![Episode 346: [CLEAN REST SERIES] Practical Advice To Help You Plan Out + Honour Your Clean Rest](https://samlaurabrown.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/Ep-346-blog.jpg)
In the previous episode of my clean rest series, I talked about how working from a to-do list makes it hard to get clean rest.
So what should you do instead?
Where does clean rest go in your calendar and how much of it do you need?
And how do you rest when you’ve planned, so you honour your rest?
I answer these questions and give you practical advice in today’s episode. If you’re wondering how to plan out your clean rest properly each week, listen in.
In This Episode You’ll Learn:
- How to plan out your clean rest properly each week
- Where clean rest is scheduled in your calendar
- How much clean rest you need
- How to honour your clean rest
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
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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 third part in a five part series on clean rest, clean rest is when you are resting without guilt. It is intentional nonbusiness time, and it is the third step in the PGSD process. The PGSD process is the practical process for getting into a growth mindset and getting out of your own way in your business. It includes planning properly as a perfectionist, that’s your growth goal and your power planning. And that includes planning clean rest in your power planning as well. Following through with your plans, 80% of the time, resting without guilt and repeating that.
So when you are doing that you will be getting out of your own way. And in this episode, I’m going to be talking specifically about tips to help you plan out your clean rest. So what that looks like in terms of your Power Hour, your little tweaks and your weekly review. Those are the three steps of power planning. I teach power planning in depth inside PGSD, if you can relate to and resonate with what I talk about on this podcast, I invite you to join us in PGSD and do this work.
So you don’t just intellectually understand these ideas, but you are living them and benefiting from them in your business and in your life as well. So the doors to PGSD will 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 to find out more about PGSD, to sign up for the waitlist and to join when the doors do open, you can go to samlaurabrown.com/pgsd, I will leave a link for you in the show notes.
So let’s chat through you’re planning out your clean rest and how much clean rest you should be getting. So in this series already, we’ve talked about what clean rest is why it’s so important in the second episode in the series, that was episode 345. I talked about why it is so hard to get clean rest when you are working from a to do list and why we want to be power planning. And following that specific process power our, little tweaks, weekly review to be working from our digital calendar in a way that gets our perfectionist mindset on our side.
So it is working for us. Instead of against us. If you have a follow through problem if you are working in spurts of motivation, and stopping and starting if you have burning out if you feel like you are so busy and you don’t have enough time, but at the same time you feel like you’re not getting anything done, then you just have a planning problem.
And anyone can learn how to plan properly as a perfectionist. So in this episode, I’m going to be talking about a few things planning related when it comes to clean rest that are going to help you get as much clean rest as you can get the highest quality clean rest, and also get clues as to when to schedule clean rest what that looks like for you because it is not a cookie cutter template.
So if you don’t know already, when it comes to power planning and planning out your week, we don’t tell you what to put in your calendar in the center, we don’t say you know, you should be spending x amount of time doing this certain kind of task and then time on this other task and you need to get this many hours of clean rest. We don’t tell you that because really power planning and your growth goal as well, because that’s an all star for at all and is what helps you figure out your needle movers. The power planning is a tool to better understand yourself and work in a way that works best for you.
So if you love any other modalities or different ideas around productivity, so say for example, Human Design and things like that, that this is such a practical tool to really help you to figure out and honor how you work best how you rest best, how you show up best and to really lean into that, instead of so many of us are trying to work against what works best for us and people who work best in the evenings are trying to wake up at 5am and people who do super well in the mornings that are trying to have a slow morning. And really when you are power planning you’re planning properly. It is about planning in a way that gets your perfectionist mindset on your side and specifically works for you.
And so everyone’s going to have a different amount of clean rest in their calendar, and they’re gonna have it at different times, it looks different as well, depending on what stage of life that you’re in. So in the fifth part of this series, I’m going to be chatting more about my experiences with clean rest and how that’s evolved. But, for example, at this point in time, I have a one year old daughter, my clean rest and like how much time I have not to work on my business is very different to when I was full time in my business, and I was pregnant.
And it’s different again to when I was full time in my business before I was pregnant. And it’s different again to when I was working part time as a hospital receptionist while building my business. And it’s different again to when I was working as an accountant full time in building my business. So it’s just knowing that you are going to have different seasons, and different stages of life.
And that’s such a beautiful thing. And we don’t want to feel like, well, I can’t plan because my life is constantly evolving, or because I have disruptions and uncertainty in my week or things like that, it’s really about understanding that we can plan for those things. And create, for example, if you have distractions, or a lot of uncertainty anywhere, you can use something like buffer time to create pockets of time that you can shuffle tasks into and different things like that there are lots of practical things you can do.
So that you are able to plan in a way that really truly works for you, and for your lifestyle and for your goals that you have. And that includes not just your goals for your business. But what you want to do in terms of how much time you want to spend with your family, or you want to spend doing hobbies. Maybe right now, like I don’t even know what hobbies I like doing.
Because you don’t do anything except work in your business, I feel bad that you’re not working in your business. So clean rest is a beautiful container for being able to figure that out. And again, it is really about what works for you. And as well. And this is I love all of this. I mean, of course I love all this stuff. But one of the reasons particularly that I love this work and this process for creating a growth mindset, when you are planning properly and following through and resting without guilt.
Each of those three things helps you to build self trust. And when you have more self trust, when you are able to trust yourself to make decisions when you’re able to trust yourself to put yourself back together no matter how you’re feeling. And to be able to pop out on the other side of that when you trust yourself to be able to rest when you trust yourself to be able to do new things and to put yourself out there and to be with yourself and not beat yourself up.
Your life changes in untold ways. It’s just incredible. Once you have that foundation that I’ve have my own back, and I am my biggest cheerleader, as cheesy as that sounds that I am supporting me. And I am here for me that that is when business gets so fun, and life gets so much more enjoyable. And it just creates this like hum underneath it all instead of having this hum this background hum of inadequacy and that we’re not doing a good enough job. And we’re behind.
And we’re not measuring up that we instead replace it with this level of self trust and this new kind of hum of sufficiency and confidence and committedness and determination, and curiosity and gratitude and so many other incredible things. So when we are doing all of this work, we are creating self trust, and that is it’s just going to flow over everywhere how you do one thing is how you do everything. So I love that when we are doing this work specifically on our business and using our business as our tool to release our perfectionism handbrake.
And within that using power planning, the growth goal and all of that, that those benefits are going to flow over to everywhere else as well. This is why I teach that you have your growth goal, which is your 12 month revenue goal for your business. We teach how to set that inside PGSD, we review it for you. And we can coach you on that if you’re feeling like you don’t know what your goal should be. The PGSD coaching calls, we will help you with that. So you have that growth goal.
And when you have that you are then able to really have this incredible container to develop self trust, get out of your own way to practice all of these things that help you to be in the growth mindset and to be not burning out. Not feeling behind all those beautiful things. So let’s talk about how to plan out your week when it comes to clean rest. And specifically I want to chat through the power hour little tweak send weekly review for each stage of power planning, what you are going to be needing to do as it relates to clean rest, this is not exhaustive.
But this is just enough to give you something to work with as you are practicing power planning and getting more clean rest, again want to invite you into PGSD to really learn this in depth and be practicing this and embodying this and living this. So let’s talk about your power hour as it relates to clean rest. Knowing that clean rice is intentional non business time, we’re deciding we’re not allowed to work on the business.
And we’re also immune to follow through with clean rest 80% of the time. So we’re not focusing on having to follow through with every single clean rest plan that we make. And we’re not focusing on that clean rest time having to be completely guilt free, and unproductive or anything like that it’s just think about it for now is it’s time that you’re not working on the business. And you’re deciding that ahead of time. So it’s super easy not feel guilty about it. So let’s talk about your power hour.
So this is when you are deciding and determining what your needle movers are for your business, your growth goal will help you with that. And then you’re putting your needle movers into your digital calendar. And so when we are doing that we have first of all putting in our commitments, then we are putting in our… What am I saying? Our clean rest, and then we are putting in our needle movers. So I wanted to mention that you need to make sure you’re doing it in that order.
And then once you’ve got all of that in your calendar, then you’re going to review for contingency plans, you are going to anticipate and overcome ahead of time productivity obstacles, and you are going to review workability and commit to what is in your calendar. Super important. I’ll talk about that in a minute. But clean rest goes in before your business tasks. So you are deciding ahead of time how much clean rest you are going to get. And in the beginning, especially, you’re really just going to be guessing.
And this is why we power planning, we make the three month commitment, because it’s going to take you a minute to really start to get into a groove with power planning. We don’t want to be in this perfectionist mindset about it that we need to be good at it from day one. Instead, when we have this container of the three month commitment. It just creates more room for experimentation and really understanding that it is a process to learn in the sense that initially, you might be really focused on trying to figure out what your needle movers are.
And then once you’ve got that down, then you might be looking at making sure you have contingency plans like it’s going to come in layers, and we help you with that inside PGSD. So when it comes to this clean rest, we want to make sure that it is going in your calendar. And again, it is just gonna be a guess. But as it relates to this, I want to say to have more clean rest in your calendar than what you are comfortable with. Because it really helps to have constraint around your business time.
And this might seem kind of trippy to you, if you feel like you don’t have enough time to get everything you done. Which by the way is just because you haven’t been planning properly, that it has been easy to have that belief and stay in that belief. And to stay in that overwhelming. There’s that whole addiction to feeling behind that comes in. But when we are constrained in terms of how many hours we have to work on the business, it really helps us to figure out and have to get clear on what the needle movers are.
Because when we have so much time like when we have all the time in the day, and every day of the week, which I know a lot of us fantasize about, myself included at times. I’m like, Oh, I just need more time. And I’m like, no, no, I just need to think about it at a higher level, I don’t need more time. But it can be so programmed into us this belief that we need more time to get more done, instead of thinking about the outcomes we want to create.
And to recognize that the more rest we get, the more creative our brain can be at really getting the results we want and creating what we want to create in the world in the most effective, efficient, powerful way possible. But when we have that constraint there, whether it’s forced upon us or whether we create some of that ourselves, but either way, owning that like not being a victim of, oh, I only have this amount of time to work per week. I mean, I can tell you I was that I was like, especially when I was working full time.
I was like if I could just be like these full time business owners, I would be so successful. Then once I left that full time job and I wasn’t successful, I just did so much procrasti-working, because it felt so uncomfortable to have all this time and to not really know what to do with it. That I just spent my time doing a whole lot of busy work. Pinterest related for me at the time and it was just so obvious to me when that happened like oh, it really was lack of time was never the problem. But I really wanted it to be.
I really like I was in a lot of self pity about that. And so I just want to encourage you, regardless of whether you have constraints in your time relating to a job relating to children relating to a health issue, whatever else it might be, that you reframe that constraint to be something that is going to help you be more productive. And I know that when you are constrained with your time and you’re not planning properly, and maybe you’re doing time blocking, or you’re working from a to do list, that it feels very stressful because you can’t trust yourself to do what needs to be done.
You don’t even know what’s important. You feel so overwhelmed that you don’t know where to start. So you don’t do anything at all, but then you just need to do something. So you pick anything and you do that kind of 80% jump from task to task task. Get to the end of the week and feel like you’re exhausted. You’ve got nothing done. Just a planning problem. Again, it’s just a planning problem and that can be solved. Anyone can learn how to plan properly as a perfectionist.
But when we are in that cycle, when we are really feeling like we are a victim to what’s going on around us, and we don’t have enough time to get everything done, we just, we just really don’t have enough time, I just want to invite you to consider that maybe that’s the best thing that’s ever happened for your business. And that however much time you have, you can always use that time better. And not in the sense of we need to use it perfectly and all that pressure. But to just really understand that what you do in your business time is so much more important than how much business time you have.
And when you are power planning, especially once you have been practicing that for a period of months, that like I know for me in three work days per week. And some of those work days I have had a very rough night before with multiple night feeds and things like that going on. And I’m not feeling motivated or energize it with three work days per week, I am getting so much more done, than when I was working five full time days per week in my business just because of how my power planning practice has continued to improve.
And when I was doing that a couple of years ago, I was getting so much more done. So oh my god, it’s insane how much was getting done when I first started power planning, compared with when I was working from these to do lists or when I was time blocking my calendar in this overbearing like horrible way that I just constantly fell behind. And I would never be able to stick to it for more than a couple of days.
Because it just like even a robot probably couldn’t follow through with the plans that I had in my calendar. I tried, I really tried. And I would get myself up on a Monday morning to be so motivated. And I couldn’t get myself to do it. And it was just a planning problem. So we want to own the constraints that we have, we also want to create some of those for ourselves. And to have a clear start and a clear end to the day. So you’re going to be doing that when you’re doing your Power Hour.
Because you’ve got your clean rest in there. First, again, we’re just guessing how much clean rest and through the process of your little tweaks in your weekly review, you will really start to figure out when to put your clean rest how much clean rest to include in your calendar, some signs that you might need a bit more clean rest and different things like that, how to know when to rest and when to push through and do the things because sometimes you might put clean rest in your buffer time.
Other times, you might decide, hey, actually, I do just really need to get this shit done. And I’m going to do that. And I’m going to do it instead of the rest, which we don’t want to default to doing that I know we love thinking about, Oh, cool, just rest once everything’s done, I talked in the last episode about why we don’t want to do that, it is not going to help you to create the most successful business that you can. And it’s not going to help you enjoy the journey either.
So we have the constraints, and we want to have more clean rest, then we are comfortable with and to just if you need to hear this, to sit in the possibility that rest is a productive activity. And the more you rest, the more productive you will be when the time comes to be productive. And the more you will be able to trust yourself to be productive. So lack of time won’t feel like a problem. Because you know that when the time comes to get shit done, you can do it. But when we have constraints on our time, it feels so stressful when we don’t trust ourselves to be able to do the thing.
So like I don’t have enough time. And I don’t even know that when the time comes like I might just sit there and scroll through Instagram. So of course it’s stressful if you’re feeling like that. So when we’re planning properly, it really helps us all that and we want to be owning the power of constraints and creating constraint for ourselves in terms of how much business time we have with clean rest.
Knowing that clean rest is a productive business activity, like if you need to frame it that way, because it is true that that’s what it is, then frame it that way for yourself. So what I want you to also be thinking about in your Power Hour, is that you are thinking about what time of day you naturally rest slash procrastinate. Because a lot of times we’re procrastinating, especially the mindless kind when we’re scrolling and that kind of thing, though also when we’re doing busy work.
And we’re just kind of slipping into the easy tasks where we can just go through the motions or we’re doing a lot of behind the scenes stuff, not really doing things that can be seen by others. I want you to be thinking about what time of day you naturally tend to feel a bit of wane in your energy that you find it harder to think. Or conversely you can think about when do you find it that you’re most switched on in the day.
When do you find it easiest to get things done when you tend to have your best ideas. Again, little tweaks in your weekly review or tools within Power planning that are going to help you really see that on your calendar and really be in touch with that it might be if you’ve been one working from a to do list or time blocking, or different things like that, then it might be really hard to answer that question. But you probably have a hunch. So when you begin power planning, you just want to go with that hunch, and then we experiment, we test, we will review. So I want you to think about what time of day you naturally tend to rest, especially.
So for me, just to share some examples. For me, I tend to around like mid afternoon, that’s not what I want to be doing my most courageous, highest level of thinking needed tasks, my I can do it, I can do it. And this has been for a lot of us, right? Like, we can do it at any time of day. But when is it easiest for you to do it? And when is it most challenging for your brain and like, let’s actually use that to our advantage if we can, if our other commitments that we have in our life allows for that, like, let’s actually make a schedule, not just one that sounds great on YouTube of like, you know, wake up at 5am. Like, that might be amazing for you.
I personally find it very well, when I have an early morning starred, a lot of people don’t. And so it’s really about figuring out what works best for you, again, using power planning as a tool to figure that out, and to learn that about yourself. But for example, if you’re like me, and you find mid afternoon, not your most productive time of day, then you want to be looking at okay, what can I do creatively think here, like, how could I possibly structure my day, if there were no rules about what time of day I could work.
And yes, I have whatever commitments I have going on through maybe. And I just wanted to speak as perfectionism people, please, I just want to mention this, it might be that you do have a bit more flexibility with your commitments than you were thinking. And maybe you just need to have a couple of uncomfortable conversations with other people in order to have your schedule be what you really want it to be.
And that may be you need to be willing to have the thought error that you are selfish, or different things like that, to be willing to be uncomfortable, so that you can really work in a way that’s serving you and your business best and therefore serving your family and everyone you interact with best that sometimes it is like the schedule that we think is totally out of reach is available to us if we are willing to get uncomfortable and have certain conversations or if we’re willing to be inconvenienced sometimes and do things at a time that we feel like is inconvenient to us.
So for example, maybe there’s a coaching call that you want to be on. And it’s not at a perfectly convenient time for you, but you really want to be there. So being willing to be a person who is going to show up no matter what, and who is willing to be inconvenienced who doesn’t just only do things when it is convenient for them. So I just want to offer that, that maybe there’s a couple of conversations you need to have, maybe there’s a conversation you need to have with yourself.
That can tend to be the case, I’ve been able to do that both of those things, many times. And it is so incredible as well, like, this is a side note for now. But I will just briefly mention that, especially when I went full time in my business. And initially when I went part time to part time working part time business and then to full time business, that I really had to learn how to say no, because everyone suddenly thought that I was free at all times of day. And of course they did because when they asked if I was free for coffee in the middle of the day, I would say yes.
And I would kind of behind the scenes, trying to orchestrate my plan so that I could do what worked for them. And a lot of the time I didn’t even ask if there was another option. They would just suggest a time and and it could work for me because I didn’t have any other plans. And so I would just say yes. And then I would inconvenience myself. And it was so powerful when I just started to actually say I do have plans because plans with yourself a plan. So I have plans. And would this time work for you. And like nine times out of 10 that time would work for them, like the time that actually suited me.
And sometimes it wouldn’t. And I just had to get comfortable with saying actually I can’t do that time I’m working. Like I’m what I’m the boss. And I’m saying I’m working and I’m not going to change that. And how about this, like, you know, maybe we wait a couple of weeks and then we catch up. And that was life changing. So I just want to share that in case it’s helpful for you. So have more clean rest than you feel comfortable with. And finally about the power hour I want to say commit to your clean rest.
So this is the final thing we do in our power hour after we have gotten everything out of our brain how to look at it figured out what’s important, what isn’t what we’re going to do this week, what we’re giving ourselves permission not to do this week so you’ll have needle movers and you might have more needle movers and you have time for in the week. The goal is not to fit all of your needle movers into your calendar. The goal is to stop overestimating what you need to do because we so often overestimate and have so many shoulds that don’t even need to be on there at all.
So the goal is never to get all that To Do list into the calendar, so you are going through this whole process in your Power Hour again full details inside PGSD. You go into that you’ve got your commitments in there, then you clean rest, then you’re what am I trying to say… your needle movers. And then after that you are not just stopping there because a lot of times we want to stop there. And we think cool, pretty calendar looks good.
But no, we are going to review for workability, we’re going to think, Okay, what’s going to happen if something comes up this week, have I got buffer time in there? Do I need a bit more of that, like thinking through those contingency plans, the obstacles that might come up reviewing workability like mentally taking yourself to each morning in the week, this is why the power hour can be tedious, it is the best hour you will spend in your week. Because after that your brains done all the heavy lifting, and it can just follow through and be the good little employee. So this is our boss time that we are making those decisions.
And we’re like tapping into our future self who gets to the goal and all the things and so you’re mentally zooming in each morning and looking at your calendar and thinking okay, if that was today, what how would I be feeling about today? What’s coming up? Have I got enough time to eat? Have I got enough time if I’m commuting somewhere, like have I given myself a minute when I get home to go and pat my dog and say hi to my husband and whatever like to actually like mentally zoom forward. So to do all of that, and then we want to commit to it. And again, once we’ve done the planning for the week, we’re focused on 80% follow through, it’s not like 100% follow through is what we’re aiming for.
We’re going to be making little tweaks we’re expecting like this is the beauty of little tweaks, we are expecting that we’re not going to follow through on 100% of things. And so it gives us permission not to feel ashamed about it that we don’t have to beat ourselves up for not being perfect at following through, we can just be like, Oh yeah, I’m aiming for 80% roughly speaking, like we don’t calculate that in any particular way. It’s just aiming for 80%.
And I’m just constantly updating and I’m that’s giving ourselves room for being a human and knowing that sometimes our brain is going to overthink things and we’re going to have that perfectionism handbrake on and other times something unexpected is going to come up or something’s gonna take like we didn’t realize how big a task was, and all that different stuff that we are able to be compassionate with ourselves about that. And then resting without guilt and repeating. But when it comes to the follow through that we are not like but can this is the thing. It’s like the parts of it, like we want to be committed 100%.
And if we can’t be committed 100% of the calendar, we want to make those adjustments. So we’re creating plans we can actually follow through on. And then when it comes to the follow through. Yes, we’re committed. And knowing that if I committed 100%, then we’re probably going to follow through about 80% of the time because we’re human and there’s stuff going on in our life that comes up that we can expect and all the things we have emotions, all of that.
So we want to be 100% committed and you need to underline this in your mind, commit to the clean rest. So it’s not okay, well I rested these times if I get everything done, when you are committing to what’s in your calendar, it’s not just committing to the needle movers, you are committing to the clean ewar I like to instead of just having blank time in my calendar, I personally and some PGSDers do this differently.
And it’s totally about what it looks like for you. I love seeing all of our different calendars and seen how they look different based on our different personalities and what we like to do. And so I use iCal other people in PGSD use iCal others use Google Calendar, it’s one of the two so when we are doing our clean rest, we can apply to everyone but I personally like to actually add a chunk in my calendar for clean rest so that I physically when I’m doing my little tweaks if I have eaten into any clean rest time.
I physically need to move that on my calendar so that it’s a little alarm bell for me of I have changed this clean rest and or I’m about to eat into my clean rest time and is do I like my reasons for that. And so I like to have it be on my calendar. And so my calendar looks full, but a lot of it is clean rest and you know on iCal, you can unclick certain views.
And so I can just unclick the clean rest if I want to or whatever and just have things condensed down by I would encourage you to put the chunks of time in for clean rest and it’s going to make it easier to just then have these gaps that you put your needle movers in. But we want to be committed to the clean rest as much if not more than we are to the needle movers. Your clean rest is a productive business task. And because we perfectionist love being productive, and we don’t see rest as productive, and we just want to be busy all the time.
And we like to do procrasti-working and do things that don’t really matter because then we get to feel productive without feeling vulnerable and without having to risk feeling ashamed and all of that kind of thing. That for us missing out on rest is not the punishment. Missing out are on getting to do something productive business related is the punishment. So it’s so helpful sometimes to just let yourself feel the consequence of if you are procrastinating and zero procrastination is not the goal. So it’s not a problem.
If that was happening, you will definitely procrastinate less once you are planning properly. But at the same time, if you are procrastinating instead of then, okay, well, now I need to get you know, work late because I didn’t get stuff done. It’s no, you need to rest. And so now you need to experience a consequence of not having that done. Or you need to tweak your calendar so that you still have that clean rest. And then you know, you’re moving these tasks, your other work periods, maybe into buffer time or things like that.
But to let yourself not do the work stuff, I know that might feel scary, but trust me, it’s it’s such a great productivity hack, to let yourself feel the consequence of procrastinating because when we’re in this mentality of well, I’ll rest once everything’s done, then our brain, again, is not getting rest. So it procrastinates as a form of rest, because it wants a break. And we’re not giving it to it. So it’s like, okay, I got to procrastinate or burn myself out or feel overwhelmed or something. So I can just have a minute, then like, Okay, well, I need to work late, or I need to work on the weekend, so I can get it all done.
And then we never experience the consequence of not having gotten it done. So it just reaffirms that pattern. But instead, if you honor your clean rest, then when you are in your business time, you’re like, Well, I know that I can’t work back late. So I’m just gonna get it done. And then it’s easy to get it done. Because your brain knows a break is coming as well. So it goes both ways. So want to commit to the clean rest. Now we’re going to talk about little tweaks.
So when you’re doing your little tweaks, so these are just your little updates in your calendar, you will be paying attention to when you were eating into clean rest times, as I mentioned, you can have clean rest as chunks in your calendar. And for mine, I don’t label I’ll talk about this more. And I talk about what I get up to my clean rest. But I don’t label like all the different clean rest activities, I might have a commitment in there that maybe involves someone else or different kinds of things. Or maybe there’s something.
So for example, a commitment I have at the moment is wedding planning. And so that’ll be in my calendar. But typically my clean rest non business time. I don’t tend to like write out what I’m going to be doing or anything like that. It’s just like time where I can just do what I feel like doing in the moment kind of thing. A lot of the time in my non business time. I’ll be looking after Lydia, and different things like that. But it is I just want to mention that that I’m like super structured and very detailed with my business time. And then my clean rest time is when my brain can have a break from that structure.
And can really just kind of go with the flow, not that with power planning, you can definitely go with the flow and like, change up your day and shuffle things around. And I love that you have the ability to like have structure with flexibility as well. So we want to be anyway paying attention to when we’re eating into our clean rest time. And just taking note of it. And then in the weekly review, as well, we will be reviewing that. So I’ll talk about that in a minute.
But paying attention, just checking in with myself, do I like my reasons for this? Fast forward to your future self, would your future self say to rest, or would your future self say, to get the thing done. So that can really help as well to just be a question that helps you access what is in your highest good, because in the moment, like no one does need to do the thing, it’s really important.
And when we zoom forward to maybe it’s your future self, at the end of the week, who’s reflecting for you think about your future self, at the end of the year, they might be like, you just need to rest, it’s all going to be okay, just this, the rest is what you need. And there might be other times less often than we think that our future self is like just do the thing, this is going to be the best thing for you. So listen to your wisdom on that. Remembering clean rest is a productive task.
And with a little tweaks when I update our calendar to reflect what happened, so that you can see how much clean rest you are getting. So this is going to be rough in terms of like when I’m updating my calendar, do my little tweaks, it doesn’t reflect exactly to the minute like if you’ve use iCal or Google Calendar, you know, like, it’s things are kind of in 15 minute chunks. And even if you have a lot of 15 minute chunks, it gets messy. So I kind of like to do things in 30 minute chunks. So it’s not going to be exactly to the minute but it’s good enough, it’s more helpful than a to do list.
And definitely, it’s very hard to do any kind of productive evaluation on your week, when you’re just looking at this long to do list that wasn’t very well thought out or considered was just kind of written with this wish list mentality. So you want to update your calendar. As I said, I like to use a little checkmark emoji, and to update it to reflect roughly speaking, what got completed in that time. So that now let’s talk about the weekly review, when I get to my weekly review, I am able to compare a screenshot of my calendar at the end of the week, versus a screenshot of my calendar after I did my Power Hour.
And I can see the difference is it’s always different. Always, always, always, always, I don’t think there’s ever been a single week where it has looked the same. And that’s part of it, we have little tweaks for a reason. It’s not that you didn’t follow through and you should have it’s part of the process. So I like to get the next to each other. And then I just like to compare and see what they did like, what did I think I was going to do that week versus what I actually did? When did I end up pressing.
And this is when you really get close to like, for example, a lot of the stuff I figured out about how I work best is I can constantly see and especially over time, when you do more and more and more weekly reviews, that you will see a pattern of okay, at three o’clock in the afternoon, I am really dragging my feet like any task that I have in that time, it takes way longer than I had originally planned in my power hour. So maybe that’s a time a cue to me that I’m either not getting enough clean rest overall, or that I’m putting in a, you know, the task in that time period needs to be something that doesn’t require as much mental energy.
So for me, I have tasks like checking in with the team and things like that in the afternoon. Rather than this not 100% of the time, like right now it’s late afternoon, I’m recording a podcast. But generally speaking, I don’t do podcasts in the afternoon, I do them in the morning. And so it could be that okay, well, next week, I’m going to experiment with doing that kind of task in the morning and see what that looks like. And I might still want to be working at that time of day.
But I’m going to do a different kind of task, I’m going to group these tasks together, like we’re just creating a hypothesis and testing it and then with our weekly review being able to reflect and evaluate effectively. So you want to be looking for trends for patterns, to be getting clues. So that this is I love how it just compounds. So when you do your weekly review and you go into your next Power Hour, which could be immediately after weekly review, it could be on a different day. So I like to do at the moment I do my weekly review.
And then I immediately do my power hour after typically at the moment on a Sunday. There are other PGSDers who like to do their weekly review and then definitely get a night’s sleep on it and then do their power hour a different day, like this week as well. I didn’t I did, I think my weekly review on Saturday, and then I did my Power Hour on Tuesday. Like sometimes that happens. It’s completely okay. And so it’s just knowing that it’s a really flexible process.
And it’s designed to serve you and for us not to use it against ourselves. So you want to look for the patterns, the trends, when were you your most productive. When were you doing busy work? When were you scrolling? So if I end up like scrolling or you’re doing whatever. I don’t tend to write like procrastination in my calendar, I just would write like clean rest, in the sense that it’s like I’m not doing business stuff.
Or if I’m like procrastinating within doing a certain task, I’ll extend out how long that task is. So I can see that it took me longer. That’s typically what I’ll tend to unless I like, go down a rabbit hole related to no task in particular. Then I put that as clean rest. And I just know that that’s my brain. Like I can know when I look back at my calendar, and I see like I had to clean rest at 2pm. On a workday, I know what’s going on there.
So it’s just about whatever helps you and also as well, what you might like to do, is if you like using emojis, for example, you could just put an emoji if you procrastinated, for example, you were scrolling through Instagram, just using an example you probably can’t relate. But you might want to put like, I don’t know, a little phone emoji or something in there so that when you’re doing your weekly review, you can look back and see like, Okay, I could see I was like on my phone and you might be able to see, okay, I keep in the afternoon scrolling. Maybe I need more clean rest, maybe I actually need to give myself a lunch break.
Like lately, I’ve been giving myself an hour lunch break, even though I feel like I don’t have enough time is and I really went through it is a wake up letter. I find that when I have an hour lunch break, and I can really just put on some YouTube like random vlogs and whatever I just like mindless YouTube and enjoy my lunch. And if Stephen, Lydia are home to enjoy being with them, otherwise, I’m pumped. And I just like hanging out and I’m not in a rush. It’s just so good. Other times I’ve been working out at lunchtime, and like I’m always experimenting with my work week.
And so it can just really help to see like, Okay, I actually need to give myself a lunch break and not expect myself to eat at my desk, while watching like a video of a marketing program. Like if that’s you, you need some clean rest, and that is not clean rest. So what else was gonna say? Okay, so look for patterns, play around with it. And what we want to be doing as well, when we are doing our weekly review is connecting productivity and like being focused with clean rest to make sure your brain is noticing the connection between those two.
And that seeing that like if you’re not being productive, to have your brain going, okay, am I getting clean rest to have a look at that, to investigate that. And when you are being productive to really see like what clean rest was supporting this productivity? What time was I starting my day? What time was I ended my day? What did the week before that look like? How did I really set myself up to be so focused? And you will really just start to get to know yourself so well when you’re doing all of this. And also with your weekly review.
Be compassionate with yourself. If you’re not getting as much clean rest as you think you should be. We perfectionist love to get it right. And we think there’s these rules about what is right when it comes to clean rest. And when it comes to planning properly as a perfectionist, that doesn’t mean like here are the rules and you have to follow the rules and do it right and there’s a wrong way to do it. Planning properly just means that you are planning in a way that get to a perfectionist mindset on your side.
And power planning is a container to help you do that. But that’s going to look different for every season of life that you’re in. Everyone is going to have different look in power planning. It depends what kind of business you have. If you have children, if you’ve got other stuff going on your life like it’s really a tool for self trust, self compassion, self confidence, self image, like getting into the growth mindset, releasing that perfectionism handbrake, getting all the overwhelming, feeling behind, the procrastination and the burnout.
And to know that being compassionate with yourself, and also giving yourself a little loving kick in the pants when you need to sometimes in your weekly review is going to help you do that being a bitch to yourself isn’t how to get yourself into a growth mindset just in case, you needed a little reminder that it is safe to be kind to yourself. You’re not going to be unproductive if you don’t beat yourself up.
So those are some tips in terms of how to plan out your clean rest. And just to reiterate in terms of how much you should be getting, I know you want to hit the right amount of clean rest to get. It’s going to depend on you your preferences for your life and your lifestyle, your business, your energy levels at different times of day. Do you have children? Do you have health stuff going on? What are your priorities outside of your business? What order priority is your business within those? Like there’s a lot of different things going on there.
And so this is why it really helps you to build self trust, to have the trust to decide how much clean rest you’re going to experiment with as again as a rule of thumb I recommend a little more than you’re comfortable with. Create especially if you feel like you don’t have enough time for clean rest, that’s when you know you need it. So add a little more than you’re comfortable with. And then what you’re going to do is you are going to be really experimenting with that, and knowing that it’s not like you’ll ever get to this right amount, like, as I said, it’s gonna keep changing and evolving.
And you will eventually start to get a feel for like, Okay, I my workday at the moment in this season of life, this stage of my business, I like working, you know, these hours or this hour of this day. And that’s working for me, and then your weekly review, like, you can trust that because in your weekly review, you’re going to get the insights you need as to when to change that. And so that’s why we don’t say like, here’s exactly what your calendar should look like.
And you need to have this much rest and this much time in your business. And, you know, this much time working out and you need to wake up at this time of day, like my business is going to look so different to your business, even if you’re a coach as well, which there’s a good chance you’re not in PGSD, we help all kinds of entrepreneurs, we help artists, real estate agents, graphic designers, stylists, like you name it, every kind of entrepreneur is in PGSD.
I have a dog, I have a house that I’m decorating our house that we moved into at the end of last year, I’m still working on that I have a one year old daughter, I have currently the point of time of recording this, I have a wedding that I’m planning like, it doesn’t help you for me to say here’s what’s in my power planning, you need to have the same setup. Power planning is a tool and clean rest is part of that, to help you really figure out what works best for you.
And I love that no one can tell you the answer to what should be in there because it forces you to trust your own wisdom on that and to figure that out. And if you are someone who does a lot of procrasti-learning, and you are often looking outwards for the answer before you look inwards, this is going to be a really great tool to help you. And also I want to mention just on that note, on procrasti-learning that if you’re thinking I want to be in PGSD. This sounds amazing.
I want to plan properly, I want to be getting out of my own way. But I have so many things I need to do on like how am I going to have time to learn all of this. A like in PGSD, it’s not like learn all of this situation. It’s called a perfectionist getting shit done for a reason. That is really about learning through doing and we give you the tools to take your growth goal and to learn power planning and all of that. But, for example, the power planning module is 4-15 minute videos.
And then when you do that, and once you start, like really you’re going to learn it from practicing and getting coaching and getting support and doing the thing and doing it in that container that then you are going to be able to actually figure out so maybe you’re in all these different courses, you’re going to be able to figure out which one’s actually going to be a needle mover like, which is the one you should focus on right now.
And you’re going to actually be able to plan it in a way. That means you can actually implement what you’ll say for example, if you’re in a marketing course, instead of just like watching random marketing videos, while you’re at your desk, eating lunch, and like feeling like Oh, my goodness, I need to watch all of this, and I just need to keep refreshing myself on these things and whatever, that you are going to first of all, because you’ll have less time, you’ll be like, do I actually need to watch this thing?
Or could I just access my own wisdom, because there’s a good chance, most of the things you’re watching stuff about, you could probably teach someone anyway, just speaking as a past procrasti-learner, that we tend to know a lot and we don’t give ourselves credit for it. So it might be that instead of actually, you know, taking that course you just ask yourself, Okay, what do I actually know.
And you give yourself half an hour to write that all out. And then you act on that instead of needing to go outwards for the information. Or if there are genuinely things that you need to learn, which is totally okay. And it’s part of building a business as well, that you are able to actually figure out so instead of just saying, you know, like work on.
So say for example, I’m in Stacey Boehman’s 200k mastermind, so to me just having like, a big like, if I was time blocking rather than power planning, if I had like 200k mastermind videos, so vague and my brains like okay, that actually looks fine, because I can just watch stuff and not have to apply anything, whatever. If in your power hour, you decide, okay, I’m going to watch the 30 minute lesson on this, then I’m going to watch this lesson on that, then I need a 45 minute chunk to actually do the journaling and apply it.
Whatever is just going to be you’re going to get so much more from other investments that you’ve made when you are planning properly. So I just wanted to mention that if you’re feeling like, this sounds amazing, but I didn’t have enough time to learn this. You don’t have time not to learn this. And once you learn how to plan properly, that is a skill. You only really need to learn once and you refine it through practice.
But once you learn that, and you really start embodying it and you do that first three months commitment and you are living that in your life like the benefits of that compound, quarter after quarter after quarter, year after year after year. If you are feeling like and I just, I really want to make sure you know you are invited in this PGSD. If you can relate to this, if you are still listening at this stage of the episode, want to make sure you know that PGSD is going to make such a difference for you in your business.
When you have a handle on like the business time you do have like you don’t have as much time as you want to have. But the business time you do have you know that you are making the most of it and you can trust yourself to get shit done. You can also trust yourself not to be cruel to yourself, and not to have to force impress yourself to your goals. But you’re able to calmly sit down, do the scary things, do the tedious things, do the boring things, also do the fun things. And then you’re able to close your laptop and go be present with your family or go to that workout class or go and walk walk your dog or whatever it is like it’s a different life.
And I want to invite you into that. And that’s what we do inside PGSD. And so yeah, if you’re feeling like you don’t have enough time, you don’t have enough time not too. The same with clean rest, when we feel like we don’t have enough time. That’s when we need it the most. If you feel like you don’t have enough time to learn power planning and how to plan properly. It’s not a time consuming thing to it’s again, through doing that you really learn it. But that’s when you need it the most. I want to invite you into PGSD.
As I mentioned, the doors of PGSD are opening at 6am New York time on the 27th of July, closing at 11:59pm New York time on the second of August. We are strict with those enrollment dates. We are always getting people emailing DMing after the doors closed saying I’ve just found out about it or I regret not signing up and can I sign up now the answer is no. We just have enrollment periods. And those are the enrollment periods. So I want to invite you to join us when the doors open. And at the time that you were listening to this the doors will be opening in about a week’s time actually no. Yeah, a few days 27, 6am New York time of July.
So I want to invite you in. I want to make sure you know about it so you can get anything ready that you need to and you can join us and plan properly as a perfectionist, follow through 80% of time, rests without guilt and repeat. That is a process for creating a growth mindset. That is a process for getting out of your own way if you are looking for a really practical actionable process to not only achieve your business goals, but to also do the work on your perfectionism. And that personal development work that you know you need to do. This is that join us samlaurabrown.com/pgsd The link will be there for you in the show notes. So I am going to wrap it up here. I hope you are having a beautiful day and I will talk to you in the next episode.