![Episode 345: [CLEAN REST SERIES] 5 Reasons You Don’t Get Enough Clean Rest When You're Working From A To-Do List](https://samlaurabrown.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/Ep-345-blog.jpg)
We perfectionists LOVE a good to-do list…
But working from a to-do list makes it really challenging to get enough clean rest – even if you’re making a real effort to have more work-life balance.
And I share the five reasons why – and helpful examples for each reason – in this second episode of my clean rest series.
If you only get a break from your business when you’re busy recovering from burnout, this clean rest series – and today’s episode in particular – is going to be insanely helpful.
In This Episode You’ll Learn:
- Why there’s never any time for rest when you work from a to-do list
- Why you get less done with a to-do list versus when you plan properly
- Why you feel behind when you work from a to-do list
- How working from a to-do list makes it hard to trust yourself to be consistent
PGSD is opening to new students on 27 July 2022:
The PGSD Process will get you out of your own way in your business and have you making more money more easily. The doors to Perfectionists Getting Shit Done will be opening at 6am New York time on 27 July and closing at 11:59pm New York time on 2 August 2022. To find out more about the program and be the first to know when the doors open, join the waitlist here: samlaurabrown.com/pgsd.
Featured In The Episode:
- Join the waitlist for Perfectionists Getting Shit Done (PGSD) – samlaurabrown.com/pgsd
- Learn the basics of Power Planning – samlaurabrown.com/planning
- Sign up for daily Perfectionist Power-Ups – samlaurabrown.com/power
- Follow me on Instagram @perfectionismproject
Listen To The Episode
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FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Hi, and welcome to another episode of The Perfectionism Project. A podcast full of perfectionism advice for entrepreneurs. My name is Sam Laura Brown, I help entrepreneurs release their perfectionism handbrake, so they can get out of their own way and build a fulfilling and profitable business. I’m the founder of the perfectionist getting shit done group coaching program, which is otherwise known as PGSD. And for even more perfectionism advice to help you with your business, you can follow me on Instagram @perfectionismproject.
This episode is the second part in a five part series about clean rest. Clean rest is when you are resting without guilt, it is intentional non business time. And it is going to help you get into a growth mindset, get out of your own way in your business. So you can show up fully and do all the things that you know you need to do. So just to recap, where this fits in with the growth mindset and in the process for creating that. So the PGSD process is how to get out of your own way.
And that involves planning properly as a perfectionist, this involves setting your growth goal, we break that down into quarterly milestones. And then we are using power planning every week to pursue our quarterly milestones, and ultimately, our growth goal, follow through with your plans 80% of the time, rest without guilt, and repeat and want to underline that rest without guilt and repeat. That is what we’re talking about in this series.
And I want to make sure that you know about PGSD, and that you know that you are invited to join us at the doors to PGSD that stands for perfectionist getting shit done. We’ll be opening at 6am New York time on the 27th of July, and closing at 11:59pm New York time on the second of August. So if you are someone who is burning out, maybe you are working in spurts of motivation, you have these intense periods of productivity, and then you kind of fall off the wagon for a week or a month, and then you get back on and you’re insanely productive.
Because you’re trying to make up for past procrastination and just this whole thing, I really want to invite you into PGSD to master this process of planning properly, following thru 80% of time, resting without guilt and repeat. So you can get into that growth mindset so you can get out of your own way. You can, as I said at the top, show up fully and do all the things that you know you need to do to build your business. So let’s talk about why it is really challenging to get clean rest when you are working from a to do list, we perfectionist, we love a good to do list. We really like we love being productive. That is like top five things we want to feel we want to feel productive, we want to feel organized.
And so having a to do list allows us to live in this land of hope. It’s like this kind of lottery ticket mentality that when we’re writing out this to do list, we get to think about what if, what if I was productive and like, we get to feel almost as though we’ve ticked off the to do lists just by writing it out, then we can end up in this procrasti-planning, where we are writing and rewriting and rewriting to do lists of tasks that we know we’re not going to get done, or they’re so vague that this whole long to do list just becomes so overwhelming that we don’t even know where to start. So you might find yourself in this dilemma that you feel like you have no time to get anything done. And then when you do have the time to get shit done, you don’t even know where to begin to do nothing at all.
And then that adds more pressure to everything because you have even less time now to get stuff done. So I want you to know that this is just a planning problem. Your follow through problem is just a planning problem. And anyone can learn how to plan properly as perfectionist. So I want to talk to you as well in this episode about what it looks like to be planning properly as a perfectionist, what the three steps of power planning are, why that does not involve working from a to do list.
So that you are really set up to have it be easy to get clean rest, because if you are trying to take what is being shared about clean rest in this series, and use whatever to do list method or maybe you’ve got all of these different like paper planners or different things like that, or maybe you have been calendaring. And you have been time blocking. So you just have like chunks of time for like Instagram content and work on website and like that kind of thing, which isn’t power planning.
So with power planning, we are working from a calendar but we are doing it in a way that gets our perfectionist mindset on our side. And that is not what typically tends to happen. Like when I first started working from a calendar before I was power planning and really figured out what that looks like. I was what I would call time blocking and it was just so insane what I expected of myself. I basically expected myself not to eat, not to have like any time between things.
So like if I got home from somewhere I need to jump into something right away that I didn’t need really any sleep and that everything would get done super quickly that I’d never have any resistance or motivational problems or anything like that. Like I was just planning for this idealistic version of myself that I had in my mind. And it was a lot of pressure, I always fell behind. And within a couple of days, I had just completely abandoned my calendar altogether. And I was back to the to do list. So maybe that’s what you’re doing. Just want to be clear, that’s not what it looks like to be power planning.
And when we are going through the three steps of power planning, so that’s your power hour, your little tweaks, your weekly review, I teach that in depth in detail inside PGSD. When you are doing that, you are planning in a way that gets your perfectionist mindset on your side, which means you’re not over planning anymore, which is what I was just talking about. You’re not under planning, where you have these really vague plans. So I was talking about that when it’s like, work on Instagram stuff.
And then it’s like work on website, when we just have these vague chunks, that’s under planning when things aren’t specific enough for us to actually follow through on and that’s very overwhelming as well. And we’re just kind of winging it in this vague way. Our brain is like, I don’t really know what to do. So I’m just going to do nothing at all. So we want to make sure that we are not over planning, we’re not under planning and we’re also keeping our plans workable. So that’s the little tweaks, step of power planning, it’s so important we do that.
And we tend to not do that, when we are time blocking and doing those things. And we definitely tend to not keep our plans workable when we are working from a to do list, because it’s not really workable to begin with. It’s just this long wish list of stuff that our motivated self, we’d love to do. And maybe you have as well, just thinking of different ways that I’ve heard our PGSDers planned before they joined PGSD, that they would have a to do list for every category of life.
So you might have a business to do list and you have maybe a house to do list, then you have a to do list relating to health and fitness, like you’ve just trying to cover every area at once. And it’s so overwhelming. So I want to talk in this episode about why it’s so hard to get clean rest when you’re working from a to do list specific reasons for that. And I want to share a bit with you about power planning and what that looks like.
And how it makes it easy to get clean rest. And then in the next episode, we’re going to be going into detail with that how to plan out your clean rest. And specifically in terms of the three steps of power planning, where clean rest fits in with each of those, so that you are really set up for success with that. And again, I want to invite you into PGSD, to really not just understand these things intellectually, but to really have all the tools, have all the support and have the commitment, and we make the three month commitment to power planning, you have the commitment to making this work because it does work.
It’s so incredible, it does work and the benefits of getting clean rest, and just being able to sit down at the beginning of the week. And whenever you can do your Power Hour whenever you want. But being able to look at your calendar, and you know exactly what you need to do. You know how much time you have, you know that you have considered that maybe at times you’re gonna have low energy, or maybe like me, I have a daughter, Lydia, maybe you have children.
And you’ve got plans that are workable, that include buffer time that you know that if something comes up unexpectedly, that you will be able to adjust and adapt to that that you are being so damn kind to yourself with your calendar, but not in a way that lets you off the hook, you are being kind to yourself in the sense that you are truly giving yourself the full opportunity to show up for yourself and your business and your goals that you have. And to also take care of yourself and to also take care of your family or whatever else you have going on. It is life changing, to be able to have that sense of clarity and calm.
And that container to do courageous things and to challenge yourself and to blow your own mind and to show yourself what is possible. And it’s just really, really, really hard to do that when you are working from a to do list. So with all that said, let’s talk about some of the reasons that it’s really hard to get clean rest when you are working from a to do list. And this means if you’re working from a to do list, and there’s a time and a place for to do lists. Do not get me wrong, like I still use a little to do list for my life admin stuff.
But when it comes to business, we don’t want to be working from a to do list. It just makes it so easy to get in your own way and to have your perfectionist mindset working against you instead of having it work for you. So here are five ways that, a five reasons I guess that clean rest is so hard when you are working from a to do list. So the first is that there’s never time for rest. There’s no time left over. So a lot of times when we are working from a long to do list. And again with all that speaking from experience here like I need to clean all these long to do lists.
So I get it. And I have coached hundreds of PGSDers who we’re using to do lists. And it’s not like we weren’t getting anything done at all, you have probably been able to make money in your business and experience some degree of success. But you are now bumping up against that next level. And you know, that you need to work on how you are managing your time and how you are managing your mind. Time management is my management. So you know that this is something that you need to work on. So anyway, all of that to say,
I get it, there’s nothing wrong, like we get told about these to do lists and just, you know, write a big long to do list, and then just pick your top priorities, and then focus on them. And that just doesn’t work. When we have a perfectionist mindset, and we’re in that mindset, and we are, instead of, you know, just having the priorities, and then being ones we can actually get done, then we pick these vague priorities that we know aren’t really going to get done.
But we really should do them because we’ve been procrastinating on them for so long. And then there’s these just, they’re just these big, vague beasts of a task that we feel so overwhelmed that we don’t even know where to start, we just jump from task to task to task, not getting anything fully complete. But we’re so busy, because we’re just like doing a little bit of this, and then a little bit of that, and then a little bit of that. And then we don’t get anything done at all.
And then we’re like, well, I just need to do anything I can. So then we end up doing busy work just so that we can feel like we’re doing something and then when the next week comes right now let’s do the list again. And following that advice. It doesn’t work for perfectionist, most advice doesn’t work for perfectionist when it comes to planning and productivity. And it’s gonna make your perfectionist mindset work against you. So when that’s happening, then the next week, you’re like, well, shit, I’m even more behind on things, there’s even more to this to do list and there’s more pressure.
And that just sends us into overwhelm. We don’t do anything at all that whole thing. So when we are sorry, I’m very passionate, I’m not gonna apologize, I’m very passionate about this, it is so powerful to learn how to plan properly as a perfectionist. That’s why I want to help you with this series. That’s why I want to help you inside PGSD. And so I am now committed to sharing what this episode is about, which is the to do list and where to how to get clean, right. So there’s no time left over for rest when we are working from a to do list.
So we have that long to do list, what tends to happen is it’s longer than we have time for. And there’s all sorts of things on it. And typically, as well, the tasks that we have on a to do list have very vague. So it’s things like, you know, Instagram post, and it’s just these vague. Let me think of what else we could have on to do list. It’s just like these ideas of things, it’s not clear enough that we could know exactly like if we had to sit down at our desk to do something, what we need to start with.
So instead of being broken down into specific outcomes that we need to create an each of those outcomes would add up to the overall outcome that we want to create. For example, if you are recording a podcast episode, instead of say, for example, you want to start a podcast, instead of having it be like start podcast on your to do list. That’s overwhelming, isn’t it? Maybe you have it on your to do list and you know, and you keep pushing it off. Start podcasts, your brains, like I don’t know what the fuck to do with that.
But if you instead have it be outcome oriented chunked down, this is what we do in our power planning, we chunk it down. So you’re going to have for example, 30 minutes to research, or maybe it’s an hour to research, how to start a podcast or even better 30 minutes to access your own wisdom on what you need to do. If you’re going to start a podcast, if you’re going to give someone else advice on what to do, what would you tell them, and then to go through each of those steps. So maybe the first step is you create the name for the podcast.
PS don’t overthink that you can change your name for your podcast like I did, then maybe you are going to add a note, brainstorm 10 episodes, then you’re going to select three episodes to record then you’re going to record them like I’m just making stuff up. But we weren’t like that’s so much easier to follow when we break things down like that clearly versus typically when we have a to do list, it tends to be like start podcasts, which are brains like, “no thank you”, I’m not going to do that. So anyway, where were you planning in this way. And we have this long to do list full of vague tasks. And it’s much longer than we actually have time for. There’s never any time left over for rest.
And we tend to when we’re working from a to do list be in this mentality, that we will rest when everything is done and you might be in the belief that you’re just the kind of person who prefers to rest and finds it easy to rest once everything is complete, and you’re the kind of person who would rather get everything done and not rest, then who would rather rest and have things not be finished. And I get it. I see you. I see. But what I want to lovingly invite you to consider is that the reason that you love getting like being this person who would just rather be busy than resting is because you just need to learn how to feel safe resting. And also the reason that everything doesn’t get done is because you aren’t resting.
It’s not this whole, like, well, I’ll get everything done once I rest. You’re not getting everything done because you don’t rest. And this is why this whole series is on clean rest, why this is something that we really work on inside PGSD. And we really take it seriously like not that it’s this heavy thing, but that it’s not something we just gloss over. And I will do that if we get to it. Clean rest is a very important part of the practice of getting out of your own way and getting into a growth mindset. And so if you’re in this mentality of I will rest, once I’ve gotten everything done off my to do list, it’s going to be very hard, there’s nothing… Like you’ll never be at that point where everything is complete.
And that’s especially because you’re not resting. So when you are working, you’re going to be working in about 50% capacity at best. Even if like that might because you haven’t had much rest, that might feel like you’re 80%, maybe you’re 90%. You know, it’s not 100. But it feels pretty up there because that’s what you’re used to. And this was huge for me, I used to like, I used to be someone that the first thing that would go when I was busy was sleep.
And I would see sleep as something that was really unproductive rest, sleep anything like that super unproductive. And what I realized once I gave myself permission to rest, and once I started to prioritize getting a full night’s rest, which means about seven and a half hours. And I say that now, this time when I have a one year old daughter. Well, that sounds like a dream. But anyway, all of that to say that I viewed rest as being something that was really unproductive, which isn’t true. Rest is such a productive activity. And I thought that I was really working at my best capacity.
Once I started to get a full night of sleep, or better sleep like better quality sleep, if you can’t get more sleep, there are things you can do to get better quality. Anyway, this isn’t about sleep, this is about like resting when you are awake. But getting more sleep is important as well. But you need to really start to see that your brain like you don’t even yet know how much your brain is capable of if you’re not getting as much clean rest as you should be. And later in the series, I’m going to be talking more about how much clean rest to be getting.
I think it’s in the next episode actually 346 I’m going to be going into how much to get. But you want to know now that the reason you’re not getting everything done, is because when you’re working from to do lists, it’s super hard to get all these vague, overwhelming tasks done. And you are not like it’s this vicious cycle. Where because you’re not resting, you’re not getting everything done. And because you’re not getting everything done, you’re not giving yourself permission to rest. Hello burnout that is a recipe.
So the next thing I want to mention when it comes to the to do list and clean rest, is that getting less done. So wait, what am I writing? Getting less done so rest feels less safe. Oh, yes. Okay. Sorry just reading my note that I have. So when you are working from a to do list, you will be getting less done, than when you are planning properly as a perfectionist. When we are planning properly, we are taking into consideration our real lives and the fact that we’re not motivated 24/7.
And the fact that we don’t have every second of the day to be productive. And even if we could physically work on the business and say sit at your laptop all day, every day, that your brain, especially if you’re doing courageous needle movers. That’s something we’re really I mean, I haven’t even got that in my notes here. But needle movers are so important.
Those are the tasks that move your business forward and PGSD we do a lot of coaching and helping you to identify exactly what your needle movers are, regardless of what kind of business you have, helping you figure out where to focus your time so that you can rest a lot because when you are working, you’re doing the stuff that matters, not the stuff that just keeping you busy and helping you just you know, spin your wheels. So when you are working from a to do list and you’re not planning properly, you are going to be getting less done. Because of what I’ve already been talking about that you will feel so overwhelmed. You won’t know where to start. You’re busy all the time, but you’re never getting everything done.
And so it doesn’t feel safe to rest. Because it feels like you’re already so far behind. If you have been feeling behind and like you were never on top of everything. Then I want to invite you to start planning properly and to join us in PGSD so you can learn how to do that. So that is another reason that clean rest is really hard when you’re working from a to do list. It’s just going to be harder for it to feel safe when you aren’t being as productive as you could be.
That’s not to say that you need to be at this optimal level of productivity for you to feel safe and to not have guilt around rest. But it is easier. I mean, there’s something to be said for it is easier to rest. When you really know that in your business time, even if that time is really limited, that you were doing this stuff that matters that you were doing it in a clear and focused and intentional way, that is actually going to make a difference in your business, that you aren’t spending all of your time on these tasks that don’t actually matter and aren’t moving you forward. It is so much easier to rest without guilt when you know that your business time is being used so wisely because you are planning properly.
But if you’re working from this long to do list, and you’re just feeling overwhelmed and list is getting longer and longer, it is hard to feel safe resting, it is hard to not feel guilty when you are resting. Number three, when we are working from a to do list, we don’t even recognize what we have accomplished. So if you are in this mentality, that I will rest once everything is done, my guess is that you have been getting things done. So I just talked about how we get less done than we could be if we aren’t planning properly, which is true, but you are still getting things done.
And you’re not actually able to recognize that your brain isn’t registering that you are doing things to grow your business, because your brain is so focused on the 20 to do items that are unticked versus the six that you did take off. And so it’s really hard to get clean rest. When you are feeling again, like you aren’t getting anything done and that you’re always behind it that you don’t have enough time for rest, you barely have enough time for everything as it is let alone adding any extra rest. Like are you kidding me.
That is what I hear so often from perfectionist who are working from a to do list. And this is why we make the switch to power planning. Because it’s just going to be so much easier to feel safe resting. And part of that when we have power planning. So we have the power hour, little tweaks, weekly review, part of our weekly review is training our brain to notice that we did accomplish things. If you are getting to the end of the week, and you are feeling like you got nothing done.
This, I used to be here every week that I would get to the end of the week and feel like I got nothing done at all. And I just felt so far behind. And that would put so much pressure on me. And then definitely for sure when I was feeling pressure, I could not think clearly. And then I was so overwhelmed about what should I focus on, I don’t even know what to spend my time doing. And maybe I should do this. And let’s have a look at what this person is doing. And maybe I should do that too. And it does this whole thing.
And so you just want to, to know, this is all just planning problems that can be solved, which is such a beautiful thing. And again, why I really want to invite you into PGSD, because that is the best place to be learning how to plan properly. But when we’re doing that weekly review, we are training our brain to actually notice, hey, maybe right now, my experience is that I had an unproductive week because my brain is just trained to see what didn’t get done.
But when we take that time, and we go through the process for the weekly review that’s inside PGSD, that you will see that you did do things and you will really start to again, create safety, it’s a word that’s going to come up a lot, you will feel safer resting because your brain will actually see we did do things and it’s not that okay, it’s not you know, I’m safe because I did do things and that means that I’m productive and being productive means that I’m lovable and all the things.
It’s just knowing that when you can again, trust yourself to get shit done when the time comes and to trust yourself and to know that your business time is actually adding up. Something if you are sacrificing for example time with your children or with your spouse or with your puppy or whatever to be working on your business. Then it’s just so helpful for your brain to have this time at the end of the week to see it is adding up it is working. I’m not behind. And I might be in the messy middle and figuring it out. But it is working and it is going to add up to something I’m going to get to where I want to go.
As like we perfectionist we aren’t great at celebrating ourselves. It is a practice and the weekly review really helps with that. When we’re working from an endless to do list. We don’t celebrate ourselves, we always feel behind and we don’t recognize that we are actually getting things done. So the fourth thing I want to mention is that when we are working from a to do list. We don’t have any time or any opportunity sorry to overachieve, on what we had set out to do. And we don’t have any opportunity to have an early mark, in the sense that we don’t have the ability to say, Okay, I got everything done today.
Like, if you’re working from a to do list, do you ever feel like that I got everything done, maybe once a month, you’re like, I’m insanely productive. I’m a badass, look at me go, I got everything done, and you feel amazing. But then the other 30 days of the month, you feel like you were so far behind, we want to have it be. And this is what happens when you’re planning properly, we want to have it be that you have the chance to complete everything in a day that you had set out.
Because when you’re planning properly, you are doing your planning in a way that you can actually follow through on. And this helps us achieve so much more, it might be a bit scary at first to see like, oh, there’s less here on my calendar than I have on my to do list and I want to be really productive. But to know like, that’s stuff on your to do list it wasn’t all getting done. And when you are having it in your calendar.
And when we’re making a little tweak, so just gone into this as well, just so if you’re like, What is this power planning, tell me more about it. So in detail in depth, we teach it inside PGSD. Also, I did a Planning series on how to do power planning, and what that looks like and why it’s important. So that’s from Episode 307. And it’s five parts. So 307, 308, 309, 310 and 311. So I want to point you there if you are hearing all this about power planning, like, tell me the basics, and I want to know all about it. So that’s where you can go.
So when it comes to our power planning, when we are doing our Power Hour at the beginning of the week, we are really thinking about what are our needle movers that relates to our growth goal that we have for the next 12 months and inside PGSD, we will review that goal and make sure it’s really set at the optimal level for your growth. So that will be your North Star. And that is so important.
When it comes to figuring out your needle movers what you should focus on with your time versus what you shouldn’t, that is all filtered through what your growth goal is. So you really need to have that to be planning properly. So you have your growth goal. And when you are doing your Power Hour, you are figuring out what your needle movers are, and you’re putting them in your calendar, and you’re putting them in your calendar after you schedule your commitments. And after you schedule your clean rest, then you put in your needle movers with the time that’s left over.
So instead of this mentality, like I was talking about at the beginning of the episode, where we will rest in left over time, when we are power planning, we will like do work in the leftover time that we aren’t resting. And we need to do it that way. Because if you think about for example, with budgeting and saving money, if you save what’s left over, there’s nothing left over because you’ve just spent it all. But when you first of all put away what you want to save, and then you spend the rest.
That is how you can actually save up the money. So we do the same thing when it comes to clean rest that we put aside the clean rest. Knowing that our perfectionist brain doesn’t want to have the rest. We are the people who’s like rest is not the reward. Keeping on working and being busy is what we want to keep doing. So it can feel like rest is a bit of a punishment. And we need to unlearn that. And the best way to unlearn that is to practice clean rest, and develop a relationship with it.
Where it feels safe to rest where you don’t feel like your worthiness is at risk when you are resting. So we want to be planning out our week where we are putting our commitments. So it might be family stuff, it might be maybe for working in Job, it might be that job, whatever it is, you’ve got your commitments and stuff you need to do not related to your business. And as well with that it might be maybe you have calls or different things that are already scheduled for a certain time, like anything that’s kind of set in stone.
And I also has a commitment put in like my workouts and things like that, then clean rest, then it comes to the business tasks. And the beauty of this is that because you’re actually planning in a way that you can follow through on that. And this happened. Like many days this week, I worked three days a week. So the two earlier days in this week that I had been working, where I was able to finish my day a bit early. Because I had listed out exactly what I wanted to do in that day.
It was something I could actually follow through on it would require focus, courage, all of those things. I know for me from my weekly reviews that I have the most brainpower in the morning. So in the morning, I’m doing my focus tasks. In the afternoon, I’m doing tasks where I’m checking in with my team, posting on Instagram, that kind of thing. And so I had listed out in my calendar what I needed to do the clear outcome.
So there’s no confusion at all or overwhelmed from my brain, I just know what needs to get done. And then I was able to figure out because it’s focused on the outcome, that’s what we put in the calendar. Instead of like an activity, we are focused on the result we want to have. So when you do that, you were able to have your brain come up with solutions that you wouldn’t have seen before. And do things oftentimes more quickly, and cut out a lot of busy work that way. So I was able to do that and finish earlier than I had planned.
And instead of bringing in tasks from a future day, because I don’t trust myself to be productive again, this is what happens when we’re working from a to do list. We’re like, Oh, my God, I’m so productive today. I should get more done, because I really want to capitalize on this. And that’s really our saying, I don’t trust myself to be productive later because it’s not normal for me to be productive. So I need to be super productive now.
But when you are planning properly, you can trust yourself to be productive on all of your work days, that doesn’t mean well now these productivity robots. But you can also trust that if you are, I don’t know, if you’re really struggling with energy, maybe you have a health issue, maybe something’s come up with your kids, maybe you’re just not feeling it, that you can keep your plans workable, you can make those little tweaks so that you can keep following through with your plans.
But I was able to get everything done that I had in my power planning on that day. And I was able to finish early and like really have a sense of completion, which I have every day because of power planning. But I was able to have an early mark, and my brain was able to get the reward of getting to be let off early, like let out of school early, because I did all the things that I had planned to do. And I can trust myself to be productive later.
And even though at the moment, I am planning a wedding, I have a daughter to look after, like I’ve got other things going on that I can trust, like all my I have three work days a week, I can trust that when that time comes, I’m able to do the work that I need to do to build my business to a million dollars. And I’m able to just finish early and feel safe doing that. And then in my time that I’m not working, I’m able to enjoy that. And that doesn’t mean that it’s like I never think about business. Like sometimes in my clean rest. And I’ll talk about this more in the fifth part where I talk about what I get up to my clean rest, I will be listening to business podcasts or doing things like that.
So it’s not… It doesn’t have to be this all or nothing black or white thing. But I don’t have this feeling of I should be doing more or I didn’t do enough. Because at the end of the day, I always go into my calendar, I spend a couple of minutes doing my little tweaks and making sure that everything on my calendar, like my calendar reflects what got done that day. So I will adjust things roughly speaking so that it reflects how much time it actually took me to do certain things.
That way, when I’m doing my weekly review, I can look back and I can see patterns, and I can see okay, well when I do a task and that often it takes me way longer than if I do the same task in the morning and different things like that. So it reflects what actually got done. And if I didn’t get everything done, which definitely happens at times, then I have buffer time planned in to my calendar during my work hours, so that I can drag and drop things into that buffer time. So I’m already expecting that I might have miscalculated how long something will take or how much energy I’d have or whatever.
And so I’ve added buffer time in my calendar during my power hour to account for that. And if everything gets done, I’m able to take that buffer time as rest and give myself even more rest than I had planned. But when you’re working from a to do list, it is really challenging. To feel like I got everything done. As I said, we might have one of those days once a month, 12 times a year, that is not enough. Like we need to be feeling that way every day.
We are responsible for creating that feeling for ourselves, we have the power to create that feeling for ourselves. Just imagine being able to go to bed every night feeling like I did everything I needed to do today I am on track. Like that is a feeling that we are creating. And when you are in that place, it’s so much easier to have self trust to be able to put yourself out there do the courageous things. To say no to things you want to say no to like all that different stuff.
It’s just it really creates this baseline this foundation for you to live your life the way you want to live it have your business the way you want to have it to not have stress or burnout from your business. Seep over into every area of your life, if your business is currently affecting your relationships, that you’re really stressed when you’re you know, outside of your business time and but you’re thinking like I should be working, I should be working or I’m behind on everything. Or it’s not working. I’m never gonna get there, that’s going to impact your relationships. And then that impacts your business as well. Like it just we really want to be prioritizing clean rest.
Putting that clean rest in our calendar before our needle movers. Knowing that having constraint on how long we have to get shit done is going to help us be more creative and more productive and really get our brain working and it will be able to do that our brains will be able to creatively problem solve and figure out how to achieve our goals in less time when it has had time to rest and recover and recharge. It’s got a full battery. It’s not just working at 50% 30%. We are able to really think effectively to self coach effectively to create what we want to create in as little time as possible.
When we are giving our brain the chance to have a rest, it’s also so much easier to do courageous things when your brain can see a light at the end of the tunnel and knows that arrest is coming up. But if it’s like cool, I’m going to do this courageous thing. And then she wants me to do this other courageous thing, and then this courageous thing, and then this thing and this boring, tedious thing. And like, Hell, no, I’m just gonna go scroll through Instagram. So when we have rest, we are giving our brain that break, it really wants and needs and deserves.
And that makes us so much more productive in the business, and having a clear end to your day and a clear beginning as well. So this is the other thing talking about the beginning of the day, I mean, this, all of this could be a whole different podcast episode, I could record so many about all these things that I’m talking about. But to just briefly touch on it here, that if you wake up feeling behind, you just have a planning problem, you just need to learn how to plan properly as perfectionist.
And that’s what you do inside PGSD. But really, that is the truth that when you wake up feeling like you’re already behind. That is just a sign that there are some adjustments that need to be made with your planning. That is no way to live, it’s not going to help you be more productive. And we want to have you starting your business time. Maybe that’s maybe you work. If you have a job, like I, when I was working in accounting, I would work on my business before I went to my job, I’d wake up early to do that I have like an hour.
Because I just found working at the end of the day did not work for me, my brain was just done at the end of the day of work, I had no creative energy left, maybe you are working during nap times. Or maybe you have a full day of work that you’re able to do whatever your situation is, we want to make sure that that day is beginning at a time that is best for you. When we’re working from a to do list, we’re not thinking about that we’re like, oh, I need to start taking off shit because there’s so much to do.
So when you are power planning, you will decide when your day starts, and you use your weekly review, and your little tweaks to reflect on when you work best. But for example, for myself, I have learned through power planning that I really work best when I’m doing my most intense thinking in the morning. And that I experimented for about a year with doing slow mornings, like I had heard about people, you know, you just ease into the day with this personal development routine and all of these different things.
And then kind of this is before I had Lydia and when I was working four or five days a week. And I would do you know, read a book for half an hour and meditate and workout and all these different things. And then I get started at around 11am. And that didn’t work for me. I mean, I was still doing things. But I can see, when I look back that I get so much more done and enjoy my day so much more when I get in. And I do my thinking early. And I do the courageous tasks earlier in the day.
And then I finish up ideally like 230 – 3 o’clock, I finish up and then I can do any stuff after that. And it looks a little bit different at the moment with the workdays that I have and the work setup, and things like that. But when I was when before I had Lydia, and that wasn’t a factor in it that for me, and ideal day 830 to 230, rather than 11 till six or something like that. And so you will figure out what that looks like for you. And you will if you keep saying to yourself, I’m going to start at 8:30am, and it’s 9am.
And you haven’t started your day, instead of trying to like push against that resistance to get started at 830 to just give yourself permission to start, for example, at 930. And then you can enjoy your whole morning, not feeling guilty or behind. But to just know, when 930 comes, I know exactly like my brain knows exactly what it needs to do today. And it’s within its power to do that. And there’s a light at the end of the tunnel, and I’ve got a lunch break. And it’s like it’s all set up to work in my favor.
And I can just enjoy my morning or maybe you just want to work in the evenings, whatever it is for you that you will be able to create a clear start and a clear end to your day and to give yourself the chance to feel accomplished. And which is only going to make you feel more productive and be more productive. When you feel accomplished. When you feel like you’ve got everything done that you needed to do that is going to breed productivity. And so we want to do that. And it’s just so hard to do that when you’re working from a to do list.
It’s just almost impossible to overachieve on your day, and not in the sense that I was talking about before trying to capitalize on your productivity. We don’t want to do that when we’re capitalizing on productivity. We are further solidifying the self image that we’re not someone who’s productive and when we believe we’re not someone who’s productive, we have to use willpower motivation to be productive. And this is when we’re working in spurts of motivation and it doesn’t last, we instead want to be creating this self image that of course, it’s normal for me to have a productive day. It’s so normal.
And so I don’t need to capitalize on this because it’s normal for me. So I’m just going to wrap up, I’m going to get done early. And my brain knows if we figure out a better quicker way to do this. We’ll have an early mark today. And then I can trust that especially because my brain has rested when it comes to my next period of work, I will be able to be focused and get shit done. So the fifth reason I want to mention is that when you are working from a to do list, you are not developing self trust, that you can be productive. So I’ve kind of just talked about this, actually.
But this is I just want to underline it, if you’re working in spurts of motivation if you’re stopping and starting, and if you are constantly feeling like well, I don’t know when I’ll be productive again, because I have a real procrastination problem. It’s a planning problem. But I have a real procrastination problem. So I just need to make sure I make the most of this inspiration, then it’s just a planning problem. And that is partly caused by you working from to do lists, which is going to get your perfectionist mindset working against you from the get goes. So we want to be doing power planning.
This is what I teach in depth inside PGSD. I’ve also talked about what it looks like on the podcast, so you have enough information to get started and to begin practicing with it. But again, in depth in detail, that is what we do inside PGSD, we plan properly, follow through 80% of time, rest without guilt and repeat. It is where you will get the support where you will get the full tools and everything that you need to know the community.
All the things PGSD private podcast to have you listen to the coaching call replays on the go like, it’s really about going beyond intellectual knowledge about what clean rest is like this, if you’re thinking like, this sounds good, I need more clean rest, I want to invite you in. But let’s talk about just quickly recapping the three steps of power planning and planning properly. So that is your power hour, your little tweaks and your weekly review.
So in your power hour, you are putting your needle moving tasks into your digital calendar. And your needle moving tasks are based on what your growth goal is, then we have little tweaks. So throughout the week, you are making little adjustments to your calendar. And I like to put a little checkmark emoji next to things as I go through, I get that satisfaction of ticking off a to do list. And it’s it’s even more satisfying, because to my color coded calendar.
And I just get to the end of the week when I’m doing my weekly review. And I just see all these texts because there’s no crosses. Like it’s all text because I have just updated it to reflect what actually got done and then put a tick next to it, regardless of whatever it was, even if it’s a task that took me an hour more than I had planned, I still have a tick next to it. So it’s gonna help your brain in that sense, like our brain loves accumulation, and wants to see all of these checkmarks.
So it really helps with that, you’ll still get the satisfaction of the checkmark when you are power planning. And we want to have your little tweaks. You are constantly updating your calendar so that you never fall behind on it. And as I mentioned, you have things like buffer time in your calendar, so that you can drag and drop things and change them around. This is why we use a digital calendar as well as opposed to a paper planner.
Paper planners are beautiful, and I love the idea of them. But it is really hard, especially if you’re a perfectionist and you don’t like things looking messy, that you want to be able to change your plans and be really specific and detailed about things which often in paper planner, there’s not enough space to be as specific as you need to or to like reject the order of tasks or to slide something to the next day or drop it into the next week, things like that.
So we want to be working from your digital calendar, making those little adjustments so that you’re never falling behind. And then when it comes to your weekly review, that is when you are reflecting on the week you are looking at what you’ve got to accomplish your aha moments, your realizations, what isn’t working, what have you been avoiding what your masts are like all of that kind of thing.
And you are then especially when you are making the three month commitment to power planning and you are practicing power planning, I’m really seeing it as a practice that over time especially like once you get to be more than four weeks into it, you will begin to see patterns and in the next episode I’m going to be talking about some of the patterns to look out for and how to plan out your clean rest and what that’s going to look like for you.
So definitely tune in to the next episode if you want to hear more about that. But your weekly review is a very important part of planning properly when we have our perfectionism handbrake on. We don’t like to evaluate because we can be so cruel to ourselves and shame ourselves so badly that we really just kind of scared to look at what the week was like in case we find out that it was a total shitshow.
And the beautiful thing that always happened and I love seeing this. So in PGSD, we have the persistence log section in the PGSD forum, which is where you can post your, your weekly review and your updates and the highs and the lows and everything in between. And so many times each entry in the persistence log will say, I really don’t want to be doing this Weekly Review, but I’m going to do it anyway. And I just don’t feel like I get anything done.
But I’m just going to trust it and do it. And then by the end of it, they’re like, Okay, I realize I actually had an incredible week. And here are my lessons from the week and I’m feeling so empowered for next week. And it’s just the power of having a chance to reflect and it really helps us to develop that growth mindset and to be willing to evaluate without having to mean something about ourselves if we see something that we don’t like or that we know better than to be doing. So that’s a little overview again, of power planning how to plan properly as a perfectionist clean rest is a very important part of planning properly.
If you aren’t putting clean rest in your calendar, you are not planning properly so anyway, I’m gonna wrap this episode up. The next one is going to be on tips to help you plan out your clean rest, how much you should be getting. In the episode after that we are going to be sharing a coaching call that was inside PGSD that’s going to help you understand what counts as clean rest and what doesn’t. I eat this clean rest need to feel recharging and do need to feel energized after it for to counts that need to be completely free of guilt for it to count like that kind of thing. And the fifth episode in this series I’m going to talk about what I get up to when I’m taking clean rest and how my clean rest practice has evolved.
So I hope you have found this episode helpful. I know that I have shared a lot in this episode. Know that if you want to learn all the steps of how planning you want to set your growth goal you want to be planning properly getting the clean rest PGSD is the best place to do that.
So I want to invite you in when the doors open they will be open at 6am New York time on the 27th of July and they will close at 11:59pm New York time on the second of August. Samlaurabrown.com/pgsd is where you can go to find out more information to join the waitlist and when the doors open to sign up and join us. So I hope you are having a beautiful day and I will talk to you in the next episode.