[00:00:00] Hey everyone. Welcome back this week. I'm ~really~ excited to tackle a question that I ~actually~ got from one of our Gentle Productivity Club members.~ She submitted it during she submitted it ~for a q and a, but as soon as I saw it, I was like, oh my gosh, we've gotta turn this into a whole episode.~ It's so, good.~

[00:00:15] In case you didn't know, the Gentle Productivity Club ~is a membership that I offer that ~is a hustle free membership ~that is~ designed for creatives and high achievers to get stuff done,~ even the stuff they don't wanna do,~ so that they can ~really~ focus on the work that lights them up and ~focus ~on getting done with the work and getting out into their lives.

[00:00:33] ~Yes. ~No hustle included. Yes. ~So~ here's the question that came in.

[00:00:40] Do you think it's easier to be gently productive after years of working to burn out? I love the idea of being soft and gentle with myself. But I'm pretty early in my career and feel like I need to spend my spare time working now and be gentle later. A lot of the quote, be nice to yourself

[00:00:59] [00:01:00] content in my feed comes from people who worked a burnout when they were younger and are coming home to gentleness when their businesses and lives look, from my perspective, settled and successful due to their prior hard work years. The first reason I got so excited about this question is because it's something that I have wondered for a really long time. Being an internet dinosaur.

[00:01:26] I started blogging in 2008. It started my podcast in 2014, started my coaching business in 2011. And yeah, I have seen a lot of different trends come and go and for so long it was that girl boss culture. Go, You gotta hustle. I'm not even pointing fingers I was doing it too. And then we got to a point where ~a lot of ~people did start burning out.

[00:01:51] ~A lot of ~people had to pull back. The pendulum swung in the other direction. And for a lot of people that looked like a break, a sabbatical, a [00:02:00] big step back. There was a bit of a reckoning of what do I really need? How do I wanna be showing up? What does it mean to.~ I~ commit my life to whatever this is, I'm doing whatever this endeavor is, and is it working for me?

[00:02:15] I love that question. Is it working for me? And where we've come now, is ~this what I hope feels more like a middle ground? I have various thoughts on that and how well it really feels like a middle ground.~

[00:02:19] ~Go, ~What I hope is a middle ground where we can look at, we don't want the burnout. We don't want too much, too hard, but we also don't want too little or nothing. That's ~part of~ why I brought back raise your hand. Say Yes, and it is ~part of~ why I have the Gentle Productivity Club.~ Is because~ we want to ~be able to ~ show up and get things done in a way that works for us, in a way that sustains us.

[00:02:42] We're saying yes to ourselves and we're saying yes to the things that we really want to do. But as the question asked, am I only able to do that once I have hit a certain level of success? Because that is what it can feel like: that I need to hustle now [00:03:00] so I can rest later.

[00:03:01] To start us off, I want to underscore the myth that is inherent in the question, and the myth is that working harder equals more success. It's just not true.~ Sometimes it's true, and also I totally understand this depends on what industry you're in. That certain industries, the expectation is that you work yourself to the bone and you do get yourself right on the brink of burnout.~

[00:03:16] ~I hope that culture is changing in the world. I hope that by having conversations like this and learning what effectiveness is and redefining success, that will start to change. I. I am one person. I'm doing what I can. So I do understand that this may not apply globally to everybody and whether or not even if you work in one of those high pressure environments, listen to what I have to say.~

[00:03:16] ~Because I promise that there are things that you can do to be more effective and then that will give you more time and space back for yourself. So the myth, again, that hard work, working harder, working more equals more success, untrue. And~ in fact, what studies show is that when people work ~these studies have been done on~ the four day work week instead of the five day work week,~ and they show that.~

[00:03:22] People are just as effective in fewer hours, the work still gets done. Ooh, isn't that nice?

[00:03:32] ~And so if we say, okay, hustle does not equal success, then that invites us to ask the question, what does equal success?~

[00:03:32] ~And you get 10 people in a room, you're gonna have 10 different answers. You get a hundred people in a room, you're gonna have a hundred different answers. You even get 10 people that are on the same team at work in the room, you're probably still gonna have 10 different answers. So ~what we get to do when we put that myth aside, is we get to say, okay, what do I wanna believe about success, about what's possible, about what that success looks like, about what creates it?

[00:03:43] And then all of a sudden we have a different goal~ that we're aiming at.~

[00:03:47] What does bring success, ~right?~ Once you have that idea of what it is, then what helps you attain it and maintain it is being strategic, focusing on actions that you can take and [00:04:00] focusing on the most effective actions you can take towards your goal, but so often we set out towards action we don't even have a goal in mind.

[00:04:09] I don't even know what I'm aiming at.~ I if I could tell y'all the nu, if I had a dollar for every time I've done this in my business, she'd be a millionaire. So ~I'm not just pointing fingers. This is something that I do too. ~ ~And in fact, it's ~often a lot~ more comfortable and ~a lot more ~familiar to just take action than to sit down and really think about our goal and think about what is going to define success for us individually.

[00:04:23] So what I want you to think about, and you can experiment with this one, is the next time that you're sitting down to work on something, anything. ~ ~Anything. This could be reading your kid a bedtime story. It could be a work project, it could be a social media post. It could be a workout, it could be getting dressed in the morning.

[00:04:40] Think about what do you wanna get out of this? What does success look like for you? What does success look like for you here today in that moment? And then let yourself work towards that. If you aren't sure, if you don't know what success look looks like, that's okay too. What data [00:05:00] can you start to collect?

[00:05:01] What can you play with to ~help you~ figure that out? We're leaning on that discernment,~ right? That discernment. ~We're also leaning on the acceptance. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, I will link up here to the radical self-belief video.

[00:05:15] Maybe you need to accept that you aren't sure what success looks like. Maybe you need to accept that other people in your life have a different definition of success than you do. Oh ooh, Do you know how much conflict that creates? We may not be able to make it go away, but wow. What beautiful awareness~ I.~

[00:05:30] You can bring to it, and how much will that shift when you start to understand, oh, we're actually working towards different goals here. No wonder there's so much tension.

[00:05:39] ~So what we get to do ~instead of hustle hustle, until you burn out and then hustle some more, and then you burn out and then hustle some more, and then you burn out where this becomes the norm. ~ ~I've lived that way. It does not feel good, is that you get to set a more sustainable pace for yourself right away.

[00:05:56] ~Now again, I know that it feels like, yeah, but this is when Yeah, but, I'm not gonna be able to do, I'm not gonna, I'm gonna fail.~

[00:05:56] ~And~ I want you ~right here ~to ~really~ understand that [00:06:00] adopting a gentler approach to productivity, saying yes to gentle productivity, I love it, saying yes to gentle productivity. If we're only looking at your output for only looking at what gets produced often it doesn't look that different. From Hustle hustle go, it feels radically different on the inside. Oh yeah. It's so good. Things are still getting done.~ So instead of shifting, actually, what are you doing?~ What we're doing is~ we are ~completely altering your animating energy. We are altering the energy that is moving through you that is compelling you to do whatever it is that you're doing.

[00:06:34] Hustle, culture, fear. That is the animating energy, fear, lack, not enoughness. Have to catch up already behind And is that the energy that you want to animate you?

[00:06:48] One of my favorite metaphors for this is thinking about reading to your kids at night before they go to bed. ~And that is something that. A lot of people do. It's something that I did, but~ thinking about if we are moving through bedtime, reading to our kids' story [00:07:00] time with the animating energy of fear, with the fear of, if I don't do this, I'm a bad parent.

[00:07:05] If I don't do this, they're not gonna go to college or go to a good college, or they're gonna fail in kindergarten, or they're not gonna understand their ABCs, or everybody's gonna laugh at them ~or there are any number of things that the world has convinced us that to be afraid of when it comes to parenting.~

[00:07:15] Oh my God. And ~thinking about~ how is that gonna feel when you're experiencing this bedtime ~story, time ~ versus animating energy of love. Where you say, yeah, I've read to my kids at night because I love it. They love it. It's so fun.~ It's a really great time for connection. ~It's one of my favorite parts of the day.

[00:07:29] Think about how present you are going to be when you show up to that story time. Think about how you are going to carry yourself through that story time, where instead of just checking off boxes, you are living in the experience of it. And you can't tell me. You cannot tell me that the frantic fear-based experience is going to feel better.

[00:07:57] Than the ~present ~being, present experience. And then when we think [00:08:00] about effectiveness, ~we think ~about the kind of parent you wanna be, the kind of person you wanna be on this planet. What do you choose?

[00:08:06]

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[00:08:06] Here's the thing though. Let's say that I've convinced you and you're like, okay, gentle productivity. Sure. There's a whole club for it. We'll put a link ~easy to find the information, link~ in show notes.

[00:08:17] Easier said than done to actually live it, which is why there's a whole club is because this is not a one and done thing. It is not something that you're like, alright, I understand it. Therefore, check a box and now we're done. If you are someone who has hustled for so long, adopting gentle productivity, stepping into that lifestyle 'cause it is a lifestyle, is going to feel uncomfortable.

[00:08:38] It's gonna feel unfamiliar. It's going to feel like you're doing something wrong. One of my favorite things is when people come to me and ~they're~ like, oh my God, I like got everything done. It felt great. I finished work early and I was able to go and be in my life. It feels like cheating, and I'm like, that's right.

[00:08:58] That's right. [00:09:00] Because we have been so conditioned to believe that hustling is the one right way. The only right way. And if we are not like balls to the wall going as hard as we can, we're doing something wrong. ~Yeah. So~ it's gonna feel unfamiliar, it's gonna feel uncomfortable, it's gonna feel like you are not doing enough.

[00:09:18] And ~there is gonna be doubt~ that doubt is gonna be rampant. Call on your faith. That is a perfect time to call that in. Some people aren't gonna understand. Not everybody gets gentle productivity. Not everybody has the same conditioning you have ~not everybody's brain. The wor works the way that yours work. ~Not everybody's brain works the way that yours works. That doesn't make you wrong. We're also not gonna make them wrong.

[00:09:34] But ~like~ more importantly, we're not making you wrong here. What you're doing by stepping out with gentle productivity. And I also wanna talk to the people who have done the hustle and gotten the success, and then now they're finding a different way because we're all always at the beginning of something, is you're laying the foundation for what you want to continue.

[00:09:51] You're planting the seeds that you want to grow and that you want to harvest later. Otherwise, what happens is you're gonna have to shift gears mid [00:10:00] flow. It's gonna be painful, it's gonna be jarring. It as somebody who's had to do that many times, not good for business, not good for success. To have to hit pause like that, and I look back on so many different places and so many different choices I made.

[00:10:18] I'm looking back with grace, but I'm like, if I had adopted and embraced an easier way, then I wouldn't have ever have gotten to that point where then I had to walk so much back and recover. It's if you're driving a car. And you're running late, and so you think the answer is to speed and run red lights, which nobody listening to. This does, I know, speed and run red lights and, run stop signs, because that feels like the only way that you can be in control. And then you get into an accident, then you're really late, ~right?~

[00:10:47] So you could have gone at a more sustainable pace the whole time. ~Wow.. Trust me when I say that ~building a shaky foundation now is going to require a huge course correction down the road. So why not look at what foundation can you build now? Also, becoming the [00:11:00] person who everybody counts on to always overdeliver and always go above and beyond. That is a hard one to walk back later.

[00:11:07] Okay, so how do you proceed? What do you do now?~ Do you want help with this? Obviously~ there's a whole club around gentle productivity run by this awesome life coach who's really fun and really smart and good at what she does. So you can come join us there. But here are five more steps that you can think about with your what's next?

[00:11:23] Number one, remember that you can do so much more with a balanced nervous system than with a dysregulated nervous system. We wanna call on discernment. We wanna hone our critical thinking skills. You wanna hone your creativity. You are not gonna do that when you're dysregulated. But so often we think if only I can stay dysregulated for a little bit longer.

[00:11:45] You have to trust yourself enough to know when you need to slow down. Yes, it's going to feel slower, but the quality of what you're able to create is going to be so much higher.~ And again, how are we? How are we defining success? Quality, right? Quality ~

[00:11:55] ~number two.~ Number two, remember that you [00:12:00] are defining and working on success for your life. All the time, not just when you're at work.

[00:12:06] ~We have all, ~we've all experienced or witnessed the, I'm gonna do everything I can for success at work and come home and just be a shell of a human. But that's your life too. And so what are you trading, ~right?~ What are you trading and thinking about, what does living in integrity mean to you? What does that look like to you? Not just looking at your career through a lens, but your whole life? How do you wanna be moving through it? Thinking about that animating force of love, joy, creativity. Oh, versus the animating energy of fear. Number three, measure effectiveness. Let yourself measure effectiveness. Use that as your marker of success, and know that you can adapt and evolve and shift as you need to. Not only can you but trust that you will, that is part of figuring out something new. [00:13:00] That is part of being in this experience and being on this journey, and it's okay to need to do that.

[00:13:06] Not only is it okay, that's great because every step you take, you get more information and then yes, please, let's adapt. So you get to be flexible and fluid and nimble this whole time and even the permission to do that. What a ,gift. What a gift.

[00:13:24] Number remember that you, hi. Remember that you are not even gonna be able to call on the discernment that you might need the, faith that you might need, the trust that you might need, that radical self-belief that you might need until you slow down.

[00:13:49] So we can't hurry up and get there.

[00:13:51] I wish we could because if we could, man, you and I would be there already. We'd have been there 10 minutes ago, ~right?~ We haven't even finished this. [00:14:00] But that's not how it works. So can you practice a slowdown? It doesn't even need to be forever. Can five, gimme five minutes of slowing down right now.

[00:14:11] And I know there are some of you that are listening to this. I'd like two x. Me too. I do it too.

[00:14:16] But what are we rushing through to get to ~right?~ What are we hurrying up to get to, and what is the energy that is driving you through that

[00:14:25] as you practice slowing down? Also practice setting intentional goals, being deliberate, letting yourself know what's a priority and what's not. Ah, it's so scary. I know. How can I pick a priority when they're all so important? I know I'm working on a video for that.

[00:14:48] And number five is get into the habit of checking in with yourself. It sounds so simple. Just check in with, that's all I have to do. Just check in with [00:15:00] myself. Yep. Check in with yourself. Check in with how your life feels, and notice the places in your life where you feel obligated to compromise. To compromise your values, to compromise what you want, to compromise, what matters most.

[00:15:15] To compromise the person you are on the inside to compromise who you wanna be and how you wanna show up. You don't have to say no to them right away, but just notice. Notice where those compromises are and where they aren't, and notice how your life feels, because the noticing is going to lead to new levels of knowing, which is gonna help all of those new big yeses unfold, and it's amazing.

[00:15:45] So I hope this helps. I hope this answers the question. If it brings up other questions, then that is doing its job. Let me know what those are like, and subscribe and do all the things. Thank you all for being here. If you want more information about the Gentle Productivity Club, [00:16:00] click that link in the show notes.

[00:16:01] You are all amazing, big love. I'll see you soon.