There’s always a thing under the thing, right? A reason for why you failed, quote unquote or didn’t do the thing you said you were going to do?
That’s the kind of thing we need to get clear on as moms when we’re running thriving businesses, dealing with our family, *and* handling the mental “do more do more do more” load that comes with being a high-achieving woman.
You can’t let the so-called “productivity failures” get to you – because they aren’t failures at all.
They’re examples of opportunity. Let me tell you what I mean.
Last time you didn’t do *any* of what was on your CEO to-do list (just handled the client-and-inbox urgent ones), did you ever stop to think about *why* that might have happened?
Troubleshoot its underlying causes for next time? Or did you head straight for beating yourself up about not turning in your day’s work and go from there?
(Side note: did that go very well? Did scolding yourself inspire you to do better next time? I think not.)
- What if instead you looked at *why* you weren’t feeling inspired (or at the very least motivated) to check off your *own* business’s to-do list that day?
- What if you asked yourself if you stayed up too late the night before, or your kids’ lunch-mess clean-up took way longer than it should have, or you were having a really tough day dealing with some family issues on group text?
- What if *that’s* the reason it threw off your focus?
Not buying it? Okay, let’s look at *these* non-emotional reasons why you might have been off your game yesterday.
- Were you trying to push yourself through an ordinary day’s work during your cycle week?
- Forcing yourself to focus on nuts and bolts during your mid-point ovulation time, when all you really wanted to be doing was hopping on calls with people and magnetically networking?
- Scheduling all the podcast interviews and client projects and high-power, high-energy creative brainstorming sessions for your next marketing offer – during your pre-menstrual cycle week?
Eh, that’s not going to happen. Or even if you *do* force yourself to show up for those task items, it’s not going to go very well.
So you just sidestepped the whole “wrong task for the wrong time of the month” issue and didn’t do any of it.
Or what if you just “got used to it,” even though it’s not really working very well for you?
And that’s okay – because now that you got curious, now that you can *see* why you might have unconsciously made that decision, you can put a few new guardrails in place going forward.
- Next time, I’m going to have all my high-energy mid-cycle tasks grouped over here – and I’m giving myself permission to not even *look* at them till I’m around ovulation.
- Next time, I’m creating a list of all the period-friendly, low-energy, only-into-planning mode to-dos that *need* to happen in my business, but would be a waste of my higher energy at other times of the month. I don’t have to do them right now; I just have to put them over here. I’ll pull them all out on *that* week.
- Next time, I’m banking my ordinary projects and client meetings and content creation tasks for all the *other* weeks of my cycle, when I have not-high-but-not-low energy. This is what *used* to be my everyday expectation bank, but *now* I know that I’m only choosing *these* during those 2-to-2-and-a-half weeks a month. That’s my new normal.
How does that sound when you look at your new, cycle-batched to-do list today?
Do you feel a huge sense of relief, knowing that your tasks match up with your energy now? I hope so.
For me, when I was doing summer coffee dates with friends, I kept getting stressed out trying to fit everything in (‘cause it was my grocery day AND my “catch-up-on-everything” day). And I couldn’t change the coffee date schedule.
But what I *could* do – as my husband pointed out to me – was move the Friday grocery run. (And make life way easier for myself, even though I kept saying “it’s only for a little while” and then complaining to my husband how busy Friday was every week).
So remember, next time you’re dealing with a “productivity failure,” don’t forget to ask yourself – what went on underneath this “refusal to do work” today?
(It wasn’t actually a refusal – I know you.)
What else was going on under the surface?
Where did I need to give myself grace, but forgot?
Your mental self-talk (and therefore personal life enjoyment!) as a high-achieving woman is going to be a *lot* better after this.
‘Cause you just needed to know HOW to fit everything in for your business; STILL hit the essentials on the home front; AND make time for your husband plus your kids. Which is ALL going to happen when you use my scheduling, outsourcing, and mindset-reframing strategies inside of Take Your Time Back VIP (my done-for-you work/life balance program for business moms).
What about you – do YOU need to change something about the last quote unquote productivity “mistake” you made? Either in what led up to that, or in how you’re talking about it?
