Productivity | ep56
About this episode:
It’s hard to feel productive when our to-do lists never get shorter. Truth is, productivity has less to do with what you’re doing externally and more with what you’re believing internally.
Listen to this episode to change your relationship with productivity and learn about Shirin’s Productivity Protocol.
A quote to take with you:
“Love, productivity is a feeling. It’s the moment that you finally say to yourself “this is enough.”
This week, I invite you to…
Ask yourself:
Productivity means…
In my household, productivity was….
Want to dive deeper through the full journal prompts?
If you want to be in the know and get each Mindset Monday straight to your inbox complete with journal prompts to take you even further, get on my email list.
About your host, Shirin Eskandani
Hi, love! I’m Shirin.
Coach, speaker, writer, and life alchemist.
I teach you how to trust your intuition again, tune out all the BS, and let your heart lead the way.
Because once you strengthen your inner GPS, decisions become easier, boundaries become clearer, and belly laughs become a daily thing.
A LITTLE BIT ABOUT ME:
I’m a certified life coach (accredited through the International Coach Federation)
My husband and I met on Instagram and we live in Brooklyn, NY with our plant babies
I have a masters degree in Music and was a professional opera singer for twelve years. I worked all over the world singing on stage at Carnegie Hall and the Metropolitan Opera (more on that later…).
I believe in the woo just as much as I do the work (internal and external). No amount of crystals and affirmations will make up for a lack of a healthy mindset and aligned action.
I love all the Real Housewives franchises. Don’t make me choose one… seriously, don’t.
+ Read the episode transcript here
Welcome to wholehearted coaching the podcast. If you're looking for more purpose, more passion, more joy in your life and you have come to the right place. Let's create your dream life while living your dream life. Okay, love. Hi love. Welcome to wholehearted coaching the podcast. This is where we take a deeper dive into my mindset Monday post, which you can read on Instagram at wholehearted coaching, or you can get the full post plus journal prompts. When you sign up for my email list, you can do that in the show notes. Or you can head to my website wholehearted dash coaching calm. So in today's episode, we're going to be looking at productivity. But we're looking at productivity the whole hearted way, which means that we're going to be looking less at what you're getting done. But how you're getting it done. What I'm going to be talking about is probably going to go against the grain of what so many coaches and people in the world tell you about productivity, which is about focusing on the external focusing on the results and your achievements. And I have found that the more we base our productivity on what we get done, the less productive we are. So in today's episode, we're going to be talking about a way in which you can become more productive, but it's less about what you're doing on the outside, and more about what's going on inside. So today's Mindset Monday reads, productivity is a feeling productivity is the acknowledgement that only you can give yourself that this is enough, you are only productive as you allow yourself to feel. So I'm going to talk to you about a cycle that I used to go through all the time, and I have a feeling that maybe the cycle is going to resonate with you. So I'd start off Mondays feeling really good feeling really on top of it, I'd have my to do list of everything that I wanted to get done that week, right listed out sometimes I'd even get fancy and put boxes next to them. So I could put you know, a tick or a checker or whatever I wanted to do on Monday, you know, Monday morning feeling good. And then all of a sudden, Monday would kind of finish and I'd be like, oh, okay, I, I didn't get all the stuff I wanted to get done today. But but that's okay, that's okay, I have, I have an entire week ahead of me, it's gonna be fine. And then Wednesday would roll around the middle of the week. And that's when the overwhelm and anxiety would creep in. Because I'd start to look at the list I made at the beginning of the week. And I'd realized that I had barely gotten anything done, or at least not gotten enough, done, right, being very realistic with the amount of time I had left in the week and realizing Holy crap, I can't do this. And so then Friday would come around. And it would just be like mocking me like, honestly, Thursday night, I'd be like, Girl, you can't get most of this list done. And Friday would come around. And you know, I'd accomplish some of the goals on that list. But there were just so many left over. And that's when I go into that shame spiral on Fridays of judging myself, and really getting frustrated at myself picking myself apart saying to myself, Oh my gosh, you're so lazy, you're not motivated, why can't you just be organized? And then we'd head into the weekend. And on Monday, I would start this entire cycle over? Is this resonating for you? Is this a pattern that maybe comes up for you at some points in your life in your week? This was kind of what my week to week was like. And I started to realize that honestly, the thing that was tripping me up was that I was basing my productivity on what I was getting done. Now hear me out here, productivity is external to a certain sense, right? It's the things that we're getting done. But our lists never get shorter. And if you are a dreamer, which I know you are, because you're in this community, those lists just keeps getting longer and even more challenging. So even if you are getting stuff done on that list, you're going to be adding more stuff to that list. Right? Because I always say, with every goal we achieve, comes another laundry list of goals that we have to kind of tackle and if you're also not getting stuff done on that list, just regardless, right? So if you're getting stuff done on the list, the list keeps getting longer. And if you do just aren't getting stuff done on the list? Well, the list is certainly not getting any shorter either, right, you're just adding on to what you need to do. Right. So our lists become such a source of anxiety and overwhelm for us. And unfortunately, we are basing how productive We are, we are defining how productive we are on this never ending list. Like, I want you to be really honest with yourself, is there has there ever been a moment in your life where your to do list or your to do list was, was short was like was, you know, that didn't have a whole lot of things on it. I mean, maybe on vacation, maybe around holiday time, maybe around those times in your life, when you're really making a concerted effort to not do as much the lists are shorter, right. But in our day to day lives, when we're trying to kind of, you know, balance our personal and professional lives, those lists just don't get shorter, really. And if we define how productive we are based off of those never ending lists, we're always going to fall short. And because we always fall short, we're always going to fall short in our own eyes and our own estimation, that's when we start getting down on ourselves. And that's when we start saying really unkind things to ourselves, which makes us feel really unmotivated. So it kind of becomes this double edged sword of Okay, you know, looking at your list, you're not getting as much done. But then you're also really getting down on yourself, which makes you feel less motivated, which which is no place for you to get things done. Is that making sense? Is that resonating, right? So we are defining our productivity based off of these lists. And because the list never end, right, we never feel productive. And because we do not feel productive, we start to believe we are not productive. And because we believe we're not productive, we're feeling really unmotivated, we feel incapable. And so then, really on an external level, on a tangible level, we're not productive, right, because we have no motivation. We have this deep belief that we are just lazy, unproductive people. And I realized I wanted to get out of this cycle, this cycle of getting to Friday and feeling like a total schlub feeling like I hadn't done anything. Because when I got really honest with myself, I was actually being productive. I was doing things, but I wasn't doing all of the things. And so I realized that I really had to change my relationship with productivity, with how I defined it. And this started with me really realizing that productivity is something that I can only grant myself, productivity is that moment, when you say to yourself, this is enough. And this is good work. This is enough, and this is going to work. Because the truth is that productivity is a feeling. It's that feeling you have within yourself, that you are capable, that you are doing things and that you are doing them as well as you can, when we do not give ourselves permission to have this feeling this feeling of I am productive, we are doing ourselves such a disservice love, I don't need to know you to know that you're getting shit done. Now we're going to have seasons in our life where we are able and capable to get more done than others. But wherever you are at, I know that you are getting shit done. And the more you ignore the things that you are getting done, the more you bypass them, the more that you sidestep them, the more that you really give into this lie that you are being unproductive, then you are never going to be productive because you are the only person who can give yourself that feeling that belief that you are productive. No list is ever going to give you that feeling because our lists never end. So I want to talk to you about what I did, to grant myself to give myself permission to feel productive, which in turn allowed me to believe that I was productive, which in turn actually made me more productive. Because I saw myself as a capable person, which motivated me to do things I want to share with you my productivity protocol. This is what I used to help me change and reframe my relationship around productivity to help me feel more productive, which in turn changed my beliefs about who I was. So the first step of the productivity protocol is to celebrate yourself more is to acknowledge what you are getting done. Love each and every single day, you are getting things done, and you're just ignoring them, you're bypassing them, right, because of that to do list that is at the back of your mind, or perhaps it's on your desk, and you can see it that To Do List makes you think that this accomplishment isn't enough, that you have all these other things you need to do. So you don't have time to celebrate this, that in fact, this isn't worthy of celebration, because it's not big enough, right? That this is not enough. But the more that we sidestep and ignore these accomplishments, these achievements that we have every single day, the more we're going to feel like we are unproductive people, right? unlocking our productivity is acknowledging those moments that we have each and every day where we are actually being productive, where we are finishing tasks when we are doing things. And so this requires you to really reframe what you believe in accomplishment is what you believe and achievement is because we are so busy, as Bernie Brown says chasing the extra ordinary that we forget about the ordinary moments each and every single day where we are allowed to celebrate and to be enjoy. When I started celebrating the small things that I was doing every day, that's when things shifted. Because I started to feel this really amazing feeling of productivity, right of being capable of doing things that I said I was going to do. And by unlocking those feelings, I became, in my own eyes a productive person. So this requires us to reframe what we see as worthy of celebration. And taking those small things that we're doing that are not small, right? The small things are what add up to the really big things, and taking a moment to acknowledge them to celebrate them. And when I say acknowledge and celebrate, I don't mean you know, you got to break out the champagne. But you know, you could do that too. But it's the simplest things like patting yourself on the back saying, Oh my gosh, you did that literally y'all. I do this to myself, every single day, when I do something that is on my list, something that maybe I have been delaying, I will say out loud, I'm so proud of you, you did that. Or media celebration for you is putting on your favorite song and dancing. Maybe it's texting a friend or a partner and just saying, Oh my gosh, I did something that I have been delaying forever, whatever that is for you love. But you need to start acknowledging what you are doing today. Because I know you are doing things each and every single day that are important that will add up to the big things. Now science also says that this is incredibly important as well. When we stop and acknowledge our achievements or accomplishments, what ends up happening is our body creates dopamine, those feel good chemicals. And so our body starts equating our work our day to day work with this feel good rush with this dopamine rush. And so it encourages us to do more and more, right, because the more we seem to work, the more we seem to do the things we want to do, we get this really amazing feeling inside. However, when we do not celebrate when we do not acknowledge ourselves, we no longer get this beautiful dopamine rush. And so our bodies start equating doing work with nothing. And that's when our bodies literally stopped us from getting shit done. Because your body's like, okay, you're putting all this work in and like, what's the point? There's like, No rush, there's no good feelings. Why are we doing this hard work? And we've all been there. Have you ever had that moment where your body just shuts down? Sometimes it shuts down by you know, you get a cold or your back gives out? Or you just cannot find the motivation to do anything and you just, you know, lay on your couch and you binge an entire season of 90 day fiance. I'm not saying I've done that. But I'm also not not saying that I've done that. That is your body taking care of you. That is your body saying no. We're not going to do things because there is no positive Have outcome to this thing. So acknowledging and celebrating is important on an emotional, spiritual and physical level. So this week, in honor of the productivity protocol, in honor of celebrating yourself, I want you to start really looking at what you are doing day to day, whether that is just getting out of bed, whether that is just putting on a real pants that don't have a drawstring. And celebrating yourself doing something small, again, putting a song on having your favorite piece of chocolate, whatever that is for you. And see what shifts see what shifts when you actually start to acknowledge what you are doing. And reframing what is worthy of acknowledgement and celebration, let me tell you, things are going to shift. Alright, so now we're at the second step of the productivity protocol. And this is gonna sound counterintuitive, but it is to do less. Now listen, we all have our grand to do list, or I have one of those, it's this big to do list of all these projects, all these things that I want to execute. Now I'm not a very like, organizational person. But if I was, I could see how it would really serve me to take that grand list, and maybe break it down into quarters or seasons, or months, whatever that is. But listen, we all have a grand list. And that's a wonderful thing to have. But when it comes to a weekly, or a daily to do list, we got to get really realistic, we have to start thinking on a more feasible level. And so creating weekly or daily to do lists that have less things in them is a really big part of feeling productive. Because if you can look at that list, and you can see those things you've ticked off. And then of course, celebrate them, as we talked about, that creates a huge shift in your feelings, you start to feel like oh, I'm productive, which makes you believe that you are productive. So I want to share with you my way of organizing my day, which helps me feel productive, which allows me to clearly see what I can celebrate. And now I have never shared this methodology outside of my group coaching programs and my one on one clients. So my secret sauce to feeling more productive is 331. I developed 331, after kind of putting together all of these really brilliant ideas by brilliant coaches that I loved looking at how they structured their day, and then seeing what worked for me. So this is what 331 is, I create every day three personal tasks, I want to get done. Three professional tasks I want to get done. And one intention. So this would look like perhaps three personal tasks, I don't know, going to the gym, making myself a nourishing dinner, calling my mom, three professional tasks, finishing my landing page, emailing a client, and you know leading a group coaching call. And then the intention for the day is something like joy or wonder or curiosity groundedness presence, I love 331 because it allows me to focus on what is most important. And it also makes me be really realistic. I create goals that are challenging, you know, daily goals that are challenging, that are a bit of a stretch, but that I also know that I can get done. Now, after so many years of doing 331 I kind of know what that looks like. But this is going to take some experimenting for you, right? Because you know, I remember when I first used to do this, I'd be like, Alright, today I'm going to write an entire landing page. And I'm going to reach out to this client and I'm going to lead a call. And then I realized No, no, no, no, that's way too much stuff. And so this is also just you experimenting with what is realistic for you. If you want to get a deeper dive into that I really recommend my podcast on sweetspot goals. sweetspot goals is a way of you figuring out what is a stretch for you. But what is also realistic for you in this moment in your life. This is a game changer, right, knowing what goals are feasible for us in this moment that also allow us to get where we want to be because so often we create goals that are outside of our scope, outside the scope of our lives of what is being asked of us professionally and personally of what we are capable of on an emotional, spiritual and physical level. So what 331 really allows me to do is honor where I'm at, and also honor where I want to be going. That's a big part of the equation, those two things. Where are you now and where do you Want to go. So when I create a 331 list, I can easily I know that I can tick off those things, which makes me feel really productive. And if I add anything to that list, well, that's just the cherry on top of all of it. So 331, I encourage you to try that out this week and see what shifts and I love having the intention, be part of it, because the intention makes me have to check in each and every single day, and see where I'm at emotionally and spiritually. So if I'm feeling really kind of off, if I'm feeling like all over the place, my intention is something like groundedness, or presence or just being right here. If I wake up, and I'm feeling super inspired, then maybe the word is inspiration, joy, curiosity, discovery, I love 331. Because it's not just about the professional, it's also about the personal, it's also about that spiritual, it's about you checking in with yourself. And it's really allowing you to get to know yourself better. So the tricky thing, the sneaky thing with the productivity protocol, even though it's all about doing less and taking your time, it actually makes you more productive. Now, listen, that was not why I created this, because the reason why I created the productivity protocol was because I was tired of feeling unproductive, when when I looked on paper, I actually was being productive, I was tired of that I wanted to be able to acknowledge what I was getting done. However, the byproduct I found in my own life and in my clients lives, is that you end up being more productive. Because when you give yourself permission to feel productive, you start to believe you are productive and capable, which makes you more motivated to do things. You know, in the past, I would start Mondays with the underlying belief that I am not capable, I am lazy, I am not a productive person. And so because I had that underlying belief, I just wasn't motivated to do the things I wanted to do. But now I start Mondays with the belief that I am capable, that I can do the things that I set out to do. Which makes me now a quote unquote, incredibly productive human being right on a very tangible external level. I am a productive being. But that is because I shifted what was going on on the inside. So this isn't about hacks. This isn't about you getting up at 5am. This isn't about you, you know, having a bullet journal or this type of journal or that type of journal? No, I hope what you're realizing in this episode is that those things don't matter unless you are giving yourself the permission to feel productive. Unless you are acknowledging yourself. You are truly your own key to productivity. You have the key love and the key is in you allowing yourself to feel productive. So love this week, I really encourage you to celebrate your accomplishments more, to reframe what accomplishments are worthy of celebration, to reframe what day to day, or what I call micro celebrations look like and to create lists that not only nurture your professional life, but your personal life, and to create lists that honor where you're at, and honor where you want to be going. I promise you, if you start doing these things, if you start implementing the productivity protocol, everything will shift. Yes, you will be more productive, which is whatever, it's great, whatever, I guess it's good. However, your experience of your day to day your experience of your own life is going to transform. And that is what is the most important thing. Love, you are capable, you are productive. You are getting shit done. Now, it's time for you to acknowledge that to see that, to celebrate that. Until next week. I'll talk to you then. Thank you so much for joining me this week. If you liked this week's episode, please share it with a friend. comment and rate this podcast until next week. See you later. Love