The Productivity Blueprint

Welcome to This Daring Adventure podcast, where we work on bridging the gap between where we are and where we want to be in order to live a bigger and bolder life.

In this podcast, we will provide inspiration, tips, and skills you need to make your life the adventure you want it to be. Here's your host mindset mentor, and life coach Trista Guertin.

Hey, everybody. Welcome back to This Daring Adventure. My name is Trista Guertin and I am your host. Thank you for joining me.

This is episode 72 on productivity.

This is a topic that I have struggled with myself personally, and I have had several clients who have presented with this issue.

We know we want to create something, whether it is writing a book, starting our own business, studying. we just can't seem to get ourselves to sit down and do the work. Now, everybody who has presented with this issue In coaching and including myself has some sort of thought pattern that there's something wrong with them, that they are doing something wrong and that they are flawed. it seems like everybody else is able to do it, but not them. And therefore there is some sort of fatal flaw within them that they just can't get a handle on. I want to reassure you that this is not the case. There is nothing wrong with you. This is very much a function of our human design and our brain and the way it functions.

In this episode, I'm going to go over just a little bit about why this happens, and then I'm going to give you a few steps that you can take to help yourself actually sit down and do the work. But one of the most important things I wanted to share with you here is that obviously other than the fact that there's nothing wrong with you, this is a process. it is a discipline and a skill that you have to build the more you do it, the more you were able to get yourself to sit down and do the work, the better you will become at it. It's just like anything else, learning to play an instrument, learning to speak another language, learning to, ride a bike or read, or, even just the discipline of going to the gym and building muscle, building strength, building flexibility.

It takes practice and little by little, each time you sit down and do the work, you will become better at sitting down and doing the work. But because of how our brain is designed, It doesn't mean that you will be one and done, and it doesn't mean that this won't always be a bit of a challenge. It will, and I will explain this as we go, but I just want you to know that this is a lifelong practice. this.

You will become better at it. It will get a little bit easier, but there's no magic pill. There's no magic button or switch or trick that anybody can teach you or anybody that can give you or tell you that's going to quote unquote fix this for you.

And there's definitely nothing that You need to be fixed about, if that makes sense.

Basically, our brains have a primitive part, which is the survival part of our brain. You may have heard me talk about this before. You may have heard others talk about it. I am not I'm a neuroscientist, so my explanation is very simplistic, very basic, but this primitive part of our brain is what we used back in the day when we were living in caves, when we were fighting for our day to day survival.

We were focused on mainly meeting our most basic needs, food, water, shelter, warmth, companionship, and the primitive part of our brain is designed to seek pleasure, avoid pain and be as efficient as possible, right? seeking pleasure at that point meant finding food, finding some berries, finding some wild game to eat. It meant finding shelter, finding warmth. when we did that, when that happened, we got a hit of dopamine. the brain was rewarded and we perpetuated the cycle. It kept us alive. Then we had to avoid pain. Pain often meant death back then.

If you cut yourself, if you broke a limb. If you didn't eat, and didn't have enough stored up to sustain you during the famine, then you would die. So your brain was very fixated on keeping you alive and avoiding pain was critical. so the brain was always looking for problems. It was defaulting to the negative. It was trying to flag anything that might.

And it threatened our existence, our physical safety and security, and it did that through fear, basically, then it wanted to be as efficient as possible.

There were periods where you didn't have water, you didn't have food, and if you were to conserve energy to, be quiet, relax, not exert too much energy, then you would be able to survive more. It was more likely that you were going to survive. At least you had a greater chance.

So this is how your brain was designed in this part of our brain still exists and it's still operating based on that motivational triad. Seek pleasure, avoid pain, be as efficient as possible. what that means today is that your brain It doesn't want to do the work. It wants to watch Netflix. It wants to go through the drive thru at McDonald's. It wants to take a nap. It doesn't want to exert the energy to actually do the work. It also doesn't want to learn anything new.

If you're starting a new business, there's a lot you have to learn. There's a lot you have to understand and try and figure out for yourself. your brain doesn't want to do that work. It wants to be efficient. It wants to be lazy, basically, and it's not going to want to sit down and do the work. It's never wanted to sit down and do the work. Not when you were in high school, not if you went to college, it never wanted to sit down and do term papers. It never wanted to study for tests or exams. It just doesn't want to do that.

And so this is what we're up against. We are up against this primitive programming that still exists today. in order to sit down and get our work done. Now the good news is that we have our prefrontal cortex, which is the part of our brain that has evolved and developed to be rational, to analyze, to allow us to plan ahead. it is the adult in the relationship with our primitive brain. we can tell it to simmer down.

We're going to sit down. We're going to do the work anyway. And then after we can go watch Netflix or do whatever else we need to do with our prefrontal cortex, we can focus. But it's a skill that you have to develop. first and foremost, you have to have this awareness and understanding of what's going on in your brain.

So expect and know that When it comes time to sit down and do the work, let's say you want to do a social media post or a blog post, your brain is going to say probably the dishwasher needs to be emptied, or it's such a beautiful day. We should go for a walk first and enjoy the good weather, or I'm a little tired. I'm not thinking clearly, so I should lie down and have a nap.

This is what your brain does. this is what you should expect is going to happen.

There's, there are going to be a million other things that you could and should be doing at that moment, That's what your brain is going to tell you. So being aware and understanding that this is normal, this is not that something is wrong with you. This is how our brain functions, and this is what it's going to try to do. you want to be prepared for that and do the work anyway.

So I have a few tips here as to how you can prepare yourself and organize yourself so that you will sit down and do what you want to do and be as productive as you want to be in order to build that business or write that book or create whatever it is that you want to create, but don't let your brain talk you out of this. It will try.

So the first thing is you want to be really clear about what it is you want to do. And this is bigger picture. if it's building a business, creating a new life for yourself and the task that you want to do at that time, you are sitting down to, let's say, write that blog post.

You want to be very clear that your objective is to have a blog post written and posted by the end of your session. Be very clear about what it is you're doing. You're building your business and. In the micro step and the smaller task is to write a blog post and publish it.

Then you want to be very clear about why, and maybe not so much clear about the blog post, but you want to be very clear about why you're building this business and why this is important to you. And you will want to remind yourself of this.

Often, maybe daily, maybe at the beginning, you're doing, you're reminding yourself of this all the time, but it helps again to get you to focus your primitive part of your brain and understand why this is important. it just serves as a reminder because otherwise the primitive part of your brain is going to put Netflix and McDonald's and the park and the nap at the forefront But you will have to remind yourself about why you want to do this, why this is important to you and why you're gonna sit down and do the work that you want to do.

Then you want to be clear about when you're going to do it. Some people recommend calendaring it You can say okay Sunday afternoon at 1 p. m. I That's when I sit down to write my blog post, put it in your calendar, have reminders go off, be very clear about when you're going to do this. And don't change that. Don't reschedule it. Don't let anything come and get in the way of you sitting down and do that.

Unless there's some sort of emergency, keep your word to yourself to write the blog post. Then you want to be clear about how long it's going to take. And you decide, you give yourself, let's say blog posts, you want to write it in one hour and you decide that's exactly how long you're going to have. To write it, to edit it, and then to hit publish.

There is such a thing as Parkinson's law, which says work expands to fill the time allocated to its completion. So let's say you give it three hours or you give it one hour. That's how long it will take you to write the blog post. I remember back in university, if you had three weeks to write You know, until your due date for your paper or your essay, that's how long it would take, right? Unless you really sat down and push yourself to get it done earlier. Most of us were sitting down the night before writing that paper. you just expand and it just takes that time. you're better off giving yourself a timeframe and saying, okay, I'm going to do this in one hour and then that's it. It's done. You can use something that is called the Pomodoro technique when you're sitting down for that hour to do the work, you work for 25 minutes. And then you take a five minute break and then you work again for 25 minutes and you take another five minute break and You can do this for several cycles and then take a longer 15, 30 minute break now 25 minutes might at the beginning be too long for you to sit down and focus. You might just want to do 15 minutes, sit down right for 15 minutes, and then take a five minute break. And then you can slowly build up to 25 minutes. You can do 15, then you can do 20 and then do 25, whatever you think, but it's okay.

If you don't want to start with that 25 minutes initially. And you can start small and then build it up again. It's like a muscle. It's a muscle that you're going to build, right? If you were going to start to run, you're not going to go out running for an hour. The first time you go out, you might go out and say, I'm going to run for 10 minutes today. And then the next week you run for 15 minutes. And then the week after that, you're running for 20 minutes. It's okay to start small, give yourself permission. The other thing I wanted to note as well is that if you only have an hour to dedicate to your work, let's say you are a mom, let's say you're working full time. You only have an hour a day to actually sit down and work on your business. I want you to know that is okay. And that is enough time. A lot of us get stuck thinking that because we don't have a lot of time, whatever a lot is you consider, like you may not even have a number in your mind of five, 10, 15, 20 hours a week that you need to spend on your business.

But our brain tends to get fixated on this very sort of general problem that we don't have enough time. But I would argue that if you can sit down and do an hour of focused work every day, that is, enough to move yourself forward.

Don't let your brain talk you out of doing whatever it is you want to do because you don't have enough time. That's always a lie. So Pomodoro technique take, 10, 15, 25 minutes. Sit down, do the work and just be aware that your brain is always going to tell you when it comes time to sit down and do that work, that it's not a good idea. It's not the right time. It's better to take a nap. It's better to unload the dishwasher. It's better to organize your closet or go for a walk.

I promise you that is what's going to happen. That's perfectly normal. Nothing has gone wrong. There's nothing wrong with you. This is your brain trying to be efficient and conserve energy, which in another word right now is lazy. And you will need to use your prefrontal cortex.

Think of it as the adult in the relationship with your primitive part of your brain and direct you to sit down and do the work. Keep your commitment, keep your word to yourself and do the work. This is the only way you will build whatever it is you want to build. It is the only way you will create. The life that you want.

You have to overcome yourself and you will have to overcome yourself every single day. There's no one and done. This is a marathon. It's not a sprint. There's no magic pill. There's no magic trick. You just need to sit down and do it.

You must overcome that primitive part of your brain that is telling you no. the other thing that's really important is to hide your phone, turn off any distractions, any notifications, anything that you think will distract you. You don't want to be checking Instagram.

You don't want notifications coming up in your phone for messages or for emails. You don't want to be popping onto Facebook. You need to keep focused on what it is you want to create and whatever it is you want to work on. then just tell your brain that When you have a break, then you can check your phone, then you can, the daily mail for the local gossip or the newest gossip, or you can check Instagram to see whatever it is. But in the moment, you need to make sure that you're not going to be distracted. Your brain gets that's it. It has several hits of dopamine when you get those notifications and when you get distracted and you check Instagram and you check Facebook.

You want to make sure that you keep it focused and then give it its reward when you have a break. The other thing is When you're doing this work, if you are wanting to build a business, if you are wanting to create anything, you want to be consistent and persistent.

There will be days where there are emergencies, things will come up, you won't feel well, and That's okay. You're human. Life isn't perfect. The important thing is that you're sitting down most days, most of the times that you have scheduled yourself to work.

If you only have an hour or two a day, this can add up over time when you're consistent and when you're persistent. It makes a difference. I notice, even if I do 15 minutes of yoga a day, I notice a significant difference at the end of the week of how I'm feeling. it doesn't have to take a lot of time, but when you do it consistently and you are persistent, you don't give up.

If you miss a day, you don't make it mean anything and you get back to it. You will reap the rewards. You will make progress. And whatever happens, don't make it mean anything about you. there's nothing wrong with you.

This is the way our brain operates. This is what we're up against, but it's manageable. It takes work, but the process is actually quite simple. It's not rocket science, it's not complicated, but it takes effort. And if you miss a day, something happens, don't beat yourself up, don't judge yourself, don't call yourself any names, don't make it mean anything about you. Nothing has gone wrong. You just start again tomorrow. If you need to set some sort of reward for yourself at the end of your session or the end of the week, whatever it is, do that. If there's something that you want to work towards, do that for sure.

Your brain is driven by receiving rewards. it works. It works. We see that with children. We see that with animals.

Our brain will work the same way. if you want to give yourself a little reward at the end, absolutely do it. as I also mentioned earlier, constantly remind yourself why you're doing this, why you want to build that business. what you are creating, what you are working for long term.

It's really important to remind yourself because your brain won't necessarily remember. It won't be front and center of your mind. If you can put it on a sticky note, put it in your journal, put it on your phone, then you will be more attentive and more focused and remember why it's important for you to sit down and do that work.

That's what I have for you today.

Thank you so much for joining me.

Being productive and learning to sit down and do some of this work really does involve a lot of self trust and it involves keeping your word to yourself. That has to do with the relationship that you have with yourself.

Next Saturday, June 1st at 11am eastern standard time, I'm going to be doing another free webinar and it's the six steps to building a better relationship with yourself. This is the most important relationship you will ever have. And it is the foundation on which you build the life that you want to build, create whatever it is you want to create and become the person that you want to become.

When you have a solid, Connected, intimate relationship with yourself, you will go after your dreams, you will set bigger goals for yourself, you will start growing and evolving in ways that you didn't know were possible. I think it's such important work, they don't teach us this as we're growing up and at any other point, frankly, and I've made it one of the pillars of my coaching practice. I am super excited to share this with you.

I am designing a program, a six week jumpstart program to building a better relationship with yourself. I'm going to be introducing that during this webinar. I'm really looking forward to sharing that with you. the link will be in the show notes for you to register. Sign up in advance and if you can't make it live, I will be sending out a replay.

Thank you everybody for joining me today and I will see you soon.

Take care. Bye. Bye.

Thank you for listening to This Daring Adventure podcast with your host Trista Guertin. We hope you enjoyed the tips and conversations on how to get excited about life again.

As always, you can head to tristaguertin.com for additional resources and to book a one on one coaching session.

You can also follow Trista on Instagram at tristavguertin.

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