How to Work SMARTER, not HARDER
You may already know this, but...
before I was a burnout coach, I was a productivity coach!
Ya, I know…
My path to ending up here has been a long and windy one. It took me a long time to realize that burnout and stress management were where I was always meant to be…
I started as a fitness coach.
Then I fell in love with the personal growth side of fitness…
Then I pivoted to clarity coaching specifically…
Then I was told I should focus on productivity and time management…
And, hell, I’m sure I’m missing some other pivots, too.
It was actually during this time focusing on productivity and time management—which I only did because I was told “you’re so good at this! You should do it”—that I not only created and launched my Take Back Your Time planner!
But, in each of those pivots, I realized that something was missing. Hell, I realized that there were frankly a lot of things that were missing. I’ve always seen myself helping people—well, at least since I got into coaching. But I always found that ever pivot I made felt too, well, stifling. I felt too pigeon-holed!
I didn’t want to be a time management and productivity coach because, to me, it felt like that meant I could only focus on productivity and time management…and I didn’t want that!
What about the values work I loved? What about the clarity work? What about self-care? I was still so unbelievably passionate about all of that work…and then I had the burnout epiphany!
I realized that all of these pillars—self-care, productivity, clarity, etc.—all came together under the umbrella of burnout. Without forcing it, I’d found a coaching niche that captured everything.
In fact, I’ve been thinking bout the things that often burn us out—the causes of burnout, if you will—and these steps we can take to intentionally take our lives back! What I ultimately came up with were 5 pillars and 5 causes of burnout that, if we can overcome them, will help us to make burnout a choice in our lives, too! They are…
The 5 Causes of Burnout in Achievers…
A LACK OF CLARITY & SELF-AWARENESS - here
A LACK OF SELF-CARE SELF-CARE - here
LEVEL UP YOUR PRODUCTIVITY - this post!
A LACK OF BOUNDARIES - here
A LACK OF ANTI-HUSTLE HABITS - Coming Soon!
But, anyways, let’s dive into productivity…
Unliked when I talked about clarity, I’m sure it didn’t much convincing for you to see the importance of self-care (on the podcast or in either this blog or this one) in overcoming your burnout. And, well, I bet productivity is going to be the same way…
It’s no secret that a lot of people burn out because they’re working or just flat out doing too much. Whether you’re talking about someone whose overwhelmed or someone who is just struggling to focus, productivity plays a role. We can cut down on the very core of our burnout by learning how to be more effective. Because, yes, sometimes it’s less about how much we work and more about how effectively we’re getting our work done.
If you can complete work that typically takes you 8 hours in 4—or even 6— that frees you up for a) more rest, b) more social time, and c) more time to just live your damn life…no matter what that looks like!
So, that’s what we’re going to be talking about today! Let’s dive into our tips…
#1
Know your productivity style!
I have to shout out one of my old clients for this one. I remember we were in a coaching session and I was just kind of dumbfounded by her! I couldn't understand why all of the tricks I’d learned about work-life balance just weren’t working for her! She knew herself well and had no problem shooting down the tips I would share that she knew wouldn’t work for her…but I remember that I was almost starting to panic in a sense. How could I help her? I didn’t feel like I had anything else to recommend…
Fortunately, this chick is like me. She’s an achiever. She’s an Enneagram type 3. And what do we do when we’re not sure what to do next? We research. We look shit up. We learn. If the tools in our tool box—and those of others, as was the case here—aren’t serving us, we don’t play the victim. We don’t rest on our laurels. We ask Dr. Google until we find our answers, or at least until we find some new things to try.
And that’s what happened here.
What she found—and what she, in turn, taught me—was that there isn’t just one type of productivity. There are two polar-opposite types of productivity…and even then, those productivity types lie on a spectrum and a person can land anywhere in between!
Those productivity types are the integrator and the segmentor.
Segmentors have a more classic approach to work life balance. They like having defined work and personal times. They like to keep work and person time separate and don’t like it when they bleed into each other—or outside of their designated time.
Integrators, on the other hand, don’t. Integrators don’t care for a definite “end” to their work day. They fit their work into pockets as it seems appropriate.
While segmentors are looking to clock out of the workday by 6 pm at the latest, an integrator might leave in the mid-afternoon to take a yoga class or see a friend for coffee and return to work at 6 pm to finish their day.
As soon as I learned about this, I had a “holy crap” moment: I was trying to fit my integrator client into my segmentor approach to productivity! No fricken wonder it wasn’t working!
Mind-blowing, right?! And—perhaps even more important than knowing the two types—we have to recognize that they lie along a spectrum. You might find that you’re an integrator in some respects and a segmentor in others.
For example, in my day job, I’m a segmentor through and through. I have hard boundaries around when my work day starts and stops and tend to be very disciplined about when I am and am not working. Oh, and you best believe that I put that out-of-office responder up like clockwork at at 6pm at the end of the week.
Despite these hugely segmentor tendencies, I’m less like that with this business! I’m much more of an integrator with my business. I might get a little work done in the morning before I start my day job and a little bit more in in the evening after my day job ends. I might work only a couple of hours on Friday and finish my projects for a couple of hours on Saturday morning. My approach to productivity and work in my business is much of a “what feels rihgt” approach then having defined work horus.
So, that’s tip #1 - know your productivity type! Oh—and this might be a given, but—once you know your type, make sure you’re working with it, m’kay?
#2
Prioritize your to-do list…
If you’re someone who struggles with overwhelm, this tip is for you! I absolutely love this quote from Tanya Dalton:
Honestly, I’ve said this so many times at this point that it might as well be my quote! But I digress…
One of the biggest reasons why people get overwhelmed is they have one big master to-do list and, when looking at it, there is no clear place to start. It takes them more time to figure out what the right “first task” should be than it would be for them to knock out a couple of the to-dos anyway!
Enter the decision-priority matrix. I’m pretty sure its full name is the Eisenhower Decision-Priority Matrix because it was popularized by Dwight D. Eisenhower—or perhaps he’s just its most famous use.
Anywho, I love this matrix because it helps you to more easily determine what the money, most important, highest priority tasks actually are on your to-do lists…without your biases getting in the way! Because let’s face it, the majority of us start with the easiest tasks on the list and procrastinate on the most important ones.
No judgment - procrastination is an incredibly human behavior! But, we also know that procrastination can get a lot of us into trouble. Hell, I turned in a blog post I was asked to write to the editor of the website the very last day (and may have finished writing it that morning). Guilty as charged, my friend. Guilty as charged.
If you’ve never seen this tool before, I’ll give you a quick overview of how it works in this video below…
So, you see? It basically helps you prioritize your tasks by not just their urgency—which most of us do anyway—but its importance! This is actually something I have built into my digital planner in Notion. The tasks section of the planner is automatically sorted by due date (and only shows the items due in the next week so I don’t get overwhelmed) and priority. It makes it super easy for me because I don’t have to prioritize when I sit down to get work done—it’s done for me! All I need to do is sit down and do work! 😉
#3
Take into account your non-work life…
Let me let you in on a little secret before I get into this one—I burned out in August. Hard.
Okay…that might not be that big of a secret cuz I’m pretty damn transparent about it. I’ve talked about it a lot since it happened and all the super important things that it taught me. One of the biggest things it taught me is how important it is for me to have a day—just one day—each week where I don’t have much of anything going on. Ideally, I don’t have anything going on…but I learned in August that not having that can lead to a pretty massive crash-and-burn style breakdown.
So, how does that story relate to this tip? Well, because I think a lot of us think of burnout as something that’s super compartmentalized. As if only work can burn us out, and that is not the case.
Burnout is holistic. We get burned out when our lifestyle isn’t sustainable. Yes, we burn out when our work isn’t sustainable too, but it’s just about so much more than that. Just think! We can bounce back from a long, draining workday if we’ve got nothing going on that night, right? No commitments, plans, or obligations when we get home, and we’ll relax a little in front of the TV, work out, and get a good night’s sleep.
But, if we have even a moderately long, demanding workday, and then we have social commitments and a little baby who need our attention when we get home, what happens? We skip our workout and end up going to bed way later than we meant to.
Or say we have a really long week at work. We knew we would, but on top of that, we booked two speaking engagements in our side hustle, and we had a wedding to go to that weekend.
The long work week is something that we can recover from. But the long work week on top of the wedding and two speaking gigs? Nope. That’s not something we can recover from with sleep.
That was my August. That was the mistake I made.
So, how do we take our non-work lives into account when it comes to productivity? We have a master calendar! We put all of our shit onto one calendar! Why? So we can more accurately determine if that thing we’re thinking about taking on is something that we actually should take on. Let’s take a look at an example…
Just my day job
Just my personal commitments
Just my coaching stuff
In those first 3 images, you can see just my day job meetings, just my personal commitments, and just my coaching commitments. None of those calendars individually look that bad, right? But, when we combine all 3 together in the bottom image, you start to see how tightly packed the calendar becomes and the conflicts that arise!
There are some things that I just flat out cannot attend and that I need to RSVP “no” too, and some other things that I need to consider whether I want to try to attend them at the end of a long day.
And this is a calendar from December! Imagine what something would look like in the peak season of my day job in August!
That’s—from my perspective—the necessity of keeping a master calendar! It shows you what you can realistically fit into your life without overwhelming yourself, without overcommitting yourself, and while making some space in your life for a little bit more rest…
BONUS!
Know your peak work times/ideal environment
I’ll keep this one short and sweet. One final thing that can be incredibly helpful when it comes to working smarter, not harder comes down to knowing yourself and how you work best…
#1 - Your Peak Times…
We all have our own peak work times. We all have times of day where we’re naturally more focused and more productive. If we know what those times are, we can—as best as possible—strategically plan to tackle our most labor and focus-intensive tasks at that time. Me? I am the most naturally focused and productive in the morning. So, in my perfect world, that is when I’m getting my content creation and strategic planning done. I love to use that time to work in solitude and really bust through my to-do list.
#2 - Your Ideal Work Environment…
In what environment do you work best? How can you create it? What environment were you in—whether in previous work situations or while you were in school—that allowed you to be at your most productive?
Fortunately, I was in school for a fucking long time! Yay Ph.D.! Yes, I didn’t finish my Ph.D. and left with my MS, but in pursuing it, I was in school for a whopping 20 years, and during that time I learned a ton about my ideal work environment. I always loved going to coffee shops, finding a big table, and locking in for a few hours. During those times I learned the following about how I work best…
I marathon work. I like to sit down and work for a few hours at a time, sometimes not moving. Why? Because I get into the zone, or into flow, and I don’t want to break out of that flow if I can help it!
I love large work surfaces! I love having space to spread out when I work. I often have two screens, even when I’m out and about, because I found this kickass portable 2nd monitor. Plus, I’m known to have a notebook—or two—handy as well!
I love working to instrumental music. Even in coffee shops with some nice, chill music playing in the background, I tend to be headphoned up listening to instrumental playlists. Hell, my Spotify Wrapped top genre is always Soundtracks because that’s what I work to. It keeps me energized, engaged, and blocks out background conversations and noises, even in the loudest coffee shops. It’s almost like it cuts down on the stimuli I’m receiving which is why I’m able to lock-in.
I need to allow myself to fidget. Getting a standing desk taught me so much about myself and how I work. If I have pent-up energy, I can’t focus. So, when I’m at home, I fix that by standing up at my standing desk. When I’m out at a coffee shop, you’ll usually see me kind of dancing to my music (awkward, but true) and/or tapping my foot.
So, how best do you work? Ask yourself questions, sit back and reflect, and do your best to create your ideal work environment each and every time you sit down to get shit done!