As perfectionists we are huge lovers of to-do lists. But your to-do list is making you less productive in your business than you could otherwise be.
Listen to today’s episode to learn why to-do lists don’t work for perfectionists and a simple approach that works with your perfectionist brain, instead of against.
To learn the simple steps to plan properly as a perfectionist, sign up for my free training here: samlaurabrown.com/planningseries.
If you’re ready to stop procrastinating and consistently follow through on your business plans, join Perfectionists Getting Shit Done (PGSD) today. Sign up now at samlaurabrown.com/pgsd.
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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.
Best of the Podcast Introduction
Today I have a best of the podcast episode for you. So at this point, there are a lot of episodes on this podcast, and I want to make sure the best episodes don’t get lost in the archives. So today I’m sharing with you an episode that is well loved and also one that I am constantly referring to and linking people to.
And I want to make sure you can listen to it as well if you haven’t already. So without further ado, let’s get into the episode.
Sam Laura Brown (Start of the episode)
In this episode, I want to talk to you about the hidden ways that your to do list is making you unproductive. As perfectionists, we are huge lovers of to do lists. The longer the better. We love that feeling that you get when you tick off the items on your to do list. But did you know that your to do list is making you less productive than you could otherwise be? So if we think about your perfectionism handbrake, a lot of times a big contributing factor to that handbrake being on and to not being able to release that handbrake easily is that you are following advice that doesn’t actually work for a perfectionist and is unknowingly making your perfectionist mindset work against you.
So remember that the problem isn’t that you’re a perfectionist, it’s that your mindset is working against you. And advice like writing a to do list is the kind of advice that unknowingly turns that handbrake on. So this is something we really want to be looking at when it comes to helping you release your handbrake, get out of your own way, get shit done without burning out. Achieve your business goals. Because so many people write to do lists that we often don’t even question whether or not they’re effective. And we especially don’t question whether or not they’re effective for us. Because the same advice that other people can follow, it is going to be turning your perfectionism handbrake on. And we don’t want that.
So I want to talk to you in this episode about some of the hidden ways that your to do list is making you unproductive. In PGSD, we teach the power planning method, which takes into consideration all of these ways that a to do list can make you unproductive and remedies those in that power planning method. So I have six reasons or six ways that I’m going to share with you in this episode. The first of which is that when we have a to do list, we don’t have to look at how much time and energy we actually have. That to do list can be as long as we want it to be.
And oftentimes when we’re in this mentality that we need to be productive all the time, and that the more we do, the better will be as a person. Our self-worth is so tangled up in that we tend to have these really, really long to do lists. And it’s very easy at the beginning of the day or the beginning of the week to be like, I’m going to have the most productive week ever and write that long to do list. But the downfall of doing that is that it doesn’t have you take into consideration how much energy and time you actually have.
So what ends up happening is that we put way too much on our plates, and that makes it very easy to think overwhelming thoughts like, I don’t have enough time to do this. There’s not enough time to get everything done. I just don’t know where to start. That’s that all or nothing mindset coming in, and it just creates so much overwhelm, which leads to procrastination, which then leads to this last minute rush and burnout. So when we are doing a to do list, in this way of just writing, as much as we want to write on that to do list, adding as many items as we can, we are, as I said, not taking into account how much time and energy we actually have. And that means that also we can add a lot of busy work to that to do list.
We can add things that don’t really matter because there’s no filter to help us prioritize. So one filter that helps you to prioritize what to put on a to do list or what to put in your calendar is having a goal. So in PGSD, we teach you how to set an impossible goal for your business. That’s a very important filter. I haven’t got it in my notes here, but I highly recommend making sure that you have a goal. It’s the first step of the planning phase of the PGSD process because if you don’t have a goal, it is incredibly challenging to tell what’s important and what isn’t. It’s also really challenging to tell when you’re self-sabotaging and when you aren’t self-sabotaging, because you don’t even know what you’re trying to get to, so you don’t even know when you’re on track to that or you’re off track.
So we want to make sure that with your to do list, you are able to at least have a filter in terms of time to help you not put too much on your plate. This is why the power planning method has you putting your to do list in your calendar, because you are forced, when that happens, to recognize that you are a human and that you need to eat, you need to sleep. And despite what we think, we also need rest besides sleeping. And there are other things we have going on as well. But when we have this to do list, it just doesn’t take any of that into account, and we’re setting ourselves up for failure and disappointment from the get go. And that’s why a lot of times we have these long to do lists, and I’ll talk soon about writing and rewriting these to do lists as well.
But we have these long to do lists, and then we end up feeling so bad that there are so many unchecked items on that to do list, and we end up just winging it and going into under planning, which is where we are just trying not to even make any commitments to ourselves whatsoever so that we can’t disappoint ourselves. But that’s not productive either. So to do lists really lend to over planning and under planning. The power planning method we really have you finding that sweet spot. And one of the ways we do that is having you have the time constraint that comes with a calendar, so that you are really forced to again, prioritize what you need to do and also know when enough is enough.
Because if you are able to put all the things on your to do list, then you never actually even know when you are done. So the second way that your to do list is making you unproductive is that it doesn’t give you a sense of accomplishment. And I know I said at the beginning of this episode that one of the reasons we love to do lists is because of that sense of accomplishment that you get when you tick off an item on your to do list. But when your perfectionism handbrake is on and you’re working with to do lists, what happens is most of those items on your to do list don’t get that magical check mark. And we end up with these huge lists of things that aren’t done.
And this is often what leads to rewriting a to do list, because we’re trying to forget that we didn’t do the things that we had planned to do. So we rewrite it. We probably make it prettier than before, hoping that will keep us motivated. But we aren’t actually getting that sense of accomplishment that we think we are from a to do list. So what you need to do is make sure that you actually know when your day is finished and how much you need to do. So I mentioned that in the first point, but I need to reiterate it because if you don’t know when your day is actually going to end, it is so hard, it’s almost impossible to finish the day feeling like enough is enough.
And often when we do have a productive day and we’re working from a to do list, we just end up doing extra things and punishing ourselves for being productive. So your brain in this situation is like, okay, well, I was so focused today. I was hoping that if I was going to be so focused that I would be rewarded for that with a break. But instead, we’re in when we don’t have this self trust because our handbrake is on, We don’t trust ourselves to be productive tomorrow and productive the day after that and the day after that. So what we do is we go, okay, I need to capitalize on how productive and focused I am today. So I’m going to get all of this other shit done today as well. But again, that’s punishing your brain for being focused.
So the next time you go to sit down and do work, it means that your brain’s like, well, yesterday when we did this, we were punished for being productive and focused and getting a lot done. So instead, I’m just going to take my time today. I’m going to go look on Instagram and do all of this, because she’s just going to add more and more to my plate anyway. So I may as well take it a little bit easier so I’m not as fatigued. You need to remember that our brains are wired to seek pleasure, avoid pain, and conserve energy. It’s that survival motivational triad that helps to keep us alive. So your brain needs to conserve energy so that if danger becomes present, it can get you out of that situation. Our brains consume a lot of calories.
I think it’s about twenty five percent of the calories that we burn every day are burned by our brain and us thinking, so your brain doesn’t want to think. It wants to just have all those autopilot default thoughts that it normally has. It doesn’t want to use up a lot of mental energy. But when we are asking our brain to do things, and especially if those things are courageous needle movers, it’s going to be very fatiguing and there’s going to be resistance from the brain. So we have to keep that in mind when we are trying to be productive in getting shit done, that our brain, even though we intellectually and consciously want to be productive and want to do things subconsciously, we don’t because our brain is trying to conserve energy for a life threatening situation.
So when it comes to your to do list, If you are just adding more and more and more to your plate when you’re having a productive day, which is very easy to do when you have a to do list and you haven’t actually drawn a line in the sand as to when that day will end. Then even if you do that day, feel accomplished because you’ve got a lot done. Your brain isn’t going to help keep you feeling accomplished on a continuous basis. So when you are working from a calendar, you’re able to actually, as I said, draw that line in the sand and say, this is enough. This is everything that I plan to do today. And then you can do that and feel accomplished. It’s so much easier than when we have this long to do list, and we’re just vague about what we want to get done that day.
We might take the approach of, I’ll see how much I can get done, or maybe you have like a master to do list and smaller to do list for the day, but you haven’t considered with that to do list how much time and energy you actually have. Going back to that first point. So you probably have put more on your to do list than then you actually have time to do. You’ve probably also written those items in a vague, activity focused way, like work on this project rather than it being outcome based. So it’s also very challenging. And for you to figure out what you actually need to do and how to know when that task has been done.
Because if you get to your to do list, it’s like, work on this today, work on that today, work on that today, then you don’t actually know what accomplishment looks like. I mean, I guess you could say if I worked on that thing, then I feel accomplished. But we tend not to do that when our handbrake is on. We are not very generous with giving credit to ourselves. So when you’re working from a to do list, it’s very challenging to actually get that sense of accomplishment that you think the to do list gives you. And most likely at the end of the day, you are going to go to sleep feeling like you didn’t get enough done and that you never get enough done. And also this relates back to Self-trust.
If you don’t actually have a time of day where, you know, like, this is the end of the day and this is when I’m calling it, then it is really challenging to earn yourself trust because having an end to the day, drawing that line in the sand and then honoring that is such a powerful tool when it comes to self-trust. And the more you trust yourself, the more empowered you are going to be when it comes to your business. And another benefit as well of working from a calendar and having that line in the sand is that you can actually experience a consequence when you aren’t focused.
And I know that doesn’t sound like a good thing, but this relates to a point I’ll talk about later with self-sabotage. But when we are not actually having any consequence for being unproductive, there’s no motivation for us to be more productive. So I’ve already talked about that motivational triad and how adding more to our plate, because we don’t trust ourselves to be productive is harmful. But also if we are not experiencing a consequence for being unproductive.
So say for example, with the to do list, you haven’t actually said what you wanted to get done today. You might just have this long to do list. Or you probably already know that even though you want to get everything on that to do list done today, that you, you’re probably not going to do it anyway. You don’t really have the time. So if you don’t get everything done on that to do list, then there’s no real consequence for that. And you’re just going to drag that over to the next day and the next day and the next day, you’re probably going to rewrite that to do list. And that’s all well and good, but it means that there was no consequence there.
There was no call to attention that you weren’t focused. So there’s no real motivation to be focused on any other day either because, you know, you’re just going to let yourself off the hook. But if you are working from a calendar and you have that line in the sand as to when the day will end and you honor that which is going to help you build self-trust regardless of what you got done that day. If you didn’t get everything done that you’d planned to do, instead of adding more time to that day to get it all done, which is what the temptation is when we say, I just love feeling productive, I would rather get it all done and work a little extra, then finish on time and have things undone.
Because we have all of these ideas about productivity and self-worth and all of that. So that sounds very logical to say I just love being productive. I’d rather work a little extra, but when we do that, we are not being penalized for being unproductive. And so, as I said, we are wired to seek pleasure, avoid pain, and conserve energy. There’s no pain that we then need to avoid. But if we have tasks undone, that is painful. And so the next day, when we know that this is the end to our day, and if things don’t get done, I’m not going to have extra time to do them. We’re so much more motivated to be focused, so you need to be considerate of that as well, and make sure that you are drawing that line in the sand as to when your day will end, which is challenging to do with a to do list, to do list because it’s not time based.
This is why calendar really helps, but you need to draw a line in the sand as to when that day is going to end. And if you get everything done on your calendar early, give yourself some time off, some extra time off. I know it’s going to be uncomfortable and you want to capitalize on your productivity, but when you add more to your plate, as I said, you are really living into that self-image that you’re not someone who’s normally productive. So you need to capitalize on it. And that’s not going to help you be more productive in the future. And if you don’t get everything done by that time, you still need to put pens down and actually experience the consequence of not having been focused and productive that day so that the next day you’re like, okay, I actually can’t afford to scroll through Instagram for three hours today because if I don’t get this done by a certain time, then I’m not going to be able to stay back late and do it then.
So that’s the second hidden way that your to do list is making you unproductive, that it’s not giving you a sense of accomplishment. And also within that, I mentioned, obviously self trust and the impact that that also has on your self image, which is your identity, your story, you tell yourself about yourself. And our identity is a self-fulfilling prophecy. So if you believe that you’re not someone who’s productive every day, then you’re going to create that reality for yourself.
If you believe that you’re someone who’s not focused and who struggles not to get distracted, you’re going to create that reality for yourself. It’s so important. So number three is that it creates decision fatigue to work from a to do list. Because when you’re working from A to do list, most likely that to do list isn’t prioritized. It doesn’t tell you how long you can afford to spend on each task. And so what you need to do constantly throughout the day is to make decisions. Some of those decisions might be big, some of them might be small, but you are constantly making decisions and that is depleting the energy you have for decision making.
You only have a certain amount each day, and the more you deplete that decision making energy, the harder it is to make decisions that are in your own best interest. So what we want to have you do is to really set up your to do list or working from a calendar, like with power planning to set things up so that as many decisions as possible are made ahead of time, so that when you are actually getting to the time to do the work, you don’t need to decide, okay, what am I going to do? How am I going to spend on it? How am I even know if that’s done? It’s just all laid out for you there. So with power planning, we do a one hour power planning session each week.
Typically PGSDers will do this on a Sunday or on a Monday, and in that hour you are making decisions about the rest of the week. I know that makes it sound like it’s going to be rigid and strict, but a very important principle of power planning is keeping your plans workable. So you are updating your plans as you go to make sure that you can continue to follow through with them to account for anything unexpected that comes up, including how you might be feeling. And also, I forgot to mention this with the earlier point. This is something I personally love to do with my power planning is that I still get that feeling of ticking off a to do list with my calendar, because I am adding.
After I finish each little task, each block in my calendar, I go in and I add a tick, a check mark like I a little emoji so that I can see tick. I did that and if I didn’t, I will adjust it so it reflects what I actually did. So when I’m doing my power planning session at the beginning of the week, I am making decisions about the remainder of the week. I’m putting that bus hat on and I am deciding what is in my own best interest as the employee is going to be fulfilling that work, and also what needs to get done for the company.
And then throughout the week, I am keeping that workable by the end of the week. If you look at my calendar, it’s going to look different to how it did at the start of the week. There are going to be adjustments based on what came up during the week. Maybe I underestimated how long a task needed because I haven’t done it before. A lot of tasks that you will have as an entrepreneur you’ve never done before, or you’re not super familiar with because you’re always doing new things. So when it gets to the end of the week, my calendar will look different, but it will reflect what I actually did, which is such a powerful tool to then be able to see, okay, this is how I actually worked this week.
So now next week, what do I need to do to take that into consideration so that I need to make less changes to have my calendar remain workable. but I add that little check mark so that I am getting that sense of accomplishment. But I’m not having decision fatigue because once I do my hourly power planning session and I get everything into my calendar and I go through the whole process that we teach inside PGSD, to do that, I have so much clarity. Overwhelm vanishes because when we have this long to do list, as I mentioned, it’s so easy to have those overwhelming thoughts of there’s not enough time to get everything done. I don’t know where to start. When you have it in your calendar and you are putting needle movers in there that are outcome focused, you can actually look at your calendar and be like, okay, I know there’s enough time to get everything done.
Again, we’re not being strict or rigid with power planning. Huge part of this is not being a bitch to yourself with your to do list or your calendar, and making your plans workable so you could actually follow through on them, not just your ideal self could follow through on them, But you, as a human who again needs to sleep and rest and eat and has other things going on in their life, can actually follow through with that plan. But if you are using this to do list, you are most likely going to end up with a lot of decision fatigue, which is impacting your productivity without you even realizing the extent to which that is happening. So working from a calendar really helps with that, especially doing a one hour planning session because you are forced to make those decisions all at once.
Yes, it is tedious to do that. Our brains again, don’t want to make decisions. They just want to wing it. And we think that, oh my God, I’ve got so much to do. I just need to start. Like there’s no time to even make a plan. Makes no sense when you think about it, because then you’re just haphazardly jumping from task to task to task, and you don’t actually complete things. Or if you do complete things, they’re probably not the things you actually needed to do. It is always worth the time to make a plan. And when we do power planning, we limit that to a one hour power planning session each week because it is very easy to spend a lot of time planning what we’re going to do.
So that leads me to my next point, which is writing to do lists can become a form of procrastination in and of itself when you are writing and rewriting to do lists. That is something that we do because it feels productive to be in that planning phase, but it’s not vulnerable because when you are writing a to do list, for example, you’re not having to follow through on that to do list yet. You are not having to put yourself out there. You are just thinking about doing the work. And it is, especially if you’re rewriting to do lists quite often. Or maybe you have all these different to do lists for every area of your life. And then you notice that most of those things don’t get checked off. Or if they do, it takes months for that to happen.
Then this is something you need to be paying attention to. And power planning is designed so that you don’t fall into this trap of procrastinate planning. But with to do lists, especially when we love them being pretty and we want to have like a fresh one every day or whatever it is you’re doing, it is going to become procrastinate planning, which is planning to the extent that it helps you to avoid something else, which is doing the work, putting yourself out there, doing the scary things that you actually need to do to build your business. So be aware of that. I know it’s, it’s really challenging to call ourselves out on it because it feels so necessary, but we want to limit the amount of time that we take per week for planning. We want to spend a lot of our time in the doing.
And that doesn’t mean just doing all the tasks and only being in employee mode. We can also have you doing boss things, which is having the bigger picture vision and doing thinking and that kind of stuff. But when it comes to actually just planning in your to do list, we don’t want to have you spending two days per week just figuring out what you’re going to do that week. And then by the time it comes to actually follow through, you’re so exhausted from writing those to do lists or you’re under the false impression you’re being more productive than you are because you’re writing those to do lists and so you don’t actually get shit done. So again, with these to do lists and when we’re writing them, it can feel productive and it becomes productive procrastination because it gives us the false impression that we are moving the business forward.
When we spend all this time writing and rewriting to do lists when we’re not. And that’s when if you are feeling behind in your business, if you are feeling stuck, And if you’re feeling like I should be further along by now, it’s most likely that there is quite a lot of productive procrastination. So you are feeling like you have been doing more than you have actually been doing. I’m not saying you haven’t been doing things, but you have been doing the things that don’t contribute to a change in results. And because of that, that means that you are now under the false impression that you should be. We don’t want to really speak like that, but should be further along than you actually are. And that can become very disheartening and discouraging and can lead to quitting.
So it’s kind of the equivalent of if you joined a gym and you’re like, oh, well, I’ve been I joined the gym three years ago. I should be fit by now. If you have, for example, you join the gym, which is the equivalent of starting the business, and then you spent all of the time since then watching YouTube videos on how to work out or how everyone else is working out and you’re like, I don’t know what I want to do today. I’m just going to look at all these other people and see what their workouts look like. You write and rewrite your workout plan. It’s easy to think like, no, I’m really investing a lot of energy into the gym and into having a successful gym experience. But unless you’re lifting the weights and unless you’re doing the cardio, whatever it is you plan to do, you’re not going to get the results.
So it might be that writing and rewriting to do lists is basically having it be the equivalent of you join the gym when you started your business, and you feel like you’ve been in the gym for a long time, so you should be looking pretty fit by now, but you’re not, and you’re disappointed because you’ve put so much energy into it. But really, you haven’t been doing the needle movers, the things that actually matter. And I know it might be uncomfortable to hear all of that. I mean, on this podcast, I do my best to call you out. This is what it’s about. It’s helping you see, um, where your handbrake is on and what you can do about it. And I try my best to do that in a loving way.
But also, just remember, I’m speaking from experience here from a lot of personal experience. And I know it is really confronting when you have been struggling really hard to build your business, to realize that you haven’t really been building the business because you’ve been in your own way with that perfectionism, handbrake on. But I hope that you, by understanding that it can become a form of procrastination, that it can help you to stop doing that. And that’s going to mean that you are going to need to spend more time doing courageous things. It doesn’t mean you now need to spend more time working. Most likely, if you have just a one hour planning session per week and with your plans, you put those courageous needle movers on there. You are going to need to work less than before. And this is really the secret to getting more done in less time. You’re going to be working less. It will require more courage.
It will require more discomfort, but you will be able to work less time because you are doing the things that are really making a difference. So for example, with that gym example or analogy that you don’t need to work out ten hours a day, but you could easily spend ten hours a day researching workouts, looking at YouTube videos of what everyone else is doing, comparing workout plans, and doing all these ancillary things that don’t really matter too much. Or you could just do a one hour workout, a thirty minute workout, and there’s going to be more uncomfortable than watching the YouTube videos of other people working out, but that’s going to help you get results. But then this brings up, of course, all the stuff we have going on when we aren’t feeling like we’re working hard, then we don’t feel like we’re deserving of things. So it can be uncomfortable to be in ease.
And that’s another thing that Clean Rest will help you with, to practice those feelings to practice actually doing the courageous things and then having rest and your brain telling you you should be more productive and that you need to be working harder and ignoring your brain. Um, but yeah, all of that to say it can become a form of procrastination. And if you’re finding that you’re writing and rewriting to do lists quite a lot, it most definitely has become that for you, which is okay, but we just want to be aware of that. Number five is that you can’t spot self-sabotage when you are using a to do list.
It is very challenging. And that’s because we often with a to do list, write in such a vague way that you can’t really even tell whether or not you got that task completed. It is also harder to tell when you’re putting things off or continuously avoiding tasks, because if you have a mixture on your to do list of needle movers and busy work, which is very easy to do when you have a to do list. You have a lot of busy work items on there. Again, because there’s no time constraint, you’re not forced to prioritize. Maybe you don’t even have a goal, so you’re not even sure what you’re trying to achieve, but you have this to do list. And it’s very easy to prioritize the busy work and to feel productive because you’re ticking off those busy work items, but that you are not really even able to notice that the needle movers that need to get done, which is the equivalent of actually doing the workout, are getting put off again and again and again.
When you are following power planning, for example, in your to do list is in your calendar when you are keeping your plans workable, which again is a huge part of power planning and you are having to update your plans, your calendar to reflect what you actually did, you’ll be forced to notice how you varied from your plans. And that can be confronting, but it’s so incredibly important that you do that because then you can say, okay, I had planned to wake up every day this week at seven a m and to start my work at eight, for example. I’m just making this up.
But every day I had to move my plans because I started. I woke up at eight am and I didn’t start till eleven am. And so this isn’t then an opportunity for you to beat yourself up, but it’s maybe an opportunity to say, okay, maybe next time I plan. And this is why we do a weekly review with power planning. Next time I plan my week, maybe I just actually make a plan I’m going to follow through on, which means waking up at eight a m and starting at eleven a m so I can earn that self-trust and actually follow through with those plans instead of keeping making this plan for my ideal self. And then I don’t follow through with it, and then I feel bad about it.
I’m actually going to make a plan I can follow through with, or you can really look at that and go, okay, that’s so interesting. What about it? Like, why do I start at eleven am? Is it because I just work better in the afternoons and I just can’t think in the morning? And I need to structure my day so that I can do my work in the afternoon and just put aside all these notions that entrepreneurs need to wake up early and get shit done in the morning, or is there something else that’s going on? Is it because I have a lot of uncomfortable tasks today and I don’t want to do it, so I put it off. And is there something I can do to help me have more courage to do those tasks or to make those tasks easier?
So, for example, it could be that you are putting way too much still on your plate, and it just seems so overwhelming that in the morning you’re like, oh, I just don’t even want to get started. So you put it off until the last minute that you can, which might mean starting at eleven a m and it could be that actually deciding, well, I’m only going to put half of that on my calendar and just get these one, two or three important needle movers done. And then that’s it for the day that you can actually focus when that’s the case, because your brain can see the light at the end of the tunnel. And that example that I shared is really something that happened for me, not in that exact way, but I realized I was putting too many tasks at a time of day that my brain doesn’t function. So I work best in the morning. And so I was like, I had heard from people like they love a slow morning and just kind of easing into work. And I’d been trying that out.
And that’s not my favorite approach after having experimented with it for quite a while. But I thought I would give it a go. And then what I actually found is that it’s so much more challenging for me to do those courageous tasks in the afternoon than in the morning. And so from doing power planning and noticing the ways I kept changing my calendar and how long things took, if I did them at certain times of day compared with others, I was able to change the structure of my day so that I was able to get more done in less time. And so my brain actually saw this light at the end of the tunnel so that I would start early. So not too early, but say at eight thirty and my day would finish at two thirty because I’d figured out from power planning and having this insight into self-sabotage, and also how I work best that working six hours a day, like that’s as much as my brain can handle before. I mean, I can sit at a computer for a long time. Don’t get me wrong, I can sit at a computer for sixteen hours.
But in terms of productive, focused work without procrastination, once I get to about six hours, my brain’s like, okay, enough. We need a break. So instead of planning eight hours of work a day and then dilly dallying or doing six hours of work across eight hours, what I did was I started adjusting my power planning because of the insights I had from working from my calendar that you don’t have available when you’re working from a to do list, and I was able to adjust my day, so I was getting more done in less time without burning out, was having clean rest and just having a much better experience than when I was back in the day years ago, working from a to do list. Um, and it’s not to say that power planning means you’re instantly going to be having these perfect productive days.
In the beginning, it really is just a tool to give you insight into how your handbrake is currently on and productivity mistakes that you’re making, which is why we recommend that you do power planning for at least three months, which is why, uh, before you judge whether or not it’s working for you. And it’s why we also only teach power planning inside PGSD, because it’s going to bring some stuff up for you, and you need structure and support to help you do that and get through that so that you can have it be the incredibly empowering, effective tool that it is. But all of this to say that when you are working from a to do list, it’s really challenging to spot self-sabotage.
It’s really challenging to figure out what time of day you work best, because you are not having to pay attention to those things. When you just sit down with a to do list and try your best every day to get it all ticked off. And so we want to have you actually planning and following through in a way where you can see the self-sabotage, which is going to be uncomfortable, or you can see where you’re being unproductive, which is going to be uncomfortable, but that’s going to empower you to change that. Instead of with a to do list, it’s more vague whether or not you are self-sabotaging, which means it’s a bit more comfortable because you don’t notice when you’re getting in your own way, but you’re still getting in your own way. And that’s going to lead to discomfort in the long term because you have so much potential and your business is not a reflection of that.
The final thing I wanted to mention in this episode is that when you’re working from a to do list. One of the ways it’s making you unproductive is that you are only going to rest in leftover time that you have. So when you’re following power planning, for example, part of that is clean rest, adding time where you are resting without guilt. This is so important for helping you release your perfectionism handbrake so you can get out of your own way in so many ways. I’m not going to go into it too much more in this episode. But all of this just to say that if you’re working from a to do list, again, you haven’t drawn that line in the sand about when the day will end. So it’s kind of like, um, when you might be wanting to save money, for example, and you tell yourself you’ll save what’s left over and then, hey, hey, you get to the end of the week and there’s nothing left to save. Or it’s like twenty dollars. And that keeps happening again and again, again and again.
So the same thing can happen when you’re working from a to do list. You tell yourself, well, I’ll take a break once my to do list is done. And then hey, hey, you get to the end of the week and you didn’t have any time off or any clean rest, which is so important for being productive because you only were going to do that in leftover time and there was none. So when you are using power planning, when you are working from a to do list that has time constraints around it, you are able to actually prioritize rest. And I know you don’t want to hear that. You’re like, I don’t need rest. I don’t have time to rest, especially if you’re not full time in your business yet. You’re like, I literally don’t have time. If you don’t have time to rest, you need it the most. Let me just tell you, if you feel like you do not have time to take a break, you need it more than anyone else.
And there’s so many reasons we resist the clean rest and we have time associated with productivity. The more time we spend doing productive things, the more productive will be. That’s not the case. Often, the more time we spend, the more time we give ourselves, the less productive we are because it’s easy to self-sabotage. It’s easier to do unimportant things. So even if you do feel productive, you’re not actually moving things forward again. You are basically doing the equivalent of watching other people work out on YouTube rather than doing the work out yourself. So time constraint is such a powerful way to get yourself to be more productive. But often we end up in this mentality of, well, to do more, I need more time. And I want to just finally, at the end of this, just mention as well that if you tell yourself you don’t have enough time to get things done, and when you do have time to get things done, you’re not productive. So maybe you’re procrastinating or you’re overthinking or doing all these other things. Maybe you’re just so overwhelmed you don’t even know where to start. This episode was for you.
This episode was so for you because it can be so frustrating when we’re like, I just, I need more time to get shit done. I just don’t have enough time in the day. And then we get time. We notice ourselves wasting it. That means your handbrake is on and you need to make a change. That lack of time is not the issue. It has been demonstrated to you that lack of time in this situation is not the issue, since when you get more time you just waste it. So if lack of time isn’t the issue, what is? It’s that you are following a productivity method, a to do list that actually turns your perfectionism handbrake on and is stopping you from being able to get out of your own way. To get you done, to put yourself out there and do all of those things.
So there’s nothing wrong with you. It’s just that you’ve been following advice that doesn’t actually work for a perfectionist. So as I mentioned in PGSD, we teach the power planning method, and it’s such an important tool for helping you release your handbrake and also for getting out of your own way and being productive. But regardless of whether you’re in PGSD or not. I really hope that you will take what I’ve shared in this episode on board. And when you are planning your week, that you stop making some of those mistakes at to do lists make it very easy to make. So with that said, I hope you’re having a beautiful day and I will talk to you in the next episode.
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.