Clutterbug - Real-Life Hacks and Tips to Declutter, Organize and Clean your Home Fast - How to Get More Done in a Day | Clutterbug Podcast # 17

Episode Date: September 19, 2016

Here are a few of my favourite tips that I use to help me get more done and be much more productive! Being a SAHM means we have to self motivate and that can be tough to do!   Give some of these tips a try and share your fav tips with me!! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey guys, welcome back to the Clutterbug podcast. I haven't made a podcast in a while and I apologize for that. Today I want to actually talk about productivity or being productive, which is kind of ironic because I've been going through a little slump where I am anything but productive. It's just a lot going on. September's a really busy time for us. We have three birthdays for our kids coming up. It's back to school. And it's the change of season, which always leaves me feeling a little blah. I love fall so much, but as the weather starts to turn cool, I think it just I can't help but feel a little bit, I guess, bummed outer, a little bit blah. So with all of those things combined, I have not been accomplishing as much as I should have. And I wanted to talk about

how, especially as a stay-at-home parent, I don't know if you're a stay-at-home parent, but I I work from home. I am staying at home. I don't have a boss. I have nobody to be accountable to. I have no deadlines in my life except for the things that are self-imposed. It's very hard to self-motivate when you have nobody to be accountable to, except yourself. I mean, if I want to lay in bed and watch Netflix all day, it's completely fine. You know, I'm not going to get in trouble. I'm not going to be fired. The only person that I have to, you know, be accountable to is myself. And that's really difficult. I am not a person who has a lot of self-control. I'll eat an entire bag of cookies. I'll stay up way too late and then I'll sleep in when I should be getting up. I just, I have zero

self-control. If I'm at the store and I see something I love, I'll buy it. I'm just, I'm impulsive to say the least. So working from home is extra difficult for me being my own boss because I don't naturally have that self-control to sit and work. But what I am doing to help myself be a little bit more productive anyways during the day is what I started doing was tracking my productivity time. So tracking the times a day where I'm most productive. And whenever somebody says, you know, write in a notebook, you know, write down what you ate in the day or keep track of your daily schedule, I always roll my eyes because it seems so lame. It seems. It seems. like something that, you know, if I had the motivation to write down everything I ate in a day,

I probably wouldn't be eating cookies because I would have, you know, more self-discipline to write it down. And anyways, but the reason people say that all the time is because it actually works. So I'm not suggesting you carry around a notebook and write down everything you do in a day. What I did was just had a piece of paper beside my desk and I would just write the times where, you know, if I sat for a long time, I'd like write that time of time. day. And what I noticed was the time that I would actually focus and work the longest, you probably don't even really need to write it down. You can just look at the times of day where you're like, okay, today I'm going to tackle the laundry or those times a day where you notice you get the most

done, whether it be at your work or if you work from home or if you're a stay-at-home parent. And you'll notice there's a trend. And for me, I was always most productive right after lunch. So, I'm not a morning person. Oh, I wish I was a morning person, but I'm not. I always drag in the morning. Even if I have my coffee, it doesn't matter. I just, I'm a slow starter. And even when I worked outside of the home, I didn't accomplish much in the morning. It was like a terrible employee. But after lunch, it's sort of like, you know the day's almost coming to an end. For me, it was like the kids, you're getting off the bus. I need to get things done. And it was that, I guess, procrastination. That motivated me and those were my most productive times of the day. So for me, always after lunch,

and then again, after I get ready for bed, probably because I'm like, oh, I got to go to bed soon, the end of the day is almost here. And because I've procrastinated all of my tasks, that's when I'm feeling most motivated. So those have sort of become a habit for me. Those are just ingrained as my productive times. Unfortunately, now my kids are going to school earlier in the morning and they're coming off the bus at 2.30. So last year, and I mean, for years, my most productive time is between noon and four. So I can really get a ton done in those four hours. But now because my kids are getting off the bus at 2.30, I don't have the same amount of time. I only have until 2.30 to be really productive. So what I've done instead, because I know I'm not going to be a morning person,

is obviously I'm getting up earlier to get them on the bus, but instead of having a big breakfast like I normally do and then having a lunch at 12 or 1, I'm having a very, very small breakfast and having my lunch at 10.30 or 11. So I'm having my big meal way earlier because I'm sort of tricking myself into, you know, I've just had lunch, now it's productive time,

and I'm bumping it up an hour or even two earlier so I can get more done. Also, the same thing is after I have my shower at night and get ready for bed, I feel this burst of energy and it, you know, that's when I'll put away a load of laundry or I'll quickly clean the house or I'll empty the dishwasher, something like that. So now, as soon as the kids, I get ready for bed and go to bed, I get ready for bed too. Right away. I'm in my pajamas. I've had a shower. I'm completely ready for bed because that's when I get that burst of energy when I should be winding down, but that's just the way I work. And so now I can. can do that, you know, an hour or two earlier than I usually would as well. So I'm seeing myself being a lot more productive. The other thing I'm doing is scheduling, like writing a schedule down every single morning. People always say to do this and the reason is it actually works. And because I know the times of day where I am most productive, I make sure I never schedule things like doctor's appointments or, you know, calling a friend. If I call my friend all the time, I won't call her during those times. I

because I'm eliminating those distractions. So instead I'll do that fun stuff like, you know, I'll give myself a half an hour Netflix show in the morning or some time to call my friend in the morning or I'll schedule doctor's appointments in the morning. Or if I have to run errands and go out, I'll do that in the times where I know I'm not productive. And that way it frees up my time during those productive hours of the day

to really work on things I need to work on. So I recommend giving us a try, sort of, learning more about yourself, tracking when you are most productive and making the most of that time by always like mentally scheduling it as free work time. So write it down today. Take a look at your past week, take a look at your past month, see when are the hours of the day where you feel most motivated? One of the hours of the day where you get most things done and making sure that you leave those hours free to work on things that you want to work on in the future. The other thing that really helps with being productive is called Eat Your Frog. So this is a book that I read. It's called

Eat That Frog. I love this book. I found it of all, I have so many self-help books, you guys. I am constantly reading how to be more productive, books on, you know, procrastination, books on being just more efficient, reading books on organization, self-help books out the wazoo, but I found Eat That Frog to be really, really, really effective for me. And basically it's a simple concept. You just sort of write your to-do list, write all the things that you want to accomplish in a day, make sure that it's obviously something that's attainable. It's a, you know, anywhere from five to ten things. You don't want to overwhelm yourself and feel disappointed if you can't get them all done. But after you've written your to-do list, you look at the thing that is the one that you

don't want to do the most. So the, you know, ugh, the thing you usually procrastinate or put off because it's the worst thing that you have to do that day, that is a thing that you do first. And I guess it was Mark Twain, don't quote me on this, who said, if, you know, every single morning you eat a big, slimy, gross frog, then you can go through the rest of your day knowing that, that is the worst thing that's going to happen to you or the worst thing that you're going to have to do. Hopefully, the frog is a metaphor and he wasn't actually eating disgusting slimy frogs. But the point is, if you do the thing that you are dreading first and get it over with, all the other things in your list are going to, you know, be so much easier to accomplish and not going to seem that bad.

And usually we do the opposite. We procrastinate the thing that we don't want to do the most and usually don't get it done. And unfortunately, the thing that we procrastinate is usually the thing that's the most important. So our big frogs are generally really important things that we should be doing. So a simple concept of eating your frog every single day is such an effective way to not only ward off procrastination, but also be so, so much more productive. a lot of the times when we are procrastinating something, because we're like, like for me, I'm writing a book right now, I'm not enjoying the process. And so I procrastinate it. And instead of

doing the other little things on my list, I'm procrastinating this big thing that I need to work on every day. So I'm getting nothing done. Whereas if I forced myself every day, you know, right after lunch to work an hour on my book, the rest of the day, I'd be much more motivated to accomplish the other things on my list. So give it a try today. You guys, map out your most productive times. Write yourself a very attainable to-do list and circle the one on your list that is your giant, ugly, disgusting frog, and then open up and swallow it down. Eat it. Eat your frog. First thing in your most productive time. So that's sort of it today talking a little bit about productivity. I would love to hear your tips of how you guys are more productive.

because honestly I'm not great at it. It's something that I definitely need to work on. And I think that comes down to for me is self-control. So it's not just, you know, I need to be less of a procrastinator or I need to be more productive. For me, I need to work on my self-discipline. I need to have more self-control to not watch Netflix when I should be cleaning the house

or to not be surfing, you know, Corey Feldman and watching Corey Feldman's today's show performance over and over again if you guys haven't seen that, I don't know, it's hilarious. I feel bad saying that because I'm not sure if he actually tried or if he was trying to be awful on purpose to, you know, get to be a viral video. I'm not really sure. Either way, I cannot stop watching it. It's like a train wreck and you want to slow down to see it. It's ridiculous. Anyways, so instead of working on things I should be working on, I'm doing that, which accomplishes absolutely nothing. So today, I'm not going to watch this terrible video again.

Today, I'm going to be done this podcast, and I'm going to work an hour on my book, and then if I get that done well, then maybe I'll watch the video just one by time. Anyways, if you guys haven't seen it, you have to check it out, super hilarious. And that's it today. I'd love to hear your tips on how you're more productive.

Anything could maybe help me, and I will see you guys next time.