Podcast

Episode 441: Using Your Calendar As A Tool For Kindness So You Never Burn Out Again (best of the podcast)

As a perfectionist entrepreneur who wants to make a meaningful contribution to the world, the kindest thing you could possibly do for yourself is to honour your potential, rather than protect it.

We perfectionists get in our own way because we’re scared to find out that our best isn’t ‘good enough’.

We procrasti-work, overwhelm ourselves and burn ourselves out because we’re terrified that giving a full, balls-to-the-wall effort might come up short – and that we will end up finding out we’re unintelligent and unlovable.

But when you’re planning properly as a perfectionist, you’ll naturally be using your calendar as a tool for kindness.

Being kind to yourself as you plan is about doing the most important tasks in your business in a consistent, sustainable, productive and courageous way.

Proper planning makes execution 10x easier and more effective – and dissolves resistance, overwhelm and procrastination.

And if that isn’t a recipe for reaching your potential, I don’t know what is.

In today’s epsiode I share practical tips and advice to help you be as kind as possible to yourself with your calendar (because true kindness will make you MORE productive and successful, not less).

If you often feel the urge to rebel against your calendar and plans, this episode is for you. Listen in today.

Find the full episode transcript and show notes at samlaurabrown.com/episode441.

In This Episode You’ll Learn:

  • The difference between kindness and letting yourself do whatever you want
  • Why being kind to yourself makes you more productive and successful, not less
  • Practical ways to be kind to yourself with your calendar during your work hours
  • Why being kind to yourself will automatically happen when you’re Power Planning

Featured In The Episode:

Free Training: How To Plan Properly As A Perfectionist With Power Planning

If you want to get shit done without burning out, I invite you to watch the free training I’ve created on how to plan properly as a perfectionist with Power Planning. By the end of the series, you’ll be ready to start using Power Planning today to get your perfectionist mindset on your side so you can get out of your own way. Go to samlaurabrown.com/plan to watch the training today.

Take The Perfectionism Quiz To Get Your Personalised Perfectionism Score

If you’re not sure whether perfectionism is what’s making you get in your own way, I invite you to take The Perfectionism Quiz. 

After working with over 1,000 perfectionist entrepreneurs, I created this free quiz so you can get your personalised perfectionism score and discover which of the 5 areas of perfectionism you would most benefit from working on overcoming the most: whether it’s overthinking, procrastination, burnout, all-or-nothing thinking or fear of judgement.

It takes less than 3 minutes to get your unique result and be one step closer to getting shit done without burning out. If you love learning about yourself and you’re ready to get out of your own way, go to samlaurabrown.com/quiz to take the quiz today. 

Work With Me:

My coaching program Perfectionists Getting Shit Done (aka PGSD) teaches you how to plan properly as a perfectionist so you can get out of your own way in your business. To find out more about the program and be the first to know when the doors open, join the waitlist today: samlaurabrown.com/pgsd.

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.

Renae (Intro)
Hi, it’s Renae I’m jumping on to let you know that the episode you’re about to listen to, is one of the best episodes of the podcast. Sam recorded this episode back in 2022, a part of a Planning series and in this episode you’re going to hear Sam, talk about how you can use your calendar as a tool for kindness so that you never burnout again and at the end of the episode, Sam will tell you where you can go to get the free training on how to then plan properly as a perfectionist with power planning. So you’re going to hear about why your calendar can be used as a tool for kindness and then how to do that. So enjoy the episode.

Sam Laura Brown
So let’s talk about how to use your calendar as a tool for kindness. So I want to first of all mention that it’s safe to be kind to yourself, because I know especially me a few years ago, I’d be like, I’m not super interested in being kind to myself, because I have a lot I want to achieve. And that might make me lazy or complacent or unmotivated.

And I really felt like the best way to get to my goals was to just be harder on myself to be more cruel to myself not even consciously thinking about it that way. But it really just felt like Could it really be the case that I could actually support myself and hold myself and just have my own back and be successful? Like that didn’t feel possible? And I think because a lot of times when I was I’m in school and I was, you know, getting to a deadline or doing things last minute and all of that. It was from this place of beating myself up that I would get that, and then I would do the work.

And then I would often get great results in terms of like the result on the report card. I was burnt out, I wasn’t having a good time, a lot of the time. But I got the a the pat on the back, and all of that. And so it just reinforced this connection between success and working from inadequacy, beating myself up shaming myself into doing it, shooting myself into doing it. And so that’s really a connection, a false connection that I’ve had to unravel and unwind as an entrepreneur, to really be able to grow past I would say, like, the $100,000 range into the multiple, six figures.

And then beyond that, that when I was thinking of beating myself up as the fuel, it does work, in a sense, but it doesn’t work. And it only gets you so far. And even if it gets you all the way to where you want to go, it’s a miserable experience. And so it’s safe to be kind to yourself. And I’ve done an episode ages ago now, but it’s one of the most popular ones on beating yourself up versus holding yourself accountable. And how when we beat ourselves up, we’re actually letting ourselves off the hook, when not being accountable. But when we are holding ourselves accountable, because a lot of times we’re like, but I need to be hard on myself, I’m not, I’m just going to do whatever I want, whenever I want, I’m going to talk about that a bit in a second.

But it’s just knowing that when we’re kind to ourselves, if you think about being kind as a parent to a child, there’s, if you’re like just shaming them and saying you should know about our and setting them up to fail, like doing all this stuff that is not kind to them. And it also doesn’t help them to succeed, it doesn’t hold them accountable. And it just puts them in this shame spiral that even if they obey and do what they’re meant to do, so they do get the work done or whatever, they’re not able to build self trust to have this ability and like vulnerability with themselves to be able to reflect on things and hold themselves accountable to things in a productive way.

And when it comes to beating ourselves up, we’re just like, letting ourselves off the hook and just like just shaming ourselves and it just it doesn’t work. And it’s so helpful to just recognize that when we are being kind to ourselves, that is really when we are holding ourselves the most accountable. And we’re doing that in a way that actually works that is actually productive as in it’s going to produce the result. So when it comes to kindness, I just wanted to find this as well. So kindness, actually, wait. Before I do that, I want to say a little bit more about the parenting thing.

That being kind is not isn’t your child do whatever they want, whenever they want, they will probably end up dead. If they do like, I haven’t told her. If she did whatever she wants, whenever she wants, then she would not be physically safe. Because there are a lot of things she wants to do that don’t act like it’s just not advisable to do them. And so if I’m being kind to her, it’s not like we tend to think of this all or nothing way. So I’m either like beating myself up, I’m just letting myself do whatever, whenever. And I want to be clear, that’s not what we’re talking about either. And that that isn’t kindness, and that it’s not this all or nothing thing, when we’re talking about kindness.

This is what we’re talking about, when it comes to your business, that you were put here with a desire to make a contribution. It’s why you listen to this podcast. That’s why you have your business. And it’s why even when there may have been times that when you have wavered with your commitment to your business, where you have felt like giving up, maybe you have given up temporarily, that you always have that restless feeling of like I know I can be doing more and not more in terms of like, like the quantity of things you’re doing, necessarily, but like doing more in the sense that you know, you’re here to make a contribution and impact to help people to do something that satisfying and challenging and fulfilling with your time.

And honoring that in a way that sustainable is the kindest thing you can do. To honor that desire that you have that potential that you have. That is what kindness is. So it’s doing the most important tasks in your business in a consistent, sustainable, productive and courageous way, which is what we’ve been talking about a lot in this series that is kindness, to honor On your potential, your desire to make a contribution, your abilities that you have, and are developing your intelligence that you have and are developing your talents that you haven’t are developing, honoring that is kindness. That is the kindest thing that you can do for yourself.

And also, what we’re talking about here is not how to be kind to yourself by giving yourself breaks. And that that’s the whole thing. We’re gonna be talking about clean rest. But that’s just a tiny part of what I’m actually going to be talking about today. Because kindness is about being kind to yourself with your calendar, in your work time, and your rest time. It’s not about being cruel to yourself when you’re working. And then you kind to yourself, you reward yourself with a little break. That’s not what we’re talking about. And I want you to focus even more so on being kind to yourself when you’re working, then the clean rest when it comes to this.

Because we have this idea of like, the work is the hard thing, the rest, and I mean, as well. So let me finish that the rest. The rest is the reward. But a lot of times we perfectionist see like rest is a punishment, because we want to be productive and walking all the time, because we have our work. So connected with our self worth, that it feels very vulnerable to rest. And so we see like, rest is like, I’m happy to keep working a longer day, I’m happy to work on the weekends, because that rest feels so vulnerable, that it kind of feels like a punishment. So I’ve got that whole thing going on. But it’s just knowing that this is about being kind to yourself, especially in your work time, especially in your work time.

Whether you have five hours for your business per week, whether you have 50 hours for your business per week. That’s where I really want you to be putting your focus when it comes to using your calendar as a tool for kindness. And yes, it will be clean rest. And yes, I will talk about that. Resting without guilt is part of the process for getting into growth mindset. But so is planning properly as a perfectionist and a big part of that is the needle Movers is doing the most important tasks in a way that is consistent, sustainable, productive and creators. So I’m going to be running through now a few things that are going to help you be kind to yourself with your calendar, especially during your work hours.

And these things. When you are planning properly. As a perfectionist when you’re following power planning, these things will be happening like they’re part of the process. So you don’t need to be consciously thinking about them. These are baked in that part of what you do in your power out your little tweaks and your weekly review. But I really want to lay this out for you so that you can see all the ways that power planning does help you be kind to yourself and how being kind to yourself by honoring your desire to make a contribution, honoring what you were put here to do rather than trying to ignore that. Or rather than trying to shame yourself into honoring that is really what we want to be doing.

So let’s talk about the first thing. I’m just gonna I’ve got a few bullet points here. I just want to chat about but again, all covered when you’re doing Power planning. This is what you will be practicing inside PGSD. And you’ll have the accountability to make it that like driving. As I said, Learn at once put on autopilot get the benefits for lifetime that really happens when you have that accountability to make it long lasting. So being specific with your plans, including START and END OF WORK periods, like deciding when you’re going to start when you’re going to end your workday.

That’s really important when it comes to being kind to yourself. And within this not to over plan, which is putting too much on your plate, and not under planning, which has been too vague with your plans. And recently in the forum, I saw a PGSD just say this beautifully that over planning leads to under working, which is so true. And I was talking about this actually, I’m one of the calls that I’ve noticed that over committing leads to, not committing, like when we’re over committed, we’re not actually committed at all. And so, especially in the beginning, we have this habit of like, our to do list gets longer, like before PGSD before power planning, before planning properly, we have we sit down to work, we feel overwhelmed by that long to do list.

And it just gets longer as the day goes on. And we just are in this habit of adding more and more and more to our plate. And what we do when we’re doing our Power Hour, is we’re just been on to ourselves about that, that our perfectionist brain thinks more is better. That more means more success, like more tasks means more success, means more love for us. And so our brain wants to go there. And that’s okay. It’s just so helpful to know your brain to want to do that. But to not let it because we’re being kind to ourselves, we’re being kind to our brain.

And we’re saying, Hey, I know, you want to do that. But it’s actually not in your best interest. So we’re gonna do this instead. And we’re redirecting it. So when we’re doing our Power Hour, and we are, again, sharpening the axe, we are planning and preparing in that hour, so that our execution throughout the week is so much more effective and impactful. We are consciously making sure that we aren’t over scheduling ourselves.

And this can take a minute to learn. This is why we make the three month commitment to power planning. We don’t expect ourselves to get in a car for our first driving lesson. And it’d be like we’ve been driving our whole entire life already. We let ourselves be beginner in the beginning. And so you need to give yourself a minute to outline the overscheduling habit. But we’re looking at our calendar.

And we are thinking about how long a topic actually festival been met with the reality of how much time we have, which goes back to including start and end of your day. Like blokes, in the sense that, when we are power planning, we added out clean rest before I need to move is so they like your book ends for your work periods, typically, otherwise, you might have a commitment in there. Maybe it’s working your full time job, maybe it’s an appointment, whatever it is, but you have a clear start and end time.

And for each task as well as a clear start and end time you can make the little tweaks. It’s not strict or rigid, it’s very flexible. But you also need to give your brain something to work with. Because what we can tend to do is like, I don’t want to be rigid and strict. I want there to be flexibility. So I’m just gonna let myself like, do whatever, whenever. But our brains get so overwhelmed when they have to constantly throughout the day, be making decisions of what do I need to work on? And when am I going to work on it?

And is there enough time for everything like we want to help our brain out, be kind to ourselves, and make those decisions ahead of time, and then adjust it, it’s so much more effective and less overwhelming for our brain. If we make a plan that’s adjustable, then if we don’t plan at all, which relates to the under planning and being too vague and being in this like, well, I’ve got all day to, for example, I’ve got all day to work out. This might happen as well, this kind of thing, if you are, like you’ve left your full time job, or you suddenly like have more time for your business to like, well, I’ve got all day to do it.

So I don’t need to really plan out when I’m just gonna, like do it at some point. But like, for example, with working out, I found that if I wasn’t actually intentional with like, Hey, I’m going to do my workout today at 4pm, for example. Or I’m going to do it at 7am. It doesn’t matter what time, though you can definitely learn like when works best for you. But it’s really just about making a decision. So your brain doesn’t have to constantly keep thinking about should I go now or should I go late, or should I go now or should I go later? Because I’m like,

Oh no, I’ll go at some point. So in the morning, like, should I go now? No, I don’t feel like it right now. I’m having breakfast. Should I go after breakfast? No, I need to wait for my food to settle. Actually, I’m going to do something else. Sugar, it looks like your brain is just spending so much mental energy trying to make this decision. And we know from experience, that maybe feeling super motivated. You make the decision, and you’ll get yourself there. But most of the time, what will happen is it’s never going to be the perfect time. Your brain always is thinking like well, I could do it later.

So it just keeps putting that decision off and it doesn’t end up happening at all. And so when we’re under Planning by being too vague. And while often that’s under the guise of like, I just want flexibility and to follow my intuition maybe or to follow, like what feels good to me that we are overwhelming our brain, not a kind thing to do. We are overwhelming our brain with decisions to make that could just be made and adjusted, rather than not being made at all, and having to like, be made and remade and second guessed, and like, it’s just not fun.

We’ve all been there, it’s not fun. So you need to be specific with your plans. not put too much on your plate, not put too little on your plate or be too vague about when you’re going to do things or what you’re going to do. And to know as well, that when we’re scheduling our needle movers, the way we do it, is we schedule in outcomes versus activities. So by that, I mean, when you are looking at a block of time. So for example, right now, I’m recording this podcast episode, it says Record, episode number, whatever this is, like episode is recorded. That’s what it’s talking about. It’s not podcast, for example. And for each episode that I record, to say, if I’m recording a few in a day, then I have a block for each episode.

Over time, you’ll figure out what works better if it’s better to have a block that covers a few episodes of whatever. And you might not have a podcast, but apply that to your situation. But it’s not podcast, because my brain will be like, Hmm, like, What do you mean? What does that mean? Am I like doing the dot points for the episode? Am I drafting the show notes? Am I recording the episode? And maybe with this example, it’s like, well, obviously that means record it. But I have a lot of other podcasting tasks that aren’t recording.

But a lot of times, it’s like work on website work on branding, like sales page, like it’s just this kind of very vague thing that actually was wise, but like, it just feels so overwhelming. If you’re planning that way, whether it’s from a to do list or a calendar, if you’re just putting in activities, because as I said, like, want to be kind to our brain by making decisions in this time, we can adjust those decisions, but those decisions are made. So there’s a default there that it can default to, it doesn’t have to make every decision fresh constantly throughout the day. So if we are leaving things vague when asking our brain, okay, what does that mean? I can’t even actually remember what that meant.

Does that mean I need to spend time on this or that and a lot of times when we’re planning activities, we’ll just plan like a big chunk. Maybe it’s like a four hour thing. So say for example, if I had a day, where I’m doing a lot of podcasting stuff, I might have a four hour chunk that says like podcast, if I was planning activities, if I wasn’t planning properly, and my brain is gonna be like, I don’t know what that is. So instead, it’s broken down into Okay, record this episode, record that episode, record that episode, draft the show notes, send a Slack message to whoever I may take, like, anything that I need to do.

Specifically, somebody’s brain can look at that and go, Okay, I know exactly what to do. And so when I wake up in the morning, and I look at my calendar, like cool, I know exactly what I’m doing today, my brain can just sigh a breath of relief. Because it knows it doesn’t have to decide, okay, what does that mean? What do I need to do? First, I can’t remember what episode we’re up to. What are we going to say? Like, it’s all there like finding to put Do you mind dot points to a little outline. I’ve got that there.

And you will learn as you’re palpating you’re doing your weekly review, to debrief and reflect. You’ll figure out what kind of increments work best for you. So for example, some PGSDers say that they work best when they have like lots of small increments, say, like 30 minutes. And other PGSDers like to have like, a couple of hours as a blog, like, it’s not about here’s what works for every brain. So do this. Or even here’s what works for every perfectionist brains who do this. It’s about figuring out what works for you. But knowing that scheduling outcomes being specific about the outcome of that time period, it also helps you estimate be much more accurate with your estimating how long a thing takes home, the task takes I’m going to talk about that in a second.

But helps with that. It just helps your brain if you feel a lot of overwhelm. It’s going to be so helpful to just have that visible for your brain to see exactly what it needs to do. So buffer time, let’s talk a bit more about under estimating how long a task will take. This is often a reason that people like I can’t I can recall and I just don’t know how long things take me. And buffer time is a way to be really kind to yourself. Some pgcs call it cushion time. There’s different words for it. I call it buffer time in my calendar so that under estimating how long a toss will take is never a problem. So yes, you can get better at estimating how long a task will take.

And your weekly review and little tweaks is going to sort that out for you. Because when you do a little tweak, so I’ve shared this before in the previous episode about power planning, but when I am doing my Power Hour, the end of that I take a little screenshot of my calendar. Then throughout the week, I’m doing my little tweaks and keeping things walkable, like my Google Maps rerouting feature, keeping things workable. So I always know exactly what to work on. I’m adding a little checkmark emoji next to a task. So I’m getting that sense of satisfaction when I complete something. And I’m changing, like, if a task took me longer, I drag it out. If a task was quicker, I make it smaller, obviously, like it’s not exactly to the minute doesn’t need to be that’s a beautiful thing.

It doesn’t need to be, I love that you can’t be like crazy, pinpoint accurate with iCal that I use, because you don’t have to be and I think it would just be a waste of time to be trying to be too accurate about it. But I make it pretty much what it was. And then at the end of the week, I take another screenshot. I print them both out, though before I had my printer. I didn’t print them out, I just compare them. But I look at okay, I thought that, you know, recording this episode would take me 30 minutes and it took me an hour, I thought that writing this email would take me 15 minutes.

And it took me 30 minutes. Like some things that might be, for example, writing my perfectionist power ups that I write, that’s and then my little daily emails that go out that I write them in batches, I don’t just write one every single day, I usually like often it’s once a month, I will sit down and I’ll write out a month’s worth. And I’m so quick at those. And so often it will take me less time like I scheduled an hour to write a month’s worth. And it will take me less time than that. PS if you’d like that is a task that my brain does work super well with writing that kind of thing. So don’t be thinking like, Oh, my goodness, how can I do that, because I have practice so little power up.

So it’s kind of that kind of writing for four years, five years. So anyway, as you develop your skill set around certain tasks to the time it takes will get quicker and quicker and quicker. So yes, you can learn how long a task is going to take. But as entrepreneurs, we are always doing new things. We’re always taking on tasks and projects we’ve never done before. We are doing things even if it’s a task we have done before, we’re doing it in new ways, in better ways.

And so we’re not going to, I think it’s just not helpful to expect us to get to this point, where every task we’re doing in the week is something we’ve done before. And we’re familiar with, and we know exactly how long it takes, instead, and there’s an approach to learning it is helpful at times to just have there be how long give yourself and just letting it be done in that time, I think perfectionist overthinking, which is something we’re all familiar with that if you have you know, and 30 minutes to write an email, to your for your email newsletter, or whatever it is.

And you want to spend four out like yes, you can have the buffer time in your calendar so that you can extend that out. But also there is a lot of power in being able to say I’m going to do this in 30 minutes, or an hour or whatever. And I’m just going to let that be good enough. Because I know that I have other needle movers I need to do. So even if this email was perfect, but it took me four hours to write that it’s actually not the best use of my time to spend four hours on that one, I could have spent an hour on that, or 30 minutes on that.

And then the other three hours, putting myself forward for opportunities, pitching myself to new clients, or whatever else it is it’s your needle movers talk about dealing with his mind the next episode. So there is power in just deciding how long something will take. And then letting that be how long it will take. And a lot of my tasks, I do operate that way because my brain wants to overthink and procrastinate work, just do a lot of extra tinkering. And so having that little time that I’ve already allotted for myself. Having that in my calendar little block helps me pay attention to when I’m venturing into overthinking. But in the beginning, you might not even be aware of how long things will take especially if you’ve been working from a to do list.

So it’s just knowing like, at the beginning, just guess and just you can witness how long things take you don’t be too worried about like, is it taking too long or whatever. But over time, you will start to see like I can actually do this kind of task well in this amount of time. And once it gets longer than that. So for me once an email gets longer than like 45 minutes to write that For a long email, then I’m overthinking it, I’m in my head about it. I’m tweaking it too much. And I know that about myself. But that’s after practicing power planning for a decent amount of time at this point a few years, and really just getting to know myself and learn about myself, which is such a kind thing to do.

And I’ll talk about that in a second as well. But buffer time, means that under estimating a task is never a problem. And also the little tweaks make it never a problem. So as I said, Yes, we can learn how long a task will take, we can develop that skill set and ability to decide how long it will take and have it take that amount of time. Like imagine if you’re in an exam, say, like a college or uni exam, and they say, you know, you have two hours to do this test. You don’t get to say, hey, sorry, I was actually overthinking this question and I need an extra hour, I was like, that’s the time that you have to do it, and you get it done in that time, to the best of your ability.

And, yeah, there are definitely times that that can be a helpful tool to use a helpful approach. But then we can also have this buffer time in our calendar. So that under estimating how long a task will take is never a problem. So this can be a little confronting sometimes because you’re maybe like when so this, I think in the last episode, if your brain is used to working at half pace, at 50% of its capacity, or even less, because you haven’t told it. And I was using this analogy of the gym, and like, if you had someone say like just do burpees, I’ll tell you when to stop.

And that’s a very taxing exercise that of course, you know, going all out doing those burpees. If you don’t know, if you need to do 10 or 100, or 1000, you just kind of like going along at half pace. So that you can conserve enough energy to be able to do everything you need to do. So when we don’t tell our brain what’s going on. Like when we’re not planning properly. And our brain is in this situation of like, I just need to do burpees. And I’m like, I don’t even know if there is going to be any kind of break. Because if I’m not doing them quickly enough, and they’re just gonna like keep me doing burpees for longer, then it can be that you will look at how much time you have in your calendar after you put in your commitment and your clean rest. And you will feel like you don’t have enough time.

Notice that just because your your brain is thinking about the piece you’ve been working out before. And not how it’s able to actually function like the level it’s able to function at when it’s focused, when it knows a break is coming up when it knows exactly what it needs to work on. It knows the outcome, it’s creating that certain time period, it knows it’s flexible as well. So it’s not feeling pressured or restricted, that we can think at such a high level and get so much more done. Like I was amazed when I really started doing this practice, and how much I can get done and how like, I could have my work day timewise just by using what I’m talking about in this planning series and on this podcast and in PGSD, so that my brain is working at its highest capacity.

And the beautiful thing about that too, because you might be like, that sounds exhausting. It’s it takes so much less energy than we were like slugging slugging slogging away at half pace, forever indefinitely. With this mental drum rad and Alan, I need to do this for that. It’s energizing. It’s satisfied, like, you know, when you have that productive day, and you were just getting shit done. And it just felt like, like you did so much. But it was so energizing. That’s what we create with planning properly, and it’s sustainable, and long lasting. It’s not just a phase and then you fall off the wagon, we burn out. We learn how to do that in a sustainable way.

And talk about having work being fulfilling. Having like giving yourself a challenge, like putting your brain to the test and then rising to that occasion, is so much more fulfilling than like blowing in the breeze. And I don’t know if I’m getting any, like, analogies and idioms, right? But whatever. You know what I mean? Just kind of like, well, I’ll see what I can do and we’ll see what happens and like that kind of thing is just not fulfilling. It’s really about having an occasion to rise to annoying your brain loves doing that and setting it up in a way that your brain can really take on that challenge and it feel energizing and fulfilling and productive and satisfying. What feels draining is the half pace.

As counterintuitive as that might sound, is that when you kind of work through the day that’s draining, that’s what’s draining, no getting shit done at your highest level, and then having clean rest. So buffer time, put it in the calendar, it’s gonna be like, you might want to put specific tasks in there instead. But you’ll figure out over time to how much buffer time to put in there, how much generally works for you, if you have a certain kind of week going on.

Or maybe you have a child who’s unwell or you have a busy time at your full time job or whatever, you’ll figure out, generally speaking, how much buffer time works for you, because you’ll be able to notice in your weekly review, okay, this week, I actually really needed that buffer time, and I needed more of it. So I had to, like repairs his my tasks and move something to the following week, or I had more buffer time than I needed to, I can actually schedule in a few extra tasks here.

So you’ll figure out what works for you. And what works in different ways. It’s not that hard to figure out. And the weekly review really helps with that. So realistic deadlines. Another Way to Be kind to yourself, is to actually and we talked about not over planning, adding too much to your plate. But just being real about how much time you have how long it takes you to do things. And this gets so much easier.

As I’ve talked about, like, as you can see, this all relates to each other. But when you are breaking your projects and tasks down into not just little chunks, but outcome focused chunks, it is much easier to be realistic about how long something will take. So say for example, with a PGSD launch, I have podcast episodes, emails that I might even Instagram content I’m creating like I have a whole lot of different tasks. And then team related tasks. Just there’s a lot of different things.

And I know for sure, because we all love it that is like, we just especially if you have the self image, and the belief that you are someone who can be productive, you have a lot of potential, I guess model of this where like, like, I’ll be able to get that done, I’m just gonna be really focused and productive and in whatever. So if I was just putting in my calendar, work on launch work on launch work on launch, which is an activity, not an outcome. So we don’t want to do that that’s not planning properly.

But if I was doing that, my guess is I would probably have scheduled in about a third of the time that it actually takes me to do everything. And when I get really clear about the smallest things that need to be done. And that isn’t overwhelming, because I have a system a process called Power planning for how I put that in my calendar after my commitments and clean rest.

So I know that it’s going to get done. And I’ve developed a skill set of getting my work done ahead of time, which, like, I can develop that skill set, anyone can because I was the queen of the last minute. And I now can do it ahead of time. So if I need extra time, I can like extend out my deadline a little bit. But it’s just knowing that if you are breaking things down in an outcome focused way, and you have a system, that means you don’t feel overwhelmed when you actually look at all the details, because that’s why you want to have these big chunks of like work on launch.

Because we don’t trust ourselves to be able to get into the details and not feel overwhelmed about it. And then not go into like analysis, paralysis or whatever, that we don’t trust that until we just keep it vague. We feel behind because it took way longer. We also feel overwhelmed and behind because our brain is like okay, but what do I need to work on? I don’t even know what I’m doing today. Okay, cool. I’m just gonna go scroll through Instagram, because at least I know how to do that.

And I’m clear about that. So we want to be realistic with the deadlines that we create for ourselves. And with that, it’s about chunking it down outcome focus. There are other things too, like the buffer time really helps with that when I’m planning out my things that I need to do for a launch. Now at this point in time that I’ve been practicing power planning for so long, I’m able to plan for a few weeks at a time. In your first few months of power planning.

I don’t recommend that stick to weekly, but we have some PGSDers who plan like a couple of weeks at a time they do that weekly review a couple of weeks at a time like you can make it work for you. And so I’m moving towards doing that myself and when it comes to a launch I tend to plan like that month out but then every week I do my Power Hour and my little tweaks and my weekly review to just check in with that because things will change as I will go on like my plan at the beginning will look different like the how how I got there, the roads that I drove on to get there will look different to what I had planned. But having that plan is what allowed me to figure out how to get there and to not feel overwhelmed about it to never feel overwhelmed about it because cuz I know that like, I trust myself to be productive, I’ve developed that self trust.

And I know that I’ve thought about in a way that is actually realistic, what I need to do and when I can do it, and how I work best, so like, there’s certain tasks that I’m not gonna just lump them all together in one day, because that’s too taxing for my brain. So instead, in the morning, I’m going to do a certain kind of task in the afternoon, I’m going to do an easier kind of task for my brain. It’s sustainable.

So you learn this kind of thing. But having these realistic deadlines, really, like if you feel like you keep pushing off deadlines, unless you have a client banging on your door, or you could do it when you had a boss keeping you accountable. You can’t keep yourself accountable. A big part of that is that the deadlines that you’re setting for yourself aren’t realistic, and you’re not being committed to them. Being committed, like committing is the last step in our power hour that we do.

And it’s committing, knowing that it’s flexible, not rigid. But committing is really important and looking at like, Okay, why wouldn’t I want to commit to this plan, and then making changes so you can commit rather than be like, Oh, well, I’m committed enough, let’s give it a go, I hope I can do this, we want to be like, I am committed to this 100%, even if that means leaving off things that we know we should be doing.

And just decided I’m not actually going to do it. And I was talking about this with a PGSDer about how there’s, we can have these she was calling them like hanging over tasks. But he’s tasks that we’ve been pushing off deadlines that and like not prioritizing some of the important things and being committed to them. That we just add them in our calendar, kind of knowing that we’re not going to do them, but they’re still there. And then they just keep looming over us.

Because we don’t get them done. And I say, Well, you either just need to commit to doing it, do it at a different time that you can actually commit to, or not put it on the calendar at all. And it feels so vulnerable for us to be like, I’m just going to not put it on the calendar cuz I’m like, but I should do it, it’s like but you need to be committed to what’s in your calendar. So either find a time that you can commit to, and do this quickly. And so we’re going through that on the call, do this whole question that needs to be done. So you can get that done.

Or it’s off the calendar. And you can just be real with yourself about I’m not committed to that. And it will be on my calendar when I’m committed to doing it. Because this is how you develop the trust of like whatever’s in my calendar is going to get done. And that’s why I can plan out a month of like launch related tasks, and have, like, Lydia going through developmental things and like life going on, and I cannot feel overwhelmed about it. Because I trust like I’m committed to what’s in that color.

And I can trust myself to do it. Because I don’t put on that like, and every now and again, I probably do like I’m not perfect. But for the most part I don’t put on the like I should do this. But I know I’m not going to do it. Like I know that everything in my calendar I am actually committed to doing. So that’s really important when it comes to deadlines to be committed to them, or to not have the deadline. And to just push it out and have when you can be committed to keeping your plans workable, talked about this with the little tweaks this is a way to be kind to yourself, is that you are rerouting you’re updating your calendar as you go.

So you always know what to work on. I talked about this a bit more in the last episode. So I won’t go into it too much in this one. But you want to make sure that you are letting yourself keep your plans workable by doing little tweaks and that you aren’t feeling guilty when you do that. Like you shouldn’t be and this is why it is part of power planning to do the little tweaks.

Because it’s part of it. It’s normal. It’s what is like, what needs to be done. And why feel guilty about that. Like why have this imaginary standard for ourselves that we shouldn’t have to make any changes. Like we when we are planning on our week and our Power Hour. There’s information we just don’t have we can’t have about the week. And we’re also learning to release our perfectionism handbrake.

There’s other things going on. Like we just there’s things that come up, there’s also like we’re a human, not a robot. So there’s that going on too. And so having this ability to keep your plans workable, is incredibly important. And that’s so much better when you don’t let yourself feel guilty about it or and that guilt comes from this story that I shouldn’t be doing this. Yes, you should update your calendar, reroute instead of having your calendar say like keep going down the road.

You can’t drive down anymore. Like let it say Okay, now we’re gonna take a left here and right here and right here and we’re still gonna get to where we want Go. That’s how Google Maps works. It doesn’t say, Well, you should be on this road. So even though you’re now three roads away, three streets away, I’m just gonna keep showing you the path that you should be on.

That’s what has us abandoned in our calendar, feeling super pressured and stressed when we’re walking from a calendar, we want to have flexible structure that supports our well being our personal well being our family’s well being our business as well being like this is flexible structure, as I said, and making a plan, knowing that you can adjust it but being committed to the plan.

And it’s really important to know that like you’re committing to the plan, knowing you can adjust it. I hope that makes sense. Because a lot of times you think if I’m committed to it, it has to say exactly as is. This is why we plan for outcomes by committing to the outcomes by creating and being flexible about what the how looks like along the way. So that’s what we’re committing to, to showing up fully to doing what we said we would. And then we keep it flexible, because we are human. And we have lives going on. We’re not in the cabin, in the woods in isolation, with nothing else happening.

We’re in our life, and we want to be able to plan without having to put our lives on hold. If you are always waiting until life calms down. Before you can learn how to plan properly or learn anything else you need to learn. You’re never gonna learn it. And even if you do get that cabin in the woods time, it’s not going to be sustainable once you get into real life, because you won’t know how to handle that you’ve got life going on around you, you won’t have that skill set.

So that’s what we want to develop. That’s why when you’re busy, it’s such a great time to learn how to plan properly, because you will learn how to show up for yourself in your business without having to put your personal life on hold. And it’s going to help you weather any storm that you come across. So let’s talk about using a calendar, there’s another thing you can do that’s very kind with the a calendar create a self image, that productivity is normal for you.

So your self image is a story to tell about yourself to yourself. It’s how you finish the sentence, I’m the kind of person who I’m not the kind of person who I always I never like those descriptive statements we make about ourselves, I’m just not a morning person. I hate working out whatever it is. Those are our self image. And we procrastinate. I’m an anxious person. Like, that’s all self image stuff. And it feels like the truth. But actually, it is a story.

And it might be a story when to keep, it’s important to know that just because it’s story doesn’t mean we don’t want to keep it. But we also just want to be aware of this. And to know that we are always going to be pulled towards acting in accordance with who we believe we are. Our brain wants that consistency. It’s just too overwhelming if our brain doesn’t like if we don’t know who we are.

So we create labels for ourselves, and then we subconsciously do what it takes to stick to them. And so when we aren’t feeling sorry, when we aren’t feeling motivated, we are going to act in accordance with our self image. So by that, I mean, say if you have this self image that you’re not normally productive, you love being productive, but you really struggle with it. It’s something you’re working on a lot, you tend to procrastinate you tend to overthink, like if you had that self image.

Then it’s going to mean that when you aren’t feeling motivated, there might be a few days or weeks where you can act out of accordance with that and be someone who is productive and doesn’t overthink and get this done. Sheets done and get shit done. But when you aren’t feeling motivated anymore, like we always return to our self image and acting in accordance with that. So this is where the self sabotage comes in. We are just going back to what feels normal for us, which is like if you find yourself being productive, and you’re wondering how long it will last.

That’s your self image that has you questioning that, because you’re thinking it’s not normal for me to be this productive. I wonder when I’m going to stop being productive. And subconsciously you stop yourself from being productive. So you can be like, Oh, see, I knew this was gonna happen. And so obviously, on this podcast, I talk about procrastination overwhelm all those things. And I do that so that you have the awareness around it so that you don’t you know that there’s nothing wrong with you for having that.

But what we really want to be doing and this is something we work on inside PGSD is to not connect that with things that are normal for us in mind at this point in time. Feel like that’s a normal thing for you to do. But we want to change that story slowly but surely it’s not going to be like all overnight, but we want to start Thinking about being someone who does things at the first opportunity, being someone who gets their work done early and easily. Being someone who is decisive, being someone who does things consistently being someone who doesn’t burn out.

And were working on changing our self image isn’t all nothing that’s not overnight. And it’s really important to notice. Like, once I started having awareness around this, I was like, Oh, my goodness, there’s so many ways my self image is unhelpful, and I want to change it all. And this is why, by the way, with perfectionism, like, I think it’s so important to talk about it so that you have language and vocab around it, which gives you access to tools and solutions.

Because like, when I thought this was a motivation problem, I was barking up the wrong tree, I just couldn’t solve for it. Once I knew I was perfectionism, then that gave me access to learning about it. But we want to identify, not as a recovering perfectionist, you, I never use that term. I talk about being in the growth mindset, because that’s what we want to focus on. We want to focus on being someone who is growth minded, being someone who is courageous, being someone who shows up fully.

Not I’m not being a perfectionist, I’m a recovering perfectionist of like, yeah, my brain likes to have perfectionist thoughts. But I am someone who is growth minded. And I’m big, like initially might be, I’m becoming I’m considering the possibility that I’m becoming someone who’s growth minded. And then the more you go down that journey, it’s okay, I’m becoming someone who’s greater than I am growth minded.

And knowing and I’m not gonna go into it too much more here. I talk about this in PGSD. There’s a module on self image that when we are really like, willing to feel a little bit delusional about it to tell ourselves like I am someone who gets my work done early and easily, that in the beginning, that will feel like no, you fucking don’t, that’s not true, you do things in the last minute. But knowing that we can recreate that story just through repetition.

I talked about some ways to do that inside PGSD in that module. But we want to be using our calendar as a tool to create the self image, that productivity is normal. That being kind to ourselves and not beating ourselves up is normal if we want to create a new normal for ourselves. So here’s a few ways we can do that. And your workday when you said you would and your workday when you said you would even and especially if you’re being productive, because we tend to be like, I want to capitalize on this, because I don’t trust myself to be productive tomorrow.

So I need to double down on it today. So there’s a time and a place to add a few more things to your calendar, I definitely do it every now and again. But it’s not my standard, my standard is, if I get things done early, I finish early. And I get the clean rest the extra clean rest. And I trust that that when the next day comes, it’s gonna have me feeling even more productive and even more energized, which is normal for me.

And it’s like with this burpees thing that I’ve been talking about, if your brain knows that, if it performs super highly today, it’s gonna get told to do more burpees it’s gonna work at half pace, because it doesn’t want to do more, especially if you’re starting to move to having like, the most important tasks in your calendar, the most courageous tasks in your calendar, that it is going to just go actually, I know that if I work a long day today, he’s gonna give me all these extra things to do like if I was if I work productively, and I’m focused. So I’m not going to be focused, why would I want to do extra things, we are punishing our brain when we add more to our plate on a productive day.

So I stopped doing that your new normal is you don’t do that you trust yourself to be productive again, when the time comes, you don’t have like, you can then this is where having your weekly review is so important comes in that you can see on your calendar, okay, it took me less time than I had planned. It might mean in the next week, that you say okay, I now know this task I thought would take me an hour in this task I thought would take me two hours, they both take half the time.

So when I’m planning my next week, I might have them be smaller in my calendar or whatever. And I will add some extra things. So it’s a full workday. But then that’s fine because your brain knows what it needs to do that day. It’s been told here’s how many burpees but if on the day, you’re like, Okay, I underestimated that. And okay, I’m going to capitalize on this because I’ve been really productive and really focus on this as a normal for me.

Then your brain, it just keeps it in this habit of working in half pace. And we don’t want to do that. So don’t punish your brain trust that you’ll be productive when the time comes to work again. So rest in your rest time, same thing, trusting yourself to be productive when the time comes. You don’t have to quickly go and read an email or whatever you can have, like for me, I have on my desk, typically, I also have on my notes, my iPhone notes. But I have a little like, piece of white paper, that anytime my brains like, Oh, my goodness, we need to do this right now. Or I have this idea. I go to my office, I write it down, or I go to my phone, I write it down, and I carry on with my rest.

Because I trust future me can do what needs to be done with that. Don’t make a big deal out of an unproductive day. Because it’s not normal for you. So it’s not a big deal. It’s like if you believe you’re a runner, and you don’t run for a day, and I’m like, oh my god, I knew it. I knew I wouldn’t stick to this. You’re like, oh, yeah, I didn’t go for a run today, I’m gonna go tomorrow, because I’m a runner, or whatever.

Like, if you are making a big deal out of an unproductive day, you’re reinforcing that that’s like normal for you. It’s this big problem in your life that you’re being unproductive. Whereas if you’re someone who’s productive, you have an unproductive day, like, Yeah, that happens. But it’s, it’s not a big problem, because usually I’m very productive. So don’t make a big deal out of it, you can debrief on it in your weekly review, have a look at what went on what caused that.

Also, I think it’s just helpful as well focus on 80%, follow through 20% of the time, that’s like one day a week, you’re not going to be following through, you’re not going to be doing the things and that’s okay, like let’s just let 80% be okay, you can achieve all of your wildest business dreams with 80% follow through. And the beautiful thing about it is when you aim for 80%, you’re so much more likely to get to 100% than when you aim for 100% Because we aim for 100% that just triggers that all or nothing mindset.

This is why perfectionist when we follow the same planning advice as everyone else we get in our own way. That if we just aim for that 80% We love having high standards for ourselves, and then beating ourselves up when we don’t meet them and all of that, but 80% like knowing one day a week is going to be unproductive, or whatever, like 20% of my time. I’m not gonna be following through with what I said I would do. And that’s not a problem. When we know that zero, procrastination is not the goal.

That is what really allows us to drop the resistance to procrastination, to drop the resistance and like the pressure that we feel to having to stick to our plan so we can actually show up and get it done. And doing your weekly review. So that you notice how productive you are going back to this is us talking about your self image around productivity, that when you do your weekly review, the first part of that is noticing what you’ve accomplished in the lessons in the wind.

And we love to skip that step. We love to just be like, Ah, this week was unproductive that all or nothing mindset, we like paint the whole week with the same brush. And we’re like, Well, I feel unproductive right now or I had like moments of feeling unproductive or day feeling unproductive or whatever. And so this whole week was just a waste. And that doesn’t help us be more productive than next week.

That is us saying, I’m an unproductive person. Again, this is a big problem for me. But if we can, in our weekly review train our brain to start seeing like actually this and this is all the time in the forum and PGSD is share their weekly review in their persistence log. They’re like I thought this week was a waste was unproductive and then I’ve done my weekly review and now I’m feeling so good because I realized how much I got done how much progress I’m making. We think we had like giving them pretty were realistic, right?

We’re logical, we are smart, like accurately reflected on the week without default thoughts. But why not out all or nothing thinking just has a skipping all the incredible things we did and not even noticing what’s working and this is what happens if you feel like when your business is growing like people just came out of the woodwork I don’t even know what happened i and it feels like it’s a fluke and you can’t recreate it.

Part of that is because you’re not acknowledging how you’re creating the results you have. And if you feel like people aren’t buying I don’t know why they’re not buying like this is same thing. We need to be doing your weekly review your NASA debrief instead of just hoping to be motivated and like hoping things just fall into place to like let’s be smart about it. And actually just take a look at what worked what didn’t what to do differently.

So a couple more things I want to mention I’m going to wrap this up, clean rest this is a way to be kind to yourself. Also all this helps the self image stuff I’m just was talking about clean rest and doing it when it works for you. So clean rest is when you’re resting without guilt, in the beginning, just think of this as time you’re not allowed to work on your business, again, 80% of the time, you’re gonna follow through with clean rest, maybe 80% of that you end up working on the business, that’s fine. Like we’re aiming for 80% follow through with your needle movers and with your clean rest.

But this really helps us so many things I talked about, like having a sudden into your work day, the best ideas come from a well rested brain. And if your brain knows, okay, I don’t have to do burpees all day, every day, I can do X number of them, and I have this amount of time and then a big break is coming where I can just rest, it can work at such a good pace. It’s such a high capacity because it sees a light at the end of the tunnel.

So there’s a lot of reasons why clean rest. Your cleanr rest is very important. It’s the third step in getting into a growth mindset. So the PGSD process plan properly as a perfectionist, which is what this series is focused on, follow through 80% of the time rests without guilt and repeat. Those are the practical steps to get into a growth mindset and release your perfectionism handbrake, clean rest is very important.

And doing it this is particularly on intention doing it when it works for you. So especially if you’ve come from a corporate environment, you might think, Okay, well, I’m gonna work nine to five, and then I’m going to take my clean rest in the evenings and on the weekends. And like you just kind of put yourself in that structure, even I might work well for you, it might not.

But maybe you want to have some clean rest in the middle of the day. Maybe you want to have some clean rest, like until midday, and then you want to work. So if you want to work eight hours, you want to work from 12 till eight, or from 5pm Till whatever that would be like, it’s really about figuring out what works for you and letting go of these rules that we think we need to follow around when it’s okay to rest.

And when it’s okay to work. And thinking just because everyone else, especially people who are making like proper money or doing this, I have to do this to that. When you’re your own boss, even if you have a full time job and other things like that, like you get to choose when like what times you are working and what times you are resting, you might have other things going on the influence that but knowing that you can if you want, especially like I want to say the times that we tend to be going all out in the middle of the day, at the beginning of the day, for a significant period to have clean rest, when it works for you.

That’s a way to be really kind to yourself, to not force yourself to fit into some kind of structure or rule. Someone just made up at some point. And you think like, well, that’s the proper way to do it. That’s the right way to do it. And so I have to do what everyone else is doing. Learning more about yourself is another way to be kind to yourself. And I’ve talked about the weekly review a lot in there, so I won’t go too much more into it.

But when you are doing your weekly review, the NASA debrief, you will be looking at your preferences you have like when you work best when you rest best, your mindset and what’s going on that you will be getting to really understand yourself in a way that even if, like a lot, PGSD is super into personal development, the podcasts, the books, going to events, all that kind of thing, that even as someone who’s a personal development nerd, you will learn so much about yourself through this practice.

That’s a really cool thing to do. That’s how you can help yourself work with yourself instead of against yourself. Making the three month commitment to power planning. So actually, like letting yourself be a beginner in the beginning. And also having like I love it been three months, because when you have a three month commitment, that it’s not about doing it perfectly. It’s not like thinking about like a 12 week fitness challenge or something we like oh my god, I know I’m already not gonna stick to that. It’s not that that’s not what we’re doing.

I talked about this in previous episode, but with the three month commitment, like when I really started using this was when I wanted to get into Bikram yoga ages ago now. And I was finding that if I was constantly evaluating, should I keep going? Is this worth it? Do I like this? Am I good at this? Or should I try something else? Like I wasn’t making any progress, I wasn’t able to be consistent. Because I was just in this constant state of questioning and judging.

And instead, so what when I was in that I was kind of going like, you know, perfectly one week, maybe five days, maybe seven days, one week, five days next than zero then 00 Like I just I couldn’t stay consistent with it because this constant questioning stopped me from actually just being in the process. And so what I did instead and this really like transformed my experience with it and just taught me such a valuable life lesson. that when I said to myself, and I don’t even know where this came from, or if I heard someone else say it or what I don’t remember, but I was like, I’m gonna give it three months.

And I’m not going to question whether I like bickering. I’m not going to question whether I’m good at it. I’m not gonna like, I’m just going to decide how many days a week I’m going to do it. I realized, for me personally, that deciding to go more days rather than less days made it easy to be consistent, basically, like 80% follow through, going 80% of the time. So I think it was six days a week, it took because I had this sort of like, well, I need to go three times a week.

So then on Monday, there wasn’t like I was like, Well, I don’t have to go today. I could go tomorrow. And then I would just always like, well, I could go tomorrow. And then I get to the weekend. I’m like, Well, I can’t even make the three days. So that’s done. But if I said six days a week, it changed that question from like, should I go today? To When would I go today.

And I liked having that like one day buffer so that if something came up, I didn’t want to use that up. I wanted to like have that if something else came up. So that’s what I did. Basically, it’s all the principles I’ve been talking about. And it was so informative for me, but said, I’m gonna give it three months without judgment, without constant questioning. Are we there yet? Is it working? And just do it? And let myself be into it? Let myself explore it and see what happens.

And unsurprisingly, by the end of that three months, I didn’t have any questions about it, because of the way that I’ve been able to show up. The progress was obvious. I had learned to love it. And it just like I was able to get through those initial teething pains, the teething issues, growing pains, where I felt like, I didn’t know what the postures were, I didn’t like know how to be in a hot room for that long.

How much water am I going to drink? Like, what do I need to wear so that my feet don’t slip or whatever, on my, like, on my legs that like just letting myself be in that experience, without judgment made all the difference? It was night and day compared to when I was like, Well, I don’t want to waste any effort. Like I talked about this. In the first part of this series with the fixed mindset and that fear, we have a wasting effort, because effort is a sign of an adequacy. And so we don’t want to be seen to be putting effort into something that isn’t working.

So anyway, I got out of that fear of wasting effort will just like, I’m just going to be in this for three months at the end of it. I didn’t have to ever do it again. But I’m gonna give myself the gift of not constantly judging whether it’s working, I’m gonna give myself the gift of having time to figure out these questions that I have that might make me want to stop or be inconsistent or whatever, like, I’m just going to keep at it imperfectly.

I’m sure there was some weeks where I didn’t go six times, and I went four times or whatever. But I was committed to I’m just gonna give it three months and see how I go with it. And as I said, by the end of that three months, I was like, well, obviously, I’m going to continue because not only have I gotten so much better at it just from showing up without judgment.

But all those little questions I had, and those like things that felt so challenging, like, as I said, What do I wear? How much water do I drink? What? What class should I go to like all of that got solved just by me being able to put myself into a growth mindset about it into curiosity, into experimentation, rather than in judgment. So we make the three month commitment to power planning. Most likely, at the end of that you’re gonna be like, Well, why would I ever stop this, but you have the choice.

Like it’s just knowing I’m going to be committed to for three months without judgment, let myself be a beginner. And then like, it’s also helps our brain to again with the burpee thing, like, it’s not like this is something you now have to do forever more is like, well, I know, this is Tuesday, I don’t even know if I want to do that. Like I’ve never I don’t even like it. Maybe it’s like I don’t know that. It’s like no, just three months. And it’s not like this 12 week fitness challenge.

We’re like, oh my god that’s like such like, probably thinking about it in the perfectionist kind of way. Like I do that perfectly, not fall off and whatever. But it’s just a three month commitment to being and curiosity and experimentation. So that’s the way to be kind to ourselves, and to be kind to ourselves with our calendar, because we’re using like that’s what we’re experimenting with the calendar with our power planning.

So, I’ve said a lot in this episode. I hope it has been helpful to really get an understanding of how power planning isn’t about being strict, being rigid, forcing yourself to do things you don’t want to do me big fear we have like, I just want to like force myself, I want to be in tune with myself, like, I’ve never been more connected to myself than when I’ve been power planning. And there are times when there’s something I need to do, and I don’t want to do it. And I do it. Because as I said, it’s kind to myself, to honor the desire, I have to make a contribution.

And to rise to the occasion. Like I love that feeling of like, I sweated, like, I did something hard, and I did it like I did it. Like that’s so satisfying. There are other times that I’m like this I need to do today. And I’m not going to do it. And I’m just going to change my calendar and keep it workable. So it’s not this big problem. Like it’s knowing that having this flexible structure that supports your well being of your business of yourself of your family, like every area of life is such a way to be kind to yourself.

And I just wanted to clear this up. Because I know that if you have been maybe time blocking, or you’ve just been like walking away from a calendar, or even from materials where you’ve been feeling pressured and stressed and you have a lot of resistance, you find out how to overcome the resistance and you beat yourself up and you don’t follow through. And like all these things, there’s a solution.

It’s planning properly as a perfectionist, as I’ve said, it’s the biggest lever you can pull on, it’s when there’s so many things to work on in your business. And you might need to work on all of them at some point that at this point in time, if you’re not planning properly as a perfectionist, learning this skill set is something that is going to make everything else easier. Because you have this foundation of self trust, you have this foundation of follow through, you have this foundation of being able to work with your perfectionist mindset instead of against it.

So then you can get any marketing strategy and actually implement it, instead of just learning this one and then learning that one and you know so much but you’re not doing anything with it. Like you can actually execute on everything else hiring a team, whatever else it is so much more effectively. When you are planning properly. It just it’s the domino, it makes everything else easier. And you learn at once you put on autopilot, get the benefits for a lifetime.

Outro
If you want to get shit done without burning out, then I invite you to watch the free training that I’ve created on how to plan properly as a perfectionist with power planning. By the end of the training, you’ll be ready to start using power planning today to get your perfectionist mindset on your side so you can get out of your own way in your business. To sign up and watch the training. Go to samlaurabrown.com/plan.

Author: Sam Brown