Good morning lovelies,
Ok so we’ve talked about the math needing to add up, we’ve talked about needing a positive mindset regarding getting sh*t done, we’ve talked about noticing when you are just having a one-off day and using the promise of tomorrow to reset, and when you should stop hoping “tomorrow” will be different – when it’s a pattern. These are all time management and productivity principles that still apply when you have a newborn or other time-sucking thing in your life.
Today’s episode I want to talk to you about how you talk to yourself and treat yourself and what you think about yourself with regard to you getting things done and managing your time. Because this matters, regardless of whether you have just an hour to get work done because of a newborn or any other circumstance, or a whole day.
And you’ve probably heard this before and can kind of guess where this is going – yea – be kind to yourself – eliminate negative self-talk, etc, etc. It’s not a new idea in the self-development space.
But so many of us aren’t practising it.
We aren’t actively working on changing our internal narrative. Particularly with regard to time, and productivity.
And there are two aspects to consider here. There’s what you think about yourself in general as it pertains to time and productivity, and how you treat yourself, and how that makes you feel.
And then there’s how you speak to yourself and treat yourself in the moment and at the end of the day – whether you have had a productive day or not.
And I think the reason why we aren’t practising thinking about ourselves differently and speaking to ourselves nicer, is that we don’t truly recognise the damage we are doing, and we have been doing it for so long, we’ve come to tolerate it.
So in this episode, I want to help give you awareness as to the impact it’s having, and give you some strategies you can use to help you get immediate feedback on it in the future, so you can then decide to change it and improve upon it – in the moment.
So let’s first look at what you think about yourself in general, and how you treat yourself, as it pertains to time and productivity.
So I want you to pause and think for a minute. What comes up?
Would you describe yourself as a procrastinator? A perfectionist? A people-pleaser? Lazy? Do you tell yourself you aren’t very disciplined? You work well under pressure and so don’t when there isn’t any. You are bad with time. You are crap at time management? You are easily distracted. You’re a workaholic. You are a deadline dancer. You are always late. You can’t focus at certain times of the day. You aren’t very productive. You faff about a lot. You waste time.
What is the story you are telling yourself you are? Like it’s the news.
And then I want you to consider how do you treat yourself along with that? How does it feel to think that is true about yourself?
Maybe parts of it feel neutral. Maybe parts of it bring up shame. Or frustration. Or annoyance. Or despair. Defeated perhaps. Or disappointment in yourself.
I’m betting that not many of you will feel good about yourself when you describe how you are as it pertains to time and productivity.
Amd I’m also betting the story you are telling yourself is true about yourself, isn’t a helpful one when it comes to time and productivity.
Otherwise you wouldn’t be here.
Because the way you think about yourself, what your time story is – ends up becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy – so if you are bad with your time, it’s because you believe you are.
If you do waste time. It’s because you think you do.
If you aren’t very disciplined, or you people-please, or you are a deadline dancer, it is because you believe that to be true about yourself.
And this is because the brain likes to be right. And once it believes something to be true, it only looks for evidence to support that theory, and it only acts in accordance with it’s belief system – so it ends up creating more evidence to support it.
So the choices you make, the actions you take, are directly linked to how you think and what you believe to be true about yourself.
So knowing this, you can probably easily see what impact your thoughts about yourself are having directly on your actions, and then what that creates in your life. Ok – so if you believe you are a people-pleaser, and then someone asks you to do something that you don’t really want to do or don’t have time for, you will still say yes, because you (in your mind) are a people-pleaser and that is just what you do. You say yes to people, to please them, even if it doesn’t please you. Which of course takes time away from your day that you could be spending on something for you instead.
Ok, but aside from this, it’s also almost impossible to create a positive result from feeling a negative emotion. So if the way you are thinking about yourself is making you feel frustrated, or shame, or annoyed, or disappointed, or another negative emotion – they will be fuelling actions that create a negative result. Or they will be driving you to avoid the actions that lead you towards the result you want to make – and so the net result you create will be negative.
And this is why the other aspect is important to consider too – your in-the-moment thoughts about yourself, and how you think about yourself and treat yourself at the end of the day.
Because even if you’ve had a productive day, you’ve gotten a ton of things done, worked hard all day…if you get to the end of the day and you are telling yourself you still have loads to do, and you still haven’t really made a dent in it. Or you are telling yourself you “should” be having days like this all the time – not just “one offs” – and that “it isn’t good enough” – the emotion that will be creating will be negative. You’re going to feel defeated, and disappointed. And so it isn’t going to fuel another productive day.
And then the same applies, when you haven’t had a productive day. Or when you are in the middle of it – and you find yourself scrolling on Instagram for 20 minutes, when you should be writing a webinar – how you talk to yourself in that moment matters. How you think about yourself in that moment matters.
And I can show this really easily to my clients using a tool called the Model, which they can then use both in the moment to change the impact of that thinking and also to change their story about themselves in general.
But if you aren’t a client of mine yet, like I said before, I think that it’s hard for us to actually see the consequences of how we think and talk about and to ourselves.
So here are some strategies you can use that will not only show you the impact in a way you can see it more easily (without the model).
But you can use them also when you catch yourself in the moment thinking or talking about or to yourself in a supercritical, judgemental, mean way.
So the first one is one I use all the time. And that is the best-friend strategy.
So you simply think about how your best friend would REACT, FEEL and ACT if you were to say the same things about her or to her that you are saying about yourself.
So take a moment and imagine for yourself – your best friend. Who wants a successful business, making decent money, but also with time freedom and flexibility, time off with her loved ones and for herself. And let’s say she’s been trying (as have you, if you are listening to this podcast) to be better with her time and productivity. She is doing her best to figure it out.
Now think about what you are saying about yourself and to yourself and say it to her in your mind.
“God you are sooo crap at time management. You’re such a people-pleaser. You know you won’t get that project done this quarter because you are such a procrastinator. You’re lazy. You have zero discipline. God you’ve wasted the morning. Why do you always do this to yourself? You need to do better. You’ll never make this business what you want if you aren’t more productive. Ok so what? You’ve had one productive day this week. I doubt you’ll be able to replicate this tomorrow. You haven’t even made a dent in your to do list. You shouldn’t go enjoy yourself right now. You only deserve to rest if you finish all these things on your list.”
Can you imagine saying that to your best friend who’s doing their very best at making improvements to their time?
What a bitch you’d be. I hope you’d never speak to someone you care about like that. Unless you were totally being sarcastic. And it was a bit of fun and they knew it.
Yet here you are talking about yourself and to yourself that way.
See what I mean?
How do you think your best friend would react, feel, and then go on to act?
Probably they’d get defensive. Or shut down. And feel hurt. Attacked. Maybe you’d convince them they are doing a worse job than they thought. Maybe they’d feel shame. And then they’d probably give up trying to change. Think there’s no point.
I mean, even if it did make them try harder – at what cost. How do you think they’d feel about your relationship with them? It would for sure suffer.
So would it be worth it?
Surely a better way would be one of compassion, and curiosity, and encouragement.
“Hey, I see you tried planning your day and it didn’t quite work out. What happened? Ah you can’t blame yourself for that. Cut yourself some slack. At least you’re trying. You’ll figure it out. You’re doing way better than you were before. You got loads done today? Nice! Well done! You’ll always have more to do. Every little bit of progress counts.”
Now think how they’d feel, react and then go on to act if you’d spoken to them like that?
Probably encouraged and motivated, and determined and hopeful. And they’d keep going.
See the difference. This is what you are doing to yourself.
By beating yourself up. By labelling yourself as one way or another. By talking to yourself in a judgmental and critical way, even when you’ve done your best, you are undermining your relationship to yourself. And you are causing yourself to give up believing in and trying to change.
So remember this one the next time you notice yourself talking about yourself or to yourself around your time and productivity – and check in – is this the kind of thing you’d say to your best friend?
Ok so that’s the first strategy.
The next one, in case that one doesn’t resonate. Is to imagine the boss-employee relationship.
Imagine if your boss spoke to you like that.
How would that make you feel? How would that make you want to show up? You’d probably tell them where to stick their job after a few times of it. You certainly wouldn’t think they were a great boss.
And imagine if you had turned up to your first interview for that job and told them all the things you normally think about yourself.
“I have zero self-discipline. I’m not very productive. I am easily distracted. I procrastinate. I am crap at time management”.
Do you think they’d give you the job in the first place?
Not at all. But you are technically hiring yourself in your business. Believing that about yourself. Not getting yourself help with any of those things. Not giving yourself any training on how to improve those things even if they were true. And then expecting you to do a brilliant job.
Can you see how flawed this is?
The next relationship you could use, if that one doesn’t resonate either – is imagine the teacher-student relationship.
If we wanted to be a good teacher, and support our student to become the best version of themselves, would we speak to them like that?
Imagine the damage it would do to the student’s belief system about who they are and what they are capable of – if a teacher were to speak to them like that.
And then lastly, we can use the “parent-child” relationship to think about the impact thinking and speaking about and to ourselves this way, has.
Imagine you as a kid overhearing your parent talk to someone else about you this way – “they are useless, lazy, they’re never going to be successful if they carry on like this”…
How would that have made you feel?
Now it may be that your parent did raise you speaking to you this way, or implying that you were this kind of person.
And often that explains why we have such a critical inner voice inside of us – because we were treated this way, we believed that was the way we should think and talk to ourselves too.
But if you’ve got kids – imagine them for a second coming up to you and telling you what they did get done that day – and you turning around and telling them it wasn’t good enough. That they were lazy. That they needed to do better.
Think about how crushing that must be for them. When they were trying their best. And all they want to do is make you proud of them.
This is exactly what happens to ourselves. When we treat ourselves this way. It’s crushing for us. But I think we are so numbed out by everything else we are worrying about, and so used to speaking to ourselves this way, that we don’t notice the impact it’s truly having.
But it damages your relationship with yourself, your trust with yourself. It creates this internal battle between wanting to rebel against yourself, and wanting to make you proud. Which results externally in you creating big goals and scheduling activities to achieve them and then sabotaging your efforts and doubting that you will ever create the success you want.
It impacts your ability to get stuff done in the present, and your belief in what you can achieve in the future.
It matters so much more than you realise – how you think, speak and talk to yourself.
So remember that, the next time you catch yourself talking about yourself and to yourself in a way that is negative as it pertains to time and productivity, and instead think about one of the strategies I’ve given you – one of the relationships that resonates the most – and think about how you would talk about yourself and to yourself if you wanted that relationship to be a kind, compassionate, loving one – rather than a judgemental, negative, critical one – and change what you are saying – to that.
Ok that’s it for this week my friends. Have a beautiful rest of the week.
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