I used to feel so productive doing so many things until I realised that feeling of putting my feet up at the end of the day turned into pure exhaustion, when it once felt like deserved satisfaction. Ever felt this? When I was receiving coaching on this and when listening to one of my favourite productivity podcasts, an idea came to me like an illuminating click.

All the things I was doing no longer flowed (or maybe never flowed together well), and it resulted in me feeling burned out. When your energy is low, there is a correlation between that and low confidence levels. Yes, when you feel lower in energy, it is harder to feel confident, especially in new or uncertain situations. My priorities conflicted. So this is what I did and it is something I recommend you give it a go too.

For this, you may consider top level tasks as priorities, as important things you need to get done. Avoid listing things at the micro level. Trust yourself to know the difference between each because your instinct does, so please decide to trust it. The below is to help establish a working rhythm so you may do this once a week to allow flexibility to adapt to life as you walk through it.

1. Brain dump everything you consider as your daily and weekly priority in both your professional and private life. Spend 15 minutes doing this because it helps you reduce fluff and stop questioning what you list.
2. Highlight your top two priorities in your professional life, and your top two priorities in your private life. Consider what must be done and also what is important to be done. Urgent does not always equal priority.
3. Sort the remaining into three buckets; defer it to a different day/time, delegate it, or drop it completely. A tip, anything that does not serve your top priorities gets moved out of your main focus, remember the difference between important and urgent.
4. For any commitments that conflict with your top priorities, have a conversation to renegotiate deadlines, hand off things, and decline new tasks. Yes this is uncomfortable to do at first, that’s where the Speak Afraid Method helps, but it is important in strengthening relationships, connection, and your confidence.
5. Time block time in your calendar for your chosen top priorities to get done before anything else fills your calendar and decide to protect that time like you would protect a scheduled meeting with a VIP of your choice.
6. Renew it weekly. Tip, when you decide to create buffer space during your day, it gives you greater flexibility to adapt your schedule when something important and unexpected comes up.

When you remove competing priorities, clarity comes because you created space for it. When you cram everything in, it reduces your energy and creates confusion which both lower your confidence levels.

Now it is time to decide. Do you want more confidence and to experience the feeling of energised satisfaction at the end of the day, instead of exhaustion, confusion, and doubt? Then please do this exercise. Want me to be your accountability buddy to help you action this, invest in 90 minutes with me to get your valuable use of time, energy and confidence back. I will do this with you to help you get it done, and to start benefiting from actioning it. Invest your time here.​

All the best, Susan.

​
​