So Glad You Asked
Conversations on career, leadership and living an intentional life with CliftonStrengths® Certified Life & Career Coach and Founder of Whole Human Co. Jean Madison
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So Glad You Asked
How can I be more productive? A Look at Alignment through Strengths & Priorities
Rethinking Productivity: Beyond the Grind, Towards Fulfillment
Feeling overwhelmed by the pressure to be productive? This episode of "So Glad You Asked," with Jean Madison, offers a refreshing perspective on productivity, moving away from the traditional capitalist framework and towards a more intentional and fulfilling approach. Discover how to align productivity with your personal strengths, set healthy boundaries, and create a system that truly works for you.
This episode explores how productivity impacts every aspect of life – from work and hobbies to relationships and personal growth. Instead of feeling "less than" because you're not meeting external standards, you'll learn to define productivity on your own terms.
Key takeaways from this episode:
- Redefining Productivity: We challenge the traditional view of productivity and explore what it means to live a productive and fulfilling life, aligned with your values.
- Understanding Your Strengths: Discover how the CliftonStrengths assessment can help you identify your top talents and leverage them for greater happiness & productivity. Learn how to align tasks with what naturally energizes you.
- The Impact of People-Pleasing: Explore how people-pleasing behaviors can sabotage your productivity and discover strategies for setting boundaries that support your priorities and personal growth.
- Rocks, Gravel, and Sand: Learn a powerful analogy for prioritizing tasks and managing your energy. Identify your "rocks" (essential tasks aligned with core goals) and fill your time with what truly matters.
- Creating Your Ideal Life Vision: We discuss the importance of defining your ideal life vision to guide your productivity and ensure you're working towards what truly matters to you.
- Granting Yourself Permission: Explore the concept of "permissions" and how giving yourself the "green light" can unlock your potential and free you from self-imposed limitations.
- Building Your Unique Productivity System: This episode encourages you to question societal pressures and ingrained habits, empowering you to create a personalized productivity path that resonates with your individual needs and aspirations.
Who this is for:
This episode is for anyone who feels overwhelmed by the pressure to be productive, anyone seeking a more balanced and fulfilling approach to work and life, and anyone who wants to learn how to leverage their strengths for greater effectiveness.
Tune in to discover how to:
- Rethink productivity through the lens of personal values.
- Define your ideal life vision.
- Leverage your personal strengths for enhanced productivity.
- Grant yourself permission to pursue your goals.
- Overcome the impact of people-pleasing on productivity.
- Set effective personal boundaries.
- Prioritize tasks using the "rocks, gravel, and sand" analogy.
- Align your productivity with your personal goals.
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Welcome back to so Glad. You Asked a podcast where we have conversations on career leadership and living an intentional life, and conversations with me, jean Madison, certified Gallup Global Strengths Coach and founder of Whole Human Co, where I'm focused on intentional career life and relationship coaching, as well as organizational and team development and well-being. Join me as I answer questions I'm asked by my clients and audience, as well as personal experiences and growth opportunities that I feel we could all learn from. If you have a question or topic suggestion you'd love to hear discussed here on the podcast, visit my Instagram at JeanMadison underscore, comment your questions here on the podcast or tap the link in the show notes that says send questions here to email me directly.
Speaker 1:Now let's dive into today's episode. All right, y'all. We are back this week answering a question that I get all the time and avoid answering quite often, which is how can I be more productive? Now, the reason that I avoid answering this question is because in my work and in my world, it feels like productivity has become a little bit of a dirty word, because I really focus my coaching and a lot of the work that I do on living an intentional life, pursuing a life more filled with ease, and so when you're thinking about a life filled with ease and a life full of intention and living your ideal life all things that I talk about with people productivity feels like one of those kind of hyper-masculine things from a patriarchal world that's like you are not worth anything unless you are being productive. Or at least that's some of the belief that I have taken on over the years as I have developed my own practice of coaching, as I've kind of witnessed people moving through burnout. Sometimes, when you're moving through burnout, this idea of productivity can feel really sticky. It can feel like something that really butts up against your end goal, which is getting out of burnout. But I get this question all the time and I decided that it was time to talk a little bit about it because, at the end of the day, it is human nature to want to be productive. It is human nature to want to provide something to the world.
Speaker 1:I think where we get a little messed up is when we're focusing on productivity from, like, the capitalist lens of productivity, meaning if you are not producing something that can be quantified financially, then you are not productive, and so I just want to start off this episode by really reframing our idea of productivity. This is something we talked a lot about at Human Work, an organization that I'm involved with and would encourage you to check out. But we talk a lot about how, again, it's human nature to want to do, it's human nature to want to accomplish to some degree and it's human nature to want to contribute to society. And so, when I'm answering this question today of how to be more productive, I want to make sure that there is this lens or this focus on the word productive that is, simply looking at how do I show up in the world in a way that feels good to me, that feels productive to me, that feels aligned with the life I want to be living and makes me feel like a contributing part of society. So, with that, shake off all of the feelings that you might have about the word productivity positive or negative and just open your mind to thinking about how do I maximize my time in a way that brings me energy, brings value to the world and that I ultimately feel good about. Today, we're really going to dive into what productivity means. Look at it through the lens of strengths and cycles, talk about people, pleasing and boundaries, because I find that that plays a really big role in productivity as well. And then I'll share a few activities and resources for you to consider as you think about this idea of quote unquote improving your productivity and what that actually means for you to consider as you think about this idea of quote unquote improving your productivity and what that actually means for you and what that looks like for you. So, again, the question we're answering today is how to be more productive. How do I be more productive? I'm so glad you asked let's dive in. So just to give you all a little roadmap for what we're going to be talking about today.
Speaker 1:When I talk about how can we become more productive, there are a few key areas that I want to focus on. The first one is what I focus on with every client and basically every conversation we have here on the podcast touches on this, and that is the idea of identifying and kind of designing in your mind this ideal life. The second piece of the puzzle again something you're going to hear on almost every episode here is strengths, leaning into strengths, understanding them, understanding how they help you be more productive while also building more energy and not leading to burnout. And then I want to talk a little bit about people pleasing and boundaries. Before we dive into any of those, though, I want to talk about this idea of permissions. So permissions is something that we talk a lot about in human work.
Speaker 1:In our signature program, groundwork, we talk about boundaries and permissions, but I want to touch on permissions here because I think one of the big challenges that we have when it comes to productivity is not allowing our individual selves to actually be a part of that productivity, and what I mean by that is we are most of us are chasing productivity systems that were built by someone else for kind of the masses, and then, when those productivity systems don't work for us, we blame ourselves. But I'll just say that the majority of productivity systems that I have seen used, attempted to implement into my life over the last 30 years probably 90% of them have been developed by men, and there's nothing wrong with that, except that, as a woman, I do not operate in the same way as men do, and so if you found yourself really trying a lot of these productivity systems and being like why the hell does nothing work for me, food for thought here, just some things to think about. But going back to this idea of permissions is really this idea of like. I'm giving myself permission to do this, and in order to think about productivity in a different way and through a different lens, you might need to start off this episode by giving yourself permission to actually look at productivity differently, giving yourself permission to look at different productivity systems and see what works for you and what doesn't. So I'm going to share a couple of examples of permissions that I have written for myself lately when it comes to my work, my business and these are just little reminders, because this is how my life is right now, and these are some things that I tend to find myself beating myself up about, and so I've decided to write permissions about them, put them on post-it notes where I can see them, so I'm constantly reminded that it's okay that this is my reality.
Speaker 1:So number one is permission to work well for two hours. A lot of days of my week, I have two hours to get things done because I am a part-time stay at home mom. I spend the majority of my day with my almost 14 month old, and she requires constant attention. There is very little time for me now when she is awake and I am with her that I can do anything other than be with her, and, yes, that is a beautiful practice in presence. It can also be very frustrating because I have these expectations of myself and my work and I have these arbitrary ideas of how many hours I need to work in order to be a real business owner, in order to be successful, et cetera, et cetera. So one of my permissions is that I can get a lot of work done in two hours. I can do some really good work in two hours actually, because I'm a procrastinator and I do well under pressure. So permission to work well for two hours Another permission that I've set for myself and if you've listened to our other episodes, you won't be surprised by this permission to set goals my own way.
Speaker 1:Other goal setting systems have not worked for me this year or last year, and so I built my own again. Even my old system wasn't working for me, so I built a new thing for myself to try out this year, and I'm just continually reminding myself that I have permission to set goals in a way that works for me and they don't have to make sense to anyone else. They don't have to make sense to the rest of the world. A third permission is permission to make a schedule that works for me. Again, going back to this part-time, stay-at-home mom piece, I have really big ideas and big dreams, and there are also only so many hours in a day that I have and big dreams, and there are also only so many hours in a day that I have. So, reminding myself constantly that it's okay to make a schedule that actually works for me. It's okay to not open up evening hours, even though that's when it would make sense, because that's when my husband's not working and that's when Isla could be with him, and instead I know that evening time is really sacred for our family and that's when I like to be together all of us, and so I'm not going to open up very many time slots for an evening event or coaching slot or something like that, unless it's like a one time thing or very rare.
Speaker 1:And then, finally, the last one I just added this in as right before I started recording which is permission to make good money while not working 40 hours a week. This is a huge block that I had when I started my business. It's a huge thing that I still deal with frequently which is oh, you're not working 40 hours so you can't make a 40 hour salary and I want to get rid of that belief. So, permission to make a good salary, to make good money while working less than 40 hours a week Okay, I've shared those permissions because, in order for me to pursue productivity in a way that feels good for me, I really need to create this environment with these permissions around how I work, so that I can make sure I'm taking aligned action to the life I want to be living and that I'm not letting my beliefs around societal expectations cause me to beat myself up in that process. That's a little bit about permissions I want you to think about what are some permissions you can give yourself. If you want to dive a little bit deeper into this concept of boundaries and permissions, I would highly recommend checking out HumanWorks Signature Program, groundwork. It's something that I work in seasonally and do sessions for seasonally, but it's a really great opportunity to understand what is the work that you can't not do and how do you align your work with your life and, ultimately, how do we humanize the nature of work. So highly recommend that. But think about some permissions for yourself as we're going into this conversation around productivity. What are some of the things you beat yourself up for when it comes to being productive, and how can you reframe those things into permissions to give yourself the opportunity to live the way you live, operate the way you operate and build productivity systems that work for you? Let's dive into this first idea of how we use the ideal life to help build productivity systems that work for you. Let's dive into this first idea of like how we use the ideal life to help build productivity systems that work for us. So, first things first.
Speaker 1:I want to talk about the importance of this idea of having an ideal life vision. I talk about this a lot. I have a lot of resources about this idea, but the biggest thing is and I'll keep this short and sweet is that I believe it is really really really hard, if not impossible, to feel productive and like you're moving in a specific direction or you're achieving goals, when you don't know what you're working toward, when you don't know where it is you're trying to go. And now I do not believe that, when it comes to ideal life vision, you have to have this perfectly planned out, visualized, detailed description of what you want your quote unquote future life to look like I expect that when people do ideal life visualizations with me, that they're going to do them again and again, and again and again, because, guess what, you grow and evolve, so will your vision for your life. However, whatever the current version is that you have, that's the thing we're working toward. That's the thing where we ask ourselves the question is this thing moving me closer to the life that I want to live? And this thing could be? Is this job, is this relationship, is this move, is this home, is this friendship, is this training? I don't know. Whatever it is, is that moving you closer to the life that you want to be living?
Speaker 1:If you don't have at least a touchstone of an idea of what you want your life to be like, I just think it's going to be really hard to end every day saying, yep, I feel like I had a productive day today. True, in your work, if you work for someone, if you work in a company, you have been a nine to five and said, yes, you probably have goals and a vision for the company that have been laid out for you, so you might be able to end every work day saying, yes, I feel like I was productive today at work. But when people ask me about how to be more productive, I really look at it no surprise here from a whole human lens, from a holistic viewpoint, which is productivity, yes, in work, but also in life, but also in relationships, but also within your hobbies. All of these sorts of areas are important to feel productive in, and some will feel more productive at certain times in your life. Others will feel more productive in others.
Speaker 1:If you're really really, you know, kind of wrapped up in your work right now, whatever hobbies or community things that you do might not be quite as at the forefront, you might not be doing as much of that, so you might not feel as productive in those areas, but that's okay. I kind of look at it as like an overall productive meter, not like I need to be a hundred percent productive in every single area of my life all the time. So knowing where you want to be going is really going to be that gauge where, at the end of each day, each week, whatever it is, you can look at that and say, yeah, at the end of each day, each week, whatever it is, you can look at that and say, yeah, I feel like the things that I did today, this week, this month, et cetera took me one step closer to the life that I want to be living. Great Number one what do you want out of your life? I think that's super important. Please do not overlook that when it comes to understanding yourself and how to best be productive.
Speaker 1:Now let's dive into some of the more tactical pieces of productivity, some of the things you can actually like, hold on to research, learn more about to really answer this question of how do I become more productive, and the number one thing I always talk about with everybody is strengths. Strengths, to me, are just the foundation that help us be our best selves. They help us understand ourselves, know where our challenges are going to be, where we're going to gain the most energy, and I just find it to be a really useful foundation and language model for helping you understand how to best navigate your life and work, and one of the biggest areas of that is in productivity. One place to start in understanding your strengths is at a very high level. So if you look at your CliftonStrengths report, one of the things that it will say is you lead with blank. It'll either say you lead with executing, you lead with relationship building, you lead with strategic thinking or you lead with blank. It'll either say you lead with executing, you lead with relationship building, you lead with strategic thinking or you lead with influencing. Now these are the four major domains that all 34 CliftonStrengths are organized into.
Speaker 1:So, depending on if you have a majority of or the highest number of strength, your strengths in your top 10 are influencing strengths then you're going to lead with influencing. And the reason that this is important to know and we can talk about it without even going into your specific top 10 at first is that, for example, if you lead with executing, you probably feel very energized, very accomplished and very happy when you are checking things off a list, when you are getting things done, when you are meeting expectations. If you lead with relationship building, for example, you might not feel energized by any of those things. And now again, your individual top 10 is going to make this very individualized to you, but just kind of zooming it out as an example, you are probably going to feel really energized and accomplished and joyful when you are doing things that involve building relationships, meeting new people, going deeper in relationships with people, supporting people right, with people supporting people right. So I think this is important to acknowledge because, on this, with your individual top 10, knowing this about yourself means that, yes, actually being quote unquote productive in the eyes of our kind of Western society which is checking things off a list, may only really happen for you or feel good for you if you lead with executing.
Speaker 1:It's important to understand what does make you feel accomplished, because what makes you feel accomplished is likely also what makes you feel like you've had a productive day or you had a productive meeting. So let's use a meeting as an example. Someone who leads with strategic thinking will probably feel like they had a productive meeting if there is a very clear outcome to the meeting, very clear next steps, a path from A to Z, different options of how to get there. Those sorts of things might be things that feel productive to someone with strategic thinking, whereas someone with maybe influencing might feel that the meeting was successful if they were able to clearly express their ideas and get other people on board, or they were able to kind of shift the narrative and perspective of the group in one direction that they felt was important. That's going to make them feel productive, and so you can see how that differs from, say executing or relationship building, where in a meeting, executing is probably going to feel most productive if they actually solve a problem, get something done, check something off a list, follow the agenda and have the takeaways. And have the not just the takeaways, but like the answers to the questions. We've completed that. And relationship building might feel productive if they feel that they got to know their team members better, were able to kind of create connections between people, between ideas, were able to meet new people, were able you know anything in that kind of like relationship building realm. So when you know where what you lead with it helps you to understand the types of activities that are going to make you feel productive.
Speaker 1:Now I know that your next question is going to be okay, but I can't just rely on my relationship building to be productive in my work environment. I actually have to check things off the list. I actually have to create strategies. I actually have to lead a team and convince them to do certain things. But if I'm leading with a relationship building, maybe some of those things are harder for me, and it doesn't mean you can't do them. That's not at all what I'm saying. What I'm saying is that we need to think about different ways to do them. So if you really need to, if you run a team, I'm just going to use my own life and experience because that's the easiest place to start.
Speaker 1:But let's say, you know, I was director of a recruitment team. I really needed my team to meet certain recruitment goals. I personally lead with strategic thinking, but my number one strength is relationship building. So for me it felt really productive when we would get done with a meeting and we would have a whole plan on what we were going to do, how we were going to do it, like exactly how we were going to meet our goals. But that didn't really work for all of my direct reports, and so what we had to do is we really had to think about okay, we have this end goal and we have this kind of overarching strategy. Now how does everyone take that? And sort of mold those two things into either a language or a structure that feels motivating and energizing to them.
Speaker 1:Now, I also have high individualization, so I really love doing this. I love figuring out what works for you as an individual person. That's why I'm probably going to struggle talking about this a little bit today, because it is so general, but not everybody has that. That's okay. But I share this example because, again for me, I would feel productive just by having the strategy. Some of the more achievement-oriented people on my team or people who lead with executing strengths, might say, okay, but I'm not going to feel like we did great work until I'm actually taking action toward this goal. I'm actually checking things off a list. So it's just important for you to know it doesn't mean you're not going to do those other things. It doesn't mean you can't do those other things.
Speaker 1:But I really like to look at all of my, all of the questions you all asked me for this podcast, all of my coaching, through the lens of what can we do to build your energy and your excitement and your enjoyment and your work in your life, so that you have that energy to carry over into the things that maybe don't bring you as much energy. So we can think about that in terms of productivity as well. Start off with where are you leaning into your strengths in a way that brings you energy, in a way that kind of lights you up, so that when you have to go do some of the other things that don't come as naturally to you. Your cup is already full and you're not trying to pour from an empty cup. This is just an area to think about when it comes to strengths and productivity. We can go very, very deep into strengths and productivity, but I'm just going to touch on it lightly here today and encourage you to take the CliftonStrengths assessment, if you have not already. Learn a little bit about your top 10 strengths through that report, as well as what theme you lead with or what domain you lead with. And if you want to go deeper and you want to talk about what does productivity look like specifically for me with my strengths? You know that I would love for you to schedule a strength session with me. I would love to spend two hours with you going deep into your Clifton strengths and how they set you up for success and productivity when you understand them. So that's what we've got on strengths.
Speaker 1:Let's hop into the next piece of this productivity puzzle. All right, people pleasing, boundaries and productivity. Let's talk about it. First of all, the definition that I've kind of pulled together from formal definitions. My own experience coaching, etc. About people pleasing is that people pleasing is a pattern of behavior where someone tries to gain others affection or esteem by putting their needs aside in favor of someone else's needs, wants and desires Boundaries are. I like to talk about boundaries in terms of expectations. I love to try and set expectations up front so that I do not have to introduce and uphold a boundary later on. That's typically an easier way for me to do things. I will talk about all of that in a different episode. But you know, boundaries are sometimes viewed as these, like walls that you put up, but they really can just be relationship agreements, like, hey, this is what I need, this is what you need, this is how we're going to show up, this is how I need you to not show up, etc. Etc. These two things together can play a really crucial role in productivity, and I'm going to talk about this mostly from a work standpoint, but hopefully you'll be able to kind of translate what I'm saying into your personal life or a more social environment or something like that.
Speaker 1:So the question I'm sure you're asking yourself is how does people pleasing affect productivity? There are a couple of ways that I specifically have seen this happen for clients, for myself, for my employees, et cetera. The number one way I would say, or something I've seen most often is that people-pleasing can cause you to be sort of this yes-man type person or yes-woman type person, meaning anytime a boss asks for something, you're the first person to raise your hand to say you'll do it. Anytime anyone asks you for help or a favor or something like that, you automatically say yes without thinking you know you just you like to be of service, you like to be supportive of other people, and so you say yes, saying yes over and over and over again to other people and their priorities. You are probably not saying yes to your own priorities, your own needs and the things that maybe you need to get done in a work environment, leading you to feel unproductive because you're not getting the things done that are on your list. You're just getting things done that are on other people's lists.
Speaker 1:Another way that people pleasing can affect productivity is, you know, potentially this overwhelming fear that people won't like you if you speak up or you stand out or you offer knowledge or opinions by being an expert in a space. Sometimes that will mean that people don't like what you have to say or don't like what you're bringing to the table, and that fear of not being liked is kind of the whole thing with people pleasing. You want to be liked, you want people to see you in a good way, and so by leaning into this people pleasing kind of nature, you might be saying no to opportunities. You might not be. You know sharing your work publicly and you might not be taking things on because of that fear, which then makes you feel unproductive. Because you have all of this knowledge, all of this expertise, and know where to put it and know where to share it and know when to share it with.
Speaker 1:Maybe people pleasing is causing you to take on work that's outside of your job description, outside of your expertise or your capacity, because someone wants you to take on work that's outside of your job description, outside of your expertise or your capacity, because someone wants you to. This kind of goes along with number one. But you know, taking on some of these things where either they're not in your job description or they're just not really within your skill set Both of those things are going to make you feel not great about yourself and also make you feel like you haven't had the time or space to do the work that you're actually intended to do, because you've been spending so much time and energy trying to figure out this thing that doesn't come naturally to you. And then the last thing that I've thought about when it comes to people pleasing and productivity is that you maybe prioritize other people's things before your own, and this could be work. This could be other people's problems, other people's needs. Especially if you're a leader and you care a lot about your team, you might find yourself really putting your own work, your own growth, your own needs on the back burner because you feel that your team needs you so much and you continue to put their trials and tribulations ahead of your own needs and work.
Speaker 1:So all of these things are examples of how people pleasing can affect your productivity, or at least affect how you feel about your productivity. Those can be two different things. So one of the best ways to manage people pleasing besides maybe working with a therapist, which is what I have done when it comes to people pleasing is to really think about strengths and boundaries. So again, you know going back, you know rewind, go back to the strengths part. Think about that, but also think about boundaries. And in this sort of a work situation, I'll kind of give boundaries from the perspective of someone who is an individual contributor and then someone who is a leader. So if you're an individual contributor, you know, and your people pleasing is causing you to always be the person that raises their hand and always says yes and always takes on that additional task and always takes on that additional event, blah, blah, blah.
Speaker 1:For you, something that I would really encourage you to do and this is an example of a boundary that you've set with yourself that maybe you're not sharing with the world and that is to create this practice of pausing, practice the pause, and what I mean by that is the next time your boss in a meeting says hey, we need someone to do X, y, z. I want you to count to 10 in your head. I want you to count to 10, give other people the opportunity to volunteer before you and then, if you really must, you can raise your hand. Now I'm going to encourage you in the beginning to always count to 10. Even if it's something that you're excited about, even if it's something well within your skill set, even if it's something you really want to do. This is about building that muscle of pause, and so that might mean that, for a little bit, you are going to pause on things that you absolutely want to say yes to, just to get into that practice. Once you have that practice down and you can be a little bit more discerning, you can kind of take a second when a request is made to say, okay, is this within my strengths? Is this something I want to do? Do I have the capacity? Am I excited about it? Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, great, raise your hand. I want to do that. If no, no, no, no, no, then don't raise your hand. You're not going to get fired for not raising your hand.
Speaker 1:I know, especially if you're a millennial, you grew up in a culture of go above and beyond and it will pay off. Well, guess what? For the most part, it doesn't pay off, unfortunately, at least financially for most of us. So go above and beyond on the things that you enjoy, on the things that bring you energy, on the things that you enjoy, on the things that bring you energy, on the things that actually build your resume. Don't go above and beyond just to go above and beyond. So that's one idea when it comes to setting boundaries at work and kind of how that can help with your people pleasing. Another example of this would be an activity that I have shared with a handful of my clients and this is not my activity, this is a very well known one, but it's this rocks gravel sand activity.
Speaker 1:When you struggle with saying yes, when you struggle with taking on things that are not yours to take on, when you struggle with prioritizing other people's things before your own, the rocks gravel sand activity can be a really helpful one because it helps you to get really clear on what is yours. For starters, what is priority? You know what are the must do's, what are the nice to do's, what are the not yours to do's? That's not how that saying goes, but that's what we're going to go with today. So rocks gravel sand basically, there's this whole storyline of like if you were to have a jar and you had a thing of sand, a thing of gravel and a thing of rocks, if you put the sand in first, it would take up half the jar. If you put the gravel in second, it would take up another, like maybe three, fourths of the jar, and then you have this whole thing of rocks and only a couple of them get to go in. The rocks are the priority. The rocks are the things that are most important to you, most important to your role, most important to your life, most important to your relationships. Those are the things that you need to do and that can be everything from like eating healthy and exercising to the main priorities and KPIs for your specific role within your organization. The main priorities and KPIs for your specific role within your organization In this example that's a little bit more focused on the work world the pebbles or the gravel would be things that others ask of you, that you know maybe you are particularly good at, but they aren't really part of your work at this point.
Speaker 1:They're not part of your role, they're not a priority in your job description, or you know they're not a priority in your job description or something that's not a priority in your life, but they do bring you some energy. You are good at doing them and so you're happy to do them when you have the time and space. The sand is in this again, in this example, really just representative of all the little things, the little one-off chats, the emails, the tasks, the questions. You know the things that people come to you with that take up your time and energy, that are less important, but you know you still occasionally have to pay attention to at least long enough to say no to this is not exactly how this, this activity, is explained when you're thinking about kind of this overall idea of time management. But I like to use this example for productivity.
Speaker 1:Productivity because when you can think about the fact that, okay, if you put the rocks in the jar first, they fill up the jar and the whole activity is that the professor asked like is the jar full? And the students say yes, and then he pours the gravel or pebbles in and he shakes the jar and it kind of fills all the spaces between the rocks and he says is the jar full? And they say yes, and then he gets out the sand and he pours the sand in and it fills in all the spaces between. Some examples have a fourth option, which is the water. They say is it full? They say yes, you pour in the water and it really fills everything up. Right, but we're just going to do rocks, gravel, sand for this.
Speaker 1:You can see that when you put the rocks in first, you put your priorities in first. There's always going to be room for the priorities. Then you can put the gravel pebbles in On top of that. It can kind of fill in the spaces in between. Those things are important but they are not critical to your success. They're not critical to your kind of accomplishments at work or, you know, critical to your functioning in life. And then the sand is just, it's all the little things. You get to them when you get to them. They fit into all the little nooks and crannies and spaces, but they don't take up the most space. The most space is dedicated to your priorities.
Speaker 1:So some of the questions that you can ask yourself when you're thinking about this kind of rocks, gravel, sand activity is, let's say, something gets put on your plate and we're still talking about kind of rocks, gravel, sand activity is, let's say, something gets put on your plate and we're still talking about kind of being a people pleaser here and wanting to say yes, but something gets offered up to you. Your first question to yourself in terms of like your life could be, is this moving me toward my ideal life? If it's a strong yes, then maybe that's a rock. If it's a um, I could kind of see how this is moving me toward my ideal life, but like it's not going to have the biggest impact. Maybe that's a pebble, um or gravel and no, not really, it's just like a little task that's distracting me from the real work that I need to be doing. That's probably sand.
Speaker 1:Another question when you're thinking about more of a work environment could be um, is this moving me closer to my intended outcome or goal? You could ask is this helping me meet my KPIs or my expectations? Um, something else you could ask yourself is and when? This could be really good for those like gravel sand items is will this come up on my annual review? Think about it. If you spend all of your time on the sand and then you go into your annual review and your boss wants to hear about the rocks but you didn't create space for the rocks, that's going to be a problem.
Speaker 1:So when you're thinking about productivity, I want you to think about how am I creating and dedicating the most space to the rocks, and then using your strengths to figure out how do I actually go about doing that thing, accomplishing that thing in a way that feels good to me, aligns to the way that I most naturally think, feel and behave, and brings me the most energy. Those are some of the questions to ask yourself to keep yourself out of people pleasing, to keep yourself in this kind of priority-based mindset that will ultimately help you be productive. But focusing on some of these things instead of constantly beating yourself up or asking yourself the question of why am I not being productive or how do I be more productive? It's just such a vague question. It's not going to get you anywhere.
Speaker 1:Instead, think about what is it that I can do that's going to move me closer to my goal? What is it that I can do that's going to move me closer to the life I want to live? Are these things moving me closer to my goal or the life I want to live? Am I saying yes just because I feel like I should say yes, or because I feel like someone's not going to like me if I don't say yes, or because I just that's the kind of person I've always been, when really, this thing is not actually good for me or moving me in the direction that I want to be going? These are all questions to consider when it comes to your productivity, your personal, individual method of productivity and getting things done, and this is why we haven't talked about productivity that much. It's so nuanced, it's so complicated. It's something that I very much prefer to talk about with people one-on-one so I can know them and know exactly the best ways to talk about how they can be more productive. So, no, I did not give you a lot of like. This is exactly how to be productive. Here is a system for you to follow in this podcast, but I hope that I at least sparked some creativity or some curiosity for you around what productivity looks like for you, how to design productivity systems for yourself.
Speaker 1:You know, as I mentioned at the beginning, I have felt like productivity is this sort of dirty word and you know, I found myself really avoiding this term in my work because I felt like cultivating ease and flow was not aligned with this idea of productivity in the super masculine sense. One of the reasons I really wanted to talk about this this week is because I'm currently in a training on strengths and resilience, and it's really starting to shift my thinking about how we build resilience, how we keep ourselves out of burnout, and actually one of the ways of keeping ourselves out of burnout is being and feeling productive, but again, being and feeling productive in a way that aligns with who we are, aligns with our values, aligns with our strengths, and not just productive for productivity's sake, for society's sake. So I've come to realize that sometimes doing quote, unquote, doing is the exact thing that we need to get us out of a funk. The act of being productive is the thing that gets us out of that low, sad, frustrated, confused feeling. I've also found that, you know, if you have high execution strengths, me telling you not to worry about productivity because you know that is against ease and flow might be maddening to you and it really, at the end of the day, might cause depletion, you know, uncertainty and even burnout, because you gain energy from doing, from being productive, sometimes in the societal sense of the word. On the other hand, if you don't have high executing strengths, you still have to get shit done, like we all still have to do things in our lives. And so what does energizing productivity look like for you? These are the things I want you to think about.
Speaker 1:I want you to go back through the podcast here's some of the things I had to say and ask yourself what does this look like for me? If you have a really hard time answering that question, which you're not alone, a lot of people do, most people do this is where working with a coach can be so powerful Having someone reflect back to you who you are, help you discover the ways that you best work in the world and in life and really understand who you are and how you show up your strengths etc. Is so powerful Because knowing those things means that you can create systems that work for you, that you can take action that works for you, that you can accomplish things in a way that works for you. So if you feel like you don't know where to go next with this, I would highly highly encourage you to take your CliftonStrengths assessment Again that link is always in my show notes with a discount code to buy the assessment and then, if you want to dig deeper into what that means for you how to build systems for yourself around goal setting and productivity and relationship building and all of that.
Speaker 1:Hi, that's what my two-hour strengths session deep dive is for. You can schedule that one-off or you can schedule a discovery call and we can talk a little bit more about your overarching goals and see what type of coaching offering might be best for you, whether that is a one-off strength session or a custom package let's say you're looking for a new job in the next couple of months or if a longer-term coaching relationship would be the most effective thing for you. It tends to be. I love my long-term coaching clients. I love the deep relationships that we build and the progress that is made in that three to six month time period. But at the end of the day, the discovery call is all about figuring out what you need and what's going to work best for you and going from there. So decide what you want. But I would love to see you in a discovery call If you feel like that would be useful to you.
Speaker 1:That link is also in the show notes. There it is. Y'all. We talked about productivity.
Speaker 1:I'm sure that this will spark some questions for you. Please send those my way so that I can dive even deeper into this topic here on the podcast. I put up question boxes occasionally on social media so you can drop those questions there or just comment on the podcast or reply to an email if you're on my email list. If you're not on my email list already, that link will be in the show notes. I highly recommend that. You just get occasional updates on when podcasts are out and offerings that I have coming up and just things I'm thinking about that day. That is all for today's episode. Thank you so much for your time and your attention and your thoughtfulness, as we've navigated many different topics over the podcast over the last couple of weeks and hopefully this sparks a little bit of thought for you and what productivity means for you in your life and, if nothing else, I hope you can cut yourself a little bit of slack in the week ahead. I will see you back here next time for so Glad you Asked. Have a great week.
