This is Part 3 of my 5-Part Getting Shit Done Series. Today I’m sharing why perfectionists have to take a different approach to rest and time off compared with everyone else. I also share what to do if you feel guilty taking time off, especially if you’re someone who loves work and want to get fully caught up on everything before you let yourself take a break so that you can fully enjoy it.
Find the full episode transcript and show notes at samlaurabrown.com/episode512.
Opening Soon: My Productivity Program, Perfectionists Getting Shit Done
If you’re ready to get out of your own way and take consistent action in your business without burning out, you want to join my productivity program for perfectionist entrepreneurs called Perfectionists Getting Shit Done (aka PGSD).
Enrollment is opening soon but only for one week – from Friday 31 January to Friday 7 February 2025. Find out more about the program and join the waitlist today by visiting: samlaurabrown.com/pgsd.
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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 Perfectionists 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 – (The Getting Shit Done Series)
[00:00:29] Okay. This is part three of my five part Getting Shit Done series. By the way, I’m just going to assume that if you’re listening to part three, you have listened to part one and part two. That is the way most perfectionists will approach these kinds of things. So I’m going to assume the same is true for you.
[00:00:46] However, if this is the first part you’re listening to, that’s totally okay. You’re going to get lots of value from it. But my recommendation so you have the full picture of how to get shit done as a perfectionist entrepreneur is that you listen to part one and part two as well so that you can be really just understanding and knowing exactly what is required to go from being a perfectionist Procrastinating, overthinker with a lot of smarts and a lot of potential to being someone who is consistently and sustainably taking action in their business.
[00:01:18] So in this part, we’re going to be talking about clean rest, guilt free rest. It’s a topic that most perfectionists have a hard time with. It’s very important, very, very important. So stay tuned for part three of this series. I really hope you enjoy it. And also, just so that you are aware. And you can get ready to sign up if it’s going to be your next step is to know that my program Perfectionists Getting Shit Done, aka PGSD, which is my productivity program for perfectionist entrepreneurs.
[00:01:50] We are opening for enrollment for one week only from the 31st of January to the 7th of February. So to find out more about the program and to join the waitlist, so you can get ready to sign up, you can go to samlaurabrown.com/PGSD. It’ll be linked up for you in the show notes as well, but I hope you enjoy part three of the Getting Shit Done series.
Sam Laura Brown – (Start of the episode)
[00:02:12] This is all about how to get shit done as a perfectionist who is building a business, particularly if you’re a procrastinator, if you are an overthinker, if you burn yourself out, if you just find that you get in your own way and you’re like, I know what to do and I’m just not doing it.
[00:02:30] And I try to motivate myself and I try to be more disciplined and I’m still just not doing it. This is for you. And also, if you didn’t know my program, Perfectionists Getting Shit Done, it’s my productivity program for perfectionist entrepreneurs. We are opening for enrollment on the 31st of January. So if you want to get further support with everything that I’m talking about, PGSD is the place for you.
[00:02:55] But in this series, what I’m really wanting to do is support you with really practical pieces of advice, That you can use to be productive this year in your business and to not just be full of the hope and the optimism and then not have it turn into actual business results. If you want to have a full time business or maybe you’re full time in your business, but you aren’t making a full time income, or maybe you have a bigger goal than that.
[00:03:20] Productivity and execution is essential. And if you’re a perfectionist, you need to take a particular approach to productivity. Otherwise your perfectionist mindset will be triggered and you will procrastinate, overthink, be all or nothing. So just like pressuring yourself and like getting yourself to do all the things, or then you’re just not even trying at all.
[00:03:39] So we just want to have, you have the right tool for your brain. It’s just a matter of getting, To use the analogy of someone who needs glasses, like I wear glasses, if you have glasses, you want to have the right prescription for your eyes. It makes sense. If you don’t have the right prescription, it’s going to be fuzzy.
[00:03:57] Even if you try and motivate yourself to see clearly, it’s still going to be fuzzy. You need to have the right prescription for your eyes and you need to have the right productivity tool for your brain. And so power planning and having a flexible planning method. specifically for your perfectionist brain, specifically for you as an entrepreneur is key and power planning, the power planning method.
[00:04:19] I teach that inside Perfectionists Getting Shit Done. It is absolutely essential in my productivity and my client’s productivity. And also as well, I want to mention this because I get a lot of questions about it. We have a lot of perfectionist entrepreneurs in the program with ADHD who have so much success with power planning.
[00:04:37] Okay. Because the way that power planning works really supports executive function and has flexibility. It takes into account your work rhythms, and it’s all about having it work for you instead of against you. And that includes your entire brain, not just the perfectionist piece of your brain. So I want to mention that because a lot of people ask about that.
[00:04:58] So I want to talk today. I know it’s a bit of an intro. Okay. I want to talk today about clean rest. So clean rest is when you are resting without guilt, resting without shame. You’re actually able then to recharge versus right now you might be in one of two camps. You either don’t rest and you only let yourself rest when you’re too exhausted to continue either because you’ve completely burned out or it’s 2am in the morning and you literally can’t keep functioning.
[00:05:31] Or you procrastinate and you get a lot of rest through this like time off, but you’re feeling so guilty that you’re not actually doing the things you need to do. So when you are resting, even if you are someone who is having some level of productivity, you’re resting, but you constantly feel like I should be being more productive.
[00:05:52] I should be getting something done right now. I should like, especially in business, there’s always a million things that you could be doing. And we perfectionists, we just love to should ourselves and I should be doing more than what I’m doing. And that guilt and that shame and that judgment from ourselves mean that rest isn’t actually restorative.
[00:06:17] That rest doesn’t actually recharge us. So then when you return to your work You are exhausted and it’s really hard to get shit done and then everything takes longer so you don’t actually feel like you can finish on time. You have to work into the evenings or wake up early in the morning to get work done, work in lunch breaks, do all sorts of things to try and squeeze the work in so you’re getting less rest then.
[00:06:43] And also you’re feeling even more behind. So if you do actually let yourself take time off, or maybe you have a family commitment or a dinner or something like that, you feel so goddamn guilty all the time. And what we want to do and what power planning really helps you with. is getting rest that restores you.
[00:07:01] Getting rest that makes it easier to be productive in your work time. If you have a productivity problem, you need to look at not just how much rest you’re getting. There’s a lot of conversation around like work life balance and having time off and like go to the spa and things like that. What I’m more interested in is what is happening in your brain when you are resting.
[00:07:24] What is going on? Is your brain getting rest? And like, in a lot of my time off the business, I’m looking after my three little ones. Like I’m busy doing things. I’m not just sitting around chilling all day long. That isn’t the current phase of life that I am in. I am in the phase of life, the stage of life where my non work time is busier in a lot of ways than my work time is.
[00:07:49] And so what do you do when you’re in that situation? You make sure your brain is getting rested, even if you are physically doing things in that time, even if you are including caretaking, looking after others, dealing with tantrums and all those things, that you are actually able to get rest for your brain so that when work time comes, You can focus more easily.
[00:08:13] You can have inspired ideas and then you have the courage and the capacity to actually execute on those ideas that you feel like you have time and space to think about your business high level that you have time and space. If you’re someone who likes to have like a bigger chunk of time to work on things that you actually have the energy to do that.
[00:08:34] Rather than just, if you don’t have a lot of clean rest, you’ll find that you typically prioritize a lot of the little things because you just don’t feel like you have the energy to even sit down and do like a two hour task that might involve a lot more deep thinking. Your brain is like, Nope, thank you, and I know that there’s no rest coming.
[00:08:50] And so for those who need a little support. With clean rest. And this is one of the biggest things that we coach on and support with in PGSD. It’s built into power planning that it supports you to get clean rest. But this is one of the biggest friction points, if you will, with perfectionist and productivity is I just prefer to rest when everything is done.
[00:09:14] I don’t really. Want to rest my business isn’t successful enough for me to be able to rest and like that’s for someone who’s more successful for me or someone who doesn’t like work as much as me. And I was a hard sell like it to get myself to come around to the idea. I really had to show myself. That I was a lot more productive with rest and with clean rest specifically than without rest because I love working.
[00:09:44] I really enjoy it. I love what I do. I could sit at a computer happily all day long. So there’s that. Plus when I wasn’t being productive, I was like, I literally can’t afford to rest. I literally can’t afford it. Especially when I was still working part time, I was still working full time in accounting.
[00:10:00] Like I can’t afford to rest. I don’t have the luxury to do that. And so with rest, it’s really just thinking about an understanding that if you are. in the mentality of I’ll rest when everything is done. The reason everything is never done and you only rest them when you’re completely exhausted or you finally get it done at 2am is because you aren’t resting.
[00:10:24] Your brain doesn’t have enough energy to actually do the work focused and quick and easy. So, um, The analogy I love to share with this is if you think about working out and you think about, so I use the example of burpees, which is when you’re like jumping up and then you put your hands on the ground and you jump your legs back.
[00:10:44] And if you had a personal trainer, say to you, do 10 burpees. And then you do the burpees and like, okay. Okay. I’m going to do 10 more. Like, okay. And do 10 more. Okay. I’ll do 10 more. Okay. And do 10 more. And you just keep getting told do more, do more, or just eventually, just keep doing them all the time because you should always be doing burpees.
[00:11:08] Eventually a, the quality of your burpee dramatically decreasing because you are trying to conserve energy. You don’t even know when a break is coming because this hard ass personal trainer is not giving you any rest whatsoever. So you’ve got to get that rest yourself by slowing down, by making up the excuse that I need to go to the toilet or actually have a call I need to take.
[00:11:30] Like we do this if we aren’t getting clean breaths. If you find you’re procrastinating a lot, it’s because you need rest and that’s the only way you can get it. So you procrastinate, you scroll, you go and look at YouTube videos, you might do procrastinate learning and go and watch another training about something that your brain is like, I can’t actually function at this focus level for so long.
[00:11:54] I need to take a break. You are not giving me one. So I will get one through procrastination, or I will get one through overthinking this simple task so that I don’t have time to move on to the harder tasks that my brain doesn’t have energy for. So when I started experimenting with clean rest, it was when I was actually able in my work time to To not only prioritize, I actually started prioritizing what really needed to be done, but I had way better ideas.
[00:12:23] I could get work done more quickly, more easily because I could see there was a light at the end of the tunnel that I knew I could trust myself when I was actually going to finish, that I would get rest the same way. If you have a personal trainer and they said, okay, do 10 burpees. And he said, okay, I’m going to do 10 burpees.
[00:12:40] They said, okay, we’re going to do three sets of 10, 30 in total. And then you get to rest. That’s the end of the workout. You would do that, giving it your all, because you know rest is coming. The same applies to work. If you know rest is coming, even if you’re going to look after your kids or be busy, if you know that brain rest is coming, then it’s safe to give a full effort.
[00:13:07] But right now you’re working in this like 50 percent conserving energy mode because you don’t trust you’re ever going to get a break. So you have to conserve energy and you’re just constantly like working on easier things or you aren’t working at all. You’re procrastinating. Or you’re having to then therefore also rely on the last minute spurt of motivation.
[00:13:29] So you procrastinate all throughout the day and then you’re like, Oh my God, I only got a couple of hours to get things done. Or like now it’s the evening. I really have to get things done. And you do that versus what we teach you is how to rest. And then in your work time, the hours you actually want to work, you can just be productive.
[00:13:45] And it’s a bit of a mind fuck because you have to take the counter intuitive approach. of increasing your rest to increase your productivity and not just physical rest. It’s about brain rest and resting without the story that I should be doing something right now, resting without the story that I’m behind.
[00:14:03] So in PGSD, we teach you how to get clean rest. And it makes such a difference, not just to the, your, um, quality of your work and productivity, But the quality of your life, you actually get to be present with your partner, with your kids. You actually get to have so much more of a personal life and actually enjoy it rather than resenting your personal life for taking time away from your business.
[00:14:30] So that is all about clean rest and why it’s so important for perfectionists. It is absolutely key. You need to get yourself clean rest. It’s different for everyone. There’s no set amount, but it needs to be just a little bit more than you’re comfortable with. Okay. And through power planning, you will be able to study yourself and understand for you specifically in this stage of life you’re in, what your ideal amount of clean rest looks like.
[00:14:53] So for me, clean rest looked different when I was at different stages of my business and different stages as well of my personal life, like before I had kids. And then when I had my daughter, and then when I also had the twins. So, So it will look different as your life changes and your business changes, but through power planning, you have the skill to be able to decide for yourself what that ideal amount is for you.
[00:15:17] And then you’re able to support yourself to actually get that. And it’s just one of the best ways to dramatically, dramatically increase productivity, work quality, and life satisfaction. So I’m a pretty, pretty big proponent of clean rest. So I hope that is helpful. And I will talk to you in the next part of the series.
Outro
[00:15:41] If you are ready to get out of your own way in your business, I want to invite you inside my productivity program for perfectionist entrepreneurs called Perfectionists Getting Shit Done. We are opening enrollment for one week only from the 31st of January, 2025 to the 7th of February, 2025. To find out more about the program and join the waitlist so you can sign up when doors open, go to samlaurabrown.com/PGSD.