3 strategies to increase productivity

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Many ambitious women think, “If I could just get a little more done, then I could feel calmer and more present.” It feels like the solution to feeling more balanced is having a shorter to-do list and learning to achieve more in less time. And it is true! Having less on your list helps alleviate stress and anxiety. It helps end overwhelm so you walk away from your workday feeling productive and satisfied (which is very important in creating a balanced life). In today’s episode, I decided to get super practical and walk you through my top three strategies to being more productive. You ready? Let’s get to it!

Topics in this episode:

  • What gets in the way of you being productive?

  • Why learning to achieve more in less time is the last step to creating work-life balance (not first).

  • How emotional decision making robs you of being productive and how to end it.

  • What is required to achieve more in less time? Actually giving yourself less time to do something.

  • 3 strategies to check more things off your list

  • What you need to be willing to feel, in order to be more productive

Show Notes:

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Transcript


Intro

I hear from many working moms that if they could just get a little bit more done, if they could just check off a few more things on their to-do list, then they would be able to be more calm and present. In other words, balanced. So in today's episode, I've decided to walk you through my top three strategies for getting more done. In other words, achieving more in less time. You ready? Let's get to it. 


Welcome to the Ambitious and Balanced Working Moms Podcast, the place for women who want to balance their ambitious career goals with their life as a mom. If you're looking to feel more confident, decisive, and productive at both work and home, then this is the place for you. I'm your host, Rebecca Olson. Let's get to it. 


Working moms, I have a shout out today. To start out our episode, I received a note from one of my clients, and I wanted to share it with you. Now, Ally essentially started a new job just before she and I started working together. 


Real life success.

So she started a new job, and she didn't want to take her imbalanced habits with her. She didn't want to take her people pleasing and her perfectionisms and her procrastination and her emotional decision making, all of those imbalanced behaviors, she didn't want to take those with her into this new job. And so she hired me to really help her create a new sense of balance, learn how to trust her instincts more, and to stop working past 5pm and feel like she was working all the time and all these things, right?


So we are about midway in our coaching together, and she sent me this message. She said: 


‘I got a personal shout out from our CMO today in her weekly newsletter, and I was jumping for joy. All the while, I haven't worked past 5pm since I started this job, aside from travel, and I have made a good enough impression to get that call out. Oh my gosh. I didn't know it was possible!’


And there's so many exclamation marks and capital letters here indicating her excitement, her over the top excitement for this. You could just feel it. And I read this and it quite literally brought tears to my eyes because these truly are the moments that I live for as a coach. 


In all of the conversations I have with my clients and with all of the tools and strategies that we talk about, there comes a moment when it all comes together. I see this a lot this week after week, kind of challenging conversation grind that my clients have where we're picking apart kind of what's getting in the way of them having the life that they want to have, and then, like, boom, one day, it all sort of just comes together. 


Now, I work with my clients for six months, and we do 18 sessions together over the course of that six months. So sometimes that moment is kind of early, around maybe session six or seven. But for others, it could take all the way towards the end of our sessions together. 15, 16, 17 for everything to really click, for when they really begin to feel a sense of control and calm and it all sort of settles in for them, but it always happens. 


And so I just want to take a moment and celebrate Ally and say congratulations, it has all come together! I'm so excited for you, the call out and the shout out from the CMO. But more than that, your ability to feel in control of yourself and your time and to continue to achieve at a really high level without working a ton of hours like you used to do - so exciting. 


And so today I want to dive into some of those tools and strategies that I talk about with my clients that, certainly I have worked on with Ally when it comes to productivity. 


A 5 Step Process to Balance.

Now I teach a five step process to creating a life that feels balanced. And when it comes to teaching time management strategies and productivity strategies, I want to be clear that this is in step five and there is a reason that it is the last step. 


This is the stuff about changing your behaviors, changing your habits, learning to prioritize differently, learning to let people be disappointed, learning to let things be half done. These are the sort of things that are required in order for you to truly be more productive. But it is very difficult to do these things when your brain is freaking out. 


And for my clients, for the ambitious working moms that I work with, the reason their brain is freaking out is because so much of who they are is wrapped up in what they do. And their brain thinks if we change their behaviors and their habits and they start deprioritizing work, they are going to fundamentally change who they are. And so their brain freaks out and it puts up a really big fight. 


So a lot of the work I do with my clients in steps one to four is helping them to remember who they are, what their identity is, apart from their paid and unpaid work, so they remember that they are not just their job. 


You are not just your job, you are also not just a mom, you are a human being with so much value and worth simply because you exist. 


And that is a lot of the work we do in our earlier steps. It's helping your brain see and learn how to intentionally shift your mindset towards those really positive thoughts about yourself, learning how to be more intentional with your thoughts, learning how to process your emotions in a really healthy way, to get clear on your priorities and to be clear on your boundaries and why they're important to you - all of that to prepare for the last piece and phase of the process, if you will, which is to learn how to give yourself less time to achieve more. In other words, to be more productive. That's essentially what that means, achieving more in less time. 


And in today's podcast, I want to talk about the three most common strategies that I offer to my clients that I walk them through, and ultimately, they learn how to implement. You ready? 


Here we go. Wait, hold on. Before we can actually talk about those strategies I know, I know, I tricked you. I actually tricked myself in that we have to talk about what is getting in the way of your productivity, at least just a little bit, so that you can see why these strategies work. So let's take a moment, and you could even pause the podcast for a moment. In fact, I highly recommend you do and reflect on what is getting in the way of you being as productive as you want to be. 


What is getting in the way of your productivity?

Generally speaking, I find that there are three things. Number one, a lack of prioritization, meaning you aren't very clear on exactly what is important to you, what your goals are, and so everything feels important and urgent to you. 


The second thing that's getting in the way of you being able to be productive at the level that you want is that people keep needing things from you and requesting things from you, which gets in the way of your productivity time that you maybe have set aside for yourself. So messages come in, meeting requests come in, somebody walks into your office, lots of people need things from you, which actually isn't really the problem, so much as it's your inability to say no to them, to deny the meeting, request to ignore their chats, to close your door, to tell people you're unavailable no matter what. 


So not being able to tell people no is a big reason why you might not be productive in the ways that you want. 


And then the third reason is that you're focused too much on getting something right. In other words, perfectionism. You let the desire for things to be 100% prepared, or for you to look completely put together, or for you to feel like you're putting out your best work. You're letting that get in the way of you being able to be done and move on to the next thing. Essentially, that's the fear of potential failure or the fear of inadequacy, that's getting in the way of you being able to be productive in the way that you want. 


So the strategies that I'm going to give you here are meant to address these things to help you control that fear of disappointing someone or that fear of failure. 


Making decisions from an emotional place

Because when it comes to productivity, the thing that really robs you of your time in making decisions on what you do and what you don't do, on what meetings you take and what meetings you don't take is making decisions from an emotional place. 


In other words, making decisions to avoid feeling like you're disappointing someone, to avoid feeling like a failure, to avoid feeling like a jerk, to avoid feeling overwhelmed. 


If you're ever making a decision to do something or not do something based on not wanting to feel a certain way, you are making that decision based on emotions. And I guarantee that means that you will not be as productive as you could be. 


Productive people are willing to say no.

I want you to take a moment and consider someone that you know as being like, uber productive. What do you think it is that makes them that way? Here's another moment you could pause and really think about that, right? But what comes up for me is these people don't make emotional decisions. They don't care what other people think. They're willing to say no. They're willing to put up boundaries and let people be disappointed. 


When I think of someone like this, I think of someone that is able to put their head down, close the door, not answer emails and messages, and just get to it. What they're not doing is indulging in worry, anxiety, overwhelm - not that these emotions don't come up for them, they're just simply not making decisions on what they do and what they don't do based on those emotions. They're not dwelling in them. They're not making emotional decisions. 


Making decisions based on our goals and values.

They're making decisions essentially based on their goals, based on their higher levels of thinking, based on their values. That's where we want you to be making decisions. Because when your brain can live in that place, it can live in your higher goal focused, value focused place. You're going to make the best decisions for how to use your time and how to prioritize. 


The number one strategy for achieving more in less time.

So let's dive in the number one strategy for increasing your productivity, meaning achieving more in less time. And I actually just was teaching this particular strategy in one of my workshops that I was giving to an employee resource group of working parents, and that is to stop looking at your full to do list when you get to work each day and instead narrow it down to just three things that you have written down on a separate piece of paper, like a small sticky note, for example, that indicates those three priorities for the day. 


Making decisions the day before.

What's important about this is that you do the decision making for what these top three priorities are the day before. 


You don't get into the office and look at your to-do list that feels like a mile long, and try to pick out three priorities. Because likely whatever you choose is going to be something that is not necessarily the priority, but it's something that feels urgent to you. So all of a sudden, you're deciding your three priorities for the day from a place of emotion instead of strategy. 


So at the end of your workday, you want to take five minutes to look at your to-do list, to look at your schedule, to pick out the top three things you want to achieve. You do this as you're thinking about what are your bigger goals right now, what are the company's bigger goals right now? What are the things that are most important to you, that matter to you the most that will make the biggest difference to you? 


And you decide those three things, no more than three things, and you write them down on a small piece of paper that you leave at your computer and you put away your to do list somewhere where you can't see it. 


Now, one of the reasons why you put away that to-do list is because a long, unprioritized to-do list is very overwhelming to your brain. It brings anxiety, it brings stress, it brings panic, because you stare at it and you don't know what to do first. They all feel important in that moment, right? And so you feel paralyzed in trying to decide what to do, which of course, then takes time, or you waste time as you try to consider it. 


Long to-do lists bring a feeling of stress.

Oftentimes it brings about this feeling of stress. And so you just pick something in order to check the box, which is going to give you a quick hit of dopamine, kind of that instant gratification of completion or satisfaction. But whatever it is you choose is likely not the most important thing to get done. Just because you choose it, it doesn't mean it's the most important thing. 


Instead, you're just chasing a feeling of instant gratification again, an emotional response. So by simply doing away with your to do list first thing in the morning, and just having a very clear decided priorities list, it's going to help alleviate those feelings of stress and anxiety and indecision and immobilization. 


Now, of course, if you finish your three priorities for the day, you're welcome to get that list back out and decide on what you're going to do with the rest of your time. But you don't get to do that until you complete those three priorities. 


Feeling accomplished at the end of a workday.

This is also going to help you feel really accomplished at the end of your workday. When your brain says, what did I even do today? It feels like I didn't get enough done. We all have those thoughts. We all have those moments. Now you can redirect your brain. I achieved these three things, and I decided ahead of time what they were going to be. I know that they were really important to get done. I got them done. It's going to help you feel accomplished at the end of your workday, which is going to help you also shut down your work brain at the end of your workday so you can be more present with your family and your loved ones and whatever it is you're doing. 


So that's strategy number one. Prioritizing three things and only three things to do tomorrow, put them on a separate list, and then never look at your to-do list until you complete them. 


Time blocking.

Strategy number two is simply called time blocking. Now, I'm not sure your particular experience with time blocking. It's a very common strategy, so you might be rolling your eyes at me right now. But if time blocking hasn't worked for you, I could probably tell you why and what's been missing. 


Now, for those of you who don't know what time blocking is, it's when you block out a window of time on your calendar, usually a chunk of time, an hour or two or more for a specific purpose. 


In this case, that purpose is for you to accomplish something on your to do list, likely one of those three priorities and to ensure that you get it done. 


One of the reasons why time blocking works is because a lot of people have the intention of getting something done, but they don't actually schedule it into their calendar. So that could be something like a project deliverable that they know they need to make progress on. But if you looked at their calendar to finish that, there really isn't any time to actually do it. So their thought is that they're just going to squeeze it in between meetings or tasks or commitments that they have and the reality is they're not. You're not actually going to squeeze it in. Likely what you're going to do is just work later or log back on to finish it. So time blocking is setting aside time specific time to complete something. 


Deciding the outcome of a time block.

Now, there's something very important about time blocking that I see people miss a lot, and this is likely where it has, potentially not been effective for you. When you time block, you must decide what the outcome of that block of time is going to be, what is the deliverable on the other side? 


You cannot just set aside an hour of time and say, I'm just going to hammer through as much things on my to do list as possible. It's not specific enough. There's no commitment to what you're going to achieve. And so lots of things can derail you in that hour that you set aside. 


Instead, you want to decide very specifically what things are you going to work on and what will have been achieved at the end of that time block. If you're working on a project that's going to take more than just one block of time that you've potentially given yourself, decide what progress you're going to walk away from that time block with. 


Result focused scheduling.

Now, I call this result focused scheduling. And one of the reasons why it's so important is because it builds a sense of commitment towards completing something. 


I want you to think about the likelihood of you working out tonight without deciding when you're going to do it. Sort of like, oh, it's a nice idea if it happens. If I feel like it. Or if magical time kind of appears to do it tonight, then I'll do it. Versus you know exactly when the workout class is, or the time slot is that you're going to work out at home and you know exactly what you're going to do during that time, which one is going to give you the greatest chance of actually achieving that workout tonight? The second one, of course. 


So time blocking has you setting aside and making time for very specific achievements or deliverables, and it has your focus on exactly what you're going to do in that time so that you feel very clear and committed to the outcome.


Now of course, the challenge will be keeping that time block. And this is really where the rubber hits the road and where a lot of my clients and I focus on coaching because it's really not enough to just time block. 


You could easily ignore whatever you put in your calendar and get derailed by someone else coming into your office, or an email coming in, or a slack message, or somebody on your team needing something. Those are sort of the sort of things that would get in the way of you in the moment, being able to commit and follow through with that time block. 


But even then, there's protecting that time ahead of time, not scheduling over it with other meeting requests and other tasks that need to get done that feel urgent. And of course, the big one here is that fear of disappointing others and other people feeling let down, or like you're not supporting them or you're not hearing them or inconveniencing others. The fear of feeling selfish or irresponsible with your time when other people clearly need things from you. 


What is at the core of not protecting your time?

With my clients, I help them to really diagnose what's going on in these moments, what's at the bottom of their struggle to protect time for themselves and prioritize their priorities and their needs and themselves, ultimately. And we come up with really specific strategies and protocols to help them overcome this in the moment. 


This is a really challenging thing to teach you here on a podcast because it's so unique to you. There's a period of trial and error as we work it out, figure out what's really working for you, figuring out what those thoughts are, those mindset, those perspectives that need to change and shift, and teaching you how to do that. 


So if you've been trying to time block or maybe you haven't, but you know, one of your biggest challenges is just feeling totally paralyzed by the fear of disappointing someone else and needing other people to validate you, and that is what's getting in the way of your productivity, you're totally stressed out - please schedule that free coaching call that I talk about a lot on this podcast. Let's talk about exactly how I can help you overcome that and get to the other side to be so much more productive with your time than you are right now so that you can prioritize your family and all the things that you want to actually prioritize in your life. 


But in the meantime, time blocking is a huge strategy of success for those that are productive, specific, time set aside and protected on their calendar with clear results that are determined ahead of time and then an ability to follow through with it, regardless of how they're feeling or the fears that might be coming up in the moment, which will always be there. 


Now, another reason I know time blocking is not always successful for people is that they let themselves off the hook with the results that they desire to create. This oftentimes is where perfectionism comes in. They give themselves 2 hours to work on something and the result is going to be, for example, maybe a presentation deck is completed but then after an hour and a half in, it doesn't really look like they're going to complete it. And so now they just have 30 minutes left and they tell themselves, I'm just going to have to work on this later. And they give themselves more time to complete it. 


You must stop allowing yourself to work more to complete more things.

Now, let me be clear. If your solution to getting things done is to continue to give yourself more time to work on it later, to work on it tonight, or to push back the deadline so you have more time, if that continues to be your solution, then you will always need more time to get things done. You must stop allowing yourself to work more to complete more things. If you want to be more productive and achieve more in less time, you have to actually give yourself less time. 


Again, this is another thing that comes up a lot in coaching. What are you doing in that moment when you realize that you're not going to get it done at the level that you would hope to? How do you deal with that fear of failure, disappointment, or inadequacy that comes up because that's what you have to overcome in order to time block and actually walk away with the desired result every single time. 


You have to stop giving yourself more time to achieve and actually start working within some parameters of time and letting yourself be okay with whatever the outcome is. 


That's strategy number two time block with clear results and a I'm going to get it done no matter what sort of commitment. 


Making less reactive decisions.

Now, the last strategy I want to talk about to help you be more productive and achieve more in less time - making less reactive decisions on what you're doing with your time. A lot of energy and time is wasted in that. Create for yourself a filter for what you say yes to and what you say no to. 


Now, I've talked about the yes criteria before on this podcast and I want to talk about it here as a strategy for productivity. Because as ambitious women in leadership roles, there will always be meeting requests and projects and tasks that are competing for your attention. 


And one of the things I hear from my clients a lot is how every day they seem to be reprioritizing their to do list, because every day there's new needs and new projects that come up, and they have to sort of decide every day what they're going to get done and what they want to push back on. And when you're constantly reprioritizing, you waste a lot of time and a lot of energy. 


You're wasting mental space, because rather than actually doing things, you're thinking about the things that you need to be doing and what you should be, reprioritizing or not reprioritizing, you're weighing all the options and the pros and cons, and you can't constantly be prioritizing options if you want to be productive.At some point, you just got to buckle down and choose something and do the work. 


Creating a ‘Yes’ criteria.

And so for these clients that feel like they're constantly prioritizing and they have things coming at them all the time, that they have to decide if they're going to do them or not, and if they're going to let that new task sort of push out another priority, I have them create for themselves a yes criteria. 


That way, when an email comes in with a request, maybe another team member needs something from you, or maybe there was a meeting request that came in, or maybe your boss asks you to be the point person on a project that you weren't previously a point person on. Something comes your way, and you have to figure out if you're going to say yes to it. 


Rather than take the time to weigh the pros and cons in that moment, try to figure out how to make it work and fit it into your schedule. 


Essentially, what you'd be doing is you'd be making an emotional decision, because, again, it's an emotional decision if you say yes to it because you don't want someone to be disappointed in you or think less of you, or you don't want people to think that you don't want to put more stress on somebody else in your team, right? 


If you are always saying yes to things without strategically really thinking about if you should be doing it or not, that you're making an emotional decision. Rather than doing that, I want you to create for yourself a filter by which you then decide if you say yes to it or not. 


So that filter is essentially three to five questions, where if you say yes to any of the questions, then you do say yes to that task or that meeting or that request of some kind. If you say no to all of them, then it's a no. And you don't accept the meeting request. You deny it. You deny the project. You delegate it. You do something else, but it doesn't go on your plate. 


The 3 Question Filter.

So let me give you an example. If a meeting request comes in and you look at the agenda and you run it through your filter, it might look like this. 


Question number one of the filter: am I the only one that can attend this meeting? Yes or no? 


Now, again, if the answer is yes, you say yes to the meeting. If the answer is no, you move on to the next question in your filter, in your criteria. 


Question number two, is this meeting request a part of my strategic goals and priorities that I've set for myself? Yes or no? 


Again, if the answer is yes, you accept it. If the answer is no, you move on to the next piece of your filter. 


Question number three is this meeting request part of the company's greater initiatives right now and part of the company goals right now? Yes or no? 


Again, if you say yes to it, then you accept the meeting request. If you say no, then you move on to the next part of your filter or your criteria. 


These tend to be my standard three questions, and then I have my clients potentially add on more based on their specific job and role on your filter. You could have questions like, do I want to do this? 


What? You can actually make a decision to say yes or no to a meeting request or any request based on if you want to? Yes, that's possible. 


Or you might have a question like this: will the consequence to this be severe if I don't do this? Or you might have a question like, does this need to get done today? You come up for yourself with a filter to use for what you say yes to and what you say no to. 


Again, this is something I strategize a lot with. My clients help them to get really specific, and then we kind of test it and they trial and error it and we tweak it so that we get this filter to work for them, so they're thinking a whole lot less about what they're saying yes to and what they're saying no to. And we assume that everything is a no that comes in unless it meets one of the pieces of their filter. If they say yes to one piece of their filter, then they can say yes to it, but otherwise it's always a no. 


And it helps save some of their brain space so they're not constantly reprioritizing and weighing the pros and cons and all those things. And they could just stay focused on their tasks and the things that they have prioritized. 


Remember, if you want to be a productive person, you can't say yes to everything. 

Some things you have to say no to, some things you need to delegate to someone else, or you need to trust others to do them. You need to trust their decision making. You need to let people fail. Having less on your to do list essentially is a strategy for being more productive. 


That is what I have for you today. I hope you found this episode super actionable where you can really start to think about your own behaviors and habits, how to help yourself achieve more in less time. 


As always, I would love to connect with you. If you're interested in me helping walk you through these strategies personally, you can reach out by going to rebeccaolsoncoaching.com to learn more about what I offer as a coach and how to book that free coaching call with me to discuss the next steps in coaching together. 


All right, working moms, get out there, achieve more and less time, be the best you can be, and I'll talk to you next week. Let's get to it.

Rebecca Olson