching her on it, the do nothing signal one time came up because what she was saying was that part of the reason she sleeps in is because when she has plans in the morning, she doesn’t want to do them. She wants time to just wake up and do nothing. And I said to her, well, can you not just do nothing? Like I used to have do nothing signal one time, that’s how it came up.

And I just literally planned to do nothing. So you could plan instead of, as our perfectionist brains like to do, the first hour of the day, I have to either be like, work, if I’m awake, I should be working out or like making a healthy breakfast or journaling, or like we have all of this criteria. So it makes sense.

Like I say this at the call, it makes sense, right? If you feel like the moment you wake up and get out of bed, you’re on your own back, of course you want to sleep in. That makes so much sense. So can we not just say, let’s have you have do nothing signal one time for the first hour of your day.

And then you can have that time standing up or lying down. Like if you want to keep sleeping and do nothing by sleeping, you’re welcome to do that. And if you want to wake up and do nothing, you’re also welcome to do that.

And then you can have this time in your power planning for when your day would start. So say if she wanted to wake up at 7am, her day might start in terms of her plans at 8am and her plan from 7am to 8am is to do nothing. It’s a foreign concept to our perfectionist brains, except we fundamentally know this because this is a big reason why we procrastinate is to try and get some of this time.

We do that revenge bedtime procrastination because once it’s past bedtime, the pressure’s off. It’s the still of the night, the quiet of the night. Everyone else is asleep.

There’s no pressure from the world to be productive. There’s no pressure from yourself. There’s no expectation, but we don’t want to just have to get that in unintentional ways.

I have found having intentional do nothing, see no one time allows me to better stick to my plans that I do have because I’m not having to resist them or rebel against them to get a break. I already have the breaks plan. I have overall, I have clean rest time.

So for me, I have three days a week of clean rest time and also mornings. I don’t start work before nine and evenings. I finish up.

I often play tennis with Steve in the afternoon now before we get the kids. I finish up by five at the latest. The rest of the day is clean rest that I’m not working at that time.

We have an intense morning routine and nighttime routine, getting all four kids up and out for the day and like on the days that they’re not going to daycare, like just up and ready for the day and the same with bedtime and bath time with dinner and all of that. So there’s, it’s still an active time, but then Steve and I watch a show typically once the kids go to bed. We’re watching Ride or Die at the moment, which is really good.

I’m loving that. I’m on Prime, Amazon Prime, Prime Video or whatever it’s called. So like I also have at the end of the day, I have do nothing, see no one.

Well, do nothing, see Steve time at the end of the day where there’s no pressure there to be productive either. And we just hang out and watch a show. And I’ve just been doing, I got it from a place called craft club, craft club.

I just got like one ad from them on Instagram. I was like, I’m buying this. It’s like a half stitch, um, a little part.

I got lady to choose one that she liked the design of so that she can have it once I’m done. And I’ve just been doing this little like half stitch things. I’ve been loving doing stuff with Lydia side note, uh, like loom bracelets and stuff.

I’m like, I really enjoy this, but I haven’t had a way to do it. And so when I got the ad for that, I was like, I want to do this. So I’ve been doing that in the evenings.

There’s no pressure around it at all. I’m not trying to do that. Well, I’m just like getting the hang of that, having something to do with my hands, having that time in the evening, but on the weekends as well, when I’m solo parenting, I have do nothing, see no one time, even though I’m solo parenting our four little ones.

And they definitely in a stage where they do need a lot of attention and supervision, especially Liam. He is 16 months old toddling around and he needs eyes on him at all times pretty much. So it’s still possible to have that time, protect that time, have those guiding questions of what I want to do, what wants to be done and getting this time allows you to have a much easier time following through on your business plans and any other plans because you don’t have to rebel against them.

This do nothing, see no one time within your clean rest will really make such a difference with that. So I hope this episode has been so helpful for you. You want to join Perfectionist Getting Shit Done and come in and learn power planning, learn how to follow through with your plans, even when your perfectionist brain doesn’t want to, learn how to rest without guilt, learn how to change yourself image so that when you do become productive and follow through, you can maintain that.

And also the other thing we do in PGSD is understand how your perfectionist brain works, how to work with it instead of against it, self-coaching, what that is, how to change from perfectionist thinking to powerful thinking. So we are open for enrolment. You can start today.

So samlaurabrown.com/PGSD is where to go. You get instant access to everything, including all the coaching call replays on the PGSD private podcast. It is so good.

If you love this episode, you want to join us and you can learn how to have that power planning, put in your do nothing, see no one time, honour it, navigate as you have that. Like there will be things to figure out as you navigate having do nothing, see no one time. So you can get coached on that.

You can hear others getting coached on that. So valuable. You a hundred percent want to be inside.

So come join us. I hope you’ve enjoyed this episode and I will talk to you in the next one.

Outro
If you struggle to build your business due to procrastination or overthinking, or maybe you keep burning yourself out, I want to invite you to join my program, Perfectionist Getting Shit Done. Inside, I will teach you my proven process for getting shit done as a perfectionist entrepreneur. In case you didn’t know, perfectionists can’t follow the same productivity advice as everyone else.

When we do, we get in our own way. So let me teach you what works inside the program. It’s simple and anyone can learn.

To sign up today, visit samlaurabrown.com/pgsd. I’ll see you inside.

Author: Sam Brown