#176: A Productive Mindset (Rewind Episode)

[00:01:29] Well, hello there. This is Heather Moulder. Welcome to episode number nine of the Life & Law Podcast.

Today we’re going to talk about something I actually find pretty exciting. We’re talking about how to be more productive while doing less so that you can achieve more without so much burnout.

Now, you might be thinking, “Hmm, Heather, okay, great. You get really excited about productivity.” And in truth, no, I don’t really. I don’t get that excited about the typical productivity conversations we have. The good news is that’s not the kind of conversation we’re actually having today.

What Is Productivity?

So, here’s the deal:

When it comes to productivity, what makes us most productive isn’t all the time management techniques we’re taught. It’s not really about being more efficient. I’m not saying those things aren’t important, because they are. We want to manage our time well. We want to be productive and efficient, and there are hacks and tools and strategies we can use to do that.

[00:02:37] But in my experience, most people who are overly busy and feel like they need to be more productive and less overwhelmed are experiencing this because there’s something deeper going on. And that’s what we’re really going to get to today.

[00:02:58] What I’m talking about is prioritization. Most people don’t prioritize very well at all. That’s the number one key to being productive. Think about it. You’re not exactly all that productive in your life, in your work, anywhere if you’re not being productive in respect of the things that are actually important. It’s not productive to just be busy and do busy work. Productivity necessarily includes you working on the things that are truly important towards your goals, towards client development, towards the projects, the cases, whatever that you need to be doing that are truly important.

[00:03:43] And the fact of the matter is we spend a lot of our time doing other things and not really focusing on our true priorities. So, today we are going to get into the mindset of prioritization because it’s really the key to being able to prioritize properly.

Today’s conversation is actually part one of a two-part conversation. We’ll get into the specific process for how to figure out what true priorities are next week. So be sure to tune in then. But today we’re going to get into what I actually think is the most exciting part. And it’s exciting because it can be a game changer for you when you really start to apply the concepts that I’ll be talking to you about today.

Why Busy-ness Is Part of The Problem

So a quick story that’s always stuck with me ever since I was a kid. When I was a kid, I was one of those eavesdroppers. Is there anybody else out there who like me, liked to eavesdrop on adults? I found adult conversations really fascinating. And I was really curious about the fact that everybody seemed to be so busy. People would ask, “How are you?” “Oh, busy.” “What are you up to?” “Oh, I’m just, I’ve got so much going on, I don’t have enough time.” And people would make excuses around how they couldn’t do things that they really wanted to be doing because of how busy they were.

[00:05:00] What I find really interesting about this is this was back in the early seventies. So this was back primarily throughout the seventies and early eighties. And if anything, people have gotten even busier since then.

Part of that is because of the way technology works and we have more obligations and demands on our time these days. What I found really interesting as a kid is that sometimes these complaints really seemed hollow to me. It almost felt as though they were wearing their busyness as a badge of honor, like they were bragging about being super busy and not being able to do the things they really wanted to do.

So as a kid, I kind of thought, “Yeah, right, you just don’t want to do those other things.” And as I grew up, I started to realize, no, they kind of did. But there were these competing interests within their mind about, well, I’m supposed to be busy, and that makes me more important.

There’s this importance component to being busy that society has placed onto us. And that was part of what was going on. And so because they wore busyness as a badge of honor, they overburdened themselves with too many things and oftentimes things that weren’t true priorities.

Here are a few things that I came to realize as I became an adult and started working and started getting too busy, and then realized what I was doing and had to take a step back and really look at, okay, what am I doing? How am I living my life and what’s really going on here?

[00:06:29] Although I, along with everybody else, was complaining that time was passing me by and there just wasn’t enough time in the day, and I couldn’t do the things I really wanted to, what I realized was I was choosing to be busy. I was choosing how to spend my time.

[00:06:53] Busyness does not make you important. You don’t succeed by being busy. Success comes through focusing on the right things, which is about prioritization, being consistent in doing the right things, persevering through difficulties, leveraging your strengths, because that makes it more fun and a little bit easier for you to do, and motivates you as well. And learning from your mistakes so that you can course correct as you go, that is what makes you successful. Busyness in and of itself doesn’t.

[00:07:28] And what I’ve noticed is that people who are the most successful, and when I say successful, I mean people look to them as leaders. They’re thought leaders as well.

[00:07:42] They do good in the world. They have, you know, a full life, but they’re more balanced. They’re happy, they’re fulfilled, because there’s a happiness component to that as well. And I’m going to be talking about this more about what success really means in a future episode coming up, so be on the lookout for that. And so since success isn’t really about busyness, it all comes down to how you spend your time and understanding that that’s a choice.

[00:08:11] How you spend your time is a choice. So time is a commodity, a precious one, right? And it should be spent wisely. It doesn’t stop. It doesn’t slow down. It does not grow. You can’t create more time.

[00:08:27] All you can do is choose how you spend the time that you have. And here’s the deal.

Control of Your Time = Control of Your Life

[00:08:35] Something that I really think is important and I want to impress upon you. Taking control of your time is about taking control of your life. And most people who come to me who complain about not feeling very in control of their lives have a huge problem in how they’re spending their time. And that’s really what it’s coming down to. You take control around how you spend that time. You’re going to take control over your life and feel much more in control than you ever thought was possible.

Something that I really think is important and I want to impress upon you. Taking control of your time is about taking control of your life. And most people who come to me who complain about not feeling very in control of their lives have a huge problem in how they’re spending their time. And that’s really what it’s coming down to. You take control around how you spend that time. You’re going to take control over your life and feel much more in control than you ever thought was possible.

It’s Your Choice

I’ve already hinted at this, but the point bears making more clearly. How you choose to spend your time determines how fulfilled you are.

[00:09:15] And here’s something I learned really the hard way. So remember, I’m a cancer survivor.

I promise you that most of the things we worry about on a daily basis and focus on every single day are not important. They’re not. They’re not what you care about at the end of it all, when you’re looking at your life and you’re thinking about what was most important and what you wish you had and had not done.

[00:09:30] They’re not. They’re not what you care about at the end of it all, when you’re looking at your life and you’re thinking about what was most important and what you wish you had and had not done.

What I found is that life’s biggest regrets are about what you have not done. All the excuses you make to not do things that are really important to you because, you know, you got all this other stuff you got to get done and you’re just super busy. That’s where regret really comes from. And I learned that the hard way. You shouldn’t have to face cancer and possibly dying to start learning this lesson on your own. And that’s what I’m hoping to get across to you today.

Because life is meant to be lived, and living your life means prioritizing the things that are truly important to you and letting go of all of that other stuff.

[00:10:25] So if you don’t know my cancer story and if you don’t know my background, you may want to go back and listen to episode one. That will give you more insight into it. I will be sure to link to it in the show notes.

[00:10:37] Hopefully I have impressed upon you that this is not just about being productive in the typical sense. The day to day productivity that we all seem to focus on, this will help with your day to day productivity a whole lot, but it’s so much bigger than that. And when I talk about doing less to achieve more, this is a lot of what I’m talking about. You’re going to get more accomplished in respect of your goals. You’re going to get more accomplished in respect of your big picture project and the big cases you’re working on that are truly important to you.

[00:11:13] So where do we go from here? It all boils down to making the choice, okay? You must choose your priorities.

A Client’s Realization About Productivity & Prioritization

[00:11:22] This came up in a recent coaching session with a client, someone who came to me who is already impeccable at being productive at the things she’s doing. But what she realized is, although I’m getting a lot done, people seem to notice that I’m a go-to for so many things, but I’m a go-to for too many things. And at the end of the day, although I’m very productive in the work I’m actually doing, I’m not getting my big priorities done.

[00:11:51] And she realized there’s got to be more to productivity than just being productive in the work that I’m setting myself towards in each given moment. I need to learn how to get the things that I truly want to get done, done and set aside some of these other things or find ways to get it all done.

We coached around that, and at the end of the day, it all came down to making choices about what’s truly important and what’s not. What she was finding is that although she had priorities for the day, she was doing a good job upfront saying, “Okay, I have these priorities and here’s what I want to do”. She’d often not get through email, sometimes very little of it by the end of the day, because what was happening was people kept interrupting her. People would send her emails and ask questions that she felt like she had to get back to.

They would come in and ask questions. If she was in the office, they were constantly bombarding her with new things that were very urgent to them. And so she felt like she needed to address them. And so she was never getting her priorities done. And she’d end up, at the end of the day, looking back going, “I have been super busy. I’m exhausted, yet I got very little done, and now I have to work late tonight and this weekend, too.”

Choices Are Hard (They’re Supposed to Be)

So here’s what I want to impress upon you. When I say prioritizing is about making choices. Yes, obviously it is. The problem is, choices are hard, y’all. They’re hard. They’re not easy to make these choices. If it was easy, it wouldn’t be much of a choice in the first place, now would it? So something that’s really important is you need to know what you want. You need to know why you want it. Otherwise, you may not be prioritizing the right things.

[00:13:40] And if you’re not sure what that is, then you really need to figure it out. I suggest that you do some inner work.

[00:13:49] What happens to most of us is we start off knowing what our priorities are, knowing what we want out of our career, out of our lives, and having a very clear vision for that. But then life gets in the way.

We work towards those at first, but then other people lay expectations upon us, and we start climbing that corporate career ladder and feeling like we have to check the boxes along the way. And so we kind of lose sight of our own vision and we forget about our own priorities.

Before we know it, our goals really relate to what we think we should be doing as opposed to what we really want to be doing.

Get Clear Around Your Values

If that’s you and you’ve kind of gotten caught up in that daily grind, then what you want is to get a little more clear around your values. You’ve lost sight of them.

[00:14:41] What made you choose to be a lawyer in the first place? So that you can start to reconnect to that vision and recreate it for yourself and then set goals that are more meaningful for you. That will then be your new priorities.

Okay, so how do you do that? Well, I actually talked about that because if you’re in that space, you probably feel stuck and you’re not quite sure what to do about it. Go back to episode six, which is about what to do when you feel stuck in your career and listen to it, because there’s some really great guidance on how to figure that out for yourself.

Also consider working with a coach. A good coach can and will help you with this as well. All right?

Have Real Boundaries

So, you know, you need to make tough choices. And when it comes to making tough choices, there’s something you really need to work on in order to do it. Because, as I said, it’s tough. It’s hard. Tough choices means knowing when to say no.

Saying no is really about putting boundaries around what you will and will not do so that you can prioritize your priorities. That’s why you say no. It’s an enforcement mechanism to ensure that you actually get to prioritize what’s truly important to you.

But saying no is hard, y’all right? We don’t like to say no. We don’t like the pushback that we get. We don’t like to feel pressured to say yes. And so oftentimes we say yes when we really want to say no. That’s hard.

It also means delegating. It means pushing things off. It means pushing back on people when somebody gives you a deadline and says, well, I need this now. I need this by tomorrow. And you’re looking at it going, you know what? This is not that urgent. It can be done in a week.

And that’s all hard.

Why Your Mindset Is The Foundation To Being Truly Productive

So what you need is to focus on your mentality, on your mindset.

[00:16:31] Much of what enables you to be productive is also what can hinder you from being productive. And that’s you, your mind, how you think.

It’s what convinces you to adopt “busy as a badge of honor” and think that it’s important. It’s what tells you to overthink and overanalyze for forever. It’s what convinces you to do the things you know aren’t true priorities yet. They feel urgent, so you do them. It’s what tells you to say yes when you want to say no.

So your mind, your mindset, your mentality is your number one roadblock to being productive.

What Is Mindset (& What Mindset Do You Need)?

[00:17:10] So let’s get into mindset. Your mindset is really just the mentality that you bring to the table, how you see the world.

There’s something known as a grit and growth mindset. I like the grit and growth mindset model. I don’t really love the way they say it. I don’t love grit. I think it sounds too hard. I do love growth. I like to think of it as wanting to cultivate a resilient, growth oriented mindset.

Resiliency, to me, sounds so much better than grit.

So what does that mean? It means that you’re more capable of seeing roadblocks from within. When that inner critical voice likes to speak up and say, “Oh, no, no, can’t do that. Can’t say no. You’ve got to say yes. They’re going to get mad.”, counteracting it, being more aware of it, allowing yourself to actually listen to it.

A lot of times, we shut those things off and just go with the flow. So it requires an awareness piece to be resilient. Also, resiliency is about bouncing back, because, let’s be honest, things don’t always go as planned. We don’t always get what we want. Unexpected stuff happens. I mean, if anything has shown us that the last year has. Nobody expected a global pandemic to hit and change life as we know it for going on a year now.

[00:18:33] So that’s what resilience is about. Being more aware, being willing to face that inner critical voice, feeling whatever you feel, identifying what it is and dealing with it head on so that you can bounce back, process through those feelings and whatever’s going on in your head in the moment and bounce back more quickly.

It allows you to be more clear headed to see what’s real and what’s nothing. And it also brings forth a real willingness to get comfortable with the discomfort of feelings. Because feelings, they’re yucky, they’re tough, they’re not easy, and we often like to steer clear of them. But having a resilient, growth oriented mindset means allowing them just to be there. Okay?

Because ultimately having that mentality is what is going to allow you to say no when you want to, even in the face of pressure to push something off to someone else, or even if it’s something you need to do to push out the deadline, even though there’s pressure to do it more immediately.

So if this is something that you know, “Okay, you’re right, Heather. I need to develop a little bit more resiliency. I need to become a little more self aware so I can deal with it. I want to face, you know, get comfortable with those uncomfortable emotions so that I can be more resilient, so that I can say no more often because I’m just being pulled in too many directions.”,then I have some resources for you that I would like you to take a look at.

Number one, I’ve written some articles around mindset and how to face down this inner chatter and even your fears. I will link to a couple of those articles, the ones that I think are going to be the most helpful for you here in the show notes. So please go check those out.

The other thing is, I have a great resource for you that you can download now. It’s called five minute stress solutions. But don’t let the name fool you because it’s really about a lot more than just stress. Yes, it contains exercises, eight to be exact, that will help you relieve stress in the moment, but they’re also going to help you build a more resilient, strong mentality. So it’s about stress prevention and also mindset work as well.

So hopefully I am impressing upon you the importance of prioritization and how it really does play into how productive you really are and especially how all of this relates to your mentality that you need to really start focusing more on building the right mentality to allow you to prioritize your true priorities.

How Your Mindset Gets In Your Way

[00:21:17] So let’s go over a couple of places where this really does show up in your life. Where does your mentality tend to get in the way and hijack you is so that you’re not really making the right choices and you’re not able to prioritize the right things?

Number one is this mentality around doing it all.

[00:21:38] We have fallen prey in our society. Many of us have been convinced, especially women. But I do find this is an issue for men, too. Their language, their verbiage around it is just a little bit different. But that we’re supposed to do it all, have it all, Which is a load of crap, by the way.

And because we don’t want it all, we don’t want to do it all. And I’ve talked about this concept when I talked about work life balance, and that was back in episode three. So if you haven’t listened to it, I highly recommend you go back. I will have a link to that episode in the show notes.

[00:22:10] But this whole mindset around doing it all also convinces us that we’re supposed to do it all ourselves, that only you can do it. Only you are the one that can do this. And there’s a lot that goes into that because that’s also often not true.

Often we can delegate more often we don’t have to be the ones to do it. We can recommend that somebody else help.

When someone comes to you, a colleague comes to you for assistance on something and say, there’s several other attorneys in your firm that do the same thing, or maybe you’re within a company and you have another counterpart that does something very similar, and you just don’t have the time. It is really hard to say no. Not because you don’t want to disappoint the person but because you don’t want to be left out or because you’re afraid they’ll decide not to come to you next time.

But oftentimes that’s just not true. People understand, people are much more understanding that you have limits and that you can’t always get to it, and they’re going to be thankful that there is somebody else that can do it and that you help them find that person.

So what’s really getting in your way is that your brain, it’s convincing you that, uh oh, maybe they’ll never come back. I have to be the one to do this, or I’m going to miss out on something, or they’re never going to come back to me, and they’re not going to think well of me. Right.

[00:23:37] And that’s just not true. So that’s one area where it shows up big time.

[00:23:43] And it’s one example of why it’s so important to work on that inner voice that we all have that convinces us of these things. Because what you want is to be able to step back and look at it more realistically and be more rational about it so you don’t get caught up in all of that.

So I have an example, actually, to show you what I’m talking about and also to show you, but it’s just not that realistic to be fearing and worrying about these things all the time, so that hopefully you will start working on this and you will be willing to let go of some of this stuff more often.

I worked with a client a couple of years ago who was an expert in a particular area of tax, and she was the go to within her firm for all things that related to this area of expertise. The problem was, it was a pretty decent sized firm. And because she was the only one, she was constantly being bombarded with issues, questions, et cetera, to the point where she was just hardly ever able to get her own work done. And her own work was truly her priority.

But she had these fears in the back of her mind that said, well, I can’t say no, I have to do it, and I have to do it whenever they ask, like in that moment, which was constantly interrupting her, because, (A) they’ll never get their answers, or (B) somebody else is going to learn this stuff, and I will no longer be valued. I will no longer be the go-to for this.

So we worked around the mentality, the mindset of this. And what she found is that, honestly, the firm needed more than one person to understand and know this stuff, and that she needed to start to help others to learn it and to be trained so that she could take some stuff off of her plate and still be the go to expert in her firm for this thing, but at a much higher level. So that there would be other people that could do a lot more of the work, and they would go to her for the big picture kind of stuff and the oversight.

And so that’s where eventually she ended up and she realized how wrong she had been. She had this fear that nobody would value her anymore, but she actually became more valued because she became an innovator who put together a team that could work on these things, and she was seen in a much better light. And as more of a leader by doing that. All right.

[00:26:14] Another place where this does tend to show up and really hurts our productivity when we’re not willing to prioritize properly is prioritizing too much.

[00:26:25] Raise your hand if you have more than two to three priorities right now. Okay. You don’t have to raise your hand, but I’m willing to bet most of my listeners out there have more than two or three priorities.

[00:26:37] Let me tell you, there is no such thing as having any priorities if you don’t whittle them down to just a couple, because having more than two or three is having too many. When you have too many priorities, you do not have enough time in the day to get to it all.

And so what happens is, because everything feels important, nothing gets done, you end up multitasking it all to death. And multitasking is one of the worst things you can do when it comes to being productive. It is very inefficient because when you multitask things, what you’re doing is you’re really task switching and you’re losing time and energy every single time you do that. And when you try to refocus on something, you have to rethink it and get back into the groove.

So you never should have more than three priorities at once. And you don’t even have to have a full three, but you should never have more than three because there’s just not enough time.

Remember, prioritization is about making really tough choices, and that means actually picking what’s most important and working on it. And it’s not like anything else is, you know, the other stuff isn’t going to be there when you’re done. Then you just have a new priority once you are done.

All right, so I’ve already mentioned some resources for you that you can download and then some articles to go to, but I can’t leave you without at least one exercise that you can start doing to help you whenever you feel pressured and you’re struggling to figure out, okay, is this really a priority, or is it that I feel pressured to say yes when I don’t really want to? Or is this really something I need to do right now, or is it just the pressure from somebody else talking?

So whenever you face that situation:

#1: I want you to try to buy yourself some time.

So oftentimes people try to use our goodwill against us. They come to us because we’re good at something, and they also impress upon us that it’s incredibly urgent. So they need an answer immediately. Now, 99% of the time. That’s just not true. They don’t need an answer right this moment.

And even if it is somewhat important, you can usually say, look, I need to get back to you. Give me a half hour. I need to check my schedule. I need to see what I’ve got on my plate. I can’t give you an answer at this moment, but I can a half hour from now.

So I want you to buy yourself some time. This allows you to remove yourself from that immediate pressure so that you can make a more calm, clear analysis of what it is you’re being asked to do and to figure out what your true priorities are, whether they’ve changed at all, and how to address it appropriately. Okay? So that’s number one, buy yourself a bit of time, get yourself out of that situation and step away so that you can analyze it appropriately.

[00:29:36] Secondly, ask yourself : Is this really the best use of my time and energy right now?

And give an honest answer. Oftentimes it’s going to be no because you’re going to have other things that you’ve already set aside for priorities and you’re going to say, you know what? It’s not, this is something I can do later or this is something I can give to someone else. So be really honest about answering that question.

[00:30:00] And if the answer is it’s really nothing and it’s never going to be, then you want to know how to make a counter offer, because no isn’t always a hard no. Sometimes it’s, I can’t do it right now, or I can only do a piece of this, but I can also ask someone else to assist you on this. There are lots of things you can do, and it’s basically a counteroffer to counter propose how you’re going to help them.

So for that client I mentioned earlier, who developed a team and all of that, when she started that process and people kept coming to her, she had to learn to say, look, I can’t do all of that work right now. There’s just no way. But here’s what I can do. And she had kind of a process where she could refer to other people who could get started. She would look over it at the end, that type of a thing, so that, yes, she was still involved, but not to the same extent, not to the point where it was pulling her out of too many things.

[00:31:02] And then when it comes to saying no, and especially when people are trying to pressure you into saying yes when you know you really need to say no, remind yourself of when others say no to you.

Because we all do it. We all have to from time to time. Remember, saying no is just a mechanism for ensuring that you’re prioritizing what’s truly important. And unfortunately, what’s important to someone else isn’t always what’s important to you, and vice versa.

So you need to remind yourself, you know what? Other people say no and it’s okay. The world doesn’t fall apart. I don’t hate them. I might be a little disappointed because I wanted them to help, but you don’t go off not liking that person just because they said no.

And again, remember there are ways to give counter offers and to still be helpful, even though that help may not be coming from you or from you to the same extent as they originally wanted it.

All right, hopefully that helps you when it comes to saying no to people and when pushing things off, pushing off deadlines, et cetera. If you would like a little bit more about how to say no in a nice way and feel really good about it, I’ve actually written an article about that as well, so I will link to that in the show notes.

[00:32:18] So now you know the mindset shifts that you need to start making in order to do less to achieve more. Next week, we’re going to get into the practical side of it all. We are going to get into the how to the process for how to figure out what are priorities, what’s merely urgent but not a priority, etcetera.

I highly encourage you to listen to next week’s because I think it’s going to give you a lot of practical tips for how to figure this out. Before I leave you, I want to ask you a question. Are you ready to choose to drop busy as a badge of honor and instead start prioritizing your priorities? I certainly hope so.

[00:33:01] Remember, do download five minute stress solutions. It’s not just about stress prevention, but it’s also about creating that strong, resilient mentality that you will want to so that you can start really prioritizing the things that are truly priorities to you. We will talk next week. Bye for now.