The Best Productivity Tool is Feeling Good About Yourself
What’s the best way to get things done?
Should you plan everything out in time-blocks? Or just have one big must-do for every day and don’t worry about the rest?
Make time for hours of deep work? Or get things done in bite-size chunks?
“Swallow the frog” and start every day with the hardest task? Or ease into things with some quick wins?
Here’s what I can tell you for sure: Whatever strategy you start with, you are guaranteed to run into problems.
You’ll make the perfect time-blocks…but then something unexpected will happen.
You’ll do things in bite-size chunks…and not end up finishing the task.
You’ll “swallow the frog”…but it makes you grumpy and unmotivated for the rest of the day.
What matters isn’t what strategy you pick.
No matter what, there will still be problems to solve.
What matters is what you think about yourself in the moment that a problem pops up.
If you look at the problem and think “I’m bad at this”…
You’ll immediately tense up.
You’ll want to avoid the problem altogether and go do something else.
Or you’ll come up with a frantic, unrealistic plan to “catch up” and “get back on track.”
Or you’ll stop thinking altogether and just look for someone else to give you the answer.
What’s really happening here is that you’re in a rush to feel better about yourself as fast as possible…
And the fog of shame is distracting and distorting your problem-solving.
If you look at the problem and think “I’m good at this”…
You’ll relax.
You’ll say, “Ooh, this is fun. Let’s dig into this!”
You’ll come up with simple, doable plans that are easy to implement.
And you’ll lean into your own expertise and experience — and have FUN doing it.
In this situation, the question of “Am I good enough?” is squared away and off the table. You’re good. You’re safe.
And when there’s no fog of shame weighing you down, your head is clear and undistracted, and you can fully focus on the problem in front of you.
Solving problems isn’t hard.
The productivity problems I described above are totally solvable.
You can run into 1,000 productivity problems, and experiment with dozens of systems, and definitely figure out how to get things done in a way that works for you.
What’s hard is solving problems while feeling bad about yourself.
Because the weight of shame will weigh you down and distract you and take 90% of your mental bandwidth offline.
Your whole brain will be frantically trying to deal with the “Am I good enough?” question…
…and you’ll be unable to focus on the simple problem right in front of you.
So how do you build the habit of feeling good about yourself?
That’s exactly what I teach my clients.
We do it simply and systematically, just like building any other habit.
Here's exactly what we do.
We pick a situation that makes you feel bad about yourself.
We uncover the automatic thoughts and underlying assumptions you have about that situation (which are what’s actually making you feel bad — not the situation itself).
We come up with other ways that you can think about what’s going on — thoughts that make you feel better AND are accessible and believable in the moment.
We create a practice plan, so you know exactly what you’re going to do, when, to implement this new perspective.
And the next week, we review how it went. Did it work? Did it fail? No matter what, we’ve gathered data. We take what we’ve learned and we do it again.
By the time we finish working together, you will have gotten enough reps to build this specific habit…
AND you will have gotten a solid grasp on this overall process, which you can use again and again to solve a myriad of problems.
If you’re ready to stop letting the whims of the day decide how you’re going to feel…
If you want to learn how to solve problems with a clear head, any time you want to…
And if you want some structure, expertise, and accountability to guarantee that you’ll cross the finish line…
Then come talk to me and let’s get started :)
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