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This transcript was generated by AI so please ignore any weird errors. If there is anything really terrible, let us know.

[00:00:00] Pam: But the problem is when you are too focused on doing the to-do list, that then you never make time for or never put effort into doing the things that feel fulfilling because you get to the end of the day and you go, well, I don’t have time to do that. I don’t have time to chase my dreams.

Sarah: I’m done.

Pam: I’m done.

{Intro Music}

[00:00:29] Pam: So in our last session we talked about avoidance and procrastination, and I thought it would be good to kind of transition into talking about productivity. But not in the sense of like, here are five hacks to fit more in your day. Because I think we went through a huge phase of that where like everything that you read about was like tactics to get more done in a day.

And it was like this hustle culture of like, how can you fit more into your day. And then the inevitable outcome of that was that everyone got burned out. You know, we just couldn’t do anymore in a day. And I think there was also a lot of like maybe guilt over not being able to do it all. And stress and feeling like you see everyone else getting so much done and you’re left feeling like, well, what’s wrong with me?

Why can’t I get it all done? Or you know, just this, this constant feeling of having to do more without a focus on, like, why? Like what should I actually be doing with my time? What do I actually want to be doing and, and what would be a meaningful use of my time rather than just trying to do more?

[00:01:50] Sarah: Oh my gosh.

As you were describing the context, suddenly I kind of saw this conversation as twofold. On the one hand, it’s around how do I, you know, how do I achieve or produce what’s most meaningful for me? And then the flip side of that, or not even the flip side, but the other piece is how can I be at peace with what I’m not doing?

[00:02:14] Pam: Yeah.

That’s a huge part of it which I think that we will definitely get into as we start talking about why this is important and the strategies for determining what you should and can even spend your time doing and how to have peace with knowing that we only have so much time and there’s only so much that we can accomplish and that that’s just, that’s just kind of the reality and we have to be okay with that.

[00:02:44] Sarah: I love it. Great topic.

[00:02:47] Pam: So one of the things that comes up for me when we’re talking about this is how habit driven our lives are. And we’ve talked about this with a lot of different topics because literally everything that we do in our lives is a habit.

If you look at the flow of your day, like if you have coffee or tea in the morning, if you check your email first thing, like everything we do throughout our day, is a habit unless we are making conscious decisions to change our patterns or to change our habits, and I think that we make a way fewer of those choices than we actually think that we do.

Like I very frequently will have days where at the end of the day, I look back and I go, what did I even do today? Like what? Eight hours just went by and I have nothing to show for it other than some answered emails and you know…

[00:03:43] Sarah: You do have days like that still?

[00:03:45] Pam: Oh, absolutely. Yeah. I think everyone still does, right? I mean

[00:03:49] Sarah: I never do. No, I’m just kidding.

[00:03:50] Pam: Never, never.

[00:03:53] Sarah: I totally do. Yeah.

[00:03:54] Pam: Yeah. I mean, and, and that’s a great point that you can have all of the tools and all of the awareness and everything. And you’re going to have maybe even a majority of days where you don’t really feel like you knocked it outta the park, but you can start working towards having more days where you do feel really fulfilled by how you spent your time and where you were making very conscious decisions about how you spent your time, rather than just sort of letting your days fly by.

And so one of the things that is kind of a trap for me is I love a list. I love a to-do list, right? So I can make this to-do list and, and feel really good about checking all the things off. But the reality is that a lot of times, like the things that you put on to-do, lists are the easy things, right?

They’re the quick things. They’re the things that you do just need to knock out, and they’re not the huge things or the, like dream fulfillers or the, the things that are really going to make you feel fulfilled and happy. So I get stuck in a trap of, I get up in the morning and I sit down at my desk and I look at my to-do list and I go, oh great I’m gonna knock out all these things on my to-do list. And they’re not the meaningful things. They’re the easy things.

[00:05:19] Sarah: Yeah. It’s so interesting cuz like when do you feel fulfilled? Do you feel like right when you do check it off? But then like at the end of the day, there’s not that deeper satisfaction.

[00:05:30] Pam: Well, I, so I think the difference there is between feeling accomplished and fulfilled. Those are two very different feelings. So checking something off of a to-do list, I do feel very accomplished. It’s, you get that little dopamine hit in that, yeah, knock that one out. But feeling fulfilled is a very, very different feeling.

When I edit and and publish these episodes, I feel fulfilled. Recording them makes me feel fulfilled. Having meaningful conversations with intelligent people makes me feel fulfilled. Answering an email makes me feel accomplished, so they’re very different feelings.

[00:06:12] Sarah: So why do you think it is that it’s so much easier to put like the accomplished things on our to-do list and the things that will be more meaningful and fulfilling, not on the list?

[00:06:24] Pam: Because meaningful and fulfilling is hard.

[00:06:27] Sarah: It’s hard.

[00:06:28] Pam: It’s hard.

[00:06:29] Sarah: I thought you were going to say that.

[00:06:34] Pam: It is hard. It’s, it’s usually new things. It’s things that require effort to learn something, to reach out to a new person, to make a connection or to make progress on the Big Scary, right? That big scary thing that you have that you’re like, oh, I wish I could write a book or you know, act in a play or any of, you know, whatever your big scary thing is.

Doing that is the fulfilling thing, but it’s the hardest thing. Whereas knocking off the to-do list is easy and feels good in the moment.

[00:07:09] Sarah: Yeah. So then I love this and I feel like this really anchors what our topic is when we’re saying meaningful productivity. It’s being productive in service of those deeper, more meaningful, fulfilling items, dreams, right?

[00:07:27] Pam: And the interplay there is that. There’s going to be those things on your to-do list that you just have to do, like that’s life, right? You can’t get away from having to do life. But the problem is when you are too focused on doing the to-do list, that then you never make time for or never put effort into doing the things that feel fulfilling because you get to the end of the day and you go, well, I don’t have time to do that. I don’t have time to chase my dreams.

[00:07:57] Sarah: I’m done.

[00:07:58] Pam: I’m done, yeah. And one of the mindsets that, that really struck home for me or one of the ideas that really struck home for me over the last couple of years that has helped me shift the way I’m spending my time came from an author named Oliver Burkeman and he has this book titled Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals.

And it’s named Four Thousand Weeks because, on average, humans live for 4,000 weeks. And that’s a really powerful way, to me, to envision our lifetime. Cuz if you think about like, you know, what is it like 76 years or something on average that people live, at least in North America, I think, like you think about 76 years, that sounds like a really long time. So it’s hard to kind of conceptualize how long that is.

And then on the flip side, I don’t remember how many days it is, but there’s like charts where you can see how many days are in your life. And I think both of those numbers kind of like. They don’t really do as great of a job of conceptualizing how short your life really is.

And 4,000 weeks just, it’s, it’s such an easy number to conceptualize. And I was journaling this morning and I realized that I think I’ve, you know, I’ve lived like 2200 weeks now, and you put that into the view of having 4,000 saying, my, my life is half over. How do I wanna live the second half of my life and what do I wanna spend that time doing?

[00:09:34] Sarah: And it’s, you know, I think looking at our mortality is such a powerful way and it’s something that he touches on so beautifully in terms of that sort of coming to

peace, coming to peace, making peace with what, what we’re not gonna do. Right. And so I was thinking a lot in preparation for today’s chat around shiny objects. Our desire to do everything and do everything, have every experience, like really fill our lives.

So much so that we don’t, we can’t be productive. We can’t be meaningfully productive because we’re just like on a hamster wheel trying to do everything. And then we see another thing that looks great, legitimately, it looks great, it looks exciting. We think this would be fun. I better achieve this or, or have this.

And then let me add this to the list and how that’s not… that’s like that compulsion or that desire is something that we really need to be, you know, it’s life changing to become aware of that and just say, no, no, no, no, this is just gonna distract me from the present and not allow me to be in this moment and do these things that I’ve chosen to really focus on.

So for me, that was, that’s a really life, sort of a life altering. Concept. I mean, it might sound simple, but also to really internalize it is super deep.

[00:11:05] Pam: It is. I think that it is definitely life altering and I think that it gives you, well, so a lot of people can hear this idea of only having 4,000 weeks to live and have it cause fear and anxiety and then it’s like, oh, I haven’t accomplished everything and I need to do more.

But what I really want people to take away from this, and what Oliver Burkeman really focuses on is actually going the other direction and having it be freeing. Taking the concept of having 4,000 weeks and going, okay, I only have 4,000 weeks, so I can say no to the things that I don’t actually want to be spending time on.

I, in order to honor and value the time that I have here, I need to be making it as meaningful as I want it to be, and to be spending my time in the way that aligns with my values and the way that does make me happy and does feel fulfilling.

[00:12:03] Sarah: So, Pam, what are some of the things what are some of the choices that you’ve made or that you wanna make in service of these 4,000 weeks that you’ve been granted.

[00:12:14] Pam: So this one is maybe gonna make me sound like not a very nice person, but one of the realizations that I had and a lot of this actually really came out of the pandemic. Which during the same time that the pandemic was happening was when I was introduced to Oliver Burkeman.

I realized during that period that I was Kind of out of obligation, spending time with people that I thought were friends or you know, I would accept social invites to, like parties for instance, that I didn’t actually enjoy, but I felt obligated to do. And not to discount the value of social interaction at all, but I really took this as permission to say no.

And to really evaluate the people in my life and to decide who was worth continuing friendships with and continuing to maintain those relationships with. Or the types of invites that I would accept or the types of activities that I did with friends. Like for me, there’s nothing more mind numbing than like standing at a party and having small talk.

But I would love to take those same people and go learn something, you know, go do an activity. So I just started taking more control over what I did with people. And not feeling obligated to attend things just because I was invited to them. That was a big one.

I also, limited the clients that I work with. So I kind of did an evaluation of who was causing me the most stress and how that was impacting the rest of my time, which I think is something that is undervalued, but it’s something that you brought to my attention when I started working with you, I came to you and said, You know, I’m, I’m stressed out and I need a system, I need to get more done in less time, and I’m dropping the ball. And you were like, yeah, okay, we’ll see. Like tell me about your anxiety. And you had me walk through my workday and to tell you how I felt doing different things. And when my anxiety came up and we identified that my anxiety was almost solely focused around email.

Which I think we’ll have a whole session about at some point in the future. But it, it came down to the fact that I had one client that I did not I, I won’t go in into the details there, but getting an email from that client would like ruin my day. So every email that I got, I naturally thought that’s gonna be from this client, it’s gonna ruin my day.

So by removing that one factor, by not working with that client anymore, everything else was freed up to be less anxious and more productive and, and easier and happier and, and better. So I think those, those have been the two big things is focusing on the, on the people that I spend my time with and the clients that I work with.

How about for you? Have you had any realizations like that?

[00:15:32] Sarah: Hmm. I would say I’m really thinking on the fly here right now, cuz I do think about, you know, I’m, I am consistently thinking about how I’m spending my time and where I’m spending my energy. So, to name the big theme one is around presence in relationships.

So and this was something I learned during the pandemic that I can’t do be doing two things at once. So I’d be doing half work and half helping a kid with something. And it was the most such a brutal feeling at the end of the day. I felt like I wasn’t present for anything and I didn’t, I, I wasn’t even there.

It felt deeply unfulfilling. So, and I’ve tried that as well with vacationing while working. And it’s, you know, it was painful coming back and just thinking like, that sucked. Like, it, it didn’t feel the way I wanted it to feel. Right. Yeah. And then the learning was, oh, like you can only be present, you know, I can, I can only be present for one conversation at a time. Really be present with people.

So one is, is shutting out other things. So for example, this morning I went and had coffee with a couple of girlfriends and that’s something I’ll, I’ll plan regularly, especially cuz I teach some evenings. So I teach from six to nine and now I’m like, you know what?

Full permission take the morning off. And so to go and, and fully be there and be like, I’m in the sun and I’m having a coffee and we’re having this conversation and my phone is away. And just to be fully in this moment. So really relishing the relationships I have with my immediate family and with my friends and, and my colleagues.

So one is, is to be fully present and not trying to be squeezing in another thing. And then another is, and I’m still working through this one, is how I wanna focus my time professionally, because I’m noticing like I’m having a lot of ideas of things that I want to do that aren’t just the straight one-on-one coaching or the group team coaching. I’m having some new ideas pop up in my brain and it’s super exciting. And at the same time, it’s this juggle between, I don’t wanna freeze because I go into this, well, what’s perfect and I don’t know what’s perfect, so I’m not gonna take any action. And at the same time, I know I can’t pick everything.

So thinking okay. In service of enjoying it, enjoying what I do because I wanna love my work and I can love my work, you know, most of it. But, what do I wanna pick? And that means I can’t pick everything, even if those other things seem fun and exciting. Right. So, kind of, I don’t have an answer to that one yet, but it’s, it’s definitely framing the way I’m thinking and talking about.

Business ideas and knowing I can’t just, you know, go off in 20 directions and think that it’s going to be a success either from a business financial standpoint or from like a personal fulfillment standpoint. It just won’t be. So how can I, you know, best align those choices with what’s gonna feel meaningful for me, which is something in alignment with my values ultimately and the lifestyle that I have. My lifestyle. My boundries.

So yeah, so I would say one that I’ve definitely stepped into is with respect to relationships and just being fully, fully present and not thinking I can do another thing while I’m connecting with someone, it just doesn’t work. And the second that I’m working through right now is thinking about, you know, some of the next expressions of my business, expressions of my work and what, what reasonable in that I can really enjoy it.

And just cuz a bunch of things seem exciting doesn’t mean that I should do them all, because it won’t actually feel good.

[00:19:41] Pam: And I like that you used the context of like what is aligned with your values and understanding that you would love to do all 20 things, but the reality is that you can’t, you, you would not do well at 20 things if you did try to do all of them.

So that brings up the the idea of like, when is… what’s enough? How do you live in this world where the opportunities are kind of limitless, right? Like with the internet and with all of the knowledge that we have available and all the like changes in technology and, you know, seeing all the things that people do now our, our world is so vast that you can kind of look at it and go like, I could literally do anything.

So what should I do and what is enough? And the, you know, the, the concepts of you know, the, of like fear of missing out, of seeing everyone on social media, doing all of the things. And then you’re like, oh, well maybe I should be doing that. And then so you lose focus on the thing that you were doing.

Like how do we deal with that, and like, why is that such an, an issue? Why, you know, why are we so drawn to what’s shiny and new rather than the thing that is probably fulfilling, but it’s not shiny and new. So we’re like, eh, let’s go try something else.

[00:21:12] Sarah: Yeah. I really think about this too, what you’re saying, and I think there’s a lot of reasons why we’re drawn to the shiny and new.

One, is what you’re saying. You know, we can go online. This isn’t like news, right? We go online, we see other people doing things, and it sparks our imagination. And we do have FOMO, not even necessarily, you know, in this angry sort of jealous way. Just in a way that like, oh my gosh, this looks amazing.

Like I also wanna have this experience. This also would bring richness to my life. Without that fulsome picture well, that richness is gonna come at another cost. So I think we’re constantly seeing images and it sparks our creativity. It sparks it. It’s like, oh my God, you know, this would be great for me and I should grow in this way, or achieve this thing or move in this direction.

So I think that’s one, and I think as humans, like we get, we get used to our baseline. So we, you know, we get used to what we have and we can be so excited when we achieve something. For example, we move to a new home, or we get something new for our home that we really wanted, right? It’s a new like right now I’m working on my backyard, right?

So this is really exciting for me. It’s brand new and you know, I, I want to always feel as excited about it. The plantings and my choices and my understanding of how human, the human brain works tells me that within a little bit of time, not that long, if that’s gonna become my baseline. And it’s like, of course I had this, what else can I, what else can I get?

Right? Yeah. So when we, and so many studies, countless studies have demonstrated that, you know, when somebody gets a promotion, they’re super pumped about it. They feel really proud. A couple of weeks later, what’s next, right? So we are hardwired, you know, that’s our survival instinct. We need more to feel safe.

We need more to feel like we belong, that everything’s gonna be okay. We have more resources, we have more safety, like it’s part of our makeup. So I think we need to know, know that, that that’s there, and then sort of take actions to, you know, kind of not speak back to it, but like dance with that reaction to say like, this reaction doesn’t actually serve me.

Cuz I do want to revel in the enoughness that I have and like savor those things instead of thinking that I constantly want more and more and more, which is just going to feel unfulfilling.

Yeah.

[00:23:45] Sarah: Yeah. That makes me think about You know, I love budgeting and one of the big things that is an issue when you talk about budgeting is obviously the way they’re spending. A lot of times people have enough income, but they consume unconsciously because of this desire for more and more and more and new and shiny.

And it’s the exact same thing, whether it’s experience or your backyard or you know, clothes in your closet, we’re always seeking more. And we need to connect with what we already have and what our values are and what will actually be fulfilling. To align how we spend our time or money, whatever the resources that we’re talking about, you’re spending it to get something in return.

And the first tool that I always talk about is mindfulness and, you know, making conscious decisions about what you’re doing. And I just happened to be listening to a podcast before we started talking today, and it was with Gretchen Rubin who wrote one of my favorite books, the Four Tendencies, and she’s got a new book out. I think it’s called Life in Five Senses.

Pam, I heard her speak last weekend in toronto.

[00:25:06] Pam: Really?

[00:25:07] Sarah: Yeah. I heard her speak about Life in Five Senses.

[00:25:10] Pam: Fantastic! So the idea is, you know, engaging with the world, using your senses, because, you know, we just go through life, right? We see millions of things every day. We smell millions of things every day, and we’re, it just, it just comes in. We just don’t like pay any attention to it. And using creative ways to tap into our senses brings us into the present and makes us mindful of what we’re doing.

And so I just heard a podcast if you heard her speak more in depth about it you know, feel free to jump in here. But I think that that’s a really, really great tool that I wanna explore more. Of tapping into senses, to, to connect with how I’m feeling and how I’m spending my time and what is really making me feel good.

[00:26:00] Sarah: Okay. I love that. So how do you, like, how do you think you might do that?

Would you do it sort of. At different periods of the day before you’re making decisions or before you’re planning, almost like a meditation and then this, or have you, have you thought at all about how you might incorporate those? And we should read the book and then we can…

[00:26:20] Pam: Yeah, we should do that rather than putting words into her mouth. Cuz I literally just, just learned about this an hour ago, so I don’t have a plan yet, but something that we’ve already been doing, CK and I do. And I should say CK is the leader of this charge. If he was not here, I would totally fall off the wagon. But what we do is throughout the day, we take little mini walks.

So we start in the morning with like a 20 minute walk out and you know, we have like a trail outback, so we go out and connect with nature in that way. And then later in the morning we take a second one, and then in the afternoon a third, and then after dinner a fourth.

So we have like these conscious moments throughout the day where we’re engaging with nature and we, you know, talk about the flowers and the bugs and the snakes and all the things that we see. So just without having any concept of it being this Living Life in Five Senses thing that Gretchen Rubin was talking about, we’re doing that for the purpose of it, like breaking up your day so that you can get intentionally out of the productivity trap of like, I gotta sit down and work for four hours.

Like, it’s like, okay, this is the time for the walk, right? So get up. And have a break, and then you can come back after you’ve taken that break, and you can use that as your cue to be mindful and make a decision of like, okay, am I going to continue how my day was going before that walk? Or am I going to make the decision to start working on the big scary thing or…

[00:27:50] Sarah: Yeah, I love it. It’s like physically removing yourself.

[00:27:53] Pam: Yes.

[00:27:53] Sarah: Having a complete change of space and then grounding, and then you come back and you can decide again.

[00:28:00] Pam: Yes.

[00:28:01] Sarah: Versus just being on autopilot.

[00:28:04] Pam: Yeah. Building in those pattern interruptions.

And one thing, a tool that I really like but rarely use for this is Pomodoro sessions.

Do you use those or know what they are? So, yeah. So the idea is that you have a timer and you set like a work session for 40 minutes and then a break for 20 minutes, and. The idea there is, first of all, that you’re compressing the amount of time that you give to a task, because tasks will swell to fill as much time as you let them.

So if you’re sitting down to work on something, you say, I’m gonna work on it for 40 minutes. I’m gonna get as much done as I can possibly get done at the end of this. 40 minute session, and then when that timer goes off, you stop working. That is the key here. A lot of people skip that step. They’re like, oh, well I got 40 minutes in.

I’m gonna do another 40 minutes. But the important part is the quitting and taking a break and using that as an opportunity to assess what’s next. What should I focus on next?

[00:29:05] Sarah: My daughter’s teacher uses what are they called? Like the sand…

[00:29:11] Pam: Like an hourglass?

Yeah. She has a whole collection of them at different times and I sort of thought, oh, I kind of want one of those. Something versus like setting an alarm on my phone.

Yeah. That feels, you know, just energetically about being like, okay, I’m gonna sit down to did this thing and then using one of those hourglass timers.

Awesome. Yeah, I think I would, I would definitely like that better than some digital timer.

[00:29:36] Sarah: Shiny Object Syndrome!

[00:29:39] Pam: Now I have to go spend an hour researching hour glasses.

[00:29:43] Sarah: Oh gosh. Yeah. And, and then, and then my money buying one. Yeah.

[00:29:48] Pam: Right.

Okay. So if you do build in these pattern interrupts the tool that I like for like framing your questions about what you’re doing and this, this sounds really like, like it’s a system and you have to have this whole plan in place, but it’s really something that you can just kind of train yourself to do as kind of part of your natural thought process.

But I like to use the, the Buddhist concept of clear comprehension. Which in Buddhism, it’s used to help you decide if your actions are like wholesome. So you, you need to recognize whether what you’re doing is the right thing to do in the moment, and also what your motivation is behind wanting to do that thing.

So you can use that anywhere in your life, but in the concept of like productivity and how you’re spending your time, the question of what the motivation is behind what you’re doing is so important because it goes into like what we were talking about last time, about avoidance or procrastination or like are you doing this to avoid, you know, having the conversation that you need to have or working on the thing that you really need to work on.

Or for me, budgeting was anxiety reduction. So that was the motivation behind me spending time managing my money.

Other things that the motivation could be, would be maybe like people pleasing. Like, are you just doing this to make someone else happy? Is it not really what you should be spending your time doing? Or one that comes up for me a lot is I will do easy low value tasks if I don’t really know what to do to accomplish the big scary thing. So questioning the motivation behind what you’re doing is a huge.

[00:31:42] Sarah: Is that the question, like, what’s my motivation for doing this?

[00:31:45] Pam: Yeah. Like, why? Why this? Why am I doing this?

[00:31:48] Sarah: Yeah. It’s so interesting because that’s, you know, the typical questions at the beginning of a coaching session is, what’s the topic for today? What are we talking about? And next is why is that important to you? What’s important about this topic? Yeah. Right.

So I think, you know, asking and it’s, it’s the best, it’s the best way to get clarity on, you know, what, what you’re talking about and help bring the conversation. But I’ve never thought to, to ask myself that before I start engaging in work. And it’s so good because don’t just think you’re automatically doing what you should be doing.

So even to, you know, take beat and ask yourself. That’s really good.

[00:32:34] Pam: Yeah, it’s, I mean, why is, such a powerful question to ask in everything.

[00:32:39] Sarah: Powerful question. Yeah.

[00:32:40] Pam: Why? Right? Why am I eating this? Why am I, you know, why did I wanna buy this thing? What, like everything, what is my motivation behind this?

And not in the… not to like, stop yourself from doing things all the time, but just to like check in and be like, is everything okay? Like, why, why do I feel the need for this? Why, you know, what’s the deeper reason behind what’s going on? Yeah.

And if you’ve determined the why behind the thing that you are doing is valid or, or there’s not an issue there. The next question is like, is it the right thing to do now? And that’s important because as we’ve said, there’s a never ending to-do list. So you could, as we talked about in the procrastination episode, you could sit down and do all the things right now that are on your to-do list that don’t necessarily move the needle or need to be done right now.

They have to be done at some point, but are they just a distraction from working on what you really want to accomplish.

[00:33:50] Sarah: Okay. That’s great. So really where I see our conversation veering right now is how, what are some tools or strategies to bring, you know, to become more mindfully, meaningfully productive?

Right. So I heard you share bringing mindfulness to it. And one way to do that is by asking this, these questions, why am I doing this? And is it important for me to do this now? And then you also talked about the Pomodoro technique. So I just wanna build on that a little bit because I think yeah, that’s another great strategy.

And then I have some other ideas for strategies too. And again, these aren’t strategies to, you know, like what you were saying before, this isn’t five hacks to get more done in a day, but they’re strategies or offers, ideas for how you can bring more meaning like this, this decide become more meaningfully productive.

[00:34:47] Pam: Yeah. To align, to align your actions with what you want to achieve. Yeah.

[00:34:54] Sarah: And feel more at peace with what you’re not. Yes. There’s our tagline for the show. Yeah. Okay. So around the, the pomodoro, that, that’s one way. I think the, the thing that I wanna build on there is this concept of having boundaries around your time.

So instead of saying, I’m gonna work on this until the task is done, as you said before, like the task tends to expand, you know, with however much time we have. So saying, you know, I have half an hour to do this, or an hour, and different people have different ideas for how long people can sit down and, cause it’s really individual though.

You know, a common sort of benchmark or frame of reference would be 90 minute chunks, maybe several 90 minute chunks in a day. At a certain point, you know, you know yourself. Everyone, you know, knows themselves. We hit a wall and we can’t be creative anymore, right? So to kind of say, well, what’s most meaningful for me and how can I give myself 90 minutes?

If, if that’s available to you, or however the long the time is to really be present with this work. And give myself to it. Right? And that takes full permission because otherwise if your, your thing is on and you’re also fielding emails and there’s also people around who might knock on your door it’s, it’s distracted work and you’re not really giving yourself to it.

And you’re thinking, well, at the same time I’ve got, you know, my Amazon cart open, or I’ve got these other things. It’s like, no, like the rest of the world can wait. Right? And I think that ‘s a mindfulness technique too, to say whatever the amount of time is that you can dedicate, prioritizing the things and then putting boundaries and saying, I’m gonna give, really give myself to this and I’m really gonna practice being at peace with the things that I’m not doing right now.

I’m only doing this, I’m picking this.

[00:36:45] Pam: Yeah.

And knowing that all of the things that you’re not, picking right now. They will still be there. You’re not, it’s not an either or forever decision, like focusing on whatever you’re focusing on right now. Everything else will still be there. It will wait for you. Like this concept of, you know, scarcity or that you’re not gonna get the stuff in your Amazon cart or you know, whatever it is like that, that just takes like a reminder that like that will still be there. That person that I, you know, need to call back is, I will call them back when the time is appropriate. Like all those things. And one of the things that’s helpful for me back to, to-do lists is all of those things that are like nagging in the back of your head, write ’em down.

You know, because there is that little part of your brain that’s like, don’t forget to do this. Don’t forget you have to do that. Don’t, and you’re like, there’s like little process running back there that takes up a bunch of your, your brain cpu, you know? So if you get those outta your head, that helps to give you that freedom to spend 90 minutes focusing on something.

[00:37:58] Sarah: Absolutely. I love it. Yeah. You have, we have to get it out of our brain and get those words on a piece of paper.

And then another another technique that, you know, we would be remiss to not mention is having a daily gratitude practice. Right. To say, yeah, you know, I’m grateful for everything I have and these are specifically the things that I have today that I can appreciate and really feeling into it.

Really savoring. Savoring what you have, what you’ve built for yourself, what you’ve created, the conditions that you’ve cultivated in your life to enjoy that weren’t there last week. Last year, last decade.

Right. They’re there now. And so that can contribute to, you know, I, I have everything I need. I have enough, and, you know, I have dreams for more and I, you know, as humans we wanna expand. So how to kind of hold both, like dreams for more, and at the same time really appreciating and savoring the enoughness of every day. And I think that’s really requires a practice and a commitment. Yeah.

[00:39:05] Pam: And it can be, you know, very simple everyday things just to keep you connected with what you have.

So another strategy is to just have a plan because I have struggled with this before where like I said, you know, you sit down and you spend your whole day doing stuff and then you’re like, what did I do? I didn’t accomplish anything today. So what I like to do is, you know, yes I have the big to-do list, but I set a maximum of three priorities for my day.

So I sit down in the morning, I say, if I get these one, two, or three things done today I will feel accomplished. I will have gotten my priorities done, and I will be happy with what I produced today. Now, those three things could take six hours to do. They could take three hours to do. It’s not a matter of like, how do I fill an eight hour workday or whatever it is.

It’s this is what will make me feel accomplished. This is what will move the needle, and this is what will make me satisfied with productivity today. The other little piece of that though is all those other things that are still on your to-do list, all the like things that aren’t necessarily a priority.

And what I like to do with those is to set a specific time that I will work on them. For the same reason that you wanna get all that stuff outta your head when you are gonna sit down and focus it. If you have a dedicated time where you’re like, okay, at 3:00 PM I’m going to sit down and do all the BS that I have to do today, then you know it’s going to get taken care of.

[00:40:44] Sarah: So why do you pick three? Just wondering why is it three and not two?

[00:40:50] Pam: Uh, the, I mean, three is just kind of a magic number for people. Right? We love things in threes,

[00:40:55] Sarah: We love things in threes. It’s true.

[00:40:57] Pam: Yeah. Yeah. And usually, I mean, there are definitely days where there’s like one big thing that’s gonna take the majority of the day.

So I may not have three priority things, but it’s just a maximum of three. Because if you go any, anything more than three things, you’re not focusing, you’re not you’re, you’re getting back to just doing all the things and filling your day with as much as possible.

[00:41:20] Sarah: It’s funny because the, I’ve shared in, I think it was our first or our second episode, the five minute journal that I use in the morning.

Mm-hmm. And it’s, yeah,

[00:41:29] Pam: three gratitudes

[00:41:31] Sarah: and few things I’m grateful for. And then today I hope to accomplish, and it’s three things. I might have a mixture of work,

[00:41:39] Pam: but also personal

[00:41:42] Sarah: things. Mm-hmm. Like, you know, to be fully present and have a great time at a dinner or To make healthy choices or to, you know, shut off and read my book this evening.

So I’ll kind of think holistically, but I, I do love that the, the three, the three things. And then on the gratitude piece, it’s interesting cuz I’m writing them in the morning, most mornings I’m able to get to this. And almost always, one of the things that makes its way onto the list of three is my dog, because she’s one of the first, she’s who I see first. Around seven, she needs some attention. So I constantly get to, you know, write my sweet puppy, my perfect dog, and I remember that.

And then another one that often pops up is my morning routine or my meditation practice because I am so grateful that I have it and it’s something that I’m able to do most mornings.

And I recognize that it’s something I’m grateful for, for that I’ve cultivated and that’s part of my life and that helps me. By noticing it again and naming it again instead of just like, okay, well what next?

[00:42:53] Pam: Yep. And what next is a great transition to another strategy because the problem with work and to-do lists and having all the things is when you knock one thing off your to-do list, there’s another one. Right? It’s never ending. Kind of going back to when we were talking about all the possibilities. You, you’ll never get it all done. Ever. So there’s this feeling that like nothing’s ever done, there’s no end to this hamster wheel of, of work, of productivity, of, of producing.

So one of the tools that I’ve been using recently is actually shortening the window of time that I work, and that serves a couple of purposes. One, when we started talking about doing this episode, you brought up planning fallacy and how everything takes longer than you think that it’s going to.

[00:43:55] Sarah: It does.

[00:43:56] Pam: Yeah, I mean that’s just life, right? Everything takes longer. So regardless of how much time you think something is going to take, as we said, tasks swell to fill the amount of time that they’re given, they’re like, you know, water, they, they take up the, the entire amount of space that they’re given.

So I have taken to shortening my workday. I used to work until five o’clock and then I started giving myself the option of ending my day at 3:00 PM. If I have finished my priority tasks at 3:00 PM I can give myself the rest of the day off.

And obviously that’s a luxury that I have working for myself. So, in a second we can talk about some strategies for like people who have, you know, bosses and, and don’t have the flexibility with their, their time. But that gives me a reward that, you know, if you get all of your priority stuff done, then you can spend the afternoon reading or you know, in the garden or, like whatever it is that I really want to have… you know, I really wanna spend my time doing in the afternoon. So there is this reward at the end of the day and this incentive to focus and to get things done in an efficient way and to not be distracted.

[00:45:12] Sarah: Yeah. And also the act of doing that, the act of saying I’m going to be done, I’m gonna choose to be done is like a radical thing to do. And just to say you know, I’m, and I’m gonna change my way of being so that I can read a book. Because sometimes we can feel so charged that it can be hard to go from, you know, full work mode screens and producing to like, okay I’m in a different energetic frequency and I’m gonna read a novel.

Which can’t be sped up. I mean, unless you’re a speed reader. But generally speaking, it takes what it takes. Or gardening. Like, I don’t know, there’s something around this, you know, we’re so used to this instantaneous reward, instantaneous effort and some stuff in life in, well, a lot of stuff in the real world like it just takes what it takes. Yeah. So to say, okay, I’m gonna finish at three and I’m gonna go do something that can’t be sped up. It just is going to take what it takes. I think is so, great.

[00:46:25] Pam: Yeah, and I, I think there was a lot of guilt that I had to get over when I first started doing that too. You know, I would like look at the clock and it was like 3:30, and I’d be like, oh, should I be doing this? You know, like if I, if I didn’t do this, I could take on another client, like, I have the time.

You know, there’s that little voice in the back of your head saying, well, you know, if you’ve shortened your day and you’re still getting everything done, well, that means you have time to get more done. Yeah, so it has definitely been something that I’ve had to really work through.

[00:46:58] Sarah: I understand. Yeah. I totally get that..

[00:47:01] Pam: Yeah. But for people who don’t have that flexibility to just say like, okay, I’m done at three o’clock. You know, if you’re working a job that it’s like an eight to five or whatever. Some of these things that we’ve talked about may seem unrealistic or unattainable. The concepts that we’ve discussed are things that I think anyone can apply in some way, kind of regardless of their position.

Like blocking out time to focus on a task. You can communicate with people. You know, and if you do it in a way that is focused on that what you’re doing is for the good of your job and for your output, you know, you should be able to have that communication with a supervisor and say like, I’m going to block off this time in my calendar where I don’t have meetings and you know, close my door.

Or you know, if you don’t have a door, you know, whatever, put up my do not disturb signs so that I can have this time to focus. And it’s not because I’m being irresponsible or I don’t wanna attend the meeting or whatever. It’s, it’s because this is what will produce the most for the company. That those are conversations that you can have.

[00:48:09] Sarah: Yeah, a hundred percent. And I think as well, like this concept of meaningful productivity goes beyond how we’re thinking about what we can get done in our workday, but also what we can and can’t get done, what we choose to get done, and when we choose not to get done outside of our workday. So really, my piece for every person listening, whether you’re working as an entrepreneur or you work in an organization or both, it’s to you know, to apply these holistically, this idea holistically to what’s most important. And how can I cultivate a sense of, of presence and ownership to everything that I’m doing, both within the confines of my work and without, which is really what makes up our days.