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Episode 360: [Planning Series] 5 Ways Your Productivity Will Skyrocket When You’re Planning Properly

Episode 360: [Planning Series] 5 Ways Your Productivity Will Skyrocket When You're Planning Properly

There’s so much more to productivity than being consistent.

Consistency is just the beginning…

There are 5 ways that your productivity will automatically skyrocket when you’re planning properly as a perfectionist…

You’ll be doing the most important tasks AND you’ll be doing them in a consistent, sustainable, productive and courageous way.

And you’ll be able to do that month after month after month – without burning out or having to sacrifice time with your friends and family.

This is what happens naturally when you’re Power Planning.

I share why – as well as how to become more productive without needing to be more disciplined, focused or motivated –  in the second part of my planning series.

If you know your business would be more successful if you could just show up consistently and do the things you said you would do, this episode was made for you. Tune in today.

Find the full episode transcript and show notes at samlaurabrown.com/episode360.

In This Episode You’ll Learn:

  • The real reason perfectionists struggle to stay consistent
  • Why consistency is just the beginning of productivity
  • The 5 ways your productivity will skyrocket when you’re planning properly
  • Exactly what to focus on once you’ve developed your consistency muscle

Our final 2022 enrollment week for PGSD begins at 6am New York Time on 26 October 2022:

Perfectionists Getting Shit one is my program for perfectionist entrepreneurs. It will have planning properly as a perfectionist and doing the most important tasks in your business in a consistent, sustainable, productive and courageous way. And it provides the accountability to make your new-found productivity levels sustainable long-term, even if you prefer to lurk and learn from the shadows.
This will be our final enrollment week for PGSD in 2022. Enrollment will open at 6am New York Time on 26 October and close at 11:59pm New York Time on 1 November 2022. To find out more about the program and be the first to know when the doors open you can join the waitlist here: samlaurabrown.com/pgsd.

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In the second part of my planning series, I share the 5 ways your productivity automatically skyrockets when you plan properly. If you know your business would be more successful if you could just consistently do what you said you would do, tune in today.

FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Introduction

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.

Sam Laura Brown

This episode is part two in a five part Planning series on how to plan properly as a perfectionist. So if you haven’t listened to the previous episode, which is on the hidden reason that your business isn’t growing fast enough, I invite you to go back and listen to that episode. In this episode, we’re going to be talking about five ways your productivity will skyrocket when you’re planning properly as a perfectionist.

So as I mentioned that previous episode, in that I really talked about why it’s so important to plan properly. And that if you think about the planning advice is out there. As good as it might be as many experts as that might be saying, This is what works, you need to plan in a way that gets your perfectionist mindset. On your side, you need to get your mindset working for you, instead of against you. And I like to think about it like if you have had the wrong glasses prescription, you can probably still see a bit, but not as clearly as you could if you had the prescription that was designed for your eyes.

And that’s what we’re doing. With power planning with planning properly, that we are planning in a way her instead of having it trigger out all or nothing mindset, our procrastination, our tendency to think overwhelming thoughts, we are getting our mindset on our side so that we can show up fully. And also so that we can get into the growth mindset, which is when being out of our own way is happening on autopilot. So before I get into the episode, I do want to mention PGSD, perfectionist getting shit done. It’s my program for perfectionist entrepreneurs. And we are opening the doors for our final enrollment period for 2022. On the 26th of October, so enrollment will be open for one week only.

And PGSD will have you doing the most important tasks for your business in a consistent, sustainable, productive and courageous way. And it provides the accountability to make that sustainable, long term. So you don’t just have a spurt of productivity, we’re gonna be talking more about that in this episode, you don’t just have a spurt of productivity and then you fall off, or you burn out that it just becomes who you are to be someone who is getting everything done without burning out.

And when we are doing that we’re following the process of PGSD process, like there are really two things that are gonna have you doing the most important things, getting everything done doing that without burning out. And that is the PGSD process, to plan properly as a perfectionist follow through 80% of time rest without guilt and repeat and having accountability to make that sustainable. And so when it comes to planning properly and using power planning to do that, and we’re going to be talking about that in this series, and next episode is on the three steps of power planning that power planning, planning properly is like learning to drive you learn it once you get the benefits for a lifetime.

It goes on autopilot, and you don’t have to keep thinking about all the time like learning to drive in the beginning is something that’s new, you have a lot of different things to focus on. Like you need to check your mirrors, you need to see the car you need to not hit anyone. You need to speed up and slow down and do all the things. But then soon enough, you are driving to work. And you don’t even remember the car trip at all because it’s just so automatic. And so that’s what happens when you learn how to plan properly. And I talked about in the previous episode, how planning properly is the biggest lever that you can pull. I mean, think about growing a business why it isn’t growing fast enough that we can think we don’t have enough time we’re not disciplined enough or focused enough. We’re not doing marketing, right, our audience isn’t big enough.

The goddamn social media algorithm isn’t showing anyone my posts, I don’t have a big enough team. And there might be things to work on in those areas. But if we want to be thinking and always in business we do about what’s the biggest lever I can pull like, where can I put my time so that I’m getting the most out for what I’m putting in that is going to be planning properly as a perfectionist. I mentioned in the previous episode as well that Abraham Lincoln quote, if you give me six hours to chop down a tree, I’ll spend my first four hours sharpening the axe. That preparation makes execution so much more effective. And when we are planning properly, and doing our power hour, so it’s just one hour at the beginning of the week, our little tweaks throughout the week or weekly review. I’ll talk about that more in the next episode, that we are able to pull that lever and really get such a big return for that skill set.

More so even in the skill set of marketing or anything else. So with all of that said I do want to invite you into PGSD I’ll be sharing more about it in depth in Episode 364. So that’s coming up soon after this planning series that episode will go out when the doors open to PGSD. But opening at 6am, New York time on the 26th of October, and open for one week. So 11:59pm New York time and the first of November is when the doors will close, you’re going to samlaurabrown.com/pgsd to sign up, when it opens to find out more for the time beam is not open yet.

So with that said, let’s talk about five ways your productivity will skyrocket. When you are planning properly, as a perfectionist, when you are planning in a way that gets your perfectionist mindset on your side, as I mentioned, next episode will cover power planning how to do that the three steps I’m going to walk you through it all. So let’s talk about productivity. Because we perfectionists have this, like love hate with productivity. And we’ve planning often as well, that we love being productive. And yet, right now you might have a bit of a negative association with it, it might even just be a unconscious one, that you want to be more productive, but you’re scared, you are scared that you won’t be able to sustain it and maintain it.

Like you’re scared that if you are more productive and you become more successful, you won’t be able to maintain that you’re scared that you don’t like you can’t rely on your productivity, you’re working in stops and start spurts of motivation. That doesn’t feel reliable. You can’t trust yourself to be productive. So this might manifest by when you feel really inspired about something, you have to work on it right that second, because you don’t trust yourself to be able to just write that idea down and come back to it another time that you are lacking right now, because your perfectionism handbrake is on, which is just because you’ve been following advice, it doesn’t work for perfectionist, that you can’t trust yourself to be productive when the time comes.

Which is why it’s so challenging to rest and to rest without guilt and you find yourself not being able to finish your work day when you said you would finish, you are finding that it’s just very challenging to do what you said you would do. Because you aren’t able to trust yourself to be productive, and trust yourself to sustain the productivity. And trust yourself to handle the success that might come from the result of being productive. And that you’ll always like if you find that you’re maybe less like think about social media, for example, or whatever that you’re showing up consistently. Maybe after a period of ghosting, you’re showing up consistently. And you’re just quietly wondering to yourself, I wonder how long this will last. I wonder how long it will be before I fall off.

And it might be that week one you feeling pretty good. Week two, you’re like, Okay, I’m still doing this. Like I’m, I’m pretty impressed with myself, this is big for me. Week three, it really starts to kick in that you’re like, huh, like, it just feels weird to be still showing up consistently. Because usually by that point in time, you would have fallen off. So do that on the mindset that we professionals have. So you will be kind of feeling this unease that you’re showing up still. But that’s not normal for you. And so we always gravitate towards what feels normal for us.

And when we have the self image that we’re someone who isn’t productive normally and can’t trust ourselves to be productive, that we actually subconsciously quit on the thing that we’re doing, just so we can reconcile that and get rid of that uneasy feeling we feel when we’re showing up consistently. And it’s longer than we have before and my wondering how long it will last. So in PGSD, we do a lot of work to really normalize being productive. And I’m going to talk about that in this episode. It’s so important when it comes to sustainability, to look at your self image, the story you tell about yourself to yourself.

Because if you are thinking you’re not productive, like you can’t rely on that you love being productive, but you’re not a productive person, you waste time you’re a procrastinator or scroll or whatever, you’re always gonna gravitate back towards that. So maybe right now, you have a bit of a love hate with productivity. And just know that’s just because you’ve been following planning advice, it doesn’t actually work for perfectionist, you’ve got that prescription that isn’t actually for your eyes. And we want to get you the right prescription. So when it comes to a new kind of productivity, that’s what we’re talking about. That’s what we do in PGSD. It’s not just about doing things. Often what we think of as productivity is like doing these things we should be doing that other people are doing and doing them consistently like following what the experts say doing it right consistently is kind of what we think about.

And there are actually five elements that I really want you to be mindful of when it comes to this. And I hope that by sharing this, you will start to create a new association with productivity and just see why you might have that negative association right now with productivity of like being scared, you’re gonna burn out being scared, you won’t be able to maintain it, or you’re gonna fall off or whatever is going to happen. That that’s just because you have not been thinking about all of these five things when it relates to productivity. And when you are solving for all of these five at the same time, which is what happens just by virtue of following the PGSD process, then you are going to be able to show up fully, for your business for yourself in a sustainable, enjoyable way, that is really going to change your relationship with productivity for the better.

And when you’re doing this as well, like, it’s just inevitable that you’ll be making more money having more of an impact with your business like that just can’t help but happen when you are actually thinking about productivity and getting shit done in a way that encompasses all of these five elements. And so when it comes to this, as well, I mentioned like how we often just are kind of doing like busy work and trying to do busy work consistently. But we think we have this consistency problem. I just want to quickly mention this, because it’s something that I see quite a lot, I have definitely been there myself in the past, that we’ve been told by so many people, you just need to be consistent, especially when we look at like how to grow on social media or things like that the key piece of advice out there is to be consistent.

And I am going to be talking about consistency. It’s important, it plays a role. But it’s one of the five things, it’s not all the things like it’s not everything. And so when we tell ourselves, we have this consistency problem, then if I was more consistent, I’d be more successful. What we actually subconsciously do is show up inconsistently. So we can always blame lack of consistency for lack of results. It’s this perfectionist thing we do, we’re so scared to find out our best isn’t good enough that we instead add this criteria we need to meet in order for something to be good enough. And then we don’t do the things we need to do in order to meet that criteria. So we can blame that instead of having to blame lack of intelligence or skill or talent.

So we might say, I just need to be more consistent, but I can’t be consistent, it might be the same as like, maybe this rings a bell, I just need to get to bed on time and wake up early. But I can’t do that. And if I could, I would be more successful, but then you actually don’t get yourself to bed on time and waking up early now that you need to do that. But if you’ve created that as this criteria for success, and then you fluff around it night and you stay up late and whatever night well, I would be more successful. If I could just figure this out. It’s like, that isn’t the problem. But we create these false problems.

So that we don’t actually have to find out like risk finding out that all that potential we believe we have isn’t actually there. We perfectionist love to protect our potential instead of pursuing it. And that’s really what PGSD is about is pursuing your potential and having the process and accountability to have that be something that begins to feel safe. It’s no longer this big, vulnerable, scary thing. That will be that way at times and you have the support to get through that. But to have it feel safe to actually pursue your potential. Instead of just feeling like all the time you’re having to protect yourself from finding out that your best isn’t good enough.

So with consistency, we think I just have this consistency problem. If I was more consistent, I’d be more successful. And as I said, consistency is important. But I just want to say that consistency matters. Because you can’t refine anything without consistency. So when you are consistent with something, that’s when you have enough data to be able to then iterate on what you’re doing, and refine what you’re doing and improve what you’re doing so that you can create the result you want to create. It’s not because the sheer act of showing up creates a result. But I will talk about in a second with needle movers and things being directionally correct, there’s going to be a time where you just need to show up.

Like you just need to focus on that. But then with each of these five things, and you’ll develop them over time. And you’ll be working on these like just through power planning, these will all begin happening without you even having to consciously work on it. But I want you to not be overwhelmed with like I need to be focusing on all this at once. When you power planning when you’re planning properly. This is all baked into the process. But there will be a time in place to just show up. And there will be a time in place to just focus on showing up and showing up consistently. But then there’s a time and place for other things too. And I want you to know about those.

So that once you are consistent, maybe that’s where you are now you’ll finally figure out how to be consistent and you’re like oh shit I’m not actually making the money I want to make is because there’s more to it than that. And I’m going to be sharing in this episode, the more to it. And in the next episode when I cover Power Planning and we’ll be talking about how power planning has you working on all of these five things at once without even having to think about it like it just it’s baked into the process, you don’t have to be worried about it, it’s just going to happen just from following the steps. So let’s talk about the five ways that your productivity will skyrocket when you’re power planning when you’re planning properly.

And really like, what why each of them is important. And the kinds of stages because you’ll work on them kind of in this certain sequence. So the first is, you’ll be doing the most important things, the needle Movers, Not the busy work. The second is you’ll be doing them consistently, you’ll be doing them sustainably, that’s the third productively, we’re gonna go into that a bit more, because that involves effectively and efficiently, it’s not just about efficiency, it’s not just about effectively, whatever, you know what I mean, and courageously. This is huge. This is really huge. Okay, so let’s talk about them in that order, because that is actually the most like the order that you will need to be thinking about them in to some extent,

I’ll talk about is the most important tasks first, and then the others. So let’s talk about why doing the most important tasks, the needle movers is a really important part of actually being productive, and having that be sustainable. So a lot of times, we perfection, especially for working from a long to do lists I’ve spoken before on this podcast about why to do lists don’t work for perfectionist, this is one of the reasons that when we are working from a to do list, we tend to pick out the easy tasks, the ones we think we should be doing, but don’t actually matter.

And we spend a lot of time in busy work, and just kind of keeping ourselves busy, because we want to feel productive will productive well oh my goodness, productive without feeling vulnerable. So we just are trying to keep ourselves in action in motion. But it’s not actually moving us forward, that obviously get super frustrated over time, when you feel like you’re putting a lot of effort in and you’re not getting much out for that efforts. And that comes back to not really being focused on the most important tasks. And in the beginning, I’m going to come back to this when I talk about productivity, like doing things effectively and efficiently. Because it’s not right at the beginning that you have to be super focused on this. So if you’re just starting out with this, and you’re thinking like, Oh, my goodness, I don’t know what we need all of this about.

And in the fifth part of this series, I’m going to be going into how to identify your needle movers. So if right now you can’t trust yourself to know what’s important that it’s going to actually get you to your goals. And you feel like maybe you have too many needle movers to even put into a week. And they’re just like too many important things to get done. Part Five, I’m going to be addressing that I’m going to be guiding you through that. But initially, you just need to be focused on doing what is directionally correct. And the best way to know what’s directionally correct is to have a growth goal. So this is the kind of goal we set inside PGSD. It’s 12 month revenue goal set just above what you believe is possible. And that becomes what helps you like It’s like putting the destination, the GPS, that that then sets the direction.

So you’re able to figure out like, will this thing move me closer to that destination or further away. And you don’t have to figure out if it’s the most effective or efficient route there. Again, we’re going to be talking about that later that comes later on. But you just need to be thinking about is this directionally correct. And I’m going to be talking about this in the episode on needle movers and going into this a bit more. But for example, in the beginning, I was really just focused on if I persist, like when I started my business, if I persist, I will succeed. And this relates to consistency to some extent as well. But I was really just focused on like, if I just don’t quit, and I do what directionally correct. Like, it’s kind of in the right direction, but I’m so far away right now, from my destination.

For where I want to go that pretty much anything’s directionally incorrect. Like, do you get that, that when we’re thinking about is this directionally correct? For me? Is it in the right direction, that if we’re further away from the end goal, there are a lot of things that are directionally correct. And as we get closer and closer and closer, it becomes much more obvious. Okay, this is now the path like I can see it and I can see my destination and this is the best way to get there. But when we’re quite far away from where we want to end up, that there are a lot of things that are going to be directionally correct. So in the beginning, I don’t want you to be overthinking what your needle movers are. There will be a time and a place. Once you are doing things consistently and sustainably.

That’s when it really comes to Until look at your needle movers and doing them doing that effective, efficient things. But in the beginning, just be thinking about what is directionally correct. And trusting yourself. So when you’re doing the PGSD process, you will be developing self trust just by virtue of doing that. And self accountability as well, which is incredible. But you will be beginning to trust yourself that the next step you have chosen is the right thing to do. And we want to get out of this perfectionist thinking of like there’s a right and wrong, there’s a smart and a dumb thing to do. But you will be able to instead of like, if you’re doing a lot of procrasti-learning, that’s because you don’t trust yourself to decide what’s important, or to decide how to do something that you need information. Yes, we all do.

But then you need more and more and more and more of it, to try and compensate for your lack of self trust, like you just want to be told what to do. That’s not how it works in business. Like it’s so funny, we so many of us started a business because we didn’t want to be told what to do by a boss. And then we just want someone to tell us exactly what to do in the business like we want that person telling us what to do. The beauty of business is that there’s so many different ways to do it, you can figure out your own way. And a really important part of that that only comes when you trust yourself. So that’s something we really work on in PGSD, and then happens with that PGSD process.

But if you’re a procrastinator, really procrasti-learning a lot, is because you’re not trusting yourself, too, to make a decision about your next step, to trust yourself to execute that based on what you already know, to trust that if you need more information, you’re going to recognize that time when it comes and get the information. So you’re over preparing, because you’re not trusting your future self or your present day self. So we want to just be focused in the beginning, on what is directionally correct. Is this directionally correct on? Is this the perfect next move? That’s going to make sure I never waste any efforts. And I never do anything that could potentially be embarrassing, or that someone could say, I don’t know what I’m talking about, like, is this just directionally correct? Is this moving me in the right direction? So that’s the question to be asking yourself in the beginning.

So we want to then be thinking about doing things consistently. So especially in PGSD, this is like the first wave of productivity you can expect to experience is that you will go from doing things inconsistently, stopping and starting to doing things consistently, it might not be that you’re doing the absolute most perfect needle movers, you’re going to figure them out over time, I’m still figuring out my needle move. It’s like that’s constant. That’s something we’re always going to be figuring out. As we change seasons in our business. Like as we go into different stages of business.

As we have different things going on in our personal life, like, we’re always going to be needing to examine and re decided are needed with it. So don’t try and think like, well, if I could just figure these out, then I’ll be set for life like it’s not like that. But in the beginning, when you first sign up to PGSD, and you get started with a PGSD process, you can expect that the first way your productivity will change. And you showing up for your business or changes, you’ll be doing things that are actually correct. And making decisions. So maybe you need to make a decision about your niche or your offer or your pricing or your podcast or whatever. So we make those decisions like moving in that right direction. And you’ll be doing those things consistently.

And by the way, that alone is life changing, like being able to do something consistently. And to be someone who shows up more often than not, rather than being someone who’s good at showing up perfectly for three days and then doesn’t show up at all for two months. So you’ll become someone who is able to show up consistently. And as I was mentioning, consistency is not the be all end all. And this should be a relief. Because this like what holds us apart from consistency is thinking that consistency is the be all end all. And so we’re scared to be consistent in case it doesn’t work, and then we won’t know what else to do. So we no longer have to be scared of being consistent.

Because there it’s like we once we get to consistency, that’s when we can really start to figure out what’s working and what isn’t and what to do differently and iterating and growing. And it’s like the beginning, not the end. So you don’t have to worry about getting to consistency and feeling helpless about not knowing what to do now because you saw your consistency problem and you’re still not as successful as you want to be. So we can’t refine anything that we’re not doing consistently. So if you think about, for example, someone going to the gym, and they’re going, maybe they’re doing like I know two weeks of workouts, probably the first and second week of January and then They don’t go for three months. And then they go maybe like I know a few times every now and again, when they feel guilty.

And say over the year they do about 30 workouts, and then come January, they’re like repeat that again and again, that if you wanted to get better at working out and have your workouts be the most effective, impactful, like, let alone obviously, when you’re showing up that way, you’re not going to get results. But also you can’t even see what’s working and what isn’t working because you don’t have enough data because you haven’t been working out. So you, you don’t have a hypothesis that you’re testing and then can say, well, I thought if I did cardio every day, that I would get fitter. But I did that and then this happened and so now I’m going to add in weights or whatever.

That if you aren’t working out consistently, you can’t even see what the problem is or what needs to be fixed. Because you just, there’s just not enough volume of action there. And so when we look like the same with social media, if you’re like, oh, like, if you’re being right now, you show up for a couple of weeks, then you ghost and then you show up for a couple weeks, and then you closed.

And you’re wondering like, why your social media isn’t growing, that people say it’s just because you have to post consistently. But the reason that they say that is because when you’re posting consistently, that’s when you can start looking at, okay, this kind of thing really works, this kind of thing really doesn’t work. But if you’re only posting, I don’t know, 30 times a year or whatever, then you don’t have enough data to even tell what’s working and what’s not.

So you can’t refine so you can’t succeed. So we need that consistency piece there. And when you sign up for PGSD, that’s going to be like the first thing that you really start to notice change for you. And often this happens quite quickly. That consistency showing up more often than not, we don’t aim for 100%, like we don’t define consistency is doing things perfectly, that’s different. It’s showing up more often than not, in the PGSD processes step through step two is follow through with your plan and 80% of the time. So that’s what we’re focused on. So you will start to notice very quickly that you’re able to do things consistently. And that’s when the journey really begins. And just know it’s not as hard to be consistent.

As you might be thinking it is even if you’ve been stopping and studying for years. It’s just like what I was mentioning before that when we make consistency, the be all end all, then we’re really scared to be consistent in case we might find out that it actually wasn’t the answer. And now we don’t know what is because surely that was it. So let’s talk about the next one, which is doing things sustainably. So when we are when we have our perfectionism handbrake on, we are often really scared of burning out. And that yes, we can show up consistently but not for long, will either fall off and kind of just go back to not doing things like ghosting or whatever. Or we will show up consistently and then we’ll burn out it won’t be sustainable.

And so what we want to be focused on and this happens when you’re going through the PGSD process and using that to build your business is that you will begin doing things in a sustainable way. So there’s a few different ways and I’ll talk about this more in the next episode on power planning. But there are a few different ways that this happens, because of the power planning. So there’s a clean rest you’re getting. So we schedule our clean rest or guilt free rest in our calendar before our needle movers. And this helps to keep things really sustainable, because our brains getting rest, which is really important. The best ideas come from a well rested brain. But also, were then creating a container for ourself of like when our workouts are and when they aren’t.

And when we do that, were able like this helps us as well with figuring out the needle movers because now we didn’t have an endless amount of time, we’re really met with the reality of how much time we have. But we’re really looking at sustainability in the sense that we are not over scheduling ourselves and adding too much to our plate. And we’re also not when it comes to sustainability, we are not doing things in a way that we couldn’t see ourselves doing for a long time. And this is really important to be thinking about when it comes to this that we want to be looking at the long term when it comes to the decisions we make in our business.

And often when we’re making short term decisions of like, well, I you know, it doesn’t feel right to me to do marketing in this kind of way, but this other person is doing it. So I should do it that way. Even though it really doesn’t sit well with me. Like, we don’t want to make those decisions in PGSD, we don’t make decisions from that place. We are deciding on how we want to do business, what’s sustainable for us, we consider our lifestyle, how many hours we want to work, and all of that kind of thing. It’s not about, well, I need to make money so that I can prove to myself that I’m good enough. And so I’m going to do that in any which way with our growth goal.

We’re achieving that goal in a way that’s in alignment with our values. I can’t speak today our values and something that is a sustainable long term. And trusting ourselves and our decisions we make that’s going to get us to where we want to go because it will if we trust that and so yeah, in the next episode I’m gonna go more into this because it is part of power planning. We really do things with sustainability in mind. And clean rest particularly helps with this. But we are making sure that we are showing up in a way that feels good to us. It might be uncomfortable, it might be challenging, it might be vulnerable.

But it doesn’t feel out of alignment with how we want to run our business with the lifestyle that we have. And also through the PGSD process, this is so important, we are creating the self image, that we are someone who gets shit done without burning out. That burn isn’t a thing we do. And so if you believe right now that you are someone who burns out, like if you if someone says yes kind of person who burns out, and you’d say, Yeah, I burn out quite a bit. Right now, your self image is pulling you towards burnout and doing unsustainable things so that you can be right about who you are. And in PGSD, we really think about the self image were creating and making sure that we are developing the identity, that we are someone who gets shit done without burning out, it’s never at our own expense.

And so that makes such a difference as well. So let’s talk about doing things productively. So there is within that, doing things effectively and efficiently. So if we think about where we’re up to until now, you are doing things that are directionally correct. You are doing them consistently, you’ve also learned how to do them sustainably. And those things can happen pretty quickly. Like typically within the first few weeks inside PGSD, PGSDers will notice that they’re making decisions they’ve been putting off for years, they’re starting projects that they’ve been procrastinating on for years. And they’re starting to show up consistently and sustainably.

And like really understanding how they can do that in a way that honors them, instead of is at their own expense. So then after that, so around like a few weeks into PGSD. Or maybe it’s around three months into PGSD, we make the three month commitment to power planning that you will start to really be focusing on what are your needle movers now you have that skill set around consistency and the self image around sustainability and consistency as well that you can start to look at what are my needle movers not just what’s directionally correct, we’re still gonna be focusing on that. But what are the most important things for me to be doing versus what’s busy work. And with that, we want to be looking at two different things. So what’s the most effective thing to do?

And the most efficient thing to do, I’m going to be talking more about this in the episode on needle movers. But when it comes to doing things, effectively, this is a huge piece is that it doesn’t matter if you’re efficient. So like there isn’t much wasted time, like you have a really smooth process. If you’re doing something that doesn’t actually matter off, like doing things. Someone I used to work for use always say like rearranging chairs on the Titanic or something like that, like, even if you’re doing the best job at like moving chairs around on the Titanic, the Titanic is sinking, like it doesn’t matter. It’s not something that’s actually going to add up to something. And so we want to be looking at, yes, doing things efficiently.

So that might be things like batching tasks together, like say, for example, with podcast episodes, recording multiple ones back to back instead of doing one per week, or whatever it is like doing things with efficiency. But making sure the things you’re doing efficiently are the things that are going to move you forward that moving the needle. And the more you get into this, and as I said, this is something I’m still looking at, like it’s something you’re constantly we’re all constantly reassessing is like in terms of leverage, like what activities because there are always going to be like more things that feel important, then you have time to do that’s just the nature of business.

And the fact that, as I said before, like we want the boss to just tell us the right way to do it. Like there’s so many right ways to do it. That’s why we need to trust ourselves and just pick something and do it. And then trust ourselves that we can reflect on that. And if it didn’t work, figure out why not and then iterate on that and then go through that process to get the result that we want to get. We want to be looking at doing things effectively and efficiently. And just to leave you with one little question that really helps with this. We talk about this a lot in PGSD. If you’ve listened to this podcast, you’ve heard me mentioned it before.

What would this look like if it was easy? This really helps us to figure out what is going to give us the most leverage, like where can we put in our time, so that the thing that we’re doing is going to have the most outcome, like the biggest outcome, the most impact for us. So there might be something we could do in our business, for example, that would make us $1,000 In a way that’s in alignment with our values and And then might be something we could do that would make us 10,000 Or 100,000. Or what like there’s, there’s going to be all these white things. And part of this is we want to know the growth goal. We want to know what our Northstar is like, where we’re going. And then what I love to ask is, what would this look like if it was easy?

Because when we are asking ourselves this question, we tend to with the goal in mind, we tend to pick things that would be more effective and more efficient, then if we’re overcomplicating. So this question is really important to know this, this question is really getting to where might I be overcomplicating? And I need to simplify? It’s not getting to well, if this was easy, then I have more time and a bigger team. And, you know, Instagram would be like it was in 2016. Like, that’s not what this question is about. This question isn’t about what are the perfect circumstances that I could have that would make this so easy for me? It’s about given the circumstances that I have, what could I do to make this easier for myself?

And how can I simplify this? Where might I be overcomplicating this? Where might I be overestimating this, where might it be adding in additional work that doesn’t even need to be done. And that really helps with this, but I’ll go more into needle movers in part five. And then the fifth way that your productivity will skyrocket when you’re planning properly. And this is kind of, I mean, this is happening as you go as well doing things more courageously.

But this will really start to become a new way of life, especially once you’re doing things consistently sustainably and productively that you then have more mental and emotional bandwidth. Like once you’ve got those skill sets there to be doing courageous things. And quantum leaps in your business, like if you’re at a revenue plateau, and you want to break through that like for sure, planning properly is going to be the biggest lever for you. And then once you’re doing that, it’s about first of all consistency, then sustainability, then doing it productively, then doing it courageously.

So when I talk about doing things courageously, like we know that doing things courageously, that means you’re scared, and you still do them. Not that you’re fearless. And you know, you don’t have impostor syndrome, you don’t have any fears, you don’t have any self doubts. And like, if you could just not have those thoughts and feeling, then you could do the things you want to do. Courage is doing the thing in the face of all that with all of that, so that so you don’t need to not have impostor syndrome or whatever. Like, you just need to develop that muscle of letting yourself feel uncomfortable and having your own backs through that experience. And trusting yourself that you’ll be able to handle any emotion that might come your way from doing the courageous thing.

So for example, like courageous things who look different in different stages, so initially, and it’s what it was about in the beginning, like it might just be showing up. That is the courageous thing for you like just to post anything whatsoever on social media or say for example, like it might be going on Instagram stories or whatever, social media but you’re going somewhere and like people can see your face and you talking and that might feel like you can do written posts, but like getting on camera or like doing a podcast episode or what like, that might feel like it requires a lot more courage. So just like showing up and doing that and not even having to think about selling or anything like that, like just the act of showing up and doing it might be the courageous thing.

And then once that once you do that, and your brain recognizes that you’re still safe, you haven’t died, is that you then might and this is so fun about the courageous stuff. That things that used to feel terrifying. Like right now recording this podcast episode like having a podcast used to feel like who the fuck do I think I am? I could never do like, absolutely mortifying, and now it’s super easy and it’s because we just level up how much we can handle so to speak. I was actually talking about this in the PGSD forum with a PGSDer the other day that my coach had said something about an event I recently went to that she had said about how you will never be the you never won’t be able to handle how visible you are like how seen you are. And it resonated with me so much. She was like your capacity for being seen.

We’ll increase it every level. And so we often hold ourselves back. This is my interpretation of it now. But we often hold back at the earliest stages, because we’re kind of looking at the trajectory we’re on and thinking like, Oh, my goodness, if I keep doing this, if I keep showing up consistently and doing the things, that events, I’m gonna get to this point where there are going to be so many eyeballs on me, there are gonna be all these people criticizing me and judging me and I just can’t handle that. But just knowing like, at every level, your capacity for being seen is going to increase and you will normalize that level so that it’ll feel comfortable for you. And you’re always just only be right at the edge of what’s comfortable, not like all the way off.

And so it’s the same with doing courageous things, that it is so fun that things that right now feel so scary to you might very soon will very soon be things that are just normal, like day to day, you don’t break a sweat, but right now, it might be so scary to do it soon enough, like with practice, and with doing more courageous things and like calming your brain down and your nervous system down. So it sees that you’re okay, you’re still safe, that you’re able to do more and more courageous things that right now, the courageous things you want to do might seem like way out of reach. But as you incrementally practice courage and do more courageous things, you will uplevel your capacity for courageous things. And like you’re also up leveling, like your self image, and all these different things. So it just becomes normal for you to do courageous things.

And that’s really when it’s like, adding fuel to the fire. So when it comes to this initially might just be like posting anything, you’re like doing an Instagram story, and you’re chatting and like, you just don’t say the right things or whatever, there’s the right thing to say, but you just like have to get on stories and like, show your face. And that’s a courageous thing. And then it’s you do that, and you mentioned your offer, you mentioned what you’re selling. And then you do that and you actually sell what you’re selling, you don’t just mention and say hey, if you’re interested, you actually sell it, you help them see why it’s valuable to them.

And then maybe after that the courageous thing is pitching yourself to be on someone else’s podcast and to be selling like I’m just making this up, but there’s going to be levels. And especially once you have this skill set around consistency and sustainability, and you’re able to trust yourself to show up, you’re able to trust that you can do that without burning out without falling off, then you can be looking at the needle movers. And then you can be looking at, Okay, where can I be a little more courageous here. And I love it that as well. This relates back to needle movers so heavily. And offers, it’s an act of courage to do things consistently and sustainably as well.

But when it relates to needle movers is that the like, if you think about going up a mountain, like the quickest way up a mountain is to just like, go directly up, instead of like weaving and winding and like doing all this like, you know, going up the mountain in this very, not steep way. It’s quicker to just, you know, figure out how to go up the steep way, maybe you get a cable car or whatever, but you just go up the steepest, most direct path. That’s a courageous path. A lot of times, and this is when it’s busy work that we’re still getting up the mountain. And it’s okay, we want to focus in the beginning and directionally correct. But we’re still getting up there. But it’s in this weaving winding, kind of like whenever on this steep incline, it’s just the comfortable way. And then once you’ve got that consistency, the sustainability we can really be looking at, okay, and this is a great question to ask yourself in your weekly review.

The third step in power planning, like, how can I be a little more courageous here? Like, what’s something I could do in the same way? What would it look like? If this was easy? That question often reveals something that requires courage, that it would be easier if we just did this courageous thing than having to do all these 10 workarounds because we’re scared to put ourselves out there. That if we’re looking at in terms of especially things being effective, they’re often efficiency to delegating, outsourcing different things like that, that requires courage, but to look at, like, how could I be just a little bit more courageous? Not like, what’s the craziest thing I could do?

But how could I be like 10% more courageous this coming week and putting that in your calendar, and there’s something we talked about a bit with Power Planning, and then I’m going to wrap up but when it comes to doing things that are courageous, this is where clean rest becomes super important, and not working from a long to do list, you overscheduled your calendar but like, it’s so much easier to do courageous things when you’re planning properly, also to do the needle movers too, because those things often require a lot more mental and emotional energy. And if your brain is looking at your calendar, and can see that you have so many different courageous things you need to do, or you have this courageous thing you need to do, and then you have a mentally taxing thing to do.

And then you have like, just all these things that are gonna require so much mental effort, and there’s no end in sight, or you’ve got an end on your calendar, or whatever, and you can’t trust yourself to finish on time, that’s something we really work on and develop with power planning is like trusting yourself to finish when you said you would, and getting everything done. And trusting yourself that if something didn’t get done, that it will get done, and making a plan for that. So if you are just like trying to get yourself to do so many of those things, it’s really not about volume, especially not in the beginning that you might just be able to do one really courageous thing per week, initially, and we talked before about like, building up your endurance with this, your new capacity, that initially you might just be able to do one really courageous thing in a week.

And then you might need a two hour break after it that would otherwise be spent working, you just need a two hour clean rest block to go for a walk or to watch mindless videos on YouTube or whatever you just need like, and this is something you learn about yourself too, with your weekly review. And when you’re doing that debrief, that you can see like, Oh, I did this courageous thing, but then I procrastinate after, like on the other stuff I need to do, it’s because your brain, like it just did this thing that took a lot of even if it was a super simple thing, maybe it was a phone call, or an email, or a two minute Instagram Live, and your brain is just like your nervous system, it just needs a minute.

And if you then put in your calendar of all of these other mentally taxing things, or emotionally taxing things you need to do, you will procrastinate. And scroll, or whatever it is you do find yourself procrasti-cleaning, because your brain needs a break, and you didn’t give it to your brain. So it’s getting it like it’s doing what it needs to do to get that break that it needs. And so over time, and especially by your first three months in, in PGSD, you will have learned about yourself, what time of day is best for you to do a courageous task is it in the morning. So for me, for example, my courageous thing, and sometimes it’s not like something that involves someone else, it’s just like writing an email in the time that I said I would write it. And you know, publishing it or in my case, giving it to my team and not overworking it.

And like what am I saying? Today, it’s really hard to get the word that tinkering with it to just like to just let it be enough and to move on. That might be the courageous thing. But for me, I find in the morning, it’s easier for me to do courageous things, I do them more quickly, I have less resistance if I do have resistance easier to overcome. I’ve learned that about myself over time through power planning, especially during the weekly reviews because we update our calendar. So we have power, our little tweaks weekly review, we update our calendar throughout the week. That’s a little tweaks.

And then when we are doing the weekly review, we’re noticing okay, like what am I kinda look like at the start of the week, like to do a little screenshot, and what is my kinda look like, at the end of the week? And like, what went on there? What took longer than I thought it would take or, you know, when do they move things around to or whatever. And just noticing for me, I find it so much easier in the morning to do that stuff than I do in the evening. Not that I can’t. But I have the option to do it in the morning. So I’m going to do it in the morning. And so for me, for example, my work days, now a structured where like my check in on emails and with my team.

And like things that I find that don’t require a lot of courage or aren’t big needle movers for me, but needs to get done. I mean, they aren’t needle movers. But they’re things that don’t actually require a lot of mental energy. I will do them at the end of the day. Instead of like a lot of these things were like, Oh, just check in on everyone and I’ll check my email and that’ll warm me up that works for some people and you’ll figure this out with power planning but for me, it doesn’t. What works better is to have my deep work or my courageous tasks in the morning. I don’t have a full day of them. I will space it out so it’s more like the morning period. Don’t mind work days in the afternoon. So when I’m working in the morning and doing these creative things, my brain can see cool, we’ve got lunch coming up, we’ve got an hour for lunch.

And we’re just not going to do anything business related, not going to be eating lunch at the desk, we’re going to go outside, maybe watch whatever, like Kardashians, whatever. And to that breaks coming, so it’s safe to be courageous here and like expend this energy because I can see a breaks coming up. And then I know after lunch, I’m still going to be working, but I’m doing things that don’t require as much for me. So that means in the morning, my brain feels safe to work at its highest level when I really needed to, because it can see the day ahead, but if I was and I’ve done this, like in the past, working from an overschedule calendar where everything requires a lot of courage, a lot of mental energy, like I’m not taking that into consideration.

I have just an endless To Do List, full of all different kinds of tasks, that my brain is going to always prefer the easy, more comfortable, less needle memory tasks, though sometimes I’ll tell Well, it’s one of the needle movers, and I’m all over the place. But sometimes a needle mover, like the most courageous thing you can do is just keep doing what’s already working to talk about this today on the PGSD coaching call, like when in doubt, keep it the same. Like just let things stay the same? And have you be the one that grows. So say, for example, like we want to change the marketing strategy, we want to do all these different things like oftentimes, a needle mover will just be like, doubling down on what’s already working. And super thinking about how you could do that more effectively and more efficiently.

But especially more effectively, like if that thing is doing an Instagram Live, instead of thinking like I’m not selling enough, so I need to add more posts or whatever to be like, how could I do this Instagram live in such a way that it attracted? Whatever clients I want to get or customers or what like just asking yourself a better question about it. So even though it stays the same, like you’re doing the same action, which is doing an Instagram Live, that the result of that is tenfold because of the way you thought about it. And so I just wanted to mention that because oftentimes a courageous thing, isn’t this new thing, or this super uncomfortable thing. It’s just doing what we’re already doing that’s working and oh, so often I want to if something’s working, it feels like Well, that’s too easy. I need to find this whole new way to do things.

So that it can feel hard again, and I can feel deserving, and all of that kind of stuff. So letting things be easy, takes a lot of courage, keeping on doing what’s working, instead of changing it and jumping to the new shiny thing that takes courage. And so needle weave is oftentimes will be things that are uncomfortable and scary and you feel resistance to. And oftentimes, they will also be things that you don’t feel that way about. And it just it takes courage to just let yourself keep doing what’s working and not reinventing the wheel when your brain wants some entertainment.

So with that said, I hope that has helped you get a more fully fleshed view of what it means to really be getting shit done. Like this is what we’re talking about. You’re doing the most important tasks, you’re doing them consistently sustainably productively, and courageously. And typically, this comes in two ways. So you’re doing things consistently and sustainably. That’ll come first when you’re planning properly, and then you’ll look at doing them productively and courageously. And it’s really important that again, in the beginning, you’re not like oh my God, I need to figure out exactly the right needle movers and like overthinking them, just focus on things being directionally correct. And doing them consistently and sustainably. And then, once you’re there, focus on okay, how could I be more productive, more efficient and effective? What would this work if it was easy? How could I be more courageous and you have that foundation of consistency and sustainability to support you.

So inside PGSD, this is what we create, having you showing up in this way getting everything done without burning out and having that be something that’s normal for you. So when you are getting everything done, you aren’t scared of burning out and you aren’t scared of falling off and you aren’t wondering to yourself, how long will this last? You’ll be able to trust yourself to keep showing up to be able to handle the success, the criticism, the visibility that comes your way. And so I want to invite you into PGSD, see when the doors open on the 26th of October at 6am New York time. It’s our final enrollment week for 2022. The doors will be closing to PGSD are you at 11:59pm New York time on the first of November. So samlaurabrown.com/pgsd is where you can go in the show notes.

To find out more that’s also the link to go to when it is time to sign up. If you want to be someone who is getting the most important things done consistently sustainably. What am I saying now consistently sustainably productively and courageously. I want to invite you in now is a perfect time to learn this. And as I’ve shared It’s like learning to drive you learn it for once you get the benefits of it forever. So I hope this episode has been helpful. In the next episode I am going to be walking you through how to power plan in three simple steps. I hope you’re having a beautiful day and I will talk to you in the next episode.

Author: Sam Brown