Podcast

Episode 412: A Productive Week In My Life: Something Embarrassing I Self-Coached On + How I Improved My Morning Routine

If you’re anything like me, you love finding out how successful people *actually* run their businesses.

What their office setup is like, how they structure their day, what they spend their time doing (and which tasks they don’t let themselves do), how they manage their personal life and the things that didn’t quite go to plan. 

That’s why this week’s podcast episode on The Perfectionism Project is a chatty episode to take you behind the scenes of a productive week in my life.

If you’ve ever wondered what a 3-day work week looks like when you’re running a $600k per year business  – or wanted to hear about the practical things I do to  ‘balance’ my business with being a mum of 3 little ones under 3 – this episode is for you.

I also share a few of the things I self-coached on, including something so embarrassing it makes me cringe and want to hide in a hole (that might sound dramatic but it’s sadly 100% true)…

Plus I share something super simple I did to improve my morning routine (this works especially well on the days I’m sleep deprived). Click play to tune in today!

Find the full episode transcript and show notes at samlaurabrown.com/episode412.

In This Episode You’ll Learn:

  • How I structure my days so I can do deep work (even with constant interruptions)
  • My biggest recommendation to create a more productive desk setup
  • The practical things that help me plan out my week even though it’s so uncertain
  • What I coached myself on including something I’d rather not share…
  • How I run my $600k business working 3 days a week and being a mum to 3 little ones

Featured In The Episode:

Listen To The Episode

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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 going to be a chatty one, I’m going to be sharing with you a look at a productive week in my life. One of the reasons I want to do this is just to help you reframe what it means to have a productive week, I think we perfectionist can really be all or nothing when it comes to giving ourselves credit, or allowing ourselves to think of ourselves in a favorable way. You know, if you’re listening to this podcast, you love feeling productive and organized. And yet, probably you haven’t allowed yourself to really, truly identify as a productive person, because you aren’t perfectly productive, because there are still times that you get in your own way you overthink, you procrastinate.

So you are thinking, well, I want to be more productive. And maybe I’m okay at productivity, but I could be so much better. And yes, you can work on your productivity, you can use tools like Power planning to help you do that. But we want to have you as much as possible, really starting to identify yourself as a productive person, so that you don’t have to use a willpower or motivation to be productive, and it is your identity that you are productive, you will be pulled towards following through with your plans, you will also be pulled towards clean rest. Because if you are a productive person, you know that like how an athlete needs to rest so they can train well, so that you can be productive when it comes to your business, your brain needs to have a break so that it can recharge and get ready to go again.

So it’s going to have you really doing things in a way that supports you. It’s not just this productivity for productivity sake. And when you identify as a productive person, it means that when you are being productive, and when you are following through with your plans, that you won’t be wondering how long it will last. If you have that question in your brain, when you are having a productive week, you’re like, Okay, when am I going to fall off the wagon because this feels too good. Like this doesn’t feel normal to me. That means you really need to take a look at the self image side, we focus on that a lot in PGSD, because it’s so common, especially once you start planning properly, and really doing things in a way that works for your perfectionist mindset that you will be more productive.

But if you don’t do that self image work as well, then you will self sabotage because it feels so normal and comfortable and familiar to you to be in your own way and to relate to others through that struggle of procrastination or overthinking or being successful, but you don’t want to be too successful. So when it comes to this productive week, in my life, there are ups there are downs, there are times where I am getting shit done. There’s times where for example, on Tuesday afternoon, I finished my day early because I just felt so tired. And I couldn’t think clearly. So I did a low impact ride on my peloton bike. So it’s knowing that a productive week, if you are telling yourself that has to be perfect, in order for you to feel amazing about your week and feel proud of yourself, then you really are denying yourself the opportunity to be as productive as you could be. And you’re also really just deluding yourself about what it means to be productive.

There is no one out there who is having this perfectly productive week. And we can think as well that if we allow to think of ourselves as productive, when we still have things to work on when it comes to productivity, that we’re not going to do the things that we need to do. But if you identify as a productive person, you will better be able to identify how your productivity could be improved. And you will better be able to give yourself access and the resourcefulness you might need to get the tools you need to be more productive or to shift your mindset in a way that will help you be more productive. So the more productive you believe you are, the more productive you will become, you’re not going to be kidding yourself and then becoming less productive.

So all of that to say that these episodes the productive week in my life, it’s really to help you redefine productivity for yourself. But also to give you a specific look at things that go on in my week to help give you ideas and really just paint a picture around what it looks like to be productive. Also, if you’re nosy like me, like I love this kind of episode where people share really specific things rather than just high level concepts and ideas. So I’m going to be really sharing specific things with you. And I hope you find that incredibly helpful. It is Thursday when I’m recording this episode, and I’m just going to be reflecting on the past week and sharing as well a bit of the broader context for my week.

So if you didn’t know I have three kids, I have Lydia, my daughter who’s two and twin boys who are about six months old. And so for me, that is a big part of the context and of course my husband Steve and our dog Cotton, that really has a big impact on the rhythm of my week, and not in this negative way in such a positive way that I want to spend time with them. And I really spend a lot of time thinking about how I can achieve my goals as a mother and inside my family, and also achieve my business goals. And it’s really interesting, actually, recently, this past week, I had been thinking about this whole idea of doing it all. And we get told, like you can have it all and it is possible, especially this conversation particularly is directed to women like, it is possible to do it all and have it all. You don’t have to choose, for example, between motherhood and running the business.

But the thing I’ve been thinking about is that that statement is really designed to empower, but in what ways have I taken that on to then create an expectation for myself, that I should be doing it all. And I’ve noticed, especially over the last couple of months, and I shared in the launch debrief for our most recent launch that we did, and the reasons why that launch failed, you can go back and listen to that episode if you’d like. But I really shared about have been thinking about want versus should. We perfectionists love the shoulds. And we often struggle to answer what we want. And I’ve been just sitting in that question of, yes, I can have it all but what do I want? Do I want to have it all? Or what do I want it to look like for me.

And I will mention this a bit later in the episode too. But I have recently hired Michelle Weeks who is a PGSD coach to coach me personally like me being her client, because she coaches on motherhood and the mental load and perfectionism and like all of that stuff together. So I have hired her to coach me, I’m really looking at my mindset around being a mom, and what I want things to look like in my personal life in that regard. So at this point in time, we’ve done one session, which was so helpful, and I’ll be working with her over the next few months. And also, I think I mentioned in the last episode that I have hired our other PGSD Coach Aditi to coach me, so me being her client, on using human design to help me create the best and most helpful and most aligned podcast episodes.

So that’s amazing as well to really have our PGSD coaches. And I have obviously coached them myself over the years having me be able to be their client and benefit from what they are creating. So I’ll link them up in the show notes as well. But I’ve really just been sitting in that question of what do I want my life to look like? Like putting aside what’s possible, and putting aside what I should do, like, what do I actually want, and letting it be okay, that I’m still filling that out, and figuring out what I want that to look like for me. But at this point in time, I know that I want to be working three days a week, and having four days a week with my family. I personally prefer to have a full workday or a full rest day. And this is something I’ve really learned through my power planning. There are people I know many of these kinds of people who love to do like a little bit of each each day. So they might do a couple of hours of work. And then the rest of the day is that clean rest.

But I love to just have a day focus on work. And then a day focus on rest and not kind of dabbling between the two. So at the moment, I’m working three days per week, I have four days per week where I’m not working, and I’m getting my clean rest. And I’m not allowed to do business stuff. Like I’m not kind of checking my email here and replying to this there in so far as I can and there are some times where this doesn’t happen exactly. But I really am focused on working in work time, and not working in my clean rest time. So at the moment as well, just for further context. With the twins, they are working on a few things with their sleep at the moment and having very normal baby sleep, but it is still baby sleep which means that I am more often than not quite tired.

And I will actually share something that I needed to coach myself on which I feel a bit embarrassed to share. But I feel like it could be relatable, so I’m going to share it and look into that later, as I said, but on a lot of the days that I have, I definitely haven’t had a full night’s sleep. And that really does impact my ability to make decisions and things like that. And knowing that I can operate pretty well. But I think I haven’t really been giving myself as much grace as I could around the fact that I’m not getting a full night’s sleep like I have and I’ve talked to Michelle about this like the expectation that I should be able to work as normal and operate as normal, even when I have had months of really poor sleep like that, isn’t it necessarily the most helpful way to be looking at things I’ll share, as I said in my self coaching when I had to coach and it was a bit embarrassing, but that sleep stuff is something that’s going on in my life as well.

And when it comes to structuring my work days, this is something that came out of the last few months. And again, in that launch debrief episode, I talked about what my calendar was looking like and what kind of things I was focusing on. And I really took the time after that launch, to debrief and reflect and look at why didn’t the launch work, but also, why didn’t it feel good to me during that process, during that day to day like, I felt a lot of pressure, a lot of stress. And at this point, with my perfectionism, I am used to not feeling that way, like I have normalized, the ease and simplicity and not feeling busy and not feeling rushed. So I wasn’t doing much self coaching. And I’ll get to that in a second, too. I’m really doing a lot of self coaching at the moment, in my week, but I wasn’t doing much self coaching, I didn’t really sound the alarm with myself, that I was feeling pressured and stressed and like taking a look at the thoughts that were going on there.

But a part of what I got from that experience, was really looking at how I structure my work days, I use my power planning to do this. But making sure that I’m really setting myself up for a day that is going to be as productive as possible, but also really work with the way that my brain likes to work. And so for me, that means having the morning to really do some deep work that can be challenging at times, I am breastfeeding the boys and they need to feed when they need to feed. And so there’s often an interruption to that. But at the same time, like having that mourning period until usually mid day or 1pm. When I’m working, I usually start work at 830. But having that period where I’m not on calls with my team, I might have a PGSD coaching call. But besides that, I’m not on calls, and I’m able to just create, like do my coaching, idea development, tool development and that kind of thing, do things for the podcast.

And I’ve talked about this on previous episodes about really focusing on what I can contribute to the business that no one else can and doing my best to delegate out the things that even I might enjoy doing them, or be the most experience on the team currently doing them like what are the things that are really for me to do? And what are the things that it would be better if someone else did. And so the podcast episodes and the coaching tools, and myself coaching, like those really are the things that I am prioritizing to those things that will take up the first part of my day, I will walk you through a bit more specifically what that looks like. But all of this as I’m structuring my day, the first half is really deep work.

And bigger projects and things that feel like you know, those non urgent things that we often find ourselves putting off, that’s when I get those things done. And then in the afternoons, I will have calls with my team. Or I will be checking in on Asana that we use for project management to see what questions people have that I might need to answer and different things like that. And I will complete any like admin operations, things that I need to do in the afternoons. And I find that that way, I’m not using my best mental energy for things like admin tasks, and all of that. So that’s been really helpful. And as example the prior week, something that I did, that was non urgent, but definitely a needle movier was really taking a look at what the big picture vision is that I have for this podcast.

Because I’d found myself in this conversation of like, I want to get ahead with the podcast episodes, I wasn’t really clear about what that meant. And I just found myself constantly for weeks. In this question, I could see this for myself coaching, like I was asking myself the same question. And that’s why it’s so powerful to really have a dialogue with yourself where you can see what you’re saying, and not just here in your own brain, because then when something does keep coming up, be like, Okay, why does this keep coming up, and I haven’t been forward progress. So in my head, I kept being like, they have myself saying this to my team as well. Like, I want to get ahead of the podcast episode and with writing the perfectionist power ups. And that wasn’t happening. I was like I actually specifically for the podcast episodes, I really need to zoom out instead of thinking like, what are the next episodes I want to record?

But I need to zoom in and really think about, what do I want this podcast to be about? What do I want you to be able to expect from this podcast? What ways is this podcast going to contribute to your life? What things is it going to help you with and understanding how I fit into your day, your week, your life as a perfectionist entrepreneur and really thinking about different formats that I want to have for podcast episodes such as this productive week in my life style of episode. And it was so helpful to do that, it was so helpful to take that look at it. And if you find yourself that you are wanting to get ahead of or on top of something, and you just keep finding that your not, it’s such a great time to zoom out, which means instead of trying to be focused on answering some nitty gritty questions like what episode do I record next, to have a look at the bigger picture of okay, what is this about? Why am I doing this in the first place? What is the goal here? What and meet for me, specifically, something that was really helpful was to think about as a coach, what do I want this podcast to be about?

And I obviously know the topic that its own its own perfectionism and productivity in business. But I mean, really, what do I want to have you come away from the podcast with and before Renae, who’s our marketing manager, join the team, I was the coach, and I was the marketer as well. And because I had spent so much time thinking in those two different ways, what actually happened without me really realizing is that I’d have an idea as a coach, and automatically, I would filter it through my marketing side of my brain. And that would then mean that I didn’t really get to develop or flesh out these different coaching things that I wanted to share, like coaching tools that I’m working on, or developing or seeing success with with our PGSDers things like that, that I would be thinking about, okay, marketing PGSD, because of course, we want to have you sign up for PGSD, if it is a good fit, so that we can really help you to plan properly, and really help you to be productive and get out of your own way.

Like that’s our mission to help you get results. PGSD is the best way that I know how to help you do that. So I want to make sure you know about PGSD, but not just thinking only in that lens, I love to think about it in the coaching lens. And then either if so if you’re, for example, you’re in marketing manager, you can think about it and you might not be a coach, but you can think about like, what you do and not thinking of it in the marketing way, just thinking of it. For example, I know, if you’re a real estate agent, if you’re a dancer, like whatever it is that you do an artist. I was thinking so one of our PGSDer if you’re a graphic designer, if you’re a photographer, like copywriter, all those different things like think about what you want to share from that lens.

And then either maybe even on a separate day, or if like me, you have a marketing manager, then having after that, I’ll look at okay, now how would I market this, I just find that if I’m trying to think about how I market it, at the same time as thinking about the coaching side of things, that I don’t really flesh out the things that I want to share. So it was so powerful to just look at, like as a coach, what do I want to share. So, that’s a bit more about my structuring my days, and like making the time for the non urgent yet important needle moving tasks. So I deprioritize, like that week, I had planned to record five episodes, because I was like, I really want to get on top of or ahead with the podcast episodes like, Okay, I actually need to really think about the podcast as a whole.

So when it comes to what I was gonna say, when I do my power planning, because that might be helpful to hear. I’m really experimenting with this again at the moment. So over the years, I have done my Power Hour and my weekly review at different times in the week, depending on what things are looking like, at the moment, I’m experimenting with doing it first thing on a Tuesday morning, which is essentially my Monday. So I do my weekly review for the prior week, which is when I am comparing my screenshot of what my calendar looks like at the end of the week versus awesome a little tweaks versus how it looks when I did my Power Hour, and really getting the lessons from that week. And then I go straight into my Power Hour. But I really am feeling like I want to do my Power Hour and my weekly review at the end of the week.

So that I’m all set up for the next week and really looking at power planning a few weeks at a time at a minimum, I believe and experience now at this stage of things with my power planning with business as well just rather than doing weekly planning, planning a couple of weeks at a time or I love really planning about a month at a time and I know how to keep that workable so that I can actually stick to that and make adjustments as necessary and it just creates such a sense of calm and clarity. So I had been like for the past month trying to fit in my Power Hour and weekly review on my clean rest days. So either on a Sunday evening, which to be honest I knew wasn’t going to happen. Because I’m just busy sees at work, I’m busy with all the kids and the nighttime routine.

And then I’m not really in a frame of mind, like 8pm on a Sunday to be thinking about what to plan out and all of that kind of thing, or I was doing it on a Monday. And it just, I just found myself like not really having a specific time for it, and then not getting it done, they needed to get it done on the Tuesday morning. And it just, it wasn’t working. And the reason I share this is because as you go through different seasons of your life, and your life starts looking different, which it does for all of us, for me, it’s been really like returning to working and now having three kids and all of that, that it’s looking at reimagining what things look like and what works for you right now.

And it might be the same as what worked before, but it might not be the same as what worked before. And so really having that flexibility. This is why we don’t say, with power planning, you have to do it at 9am on Monday morning. Because that might not work for you that might not make sense for you with where you’re at right now. So it’s been really helpful to us yet to just play around with it, and experiment with it and just be open to it again, looking different, it’s look different, like every stage as I swear, like, every six months, I change what time we will be I do my Power Hour, and we weekly review based on what’s going on in my life, what my work days are looking like, etc.

So that is when I do my Power Hour, it does typically take me an hour. But sometimes it can take a little bit longer. Sometimes it takes a little bit less, if I’ve already planned out that week, and I’m just reviewing it, then it will take less. But it’s not a perfect 60 minutes to the dot. So that’s the context. And I just wanted to share, oh, actually one more thing. So the media thing as well, I think that impacts my planning at the moment is breastfeeding the boys and just being available for feeding and then also for pumping as well. And just with my power planning to have you know how I account for this in case you have things like that, that you don’t know exactly when they’ll happen. But you do know that they will happen in your day that I just have little half hour blocks called nurse, Jack and James. That’s my twin boys names.

So nurse Jack and James and I will put roughly when I expect it to be, but it’s for exactly then. And I will just drag and drop it around to when actually it ends up being so that I’m accounting for the fact that I will need to feed them. But I’m not kind of pretending that I’m not and then be like annoyed the interruption or anything like that, like I know. And I want to feed them during my work day. But I don’t know when it will happen. So that’s how I account for it. And really, I’m able to keep my plans workable. And I give myself it doesn’t take me half an hour to feed them. But I give myself that in my calendar.

And it used to take 7 hour for that in my calendar when they were younger, and it took longer to feed them but now it’s much quicker, they’re much more effective at eating. So that 30 minutes gives me some buffer time as well to just get myself some water or whatever else needs to happen. It’s such an important part of planning properly is like really thinking about the realistic situation of how long it actually takes you to do things and not just say for example for me, I could say that was 15 minutes, but I know there’s a few things I usually do after it to kind of get myself back into work mode. So I’m gonna give myself 30 minutes.

So let’s talk about a few specific things in my calendar, and I just had a look at what’s that to share what I think you might find interesting. So first of all, I wanted to share a 90 days of self coaching thing that I am doing that I have created for myself. It’s not a challenge that I’m doing through anyone else. I just wanted to give myself a container, a frame a project, essentially, around self coaching, because as I mentioned, I found that with the most recent launch, I think a big part of the reason I didn’t realize the way that my perfectionism handbrake was coming home was because I was deprioritizing self coaching, because I really didn’t, like I knew I was getting my own way. And I didn’t want to look at it. And so I wasn’t doing myself coaching. And then that was just this whole vicious cycle.

So I recognize following that, that self coaching, like I’m obviously such a big believer in it and advocate for it, we talk about it all the time in PGSD and power planning is a self coaching tool. But actually having specific time to do that self coaching was something I wanted to prioritize. And I found that when I was just framing it as like, I want to do it every day. And that kind of thing. I just wasn’t doing it like I wasn’t feeling as committed to it as I could be so I thought about how I could actually frame it. So that I really felt 100% committed to it. And so for me that was creating this 90 days of self coaching, and to share with you I think it was maybe day 17 I didn’t do my self-coaching.

And I didn’t stop then start over again from day one, I just kept going. And in my I’m using my iNotes to do my self-coaching, which is another update, actually, I was doing my self-coaching by hand, and then my remarkable writing tablet, whatever you want to call it, where it feels like real pen and paper. But then when I really thought about what would it look like, if it was easy, and sometimes that’s self coaching, like I’m feeding the boys at 5am. And I’m like chopping down my thoughts, and just having it be available and like searchable as well, because my self-coaching is really how I develop a lot of ideas for podcast episodes and for coaching tools as well. And so I want to have it be searchable and really accessible. And so also Renae, our marketing manager had mentioned about her doing her self coaching in her. I know it’s and I was like, Okay, well, I might just do that and try that. And it’s been working really well for me.

Even though I love writing things by hand, it is always helpful to question at times the assumptions and beliefs you have about doing certain things a certain way. And there being a better way. And so I definitely have been on the train of like, it’s so much better to handwrite it even if it’s can be inconvenient. And now I’m really focusing on like, how can I make it convenient, because the imperfect self coaching that happens is better than the perfect self coaching that doesn’t. So this 90 days isn’t about trying to create a streak. It’s really about creating a container for myself. Like that’s how I like to think about it, just giving myself this frame of like, it’s 90 days, because if I’m thinking it has to be everyday forevermore, it feels so vague, it feels so hard to commit to, but just 90 days.

And at this point, I know how to stick to things. I know how to get myself to follow through with things and not in this really like forceful way, but to be pulled towards doing them and find myself like in a habit pretty quickly with things. And I share a lot of how I’ve done that on this podcast and in PGSD. But I really feel like for me 90 days, in fact, oh my god, 90 days, if you are wanting to do something like this, I recommend doing like 10 days or 20 days or 30 days, but not having it been 90 if that feels like such a big stretch. For me, I felt like 90, that’s a quarter I love working in quarters. And that feels really doable to me. And I can commit to doing that every day. And I know that if I miss a day I will just keep going. So it’s not a big deal if I do so that’s just a recommendation if you hear that and like that sounds really good.

And of course if you’re a PGSDer, and if your power planning maybe you’re not a PGSDer yet but you are power planning that you can really be looking at like with your power planning, why you change tasks when you’re making a little tweaks like those adjustments, you’re making your little tweaks throughout the week. That is such a great way to get yourself coaching material to see like why did I change the plan that I have that I like, that reason what’s going on that why did this take me two hours longer than I had planned? Like it just gives you insight into actions. When it comes to self coaching. You can just you know write out your thoughts do a thought download kind of thing and then have a look at those thoughts and change them if you want or like get curious about that.

But one way I love to do things is look at my actions and then look at okay what feeling and thought is creating that? What assumptions? What self image is creating that action? So I love the actions for insight. And not just the thoughts. So that has been, that has been something that has really worked for me. So I want to share a couple things that I have self coach on this week, one of them that I feel like embarassing to share, but I feel like just remind myself what’s most personal is most universal. And so I know that there’s a chance you’ll be able to relate to this. So one thing I coach on this was, I think, maybe yesterday morning, as I mentioned, the boys have been sleeping. Like, as you would expect six month olds to sleep, they are great little sleepers, but also, they wake up during the night, they’ve been feeding overnight, and needing to be settled. And I’ve just been like, up and down, up and down, up and down. And not getting much rest.

And yesterday morning, when I was doing my self coaching which I was doing while I was feeding Jack, at 5am. I was like, it was just so interesting. I was just reflecting on how I knew I should be tired. Like I really hadn’t had much sleep at all. But I didn’t actually feel tired, my eyelids felt heavy. But besides that, I didn’t actually feel tired. Like if I told myself, I did have an eight hour sleep, it would have could have been believable, because I didn’t feel those sensations of tiredness. And when I was doing myself coaching, I realized that I was it’s almost like, if I’m tired, or I haven’t had a good sleep, I don’t want to let myself be happy and energized.

Because I want to either like Steve to acknowledge, like, Oh, you’re so tired or like, I want to just kind of be this pity party almost about being tired. And I feel like that’s really embarrassing to say, but hopefully someone can relate to this who was listening. But in that moment, just saying like, oh, I don’t actually feel tired. But like, I want to feel tired to kind of feel like acknowledged or seen. And what I did then in my self coaching was like, Okay, well, if I want to feel acknowledge for, like, not getting much sleep, which I know I’m getting sounds weird, but I feel like it is relatable like for like, oh, I have not getting much sleep, I’m so tired. But I wanted to feel kind of like acknowledged for the commitment that is kind of reflecting with the kids and all that.

So what I did was I wrote to myself, like, I see me, I see how committed I am to the kid like I just was like, what would I want someone to say about like, if someone was acknowledging like, wow, you must be so tight. Like, when I when people say that in real life, it’s like it’s not actually an enjoyable, helpful conversation. And that’s why this is so funny to look at. Like, I’m not wanting people to like, Oh, you must be so tired. Like I don’t enjoy having these conversations. But obviously, there’s part of me that wants to feel acknowledged. And I’m not acknowledging myself. So what I did was, I acknowledge myself of like, I see you I see the things you’re doing, I see the like how committed you are being to making sure the kids have what they need. And like all of this and just when I did that, and it took me like a minute to just write out like, what would I want to be acknowledged for like what’s underneath this desire to be like moping around tired, even though I don’t actually feel tired. And I can just do the things I want.

And I feel like I do do pretty well on little sleep. I mean, that’s the whole self image thing. Anyone is available, anyone’s open and has the option in believing that. But I have a belief that I do well on not much sleep. And so it was just a such a helpful reframe. We had a really great day yesterday. And again, I need to give myself pretty similar self coaching this morning. I was like, Look, I can just compartmentalize and rates. And even though I didn’t get the sleep that I had hoped I would or that I haven’t played need to function at my best. I can just move on with the day and not have to, like try and connect with myself through this self pity of like, Oh, I’m so tired.

So that was something that I self coached on. And that I noticed was coming up for me. And something when it comes to something professional business related that I self coached on was whether to so for the Planning series that is coming up for the PJSD launch, whether to reuse the or repurposed the episodes for the Planning series that we did in January 2020. Oh my God, what year was it? 2022 last year, or to record new ones and if so, what would that look like? And the reason I share this is first of all, to invite you to consider and I love doing this I try to do as often as he can to invite you to consider that you don’t need to redo things every day, like, we have this belief often that everything needs to be original.

And like if someone’s had something before from us or read something from us before, we can’t share that, again, it needs to be in this completely new way. And for me, the reason this came up is because when we were looking Renae and myself at the Planning series, it was like, all this stuff that needs to be there is there like, this is so helpful. And so we were talking about having me record from the notes that I use when I recorded that series. In January. I recorded it in December 2020. Oh, my goodness, why are the year is such a blur. Can you tell I haven’t been sleeping, 2021. Oh my goodness. Even if they say that doesn’t sound like a word, the December before January 2022.

So that I was thinking about like, Okay, well, what if what if I’m just recording from the notes I’ve already had? Why wouldn’t I just share the actual recordings? Is there a problem with them? Like, is there something in those episodes that like, we need to edit things out? Because they’re not relevant anymore? So I was really coaching myself on like, what would that look like? And then this was doing self coaching over a few days. So on Tuesday, so that was the Tuesday self coaching that I had. And in that afternoon, I really listened back to those episodes. And I did some self coaching as well on like, what’s the most effective way to listen to them? Do I just listen back to it? Do I go on a walk and listen to it? As if I am someone who is listening to it, who probably isn’t going to be sitting down at a desk.

Do I read the transcript? Do I listen and read the transcript. And what I came to was actually using otter.ai. Because if I did need to make edits, then communicating what edits, I thought to my team, that if you upload a audio file to otter.ai, then it will have not only the transcript pretty accurately reflected there, but also you can make comments about very specific things like you can just highlight the words. And you can make a comment. So I wouldn’t have to say, Oh, this timestamp, do this, I could just say like, highlight it and go, Okay, this date was mentioned here, or whatever. So I was reflecting back on that on Tuesday, and then yesterday, Wednesday, what I like the next layer of the self coaching after having listened. On Tuesday afternoon, I listened to three to five. And I just felt like my brain just felt so fuzzy.

And honestly, I think a big part of this was, as a side note, when I was feeding the boys, what I have also been looking at doing in my personal life, like not business side of things, but is putting the clips that I have of the kids into little family videos. And rather than just recording and if you’re a parent, you’ll know that all they like oh my god, that’s so cute, I have to capture that. So I have 1000s of little clips, and it just feels like they’re going into the abyss and I will you know, we’ll go back and look at them. At the end of the day Steve and I go and like look at all videos and post of our kids, and all of that kind of thing. But I just felt like there were so many of them, I wasn’t really doing anything with them.

So I purchased a course and I will mention what it is, DIY family films course, if you Google that you will find it. Also, if you have issues with this kind of stuff, and like overwhelmed with photo organizing Miss Freddy, if you Google her, she’s fantastic as well on this side of things, but I had recorded a few days ago, I think it was on the Friday or Saturday, some clips following the recommendations that cause like all these different angles, like it’s been really enjoyable to do some clips of the kids I mean, Steve, and I was like edit this together in a video and I just gotten on a roll with it. I was like I can do it when I’m feeding the boys overnight, which actually is not a great activity to do when you are then trying to get to sleep after because I was like oh, and I can do this and this.

So I really got kind of in that like perfectionist thing about of like being on social roll and wanting to keep going. And so when I was feeding the boys on Tuesday, I was editing that video on my phone. And it felt really good to do in the moment. But I think just because I would be working and then I was like, instead of just like usually I just be hanging out with the boys and maybe reading my book, like a hardcopy book and not looking at a screen. But I was instead looking at my phone and edit it. And so I found just by the end of the day, I was like, Hey, that’s not working to be doing that on a work day. It is just making my brain like I can just tell I’m not able to think as clearly. And so at quarter past four instead of just pushing through, so to speak and finishing listening back to those episodes of Part Four and part five. I just said like I’m done working for today. I was going to work till 5pm, but I’m gonna I’m going to do 20 minute cycling class, like a low impact. Like I’m just gonna sit on the bike and like spin my leg. And then call it a day and I’ll shuffle so I like tweaked my power planning so that Wednesday morning, I knew what I needed to do.

So what I did on Wednesday morning was, I just felt like I mentioned this actually today on the PGSD coaching call because it was so helpful. The one of the books that I love, one of my favorite books, I would say is called The Art of Possibility by Rosamund Stone Zander and Benjamin Zander, and yesterday, so I, Wednesdays is a day, typically, that I am home alone in the house and working from home, the kids aren’t here. Steve isn’t here. It’s not always that way. But at the moment, that’s what things often look like. So I just really felt like, Okay, I want to I just feel like inspiring myself with something. And I’m not listening to many podcast episodes at the moment. I’ll mention more about why in a bit.

But I just felt called to go to my bookshelf and pick a couple of books up that have just been kind of calling my name for me to flick through because I’ve shared on the podcast before when I’m reading a nonfiction book, particularly, I have a little system of highlighting and tabbing. The book, I actually shared this system, I want to say it’s episode 31 and 81 off the top of my head around there, where I share like what that system looks like. I’ve also shared a bit about it on my Instagram, which is @perfectionismproject. But anyway, let’s say I have highlights in my books of journaling prompts and quotes that resonated me at the time that I read the book.

So I pulled out the other possibility and also the other ones that called my name were Principles by Ray Dalio and also The Courage To Be Disliked by Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga, I’ve butchered that, but all excellent books, but I just started flicking through the Art of Possibility. And there are some really great prompts in here for self coaching. And these prompts are going to get you really growth minded as well and help you release your perfectionism handbrake. So I highly recommend this book. But one of the things in there that stood out to me, like I just gave myself the time in this space with my self coaching, to just look through the book to not really have an agenda to just like, have a look through, I just felt called to do it. And in there, there’s a question or a prompt about being a contribution. And what would it look like if you were to be a contribution.

And when it comes to content creation, there is a lot of talk, obviously, about creating valuable things to deliver, like high value content, and people just use that word value a lot. And I haven’t even found that particularly helpful, like a helpful frame, to think about value in that way. I don’t know, it just hasn’t resonated. But when I think about being a contribution, that to me is a question that really lands with me, and helps me to get out of my own way. Because it has me thinking about first of all, the person I can be a contribution to, I don’t think about the people who I’m not for for the people who don’t resonate with what I do, I think about the person who I can best contribute to.

And then I’m thinking about like, what could I do to really, truly be a contribution to them as a coach, and particularly as well, I think this book was so inspiring to me, because it really is about coaching. And about and I think everyone should read this book, but it really talks to it just incidentally, about the power of reframing things, and really looking at things through a new perspective, a new lens, which is what coaching is, there really is, I think, a distinction. I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately between awareness and self awareness, and coaching or self coaching. And people talk about like awareness is the first step towards creating change, which I do agree with. You can’t self coach or get coach without awareness, but there is more to it than awareness.

And if you’re feeling bad that you have awareness, but not change, it’s because there isn’t coaching that’s happening. That’s why I’m so passionate about being a coach about PGSD, about teaching self coaching about power planning, being a self coaching tool, so that you can do that not just have that awareness, but you can actually change the way you’re thinking and you can reframe the way that you’re thinking and at the beginning of this book, it says our premise about the book is that many of this, oh I guess about their philosophy, our premise is that many of the circumstances that seem to block us in our daily lives may only appear to do so based on a framework or assumptions we carry with us. Draw a different frame around the same set of circumstances and new pathways come into you. Like that’s what we do in PGSD, like that’s what all coaching is about.

It’s about seeing things in a new way. And so when I was thinking about that question of what would it look like to be a contribution with the Planning series that was so interesting, how it had me thinking about things that I hadn’t been before. And so this was the self coaching that I was doing yesterday, I was thinking about what would make this not just be high value, but what would it be like to really feel like this planning series was such a contribution. And I call into question assumptions that I’ve had about what that could look like, and how I like to do things on the podcast. So for example, like this episode, where I just have a few notes, and I’m chatting about things is the way that I typically create podcast episodes, I really enjoy doing it this way.

But when I was thinking about like, what would it look like to be a contribution with the Planning series, it would be actually creating quite short succinct to the point episodes, and really taking the time for me to think through all the things I know, and tell you what the most important pieces are. Rather than just chatting about like, I really want to make sure that I am communicating in the clearest way that I know. And now after 10 years of thinking about perfectionism, and productivity and business, like I needed to have a time period, where I’ve just chatting and like hearing myself talk and the ideas and developing that through that way. But I feel like now I’m coming into a time where there’s this time to chat, like this kind of episode. And there’s also a time for me to do that thinking. So you don’t need to do that thinking and figure out what’s important and what isn’t.

And what actually inspired this, in a lot of ways was a random video on YouTube. So in my clean rest time, what I have been doing, actually, I guess, to back up a little bit and share further context, I’ve decided not to consume podcast episodes, about business, particularly, but just really, in general, in my clean rest time. So there’s four days of the week, that I want to have more bandwidth to be thinking about my personal life to be thinking about how I want to be as a mom, and I was finding that and I’ve said before about clean rest, like, it’s okay, if you want to be listening to business podcasts and doing that kind of thing. And everyone’s gonna have their own lines that they draw in. For me and it’s been experimenting with not listening to that kind of content, or that kind of thing.

Maybe except if I’m on a walk, or like having an intentional time to listen, but not kind of using it just as company. But instead of being able to have my mental bandwidth for other things. So it’s been really interesting couple of… I want to say three weeks now, I haven’t really been listened to anything podcast wise, especially not on a day off. And I’ve been able to think about like all these other things I want to do and start using my mental energy for that instead of always just thinking about the business, I feel like the business feels more like controllable, and safe in a lot of ways, even though it brings up a lot of fear of judgment, or that kind of thing, that it still feels like more easily managed than my personal life. And so my brain just wants to spend all this time thinking about the business and having ideas and like…

My experience is that I love thinking about the business. And I feel like as I’ve done this experiment, it’s like, Oh, I’m just not practiced in thinking about my personal life. And also, I can really see that I just have less clarity in certain things just because I haven’t been thinking about it as much as I’ve thought about the business. And so I’m now creating space, to be thinking about those things. All that say one of those things, has been wanting to cook just recognizing that I do really want to change my relationship with cooking I did this years ago with baking that I was like, I can’t bake. And then I was like actually, I want to become someone who can bake. I use to call it procrasti-bake Tuesdays, I would make something from a cookbook that I had, and just try all these different recipes. And now I really enjoy baking.

But with cooking I just kind of frame those two things differently was like but I don’t like cooking and I’m not good at cooking, which is like perfectionist mindset of like you’re either good at things naturally or you’re not. So I was like well, I really want to learn how to cook and I want to cook for my family and I want to be able to do that and like cook with the kids and all of that. So I want to learn how to cook so I YouTubed a video about cooking for beginners. And there’s a video called Learn to Cook in less than one hour with Nick DiGiovanni who I wasn’t familiar with but he have a lot of subscribers so a lot of people know about him.

But his video learn to cook in less than one hour is so like it’s scripted and I bet you can just see they have carefully thought about what are the things that someone would need to know if they are just starting cooking and within like the first five minutes of this video he’s already shared. I’ll link it up in the show notes. He’s already shared so many things that I didn’t know, that were helpful to know. And he didn’t explain the nuances about it. He just shared the very basic things. And I feel like that’s a belief I’ve had that I need to, I love talking about the nuances of things and like we’ve been ideas together. And there’s definitely a time and a place for that. But also, there’s a time and a place for like, you don’t need the nuance, you just need this simple and basic thing that you’re able to then remember and implement.

And so that video was just such a clear demonstration to me, especially because I wasn’t thinking about it in the business context at all. But he was just very much like, you need what is it like an eight inch knife, and you need a sharpener. And that’s what like, you don’t need all these knives. Here’s why, like a one sentence on here’s why you don’t need this, this is what you need. Okay, then you need this kind of chopping board. And like just having someone who’s like, so clear and decided on something, and can give you such clear instruction, like, just being on the other end of that I was like that, to me, feels like being a contribution, like creating that kind of thing where I’ve done the mental work, so that you as a listener don’t need to do that.

So that had me thinking about scripting out episodes, which, as I said, it’s really they haven’t really done before. I’ve tried it. But I think and this is where there is a distinction to be made. There’s scripting things from a place of I need to say the right thing. I need to get it right, this has to be perfect. And we’re really thinking about us and how we’re perceived, or the goals that we have. But when we it was interesting, just when I thought about like, How can I be a contribution? Then I was actually thinking, Well, for me to be the highest contribution I could be. It would be having it be succinct and to the point. And the easiest way to do that would be to really constrain myself to say like 15 to 20 minutes per episode. And then I was like through my self coaching, okay. Well, what I’m going to do is because I started writing all these notes, like there’s so much to say.

So instead of that I was like, what would be helpful is just for me to think about if I only had five minutes to say things, what are the things I would make sure I said on this topic, to someone who isn’t familiar with me, they haven’t heard anything we say before. So like the beginner like this Nick, like, I haven’t heard anything he said before about cooking, I haven’t really heard much that anyone said about cooking. Like, I’ve obviously seen cooking shows in passing and that kind of thing. But I haven’t, I’m very much a beginner. And so it’s just like, regardless of whether you’re a beginner or advanced, getting beginner content that is really taught in a clear and simple way is so powerful.

So I’m just thinking like, how could I do that? What would that look like? And I found myself scripting things out, not from I need to say it right. But from a, this is going to be so valuable. And this is really going to contribute. And that the way that I knew that I was on track, was it it felt so easy to write the script and I have recorded hundreds of episodes, I’ve written hundreds of blog posts over the years and email. So I know how to write in the way that I talk. And I know what I’m talking about. So because of that it was quite easy as well. But I just knew that I wasn’t trying to like, cover everything.

And I thought ahead of time, like what are the things that need to be said, but when I was doing this exercise of like writing this script, I wasn’t thinking about I have to mention this and how I’m going to work that in I was like, thinking about one specific person who is listening to this, who wants to plan properly, who like knows what to do to build a business, they just aren’t doing that in their own way. Like they the person we help. What do they need to hear? And like what’s really the conversation going on in their mind? And how can I meet them where they are? And how can I make this so helpful? And how can I really, honestly, genuinely help them decide about PGSD because it’s not going to be a perfect fit for everyone.

And so instead of me trying to be like saying the right thing, or like, kind of been in a convincing energy, which I feel like I have been at times when I’ve been experimenting with different ways of marketing and talking about things, but when I really feel the clearest, and it’s always reflected in our signup results as well. It’s when I’m really like, Hey, this is something I think is going to be really work well, for a certain kind of person, let me help you see if you’re that certain kind of person. And these if you are, these are some of the things you might be thinking about, like, Okay, what cohort would be best for me to join and like, What’s everyone else, like who’s in there and like all these different things, rather than kind of thinking about it just from a sales psychology perspective, and things like that.

So that was sort of my self coaching as well. And also using in general for self coaching, just doing a lot of like problem solving and decision making. And recognizing there are different kinds of super thinking, and beginning to categorize that. So in PGSD, and on this podcast, we talk a lot about Super thinking, which is a concept that I heard about from Brooke Castillo from The Life Coach School. But that concept is quite vague. And when I’ve been reflecting on it, it’s really there are these different categories of like problem solving and decision making. And I’m really starting to create tools around each of those, which I will share in PGSD, definitely, as they develop and probably some of them on the podcast too. But that 90 days of self coaching has been so powerful.

A couple of other things that I’ve been doing like to share what my week has been looking like I hope this has been really helpful to hear a few specific things and like for me to go in more detail with some things I will just wrap up by sharing some other things more briefly. But one thing I’ve been enjoying doing is putting my like work set up so I have in front of me right now in my office, I have in front of me a box on top of which a laptop senses on top of which is my MacBook so that my MacBook is at the right height with a have a keyboard and a trackpad that are separate. And then I have a big monitor and a zeus one and that sits on a little box. So everything’s at the right height and I have two screens, I highly recommend getting the two screen setup like your laptop plus a monitor you can get one for like 100 bucks or 200 bucks or whatever but to have it’s it’s going to be such a productivity boost.

So like that alone if I want to say if you only take one thing from this episode, get yourself a second monitor, like make the time invest the money in doing that because just being able to look at different documents at the same time not flicking back and forth between things. Like I I find it so much easier to work when I have that setup. So anyway, I have that setup. And when no one else in the house I have been setting myself up on the dining room table. So we have in our dining room after we did that renovation, we have a really beautiful raked like pointy ceiling that we have all these windows in that room and I love like opening the windows and just sitting there and we have a beautiful view of all the trees like we’re surrounded by trees. And so if you didn’t know I live in Brisbane, Australia, and I’m not too far out of the city. Well it depends who you ask but I near suburbia, but we live on acreage.

So we have so many beautiful trees around us. And I love just sitting there and just like putting myself in a different work environment, even though I’m in home in my house. So maybe think about that as well, if you want to change things up, like I never thought to put my like, take, it takes about 30 seconds to put my whole setup there. Because I was like, I want to work there. But I don’t want to not have my double screen. And so I was like, Okay, well, I can actually just put both screens out there. So there might be something simple like that, that you could do as well that you haven’t thought was an option. But that’s been really great as well. I also had on Tuesday, a consulting call with someone about working on Asana, which is what we use for project management, how to use it better as a team how to like, organize things a bit better project management wise.

So that’s just something else that went on in my week to really help me again, like, instead of just tackling problems that are coming up with Asana, with team communication, and project management and things like that, that I actually zoom out and take a big look at like, Okay, what’s going on underneath this? And how can I solve for the problem long term. So in my clean rest, I want to mention a few things that have been really working well for me. And so one of those things is setting an alarm. And I think depending on if you’re well, doesn’t really matter, really, if you’re a parent, but I think particularly I’m mentioning parenting because you have kind of a couple of options.

Normally, I want to say you can either have the option where your kids your alarm, or the option where you set an alarm. Or the third option is you naturally wake up before your kids do but I feel like the chances of that are slim. So for me that options have been my kids are my alarm, and I wake up when either Lydia wakes up or the boys do. Or I can actually intentionally start my day. And as I mentioned, because I haven’t been getting as much sleep like I’ve really wanted to prioritize sleep and making sure I’m getting when I can. But at the same time, I really enjoy that feeling of like I am put together like I’ve I used to always shower in the morning that I stopped doing that or just shower in the evenings. But I love showering in the morning. And I think it’s one of the reasons I love working in the morning because I just love having that shower and getting ready in that way.

So what I’ve started doing is sharing the morning again, I set my alarm for 545. Sometimes I’m already up by that time, but if not, I set my alarm for 545. And even though I could potentially sleep till seven, maybe 545 is such a like it’s it’s not crazy early, I am someone that I like waking up early, I would say seven for me is normally asleep in it. And this season of my life is not asleep in it like I need as much sleep as I can get. But waking up at 545 and like having a shower and doing my makeup and getting dressed. And it’s been really great to to not have a podcast episode I’ve just been putting on music. And just like having a minute to gather my thoughts. And then when I’m getting the kids up, I just feel like so much more connected, because I have already intentionally sad in my day, and then I’m ready to greet them versus they’re crying or calling. And then I’m kind of like half awake, half asleep. Like my hair’s a mess. I’m like, I just don’t feel like myself, so to speak.

So that has been so powerful for me to do that. I’ve been doing that for about a week now. And I’m definitely going to be continuing because I feel like it is it just like streamlines everything in the morning. I feel like so much more resourceful and capable. Like it just really helps me set the right tone for the day. I have also been working out at my friend’s place. And that is something that felt to have logistically to do. And then I was like, okay, when myself coaching, like do some problem solving here, like, what are the options, and it was so helpful. instead of it just for a couple of weeks. I was like, I don’t know when I can like when it would work and all of that. And I was like, actually, I can figure that out. And I’m going to ask me ready to figure it out. And I did. So that’s really, really, really amazing to do that.

Another quick thing I want to mention, is taking all three kids out by myself. This is so I have had different thoughts about like, it’s kind of a almost a self image mismatch of like, I believe, I know, I’m really capable, but I haven’t believed that I am as capable as I am. So I have been like I want to go and just be able to like take all the kids out and just like do normal things. But it just feels logistically like what if I need to feed the boys when we’re out and about and then also like keep Lydia nearby and then it takes a while to feed them because I have to feed them one by one because I’m not 10 and feeding them all that kind of thing.

So anyway, I had then and my self coaching me like well, what if what if that wasn’t true? And like let’s go through worst case scenario like I have been going out with him but not as much as I want to be. And I have quite a few days where it is just me and all the kids. So I really just question He was just so imperiling a question, that assumption I went out to is called Chermside shopping center. If you’re in Brisbane, you’ll know it. But like a big shopping mall, and it was a busy day and it was like, you know what, I’m just gonna take a lot of steps. We can leave whenever we want to leave. I’m gonna park like, I don’t like parking in the prime spot because it’s like, usually in a busy area, I’m just going to park away, so I can get everyone out of the car, get everyone in and I have to be like, watching Liddy like a hawk.

Anyway, it was just it was such a great experience. And I was like, it just such a good reminder of the default thoughts your brain thinks aren’t necessarily truth. They often aren’t. And me not consuming podcast episodes, which I feel so controversial even saying that, because I love podcast episodes and like, listening to podcasts is why I have a business because podcasts introduce me to business I’ve always consistently like if I could, is actually really helpful question to ask yourself when it comes to consumption of media and social media, like, what would you pay to consume? Like, would you pay to scroll through your Instagram feed? Maybe you would? Or would you pay to have an hour a day on TikTok? Maybe you would. But for example for me, would I pay to listen to podcasts? Yes. Have I paid for apps that improve my podcast listening experience? Yes, I have have a like, do I want to act like if I couldn’t get that for free? Would I still pay for it? A 100% yes, whereas pretty much anything else. Like if I had to pay for Instagram access as a consumer, any of that, like, I don’t want to pay for that.

So I love podcasts, but mental tabs too many of them too many tabs open in my brain. And just like I didn’t have the mental bandwidth I wanted to have for my personal life stuff. So with this, and also like I was watching a lot of YouTube videos, particularly business related one some like mum vlog kind of ones, but particularly when I was feeding the boys in their like newborn newborn stage, and spending a lot of time sitting down like hours and hours and hours every day, sitting down feeding them. And it would take maybe like 30 minutes or an hour for each feed and their feeding seven to eight times per day. So that’s the kind of tongues of time while looking at that I didn’t want to be scrolling through my phones. I was watching YouTube videos and like different podcasts that are on YouTube and things like that. And it was really great.

But I found that this mental drain from needing to choose what, what things to watch next, I don’t really have like watch later that you can do and things like that. But I just found that when I looked at it closely, it really was more draining than energizing. And so now what I’ve been doing is reading again, and I love reading anytime I do any kind of like ideal day, journaling exercise, I have read it like without a doubt reading is part of my ideal day. And yet I tend to deprioritize it.

So I wanted to share a few things I’m reading at the moment. So as I mentioned The Art of Possibility, I’m just kind of flicking through that I think I will read it again, cover to cover. But I was just flicking through that yesterday. But I highly highly, highly recommend. Seven Days in June by Tia Williams, I’m reading that book properly. Like it’s a fiction book. I mean, the hardcopy not that listening to an audiobook or Kindle isn’t properly but I mean, like I, I have the physical book, Raising Girls Who Like Themselves by Kasey Edwards on Kindle. So I wanted to have a book for if I am feeding the boys, and I just want something to read and it’s dark that I can just like on Kindle, you can have it the app on your phone and have it with the black background, so that it’s not too bright. So I’ve been reading that. And that book really as well covers a lot of like, it’s about getting into like resilience and growth mindedness.

So very supportive of all the concepts that I talked about here on the podcast. And those are the main books. Like there’s one that I’m missing. I can’t think of it right now. But I am reading a lot more. And I just finished reading The Break by Marian Keyes, which I really enjoyed. That’s another fiction book. And, yeah, I mentioned about the editing family videos, which is something that has opened up for me mental bandwidth wise since not consuming things and also just thinking about Montessori stuff for the house. So that’s Montessori is a philosophy when it comes to parenting and all of that kind of thing. I’ll let you Google it and research it if you don’t know what that is, and you want to find out more.

But I have been using my mental bandwidth to really think about like, what kinds of activities I want to be doing with the kids and like how to set up the house to really support that and to support Lyddie particularly because the boys aren’t really old enough yet to be doing things independently. But I’ve been able to just have so much more mental bandwidth for that, and really just deciding as well on my days where it’s just me and the kids for me not to expect myself to be doing life admin things because I was kind of approaching it with this mentality of okay, well, I have the kids and like, they’re gonna have naps at different times. And that might be that the boys are napping at the same time Lyddie’s napping. So I might have a minute. And in that time, I need to be doing something productive and like kind of my life admin stuff and like organizing myself or like housebits, like, I need to be doing that.

And when I’ve just said, like, on my days, or it’s just me and the kids, I don’t do that, I mean, working nights. And that’s another thing, like figuring out where my workouts going, and aiming to do one at lunchtime when Lyddie’s napping. And like having conversations with Steve that, like so we can figure out how to get my workout in to like what we need to do so that I can, instead of me thinking like, oh, well, I guess I’ll fit it in, if I can, like, I really do want to prioritize that. And before having the kids, I have had a really consistent workout habit.

So just having the like, really giving myself permission to prioritize that workout over like, you know, refilling the nappy pile that we have, or whatever the nappie draw, that has been so powerful, I really want to invite you if, regardless of if you have kids or not, if you just always have in your mind mentally, like I should be working on some life admin right now like this is this is like, it’s so funny with the business that with power planning in the way that I approach business tasks, I don’t have this like I should be doing this, I should be I’m very clear about what I’m doing what I decided to do later, I don’t feel like I have these things hanging over me. But in my personal life, and I’m really working on at the moment.

Really having power planning become a tool that fully supports you with your business life and your personal life as well. And that can tie into like project management. And so you’re not just talking about like your to do items for this week. But you’re really able to look at things bigger picture, like I’m really wanting to create power planning to be a tool that I mean, it’s such an incredible tool already. But now that I’ve been using it for and developing it for a few years, like I can just see the next iteration of it. And of course, that’ll be available in PGSD. And of course, I’ll also be talking about some of those things on the podcast, too, to help make it even better.

But I’m really just looking at how I can have that feeling I have now with my business of going from like, there’s always something to be done. And I’m always behind instead feeling like I know what to do. And I’m doing it like that was revolutionary that was the business and now it’s bringing them over into my personal life as well. And so I’m just spending time thinking about what that looks like, and how to really, how to really develop power planning further to be the most incredible tool and not just like, what can I do in the next month to update it and make it even better. But like, over the next five years, 10 years, like what kind of things can I do like having this bigger vision for power planning has been really, really, really incredible and has been influencing a lot of the experimenting, I’ve been doing with my power planning and with my own productivity.

And for example, now in my power planning, be more specific in what I do in my clean rest time, instead of just having it be clean rest. And that at the end of my weekly review, I don’t really know what happened in that time. I’m kind of updating it a little bit as I go to break it down into chunks of like there’s a morning routine with the kids and in the morning activity. And then there’s like lunchtime, and then there’s a nap time that there’s afternoon routine and there’s bedtime that there’s like time after they go to bed. And just kind of like filling in what I did in those things has been so helpful to give me insight into where my time is going with the like with my week in the way that I know that with my business and it’s just making my weekly review so much more powerful.

And yeah, just giving me more mental bandwidth to not just be thinking about the business but also my personal life as well. I’m obviously really truly am someone who believes that you can have an incredible personal life with boundaries and your business as well that it’s not that if you are an entrepreneur that you have to be like, oh, you know, I’m always kind of working. I’m always kind of not working. Like there’s just so much talk around. If you’re a business owner, especially if you have like a personal brand or that kind of thing. Like of course there’s going to be this blend and you’re not going to be able to distinguish the two things and I love personally for me like I mentioned, I love having like a work day and then a non work day.

I love having that clarity and I love being able to switch my brain into those different modes and to know like, just to wrap this up, going back to what I was talking about at the beginning, if you identify yourself as a productive person, it will pull you towards being more rested. And also having a life beyond your business. Because if you are truly productive and growth minded, it means that you don’t just believe you are your business. And if you are hitting your sales goals, and you’re a good person, and if you’re not hitting your sales goals, then you’re a bad person. Or maybe it’s not sales goals for you that when you think about it, maybe it’s how many followers you have, or the engagement that you have, like, when you really think about productivity in a more holistic way.

When you start to define success for yourself, which I’ve been thinking, again, a lot about this, is what does success mean to me, and a lot of that has to do with my relationship with Steve, my husband, with my kids, with myself, and not just the business, that is an important part of what I enjoy doing. But there’s more to it than that. And to recognize, like I already have so much of that. And now it’s just improving that, in a sense, that probably isn’t the best word to use there. But you know what I mean, like really deepening those connections and feeling into that success versus like, thinking that I want something that I don’t have like, it’s really, I think a lot of getting out of your own way, here’s one thing what you do already have, and recognizing like the skills and talents that you do already have, rather than focusing on the ones that you don’t.

So that’s kind of a look at my Power planning and my week, what I’ve been up to, there were definitely times where I found myself like switching between things. So just to mention very briefly, a couple of things that came up with my Power planning, you’re like, Okay, that’s me kind of getting my own way there was when I did my weekly review. On Tuesday morning, I can see in my power planning that I emailed my accountant about something and instead of me actually going, Okay, I need to send that email. And I’m going to do that later, when it’s like the end of the day, my admin block, I instead did it right, then because I had that sort of like, well, I need to do it now. And I’ve just seen the email come through.

And that actually switched me into a completely different mode of thinking, and ended up taking like 15 minutes to do. And it’s that kind of stuff that it doesn’t feel like if I was working from a to do list, I wouldn’t even notice I’ll be like, oh, cool, I get to take that thing off, too. But because I’m power planning, I can really see actually, that wasn’t the plan to do that. And this is me, like actually just not being comfortable with staying fully in that high level thinking before I go into the weeds of things. And also, like I have made big tweaks to my calendar this week. And in Power planning, and we have the three steps to your Power Hour little tweaks and weekly review. When it came to my little tweaks.

They were big, because I was like actually, I want to reimagine the way that I’m doing the planning series, and not just go with my original plan, which was just to like, review the episodes that I already done, look at what edits need to be made, record new things and then hand that on. So it’s okay if there are big tweaks that you are making to your calendar. And that doesn’t mean that you’re doing it wrong. There are definite times when you will do some self coaching. And then you’ll be like, Okay, I actually think it would be beneficial to change the plans or other times we like I’m self coaching, and then I’m keeping the plans the same. And we might change what I have on next week, we just need to be on to ourselves, sometimes we have an inspired idea. And that’s actually self sabotage. Because our brain is just uncomfortable following through with the thing that we had planned because it’s no longer exciting and new and fresh.

And now we’re actually faced with the possibility of failure and like, what will happen when our idea meets the world? Of course, it’s going to be like, Okay, let’s go and do this other new thing instead. And I feel so inspired. So I love to think about like, if in doubt, leave it till later in the sense that and then not in this, like, if I’m in doubt about should I do this admin task now that I’d plan I’ll do it later. It’s like, if you are wanting to change your plans, like if in doubt, don’t change your plans, rather than if in doubt do change them. So I’m gonna wrap it up there. This has been obviously very chatty. Again, I hope it’s been helpful to just get a little look at what’s been going on for me how I’m thinking about my week, and what my power planning has been looking like. I will link up, do my best to everything that I mentioned in this episode. I hope you are having a beautiful day and I will talk to you next time.

Outro
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Author: Sam Brown