This is Part 4 of my 5-Part Getting Shit Done Series. Today I’m sharing why working in projects – rather than just simply ticking off tasks – is the secret to banishing overwhelm and creating momentum in your business. Plus I’m walking you through a practical tool you can start using right away that makes it easy to finish what you start, even if you have a million ideas.
Find the full episode transcript and show notes at samlaurabrown.com/episode513.
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. So this is part four of my five part Getting Shit Done series that I’m sharing with you here on the podcast. I really hope you have been enjoying it so far and what we are going to be talking about today is having a momentum project, why that’s important, what that can look like. If you are overwhelmed by all the ideas that you have for your business, if you have a hard time knowing what to focus on, this is going to be insanely helpful for you to learn about.
[00:00:58] So enjoy this part, part four and know that as well, very, very soon at this point, my program Perfectionists Getting Shit Done, aka PGSD is going to be open for enrollment for one week, only from the 31st of January to the 7th of February. It’s my productivity program for perfectionist entrepreneurs. It is designed to help you as a perfectionist, get your perfectionist mindset working for you instead of against you.
[00:01:27] So it’s easy to stop procrastinating, to stop overthinking, to not keep burning out. And instead you can take consistent, sustainable action on the tasks that matter in your business, your marketing tasks. any back end things you need to do to get yourself organized so you’re not reinventing the wheel every time you need to do anything in your business.
[00:01:48] That is what we help people with inside PGSD. That is what we are experts in. So I’m really excited to be welcoming in a new cohort of PGSDers. If you want to be part of that cohort, if you want to find out more about the program and join the waitlist so you can get ready to sign up, go to samlaurabrown.com/PGSD, all of the details are there. I’ll link that up in the show notes as well. So you can just go and click on that and go have a look and that’s it for the intro. So I hope you enjoy part four of the five part Getting Shit Done series.
Sam Laura Brown – (Start of the episode)
[00:02:23] So what I want to share with you today, I was just reflecting on, I don’t have any notes for this by the way. All just from my expertise, top of my mind and self trust. So, and just coaching so many perfectionist entrepreneurs, thinking about the key things that we teach in the program that are the most valuable for our clients that get the best results.
[00:02:44] And I want to share them with you. So you’re aware of where to focus, what to be thinking about. So we talked about why perfectionists need the right productivity tool for their perfectionist brain. Why to do lists are making you unproductive if you’re a perfectionist. Why flexible planning will increase your productivity and specifically using the power planning method, which is designed for perfectionist entrepreneurs.
[00:03:08] Then I also talked about clean rest, which is when you’re resting without guilt, without shame, you’re actually able to mentally switch off. When you aren’t working so your brain has the rest it needs to be productive when work time comes That also increases your quality of relationships and your life not just also Your productivity and your work, like how good you do your work, that also increases.
[00:03:34] So today I was just thinking like, what do I want to share with you next? What do I want to teach you about? And what I want to share is called a momentum project. And this is something that we teach you in PGSD to really anchor you to what to focus on, how to create momentum in your business, how to move yourself forward.
[00:03:56] That your momentum project is really a project that is created with a simple structure that we teach you. I’m just going to talk about a bit about what that looks like, but your momentum project It’s a six week project and depending how many hours you have for your businesses can vary, but at a minimum, you need only four hours a week.
[00:04:21] So if you are working a full time job, like many of our PGSDers are, if you have little ones or teenage kids that you’re taking care of, if you have parents that you’re taking care of, if you have a health issue and issues with energy and different things like that, that you don’t need much time to actually be able to achieve your momentum project.
[00:04:43] So with this project, it is a project that is going to build momentum for you in your business. So for example, inside PGSD, some of our PGSDers do a momentum project around posting consistently on social media. They are posting sporadically, they have a lot of drama about social media, and maybe they’ve posted consistently before, or maybe they never have, but they just know that they actually need to be able to post consistently, or whether that’s writing an email newsletter, YouTube videos, or Podcasts, things like that.
[00:05:18] Other PGSDers have a momentum project around a back end part of their business. So for example, they might need to create a new system in their business. And in PGSD, we help you identify the best momentum project for you based on where you’re at in your business. We teach you how to identify, like, what’s the best thing for me to be focused on in a momentum project.
[00:05:38] So don’t worry about that. That’s covered in the program. But some do a backend project. Maybe it’s catching up on taxes. Um, maybe it’s hiring a virtual assistant, just things like that, that I needed to help the business be more productive overall, or just like clean things up and get organized. And other PGSDers do a momentum project around, maybe they are posting somewhat consistently, for example, but those posts aren’t actually converting into sales. So they will have a momentum project around having content, for example, whatever their sales method is having that, that actually converts to sales.
[00:06:18] So for example, one of our PGSDers that I’m thinking about. She was showing up pretty consistently on Instagram, but she was never really mentioning her service that she offers. She wasn’t talking about it on her stories. She wasn’t talking about it in a post. She was just very scared of being salesy and all the perfectionism that comes up with sales. And so her momentum project was around still showing up, but actually having a sales goal that would be tied to that with that momentum project.
[00:06:49] So with your momentum project, this works because when you have a momentum project, You can actually figure out what your needle movers are and what to put on your not to do list, so to speak. So when you don’t have a momentum project, it is very hard when it comes to like prioritize what to do. And so, And in PGSD, we have the needle mover matrix.
[00:07:16] We help you identify, and we do this a lot on coaching calls as well. Um, we help you identify exactly what you need to work on specifically for your business, for the stage you’re in and the kind of business that you have. But if you don’t actually know. what the result is you want to create. So productivity isn’t about being busy.
[00:07:35] It’s about producing results. And if you have a business, those results are things like revenue created, leads generated, clients helped or customers helped. There’s things like that in a business that we want to be productive about. We want to have that result. So when it comes to your momentum project, You actually have a framework that you work through in the program. It’s very simple. And you have that and you create for yourself a clear idea of exactly what you’re working on.
[00:08:07] And so you know what to prioritize and what to leave for later. And you can have a series like this is what our PGSDers are doing. They had their first momentum project. They completed that. They reviewed that. They learned from that. And then they moved on to another momentum project. And they are building their business in a series of momentum projects.
[00:08:27] Instead of having to have a big goal, and we can teach you how to do that in PGSD as well, but for a lot of perfectionists, especially if you are having trouble getting shit done, you just need to be creating momentum and having a six week momentum project that has a clear outcome and it’s not forever away.
[00:08:45] So it’s a lot easier to stay motivated. Like six weeks is a sweet spot to really be able to have you actually have that accomplishment, have that achievement, learn a lot of lessons as well, need to get out of your own way in different ways, but it not being this big hard thing you need to do. It’s so, so, so, so powerful to have a momentum project to anchor you, to ground you.
[00:09:10] If you’re someone like me and our PGSDers you love feeling like I know exactly what I need to be doing with my time versus I don’t know what to do. There are so many things to do and I don’t have enough time to get it done. If you love that feeling of, I know what I need to do today and I have enough time to get it done.
[00:09:29] The momentum project plus power planning, which is a really simple tool that we teach you plus clean rest. Another simple tool that we teach you when you have those three things going for you. It is easy to get shit done, even if, even if you have a long, a long history of procrastination, of overthinking, of getting in your own way.
[00:09:55] Even if you are highly frustrated with yourself, this is where a lot of our BGSEs come into the program. They are so goddamn frustrated with themselves because they are smart. They have potential. They know what to do. They see other people doing those things. People who aren’t as smart as them, who don’t have as much potential as them.
[00:10:15] But they see those other people, and they’re so frustrated that they’re not further along. They feel behind. And so once you come in, and it’s all designed for you with your perfectionist brain. Instead of telling you, hey, just stop being a perfectionist about it. No, that isn’t the strategy that works. And we teach you how to be less of a perfectionist.
[00:10:39] We teach you how to release your perfectionism handbrake. But ultimately, if you want to be productive as a perfectionist, the quickest, simplest, easiest way to do that is to is to learn how to work with your perfectionist brain instead of against your perfectionist brain. So in PGSD, you learn power planning, you learn clean rest, you learn the momentum project, you are able to actually have a clear idea of where you’re going, what you’re working towards.
[00:11:07] You have flexible planning to be able to get that done. You have clean rest so that when it is work time, you have the energy to get it done. Even if you have a busy life and you are able, even if you have distractions, even if you have ADHD, even if you have parents, you’re looking after a health condition, If you have really demanding clients, like some of our PGSDers have agencies do freelance work and things like that.
[00:11:35] They have really demanding clients, constant interruptions. That’s all solvable. That is all solvable. When you actually have a productivity system that works for your perfectionist brain instead of against it. Might sound simple. I hope it does. Cause it is simple. It’s doable. You’re able to do it. We’ve had a thousand people, thousand perfectionist entrepreneurs through the program who have been able to go from procrastinating, overthinking in their own way, which used to be me.
[00:12:06] I used to be like to a crippling degree in my own way. The business, maybe I should do tomorrow and just talk more about that. Because I feel like when I say it now, it might be hard to believe from the outside. All the things I do today is part of my day. My past self could not fathom the amount of productivity, like how productive I am, the way I can just talk to camera without notes and have it be really helpful and sign clients who get incredible results, has the confidence to do what I’m doing.
[00:12:39] I had so much imposter syndrome, so much fear, so much doubt, so much disbelief. Ugh, all the overthinking, tweaking the graphics constantly, wanting to get the perfect meet, like all these different things, to now being someone, I know what I’m doing, I confidently do it, I get it done in the work time I want to get it done in.
[00:13:03] I mentally switch off when I’m not working. I’m not perfect. And I talk about that on my podcast as well. A lot. I share all my wins and lessons and learnings and mistakes and not through this lens of I’m perfect. Here’s how I figured it out. But like, I’m also on this journey, but I have figured out the, how to be productive as a perfectionist entrepreneur.
[00:13:24] That is what we teach in PGSD. And I have seen just so many people come into the program. Who nothing else had worked for no amount of I’ll make a beautiful content calendar I’ll have this paper planner. I’ll have like all the things to try and motivate yourself out like new year new me No, like actually just get a tool that works for your perfectionist brain And what if that’s the solution?
[00:13:50] And yes, you can do that in January. Like now it’s January. So yes, you can do that now. And also you can use it throughout the whole year. Whereas January motivation tends to end in January. So all of this to say, I want to invite you to PGSD because this is what we help you with. So yeah, that is the main thing.
[00:14:16] The Momentum Project, Power Planning, Clean Rest, samlaurabrown.com/PGSD is where to go to sign up for the wait list. I hope you’re finding it helpful so far.
Outro
[00:14:26] 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.