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Effortlessly Productive
Welcome to Effortlessly Productive with Annie Veblen McCarty, where we dive into the art and science of mastering your time and boosting your productivity without the burnout.
Join Annie as she explores practical tips, strategies, and mindset shifts to help you streamline your tasks, prioritize effectively, and get more done with less stress.
Whether you're juggling work, family time, or just trying to find more time for what matters most, our conversations will empower you to work smarter, not harder.
Tune in and discover how to make productivity not just a goal, but a way of life!
Effortlessly Productive
Conquering Energy Leaks: Reclaiming Focus and Ending Procrastination
Ever find yourself stuck in a cycle of endless to-do lists, feeling like your mental energy is being siphoned away by nagging tasks that never seem to get done? Join me, Annie Veblen-McCarty, as I uncover the concept of "energy leaks"—those unfinished tasks that silently drain our focus and productivity. From my own experiences with procrastinating on social media messages and folding laundry, we explore how these seemingly minor tasks can have a significant impact on both our personal and professional lives. By identifying these energy drains, you can learn to reclaim your energy and refocus it on what truly matters.
But that's not all. We tackle the twin hurdles of procrastination and self-doubt that often keep us from conquering these energy leaks. Discover practical strategies, like using short, focused timers to tackle overwhelming tasks, revealing that they are often less daunting than we imagine. We also discuss the importance of seeking professional help to overcome deep-seated beliefs that hinder our productivity. By addressing these issues, you can free up energy for more fulfilling activities, enabling you to channel it into areas that help you create, serve, and impact the world in meaningful ways.
Hey, this is Annie Veblen-McCarty and I'm gonna teach you how to be effortlessly productive. I've been an entrepreneur for over 20 years and I got sick and tired of experts preaching what business and life should look like and what I should be doing as a leader and to turn a profit, only to find myself wasting time, burned out, feeling inauthentic and still not making any money. On this show, we are ditching the shoulds. I'm giving you permission to do business differently. As a certified master coach, I believe that everything you need to have success and build the life and business of your dreams is already living on the inside. I'm going to empower you to lean into what you do best, help you see your path forward clearly and give you the strategy and action steps along the way to become effortlessly productive. Let's dive in. Hello, I am so glad you're here for this episode of Effortlessly Productive.
Speaker 1:Do you ever have those things in your business or in your life in general that end up going on your to-do list over and over and over and over again? I know I sometimes realize that I have had the same task and these are not like daily recurring tasks the same task that I just move from one day to the next, to the next, to the next, and it's not getting checked off the list, it's just sitting there and I realize that when I am doing that, it's usually a few days into writing it on my list. This is something that I call an energy leak, where it's not just the fact that I have taken it and moved it from day to day to day on my to-do list, it's that it is actually sitting there in the back of my mind and the longer this goes on, the bigger it becomes in my mind and the less that I want to do that task. And I call it an energy leak because over my 21 years of being an entrepreneur and my 44 years, at this point, of being on this planet, those things that I tend to move from day to day to day and don't get done and I realize they're in the back of my mind I have also realized are a huge suck of my energy, whether I realize it or not, and this is usually something that is happening in my subconscious. I don't even realize that it's happening to begin with until it snowballed into the point where a large part of my energy is actually going to thinking about and worrying about and having anxiety about doing this thing. A really big example of something that I tend to allow to become an energy leak is messages, specifically social media messages.
Speaker 1:I am somebody, even though I have an online business and I have built my online businesses that I've had for the last gosh 12 plus years now I've built them primarily on social media. I do not enjoy spending my time on social media. I am one of those people. It is not something that I spend my free time on. I do not enjoy scrolling. I don't like spending my time there.
Speaker 1:I have all my notifications turned off because they drive me insane, and it becomes a source of anxiety for me when I see that popping up on my phone all the time, especially when I'm trying to spend time with my family, and then I have these messages and notifications coming on. So it was probably eight years ago that I turned off all social media notifications and message notifications. However, the problem with that is that it is very easy to ignore and realize that it has been now a week since I have checked those messages and then I start to get in the back of my mind these thoughts of oh my gosh, what if somebody messaged me something important. All these thoughts start to spiral in my mind about these messages that are lingering. However, I also have had times where I then still don't check the messages and they're still sitting there and I will realize, the more days that go on without having checked them, that it's in the back of my mind all the time and I actually have a fair amount of my energy that I don't even realize is going to those thoughts and is going to the fact that that task is out there hanging out. For you, it might not be social media messages. There are lots of people who are on there all the time, who leave their notifications on, and if that works for them, that is fantastic. But there probably is something in your business or even in your life I will fully admit to.
Speaker 1:Folding laundry is also one of those things for me Not washing, not sorting, but the actual folding and putting away of laundry. Sorting, but the actual folding and putting away of laundry. In fact, I just folded and put away my laundry before I hopped on to record with you because I realized it had been like a few weeks and it was just piled up in my room and starting to drive me a little bit crazy and was one of those things that was just there in the back of my mind all the time. And then, especially, I go to do my workout and I'm like where are my workout clothes? I went to a lot of sports games over the weekend and I really like this specific pair of workout pants that have pockets that I can stick my phone in while I'm at the sporting events for my kids and digging those out. I was like where are they? I have like three or four pairs of these and I couldn't find any of them, and so that also can become an energy leap for me. So I wanted to share this with you today on this episode.
Speaker 1:Number one so you maybe are feeling like oh, I thought it was just me. I thought it was me who would have these things in the back of my mind and realize that a lot of energy is going to them, or there was just that nudge, like sometimes we're not even aware of what is happening, and so you are not alone. Number one especially as an entrepreneur, you are absolutely not alone in this phenomenon. Number two I want to just take a moment to recognize the impact that that is having on the rest of our business and on the rest of our life. So number one step is awareness, right, becoming aware that this is happening and also becoming aware of the things that tend to be those energy leaks for us, because for most of us, we have our own special flavor of task or of thought or worry. I know I have talked to a lot of clients where it's that financial piece, that financial thing, is always in the back of their mind and always a worry. So, understanding what your flavor is, I think the next thing that I want to spend a moment on is realizing why we're avoiding that.
Speaker 1:Usually we avoid certain things because we are avoiding a feeling that comes up with those tasks and there is a reason why we want to avoid that. Now, the Nahon effect is that when we avoid it and avoid it and avoid it, it doesn't go away. Our brain thinks that it's just going to go away if we ignore it and avoid it. However, like we said, with the energy leak, what ends up happening is it snowballs and gets bigger and bigger and bigger and all of a sudden we have a lot of energy subconsciously a lot of the time, a lot of energy going to the thoughts about that, or we end up procrastinating on other things because we think we should and I am doing air quotes for those of you listening. We should be spending our time doing that thing we don't want to do, so I think it's important, though, to recognize what that feeling is that we are avoiding.
Speaker 1:For example, let's take the social media messages. This is not my flavor of this, but I have coached a lot of people who also're offering. Maybe they're avoiding the messages because they're worried that they're going to be hater messages in there. So what is that emotion that is coming up for you that you are trying to avoid? I think the next step is recognizing that.
Speaker 1:This is one of my favorite analogies for this phenomenon. So if you have a room that is messy one of my daughter's rooms upstairs I walked into to collect her dirty laundry and was like, oh my goodness, this place is absolutely destroyed. I don't know what she was doing. Last night there was a party going on. There is dirty laundry everywhere, arts and crafts supplies. She was journaling and there was like paper and journals and pencils and pens and like all the things, towels, like all of it all over the floor of her room. So we have this messy room and that's an analogy for these things on our to-do list, right? These things that we know we want to do, we maybe need to do, should do the S word that I don't like, the should do them.
Speaker 1:And we are like, oh, that's a mess that room in there, those messages, that is a mess that I don't want to see.
Speaker 1:And we turn the lights off. And that's what we do when we avoid it. Right, we are turning the lights off, thinking that that is going to make it go away. The thing is, when you turn those lights back on, it's still just as big of a mess when you left it and I know if one of my kids got into that room, it's probably an even bigger mess than when I left it. Even with the lights off, they probably had destroyed even more stuff and dumped out a bin of toys. And it's even more of a disaster now when I turn the lights back on the next time and that is what we are doing with these tasks in our business we are thinking, if we just turn the lights off and move on and go do something else and avoid feeling that feeling we don't want to experience, that it's all going to go away, but what happens is we eventually are going to have to turn those lights on in our room and we are going to see that that mess is still there and it's going to be an even bigger thing to overcome.
Speaker 1:And so I want to give you a little bit of tactic today as well, because we don't just want to be like, oh, there are these energy leaks that are happening and that's great, like all this energy is pouring out into them and it's still in the back of my mind and I'm waking up in the middle of the night thinking about them and thoughts spinning about them. No, we don't want to do that. We want to figure out a way to stop it. So, number one, I think and this might be a process this is not going to go away overnight, but confronting those thoughts that we're having, those things that we want to avoid. Why is it that we want to avoid that emotion? What belief do we have about that With the social media messages, if you are afraid that you are going to open up those messages and see clients who are saying, no, I don't want to work with you or I'm not renewing my contract, I don't want to continue my coaching container with you. I want to quit your program. Why are you worried about those messages? What are you making that mean about you? So sit with that for a minute. Figure out that emotion. Figure out what that belief is that's creating that emotion that you're trying to get away from and trying to avoid. And how can we start to shift that belief?
Speaker 1:Sometimes, too, yes, we need to work on our beliefs that are happening, subconsciously for sure, and that's why it's so important to especially if you have beliefs that you've not been able to shift on your own find somebody. Find a therapist. Find a coach who can help you work on those subconscious beliefs and what it is that you're trying to avoid, especially if it is because of trauma or something like that in your life. Find a therapist If it is a clinical diagnosis. Find a therapist, a really good therapist or counselor that you can work with to help work through some of that. You can definitely work with a life coach or business coach at the same time too. Or if you're like, maybe this isn't necessarily a therapy situation, but I still am stuck, find somebody to help you work through that If you continue to find yourself stuck over and over and over again and can't get out of that loop. You can't break out of it.
Speaker 1:However, I will say also, I have often found here's a little tactic that I use. So, going back to my social media messages, if I realized that it's been like, let's say, a week and I have not checked in on my messages, I will say I am going to do this right now, I'm going to set my timer and I will set a timer for a very, very, very small amount of time, let's say five or 10 minutes, and I will give myself permission that I'm going to dive all in for those five or 10 minutes and when that timer goes off, if I am completely done with the task and I'm like everything in my body is telling me to stop, I will give myself permission to stop and come back to it at a later date. However, oftentimes what I have found is number one, that task that seemed like this huge, insurmountable thing, those five or 10 minutes. The task is done and it's off my list and I can move on with my life, and I built this thing up to be this huge energy leak that has been happening over and over and over again and in reality, I just needed five or 10 minutes to clear it. It's clear, it's free, I now have this energy back that I can put into all the things that I want to do. So that is one thing that I have found with this Number two.
Speaker 1:Often, once I get five or 10 minutes in, I'm like, oh, this actually wasn't so bad. Those thoughts through my mind of like what might be happening, and for me it's not so much a rejection, it's like, oh my gosh, like I've left this person hanging, like they were waiting on me, and my integrity is like I will get back to them and I have not responded in a normal amount of time, which sounds ridiculous. Saying it out loud, most of these thoughts that we have are so ridiculous because then it's like, three or four days later, now you've left them hanging for even longer. You, you, made a commitment to yourself that you would respond to these and get back to people in a reasonable amount of time, and now you've made it even longer, which is counter to what it is. So then, when I get into the task, I'm like, oh, I didn't actually have people that I needed to get back to. They haven't been waiting on me to respond. I didn't actually fall through in my integrity and everything is okay. Or I'm like oh, this was actually fun, like I'm having these great conversations and this was a great time.
Speaker 1:So sometimes it is a matter of if you've ever read the book Eat that Frog, eat that frog. Sometimes it is a matter of literally just being like this time these 10 minutes are dedicated to this and then, once it's done, it's so much easier to keep up with and maintain, right. Like email is another example for me where, when I have like 100 emails in there that I'm like I don't know what to do with these, I just kind of ignored them with these, I just kind of ignored them. Maybe I need to respond to these, maybe it's something important for my business, maybe I'm missing an opportunity, something like that. And once I clear it out, it's so easy to keep it cleared out, but it's when it builds up and then we avoid it that it becomes that energy leak, right. So I hope this helped you.
Speaker 1:Number one not feel quite so alone, right.
Speaker 1:Not feel like you are the only one who falls into these patterns.
Speaker 1:Number two just recognizing that energy aspect of it, because if we are leaking our energy into these other things. We're not showing up with the energy we want in other areas. I know when I have that in the back of my mind, I am not showing up for my kids and my husband the way I want to. I am not showing up for my clients how I like to. I am not showing up for myself how I like to. So all that energy is pouring out. I don't have the energy to put into creating and helping and serving and impacting the world the way that I want to when my energy is leaking out into these other areas. So I also hope this gives you some actual tactics to take to work through this and to tackle this so that we can put it to bed that we aren't just falling into that same pattern over and over with the exact same tasks. So I hope you enjoyed this, have a beautiful day and I will catch you on the next episode of Effortlessly Productive.
