Clutterbug - Real-Life Hacks and Tips to Declutter, Organize and Clean your Home Fast - How To Be More Productive, WITHOUT Working Harder | Clutterbug Podcast # 157

Episode Date: January 24, 2023

We all wish we could do more, without working harder.  In this episode, we're talking about how to be more Productive, WITHOUT working harder. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Let's talk about how to be more productive without doing more work. Hey, Clutterbugs and welcome back to the Clutterbug podcast. I love talking about productivity because I struggle to be really productive. And I'm also pretty obsessed with this. So I read all the books, all the hacks. I love talking to all these experts because I want the shortcut. I want to have and do incredible things with my life. but I'm also inherently lazy.

I just, I just don't want to work for it, you guys. So how? How can we be productive without filling every moment of our day with to-does and stuff? Because for me, being productive doesn't mean being busy. It doesn't. It means getting the stuff done that I want to get done, pushing the needle forward in life,

achieving the things that I really want to achieve that make me feel proud of myself. and I still want time to relax. I still want to not feel rushed and busy. Being lazy, and I hate using this word lazy, but I really don't know another word procrastinating, putting things off, and not doing the things that I know I should do has been a trend my entire life. And I grew up in a family where, especially my mom, really prided herself on being hardworking. that's something that I mean it's fundamentally her identity she is a hardworking person she judges people that aren't hard workers she measures herself her success everything on how much she got

done that day or how much she got done that week and she's a list maker she's a task masker and she judges other people who she feels aren't being as productive as they should and so growing up as somebody who wasn't, I didn't have a natural drive to be hardworking. I really felt bad about myself a lot. And because I never could work as hard as she did, I just didn't have that oomph. I wasn't that person that could get up at 5 a.m. and work until I fell into bed at night. That just is not me. I felt like, well, I can't be like that. So why bother at all? I kind of went the other approach and took the full, I'm just going to not care about anything. I'm not going to do anything. I'm not going to do I'm going to be just kind of a bum.

And that didn't make me feel good either. And what I've really discovered in my 43 years on this planet is that there is a way to be incredibly productive without having to be a hard worker all the time, without having to be a perfectionist, without having to do everything the right way. and I would even argue, now this is, maybe this is going to sound like a really jerk thing to say, but for as hard as my mother worked, she never really got ahead in life. She worked harder than anyone I've ever known and yet lived paycheck to paycheck. And yet never really got out of the rat race.

Even now she's retired and she's always worried about money. They don't live in a big mansion. very modestly and she worked like a dog, worked her freaking butt off because I think she spent a lot. I know she spent a lot of time doing things, working at things that at the end of the day didn't matter. We're not pushing the needle forward. We're not getting her further ahead in life. And for me, that's what being productive really is. It's how can we streamline. How can we we how can we manage our time so that when we are working it's only on things that are really making a difference that are really going to put us ahead in life so that we're not working for nothing

and i hate i hope my mom doesn't listen to this podcast but i really feel like she spent the majority of her life working for the sake of working and having nothing to show for it I'm definitely not going to say that I'm some sort of productivity expert because I'm not, but I have found ways to get pretty cool stuff done to earn a great living, to have a tidy home, to feel a little bit more at least on top of my life than I did before without having to work harder or work more with still being able to maintain a life of, I don't want to say leisure, but work a whole lot less than most people that I know. And so I'm going to share some of my favorite,

my favorite hacks with you, tips with you, take it or leave it, take from it what you will. But I also want to share some tips from other people of things I don't do that I probably should do because it's going to be different for everyone. It isn't one-size-fits-all, and what works for one person doesn't work for everyone. So I'm hoping that you grab some things,

from this podcast that can help you push your needle forward, that can help you get more done without exhausting yourself and without it taking away from your leisure time, your relaxation time, your family time, and from the things you really love doing. I just got done in an interview with Jordan Page, who is definitely a, I mean, she's a productivity guru, but I was surprised to find out she also has ADHD and sucks at planning and isn't great I'd follow through. So she really had to find, she had to hack the system. And one thing that she does that she finds really effective that I definitely want to try is time blocking.

And what time blocking basically means is it's helping you stay focused by throughout the day you give yourself three or four hour chunks and you say I'm only working on XYZ in this chunk. And some of those chunks can be dedicated to relaxation. Some of them can be family time. But we're not going to be checking our email or going on TikTok or having a snack during house cleaning chunk or during get stuff done chunk. So I love this because I've never done this before, but I'm actually really thinking about starting to implement this because I am the queen of getting distracted and falling down the rabbit hole and procrastination. But one thing that does motivate me is deadlines. So if I'm like, I have to do something by Thursday at four, I'm probably

going to start doing it Thursday at three. You know what I mean? I'm going to like, that deadline is going to motivate me to actually do it. And so time blocking really kind of acts like deadlines. It's a loose structure. So you're not saying every minute of every day or even every hour of every day. And day is designated to something, but you are saying, I'm going to get this, this, and this done by this time. And so by noon, you're going to have your kids off to school, you're going to be dressed, you're going to be ready for the day, you're going to have your morning routine done, you're going to have your load of laundry started, you're going to have worked for an hour. I don't know what yours is going to look like. Everybody is different, but managing your time in this

time blocking technique could be very helpful. And I see how it especially could be helpful for people who are easily distracted, people who definitely procrastinate and tend to, yeah, just like me, put everything off. And tomorrow, I'm going to do it tomorrow, or I'm going to do it later, I'm going to do it after dinner. So time blocking could be really effective for people like that. That being said, I have to play devil's advocate for a second because it also seems like a freaking crap ton of work. It seems like a lot of effort. And I also, I don't like to be told what to do and I don't like to be put in a box. And so this may be one of those things that I try a few times and think, man, that's too much work. It's too much work to do less work. It's too much work to save time.

I don't know. I'm going to try it. I really am going to give myself a good week, a solid week of trying to come up with a time-blocking schedule and give it a try because you never know. I don't know if this is going to work until I try it. And if I fail, if I try this and I don't succeed, it doesn't mean anything other than this one wasn't for me. That's what failure means. It doesn't mean that you're a failure. It doesn't mean that you're not good at time management. It means this one technique isn't your jam. And that's cool. Try a different one. One thing that does work for me is a daily to-do list. I used to be a person that hated to-do lists, probably because of my mother.

That's a whole other podcast. But when I did make a to-do list, it was like 50 gazillion things. I was nuts. I was like, I'm going to do every freaking thing. And then I was overwhelmed by a list that felt like it was unattainable or it was something that I couldn't do in the interim. I have definite time distortion. So if I can't see and visualize how to accomplish something within 15 minutes, 30 minutes, or maybe an hour

max, if I can't see the end result of something, I'm not going to be motivated to do it. I'm a finisher. And so I have to have lists that allow me to visualize getting them done in a reasonable amount of time, which is why every single morning I just write my top three things down that I don't want to get done that day. Today, it's this podcast and it's vacuuming the house because the stairs have dog hair all over them. And it's making a meal plan with the food that I have because, again, I was very inspired by Jordan Page. And that's coming up next week. But those are my three top things that I want to get done today. And so I just write it on the fridge. And it's easy. I mean,

if it gets to like eight o'clock at night and I'm like crap I still didn't do the things on my list. Those are things I can knock off really quickly and still feel very good about myself, that I've accomplished those things. And there's a lot of other things I'm getting done throughout the day. I'm sure that there are or maybe they're not. And that doesn't matter either. But the point is giving myself the three top things that are going to move the needle forward that are going to give me the biggest bang for my buck and writing those three things

down every day helps me be more productive on the things that matter. It means if I spill juice on my floor, it's like, okay, well, mopping the house isn't on my to-do list today. I'm just going to clean it up with my sock or whatever. You know what I mean? Like today, ooh, I'm noticing things are a little dusty. That's not my major to do today. I'll brain dump it. I'll get to it later this week. Maybe I'll take my little swiffer though and I'll just get that spot that I notice there's some dust. I have freedom. I have fly. I have fly. flexibility because I'm not giving myself too much on my plate. I'm focusing on the things that matter and giving myself permission to do the rest of this stuff kind of shitty. It doesn't mean I'm not doing

anything else, but I'm not making that a priority. So yeah, I'm, I don't know if today on my list wasn't doing this meal planning and making the, maybe I throw in a frozen pizza and that's fine. Because I'm getting the things done that matter. And this is something. my mother was not doing. She would have cleaned the entire house on her list a few times a week. And she would be polishing the crystals on her chandelier and wiping her baseboards on her hands and knees and scrubbing around the toilet with a toothbrush and canning all these pickles because there was cucumbers that the farmer had next door that he hadn't completely cleared the field so she would make a million pickles. No one would ever eat these pickles. Why are you spending days making pickles? Or she would

make her own homemade chili sauce and can tons and tons and tons and tons and tons of jars, most of which would just be collecting dust for years and years and years and years and never getting eaten. But she filled her time with things that she thought were important because to her everything was a priority. Everything was important because her list was too big and she wasn't prioritizing. She wasn't giving herself permission to do things shitty. So I want you right now, this is going to be fun.

While you're listening to this podcast, I don't know what you're doing. Maybe you're driving. Maybe you're cleaning. Maybe you're decluttering. Maybe you're just chilling. What are three things that you want to get done today? What can you do that will push the needle forward? Can you declutter one trash bag?

Can you organize your fridge? Can you write yourself some goals for the year, some big things that you want to achieve? Because if you don't know what you're willing, working towards. If you don't know what your big end goal is, how could you possibly know what to prioritize every day to push the needle forward? Where's that needle going? Where's the end? What is your big thing that you want to do in 2023? Maybe it's your house. Maybe you want to write a book. Maybe you want to start a business. Maybe you want to, I don't know, lose 20 pounds. Maybe you want to start working out. Maybe you want to have more family time. Maybe you want to visit your mother more.

I can tell I need to visit my mother. She's obviously on my mind. My point is that's an important part of prioritization and productivity too, is knowing the big end goal so that you can break things down. So you can identify those three daily tasks and have at least one of them working towards your greater goal. Before we talk more about some amazing productivity hacks, ways that you can get more done in less time.

I have to think today's podcast sponsor, Cozy Earth. Cozy Earth, I tried for the first time because it was one of Oprah's favorite things year their bamboo sheet set. And I had gone the first 40 years of my life without treating myself to really good sheets. And when I tried Cozy Earth sheets, there was no going back. I mean, it's not like they're outrageously priced, but they feel like luxury. They're such amazing quality. and they have luxury pillows, sheets, blankets, and more.

They definitely are temperature regulating so soft. And no matter how many times I wash them, they always look brand new. Right now, I think you should treat yourself this Valentine's Day and snuggle up with some cozy Earth best-selling bamboo sheets. And you can save 35% off storewide when you use the promo code Clutterbug. Go to CozyEarth.com and use that promo code, clutterbug. Whenever I meet someone who I really admire, someone who I look at, I'm like, wow, you are so freaking successful, whether that's financially in the business or just their life,

like they're succeeding in life. I always want to know their secret. Like what is it? What are you doing that sets you apart from other people? Is it that you're a harder worker? Is it that you, I don't know, are smarter? Are you? Like, what is going on? I want to know because I want to replicate that success in some way. And I'm never going to be these people. But if I can be a little bit better, that's my goal. Just a little bit better. And the fascinating thing is what I find the, and I'm very blunt.

So I'm like, hey, what's your secret? Why are you so awesome? What do you do? You work hard? You get up a five. Are you a 5 a.m. person? And the thing that I'm so shocked by, the most successful people that I've talked to, whether it's Catherine from Do It on a Dime, Jordan Page, who I just met, who's like insane CEO running like multi-seven figure businesses.

She's crazy pants. I've met so many, so many incredibly successful entrepreneurs. And the surprising thing, and people like just kick in butt. I have a friend who has 12 kids. Her house is immaculate. She's her and her relationship with her husband is insane. Her kids are all straight A students. What is happening here?

Like, what is your secret? And what I'm hearing over and over again is not, yeah, I get up at seven and I work my butt off and I work till I go to sleep. I do think that's Lisa from Farmhouse on the Boone. I do think that's her method. She's amazing and insane. But most of them that I meet, they're saying the same thing, which is basically follow the 80-20 rule. Only 20% of what you do each day produces 80% of it. your results. Eliminate the things that don't matter. Identify the things that don't matter.

And this is something that I need to be better at, but also we all need to really hear. Because we have this perfectionist mindset, so many of us have this perfectionist mindset where we want, if we're going to do something, we're going to do it right. I know for a fact that you listening today are wasting precious time doing things the hard way. There are things in your life that you can either do by taking shortcuts and get the same results or similar results or eliminate entirely and they will not affect your bottom line. They will not make that big of a difference. And some of those things, I'm just going to say it, there are clothes you don't need to fold. there are things you don't need to scrub.

There are things that you are doing that are unnecessarily taking your time. So what is giving you the biggest impact? What is that 80-20 rule? And when it comes to your home, we know it's dishes and laundry and a five-minute tidy-up. If we focus on those things, the rest of the crap does not matter. My sister is a perfect example of this. I love my sister and I hate throwing her under the bus, I see her all the time, so this is something that I've seen her live this mistake over and over again.

She lives in a house that is so cluttered. She has laundry clean and dirty all over every surface, papers, just stuff everywhere. She's mortified by her home. And yet when I talk to her, at least once a week when I'm talking to her, She's like, oh, I'm scrubbing the house today. She's washing the walls. She's washing baseboards. She's cleaning light fixtures.

She's refolding all the kids' clothes in the drawers. Wasting her time because, yes, maybe she has dusty or dirty walls. But what is going to get her to a place where her house feels under control that she can get caught up on things is if she's doing the dishes. You can't find a clean plate in her kitchen and yet she's washing her walls. She needs to do the dishes. She has to do the laundry and she has to declutter. Those three things, if those were the only thing she did and she didn't wash or scrub or do anything else, she would still be better off. And so what are you doing? What are you doing that you can eliminate?

What are you doing that doesn't matter? Are you spending too much time on emails? Are you going to meetings that don't matter? you having phone calls with people to discuss things that don't matter? What are you doing that you can eliminate? How can you follow the 80-20 rule? Because this really truly is the secret from all the people that I talk to that I admire the most. They're taking shortcuts. They're not doing everything all the time perfectly. They're allowing themselves to do a lot of things really shitty. Don from the minimal mom is one of the hardest working people I know, she does not fold, she does not scrub, she does not spend time on things that are not going to make a huge impact in her life.

And therefore, she is the most productive person that I think I personally know. And I just, I admire her so much because she knows the difference. All right. Just have to throw that out there. Think about your own life. What can you get rid of? What can you do shitty? Maybe instead of scrubbing your floors, you can just split.

you can just spray mop them. Or instead of dusting and taking everything off your shelves, get yourself a swift or duster 360. Maybe you can pass on some of the harder stuff and just do the things that are going to push the needle forward like dishes. And if you find like, holy crap, I can't keep up on dishes daily, get rid of some, declutter some. And then you'll be forced to do dishes more often. Or give yourself permission to use paper plates. We got to do what we got to do to get to a place. where life feels easy, where it feels effortless to just maintain, right?

And so we can have that time to do the things that are going to get us where we want to go, whether it's earning more money, being healthier, having more time with family, whatever yours is, the way to get there is getting rid of the stuff that doesn't matter. Okay, so here's another tip that, again, all the gurus, all the people say, we call it eating your frog but what it really means is tackling the most challenging task before lunch so doing the big thing first the really thing that's going to like give you the biggest impact and so schedule it in the morning get it out of the way because the rest of your day basically the eat your frog um i think it was mark twain who said if the first thing you do every day is eat a frog the rest of your day

is going to feel easy and it's true. We procrastinate the thing we know we should do. And we don't want to do other little things. So usually because we're like, well, if I'm going to be working, I should be doing this. So we will fill our day with nonsense that isn't going to make a difference. And by the end of the day, we're exhausted. We've worked. We've done.

We've filled our day and yet achieved nothing. And so if we do the big thing before lunch, when our mind is fresh, early on, we will be more productive, hands down, and stop no matter what. So it doesn't matter if you have a busy day, you have work, you have a ton of meetings, save all that crap for the afternoon. If you're like, I have to grocery shop, I have to save that crap for the afternoon. I have to clean the house. Save that crap for later. What is something big, challenging? What's the big thing you want to do? that's going to push the needle forward today, do that in the morning. Do that first. Forced yourself

to get that done, even a chunk of it, even a piece of it. And I promise you, you're going to see huge results. For me, my big thing is always creating content because that's what I do for a living. And I have a million things that I do as part of my job. I have to reply to comments and I have to check emails and I have to talk with brands and I have to create new, I have to create new, graphics and just there's a check out the analytics and what videos are going and what aren't and what's coming up in the future and I got to plan my next things all of that stuff is important and all of those are things that I could do but the first thing I do in the morning the first thing I do before lunch is what am I filming today what am I writing today what am I recording a podcast today what

what am I doing what what what big task am I checking off the list and I usually never want to do those things first. But as soon as I get them done, ah, I feel so much better. The rest of the day, I'm more productive. And even if I do nothing else, I still have further ahead. I still have made the biggest impact with my 20% of the time, which has 80% of my results. We do have to talk about creating systems. And I'm a person who resists routine and schedules. I'm just, I am a very go with the flow person. I don't want to be put in a box and I'm not great at schedules. But there's a difference between a schedule, I think, and a natural routine. Like creating a habit that feels really effortless, especially if you've been doing something

for a long time, you don't even realize that you do it. And so what I try to do is create systems in my life that feel effortless, but that also do the things that we talked about earlier, which are eliminate that time wasting time. And so I used to be a person who would constantly check my emails all day. I would check emails. I would check emails. It'd be like, oh, got to check an email or I got better log onto Facebook or I better log onto YouTube and check my current comments. And then I would fall down the rabbit hole and spend a very long time doing these tasks that some of them are important. But it was definitely, I was spending more time than I should have.

So now I time block when I check emails. And that's the thing, the systems. I don't check my emails. I don't check my social media when I first wake up in the morning. I might read the news and that's totally fine. But I'm not going to allow myself to be distracted because I have a system. I have a meeting with my assistant at 9. from 9 to 930, we just have a coffee.

We just relax. We talk about the day. We don't talk about work. We ease into our day. And then from 930 till 10, that is when I check emails. And at 10, my alarm goes off. I shut down my phone. I put down that stuff.

And I accomplish a task. What's that task? And then again, after lunch, I have a half an hour of emails and like replying to comments time. I have little time slots. and that's a system. And now I'm out of the habit of compulsively checking my phone and compulsively checking my email because I gave myself a schedule

and wouldn't let me do it until those times came up. And this has been really helpful to me, giving myself windows when I can indulge in these time-sucking activities. Because let me tell you, TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, even email, they are time suckers. You can fall down a rabbit hole very, very easily and log on to these things or check these things and then get distracted and check other things.

And before you know it, you're watching friggin people dance on TikTok for two hours. I'm not saying you can never do those things, but create a system of when your time is for doing those things. This is really, I mean, systems help all the time. But they definitely help when identifying the time suckers to create a system of when you can indulge in those time sucking activities. And maybe you don't know what your time suckers are, but they're easy to identify if you just carry around a piece of paper or even in your phone, you're just opening notes.

You're like, what did I do the last hour? What did I do the last two hours? What did I do this morning? What did I do this afternoon? You'll be shocked at how much time you're probably wasting compulsively. checking the internet or doing whatever it is. Maybe you're just like frivolously tidying here and then you go over and you tidy here and then you're over here and you tidy here when you're supposed to be putting away your laundry. Where are your time sucks? And how can we kind of nail these down and create a

system that is like I don't do these time sucky things until I do this thing? I don't know. Maybe this will work for you. Maybe it won't. I'm just throwing it out there. I'm throwing it out there. And the last thing I want to talk about is the fact that myself included, we have to stop thinking that if we're not busy, we're lazy. We have to stop thinking about the time that we spend relaxing, listening to podcasts going on TikTok. That isn't laziness. That is an important part of our day too. And we need to have time for those things, but we should schedule a time when it's, than when that's what we're doing, right?

We need to kind of work, I guess, laziness in. When we try to be busy all the time that's not sustainable, it is not realistic that you're going to work from the time you get up till the time you go to bed. It isn't even realistic that you're going to work straight from 9 to 5 and not take breaks. That's crazy. Of course you're going to take breaks. You should take breaks. When we don't allow ourselves those real breaks, we end up just stealing them all throughout the day.

in little time-sucking chunks. We end up getting distracted. We end up taking it anyways, but in ways that don't really feel as fulfilling. Instead of you here and there spending like 15 minutes here and 15 minutes there surfing the web and 20 minutes there and a half an hour here, what if you had four hours every night in one big chunk to just relax?

That sounds a lot better. And so let's stop confusing being busy with being productive. And let's stop confusing taking time to relax with laziness. Because that's simply not the case. We just, we need to be efficient with our time. And we need to use our time effectively. That starts with identifying the time sucks and coming up with little ways to schedule in relaxation, to take more meaningful breaks.

to take more efficient times to do the nothing so that when we get back to the doing the something we're actually being productive. It was weird today. It was a weird one. But I'm feeling it, you guys. I'm going to try this time blocking thing for the next seven days that Jordan Page talks about because that chick is amaze balls. And she gets a ton of stuff done.

And I want to be a little bit more like her. Thank you guys so much for listening today's podcast. I hope you're feeling productive. If you do nothing else, if you do nothing else after listening to this, I want you to write down three things that you want to get done today. Pick the biggest, most challenging one, and do it right now. Thanks so much and I'll see you guys next time.