4 Things to Do in Your Business when You Don't Feel Like Creating

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you're listening to Episode 109 of the Mindful Productivity podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Steckler. And today I think this podcast episode might be just what you need. I don't know about you, but over the past couple weeks, I have felt a little more stress than usual. I felt anxious at night. There's one big thing on my mind all the damn time, and I because of that, I am finding it really hard to be creative. I thought that I could you utilize this isolation time and produce a lot more in my business right now. But what I'm finding is that I am really tired. I don't know if you feel this way. I've been talking to a lot of my master mind ladies and other coaches and business owners. And one thing we're all sharing in common right now, no matter what. Our situation is that we're all exhausted and it's almost like that mo mentum has stopped. We've had an opportunity to really slow down, and now that we've slowed down, we kind of like it. So today I want to talk to you about four things that you can do in your business right now, if you don't feel like creating and I want you to give yourself full permission to stop creating for a minute, I know that sounds counterintuitive. I know you might be saying, but Sarah, you just talked last week about how you have to keep going and yes, you do. You do have to keep running your business, but that can look like a lot of different things. And I want to talk to you about the four things that you could do in your business that just is important on the back end and that are going to be a form of business self care that can really help you out. So keep lessening. Grab a pen and a paper. You are going to want to take notes during this episode and make sure to come on over and tag me on Instagram. I'm at mindful productivity. Blawg. Let me know what you get out of this episode, and I'd love to hear how you're handling everything right now. In general, let's go ahead and dive in. Welcome to the mindful productivity podcast. I'm your host, Sarah secular, and this is the place to be to live a more mindful and productive life. If you're ready to turn daily chaos into calm and start your days with intention, then get ready to join me as we dive deep into mindful living and personal productivity. It's time to connect with your true self so you can live the life you want to live. And it all starts now before we dive into today's episode. I just wanna let you guys know that I actually recorded a live on Instagram at the time of this recording just about 10 minutes ago and had a lot of you listening. Had a lot of amazing comments and a lot of dialogue that I would not have been able to think of myself. And then after the fact, I was like already to download it and repurpose it as a podcast and share it, and it's a grand, totally froze and it didn't happen. And I just want to tell you this is just a reminder that as a business owner, there are going to be things like that happened no matter what stage of business you're in all the damn time, and you just have to keep going forward. So This has happened to me so many times with lives with videos, with things crashing with webinars. I've recorded that. I've had to redo again. And I'm to the point now where if it happens, I don't even waste time getting upset about it, like Okay, cool. It didn't save. I double checked it. Double checked Instagram. There's nothing I could do. I'm not gonna spend 20 minutes having a meltdown about it. I'm just gonna get up and get going, because every minute I spend upset is one minute I won't have this evening to have a mimosa and watch below deck, because that's what I'm doing lately. And so here we are, recording this podcast, right? So get up, dust yourself off and keep going when you can. Today we're gonna just jump right into it. Your time's valuable. I'm ready to do this. We're gonna talk about four things that you can do in your business right now. If you don't feel like creating, I I thought that I would be using this time to be so creative in my business. And I think that it will come back to me. I think that I will start to get creative again. But instead of judging myself for that and not like creating more journals right now and not doing all these passion projects that I have, like, lined up, like once I move, I'm gonna do all these things and I have my office and so excited and I'm gonna go live a long time and then, like, you know, the past couple weeks, I've just been like a shit show. So no, that didn't happen. So one, I think that one thing we have to realize right now and I think this is actually point number four, but I'm gonna move it to the front because I can do that. The first thing that I want to touch on the first thing that I think that you should be doing in your business right now it is to make time to do less like One thing we have to acknowledge right now is that we're using a lot more mental energy on a daily basis. I've been talking to my friends, my other on from your friends and just like people in general. And everyone is saying the same thing. Holy shit, I am so exhausted right now, like I'm not even sick. I don't know what's going on. I've been home more. I've been like some people are like I've been reading books and, like watching more TV and other people are like, I have kids at home and I have no idea how doing all these 1000 things and they, you know, they rightfully so exhausted. But collectively, right now, we're all using a lot more mental energy. I mean, what's the first thing you're thinking about when you get up in the morning? What's the last thing you're thinking about when you go to bed at night, right? It's on our minds all the damn time. And because of that, and because we're also adjusting rapidly like globally, everyone's adjusting rapidly to these new changes to, you know, having to home school. If you have kids, too, just having more people in your household or not, right, whatever it looks like for you, you're adapting to that. You have to. There's no other choice. You have to do it quickly and would change. Good or bad comes more mental energy drain. So one there's that going on to, um because you have less mental energy you are not, is able to do all of the things that you thought you could do right. If we all just had to quarantine at home and there wasn't the stress of everything else, I guarantee you, a lot more of us would be getting a lot more done. One thing we just don't often think about is that there is a mental toll that takes place, and there is our mindset and our mentality and our mental health that always plays a role in how productive we could be. And also being productive also means taking breaks right. It's so important to realize that the whole reason that I'm so passionate about talking about mindful productivity is that being productive also means you're taking breaks. I keep seeing people talking about productivity like it's this pressure, like you have to always doom or and part of being productive is also doing less. So that's exactly what Point number one is, is that right now you need to make more intentional time to do less, whatever that looks like, right? Like you continually do less stuff online. Unplug from the news. Stop scrolling. You know, stop being on your phone as much. Do less in that way, but also make time to do nothing. I have spent a lot of time sitting out on my new balcony, staring out into the void, staring at these evergreen trees and just watching them sway in the wind. And my cat totally just jumped up on that box in the closet. Dublin, can you not? I am recording a podcast right now. Thank you. Point, as I have been taking time to do less, I think that you would benefit from doing the same and incorporating that into your work week, Whatever that looks like. We're going to get into rescheduling and revamping your routine in just a moment. Okay? Number two for four things that you've been doing your business right. Now, if you don't feel like creating, I want to help fast. I can talk. Today is the second thing is doing a brain dump. You know, you guys know I talk about this all the time, but it's so important ones. Last time you did one. When's the last time you did one? I bet you haven't done one in a minute. I know I haven't, but I have a good excuse. What's yours? Um, seriously, do a brain dump and do one. And don't feel like you need to share it with anyone because you don't write. This isn't a facebook post. This isn't some Pinterest instagramming thing. You're not gonna share it anywhere. Don't try to, like, make your handwriting all cute. Just brain. Dump it out of your head. Get it out of your mind. Right. And this is the template I want you to use. Okay? So write this down. You had a piece of paper. If you have my daily productivity and Brandon book, this little template is, like in there all throughout it. But you can write it down on anybody's Baber. And here's what you're gonna write. Okay, so I want you to have three sections of your paper. This can either be three columns or three chunks, like three big boxes. Okay. The 1st 1 is I want you to write down what I can't control. Okay. What? I can't control in the second area, I want you to write down what I can control. What can you could draw? And in the third place, I want you to write down what I will put my energy toward or into. OK, so you've got three sections. What? I can't control what I can control and what I will put my energy toward. So this is why this is so important. And to do right now, because right now you have to be real about the current situation. So, for example, we'll just do a little fun one together right now. What I can't control. Okay? I can't control the fact that when I go to the grocery store and I'm trying not to go at all, But every now and then, I need something right. What I can't control is that there's weird people that aren't social distancing. And I'm not even kidding a Costco. The other day I saw this guy like he probably was in his like mid fifties and he was picking his nose Costco during Cove Aid. What is going on? I was so angry, I felt like saying something, but I was like, Don't just continue on. I can't control that. God, I cannot control that, you know, whatever. So there's gonna be things like that that you can not control and just write them down so that you can release your energy around that, right? You can't control that. Another thing you can't control. You can't control the sales in your business. You can never control this. I know there's some people out there going, like, yes, you can, uh, you can manifest and you're like, Okay, but my point is, you can you can You can impact your sales. You can doom or or better marketing. You can have better dialogue. You can increase your sales, but you can never control them. You could never be like Sally will buy this. Yes. And then she does. That's how life works. Right? So releasing that especially around like numbers, right? Like you're launching something. This, this is This goes without saying, like all the time you're launching something. And let's say you like 1 20 people to enroll and then, like, 15 people enroll. Is that a failure? No, because you still made 15 sales, but you may get caught up in the fact that it's not 20. Right? So let go of that. There's things you can't control. Write them down in your brain dump. Let them go. Okay. Second area. What I can control. This is where it gets really fun and really exciting. Because even right now, even during this time, there are things that we have under our control. And when I see control, I don't mean like I control the world like Like you're like some crazy person that wants control over everything. What I mean is, you have an impact, right? Your thoughts become your behaviors and your actions. Whatever have a cycle goes. And so what can you control? What is within your grasp, right. You can control your behavior when you are out grocery shopping, how you respond to things versus react, right. You can control how often you wash your hands and lice, all the door knobs and all of that stuff you can control how you react when you find out that there's still not toilet paper. Who the hell is taking all of it? You can. You can control how you react to that, right? Okay. You can control how often you talk about what you're doing in your business and why you are selling. You can control how you price your service is how adaptable you are. You can control how you react if you do have students that air like I can't pay you right now or that just don't. Because of everything that's going on, you can control how you react to that. You can also control how you handle that. Okay? These maybe things that you're facing in your business, these may not be fit. Things you're facing in your business. But you have more control than you think. You can control how you get up in the morning if you have breakfast, right? How you set the tone with your family, you can do those things. Okay. Now, after you've done this brain dump and you think about those things you now get to like, you get to the fund section, what are you gonna put your energy toward? And my suggestion right now, you guys, is to pick a focus project. Pick one thing you are going to work toward in your business right now. And just one thing, and that's okay. I want to take a minute right now. Little Segway. There are so many free things right now. Fuck. There are so many free things online. I keep getting so many e mails those all jump on zoom. Like collectively. There are so many for yoga sessions, online personal training, zoom sessions, collaborative crying sessions. I'm joking. I don't know if there are there. Could be I'm not trying to be insensitive. I'm just trying to make this lighthearted. Point is, there's a lot of stuff online right now. That's free. And you may be tempted to sign up for Earl. All of it. And you may feel really good about it. I know I do. I'm like, Oh, I'm gonna sign up for this free class on the side of that and the look in your head, you're like, I'm being so productive. I'm gonna create structure in my life. But then what happens is like day 345 rolls around you like Who the fuck keeps? He is mailing May. Why would they be able to be grilling me all this shit? What did I sign up for? But the help, like right, you freak out. So really take a minute right now to think about what you're gonna put your energy toward, and just because it's free, does it mean it's valuable? And it doesn't mean it's for you, right? now. Okay, So just think about that. Think about what you're gonna put your energy toward. Gosh, I'm so weird. I think the quarantine is getting to me. Okay, so we went over to things so far, the 1st 1 being that it's really important right now to make time to do less, like, intentionally block out some time in your schedule to do less. Second, do a brain dump. Maybe you need to do this every day. I love brain dumps. They help me so much in my business. And in my personal life, they make me a better person because I'm not carrying around all this stupid stuff in my head and I get my thoughts organized. Okay, So let's move on to point number three. And that is this is an opportune time and probably unnecessary time to think about revamping your routine. So, what you're doing in the day in the morning? What that looks like. Maybe it looks like you don't have a bedtime, and you're kind of just sleeping until 10 a.m. Every day. No judgment. But if that's what you're doing, put some structure around it. Give yourself a little bit of a bumper, right? So that you know, when you're hitting the edge of something and you can kind of then kind of almost judge yourself about whether or not this is how deep you wanna go with, how far you're sleeping out, how long you're sleeping it, right? It's like I remember when I was a teenager. I love sleeping in. But then if I slept until, like, one or two, I would be really mad because it was like, basically just slept the day away. So I knew that, like if I set my alarm for noon, I would still feel like I slept in, but I wouldn't. It wouldn't be like crossing that threshold, right, So get clear about what that looks like for you. Now, if you are someone that wants more structure and you don't wantto stay up until midnight drinking two mimosas watching below deck. That's what I've done a couple times this week, guys that show so good. Kate Chastain is so funny. I wonder if I could ever get her on the podcast and make it relevant to you guys. Anyway, that's what I've been doing. But then now I'm like, Okay, I want to kind of come back to reality. That was fun, Sarah, But you need to get back to business here. It can be Also, it also can be important to think about a few things to think about. Could be block scheduling, right. So And what I mean by block scheduling, if you're new to this, is creating chunks of time in your weak or in your day where you're doing specific things. Right? So you're not task switching. So, for example, um, I like to schedule time every week to do some podcasting on, especially now that I'm in my new office. And I am currently in the process of revamping what might week looks like now with this new place and how I want my life to change. Um, it's a great opportunity to do that. Think about what you want your block scheduling to look like what those chunks of time are. Right. So even in the morning, you could have, you know, one hour or two for your morning routine, where you're getting up, you're making a family breakfast or whatever it looks like. Um, you're doing some yoga. Maybe you're meditating, but it doesn't have to be all that too, right? It could be literally getting out of bed hovering over the sink with your cup of coffee, going through a list in your head about how awful life is And then, like, you know, letting that go and moving forward and trying to be more positive. That could be part of your routine. That's fine. But like, get clear on what you're plunk schedule Looks like Okay, also get clear in any theme days you want right now. So for me and my business, I always like having like, Monday, Tuesday as the bulk of my client calls. And that really helps me, like schedule that time. And so I know what my mental energy is gonna look like for those days. But it also could be helpful to have learning days or podcast days or whatever. And these don't have to happen every single week. They can also happen like one day a month. But get clear on those, okay? And if you want theme, if you want templates and if you want guidance and you want videos with me showing you how to do this, then at the end of this podcast episode. I'm gonna talk to a little bit more about my current course organizer. Overwhelm. I'm opening doors. Back up to that right now. We're doing special pricing for that right now so that you can get in and start organizing the back end of your business because this is a great time to do it. Okay, so revamping your routine, it's a great time to think about that. It's a great time to reconsider what your life looks like right now and what kind of structure you want. There's a lot of means going around of like, how people are scheduling out there. They're days for their kids, and some of that may resonate with you and it may not. You get to decide. Okay, You don't You don't have to feel the pressure of online stuff. You get to decide what your day looks like. Okay, let's go into step for okay. The fourth thing I want to talk to about to you about today is taking time to organize and set up your project. Work flows now. A lot of people put this off or they don't think it's that important because they're like a dog to that many things right now in my business. And I know how to do all of them. I agree with you. You probably do know how to do everything in your business. If you're a solo printer, if you're just starting, you probably absolutely d'oh! I know I do. I know how to do every goddamn thing. But the problem is, is that as you move on to more projects, as your workload increases as your student or client load increases you're going to find or if you just have a bad day or two retired, you're emotionally overwhelmed. You're gonna find that there are days when you missteps when things get messy because you can't remember all of it, right? Our brain is not a storage facility, okay? It's so it's so important to remember that so setting up work flows or standard standard operating procedures in your business are important for two reasons. One so that you can have templates that you follow. I have these for my podcast. I provide these. I provide exact step by step, um, work flows for my students and I published with purpose. So when they're uploading their journal and their manuscript to Kindle Direct publishing. As they're publishing their journal or planner, they know exactly what to Dio. They're not having to go back through videos or materials where I talked about it. It's boom, It's right here. Here's the workflow, and then that makes it so much easier. It allows you to do things in less time. It allows you to not use as much mental energy. The second reason work flows air so important is because in the event in the future that you hire someone or you need someone to help you because he gets sick or you're just like I can't do this. I need a break whatever. Then you have standard operating procedures and work clothes that you can hand over to somebody else and say, Here's what you need to do In my business, here is exactly how I do it and here's how to access those things Right now. One of the things that I think keeps us from doing this is that we think, well, I don't want to set up my work flows until I know exactly what project management system I'm using or until I find the perfect planner right No, this is not a reason not to do it. In fact, inside organized your overwhelm. We do everything in Google docks, and I show you how to set everything up. And I tell you why it's so important to do this in a system like that, because in you don't want everything stored like in one place, right? Like you don't want everything stored in like a sauna or click up because what happens if that ends or your account gets closed or whatever, right? It's the same reason why you don't want to run your whole business off of Facebook because you don't own that right? So it's important to have. And again you want to back up Google docks, too. But it's important to have these things save somewhere, so I actually recommend setting up your work flows there first, and then if you're in the stage where you're still considering what kind of time or project management system you want to use, then you've got them all organized and documented. Then, if you want to hire someone to help you put those things, migrate those things into click up or notion or whatever it is, then you can do that, so take time to organize your work flows, and if you're going well, I don't know where to start. Then start with whatever you're working on right now and start documenting it. If there's a process that you lead your students through, if there's a process that you do with your clients, if there's a way that you onboard your new clients and you send them certain questions and forms and then you know you you file things, certain places, that's a workflow. That's a standard standard operating procedure. Start documenting it when what you're already doing can be tangible, unhelpful info for you in the future. So start doing that. And again, if you want help setting all these up, if you want to see how I do a lot of these things in my business, you're gonna find these inside. Organizer overwhelmed. There's templates, tutorials, Ah, Google templates. So much more where I show you how to do this. So, you guys, I want to tell you about two ways that I can help you right now. Okay? I have two ways that I can help you. These air both low cost offers. These are both low cost opportunities that are gonna help you in huge ways. So if you're wanting to move forward right now, in terms of revamping your routine or yourself care, then go check out my free course. The self care reboot that's gonna help you do that in less than two hours. Okay, you can start that right now. You can find that by going to mindful productivity block dot com slash self care reboot. And the on porch of that is the self care action plan that helps you set up a complete action plan for yourself. Care within your business right now. The second thing that I have going on right now is I've opened doors back up to organize your overwhelm. This is the thing that is gonna help you set up the foundation of your business. I'm gonna help you set up a weekly pulls point check in in your business everything you need to track. We're going to get clear on what your weekly routine looks like. What your block scheduling looks like. I have tutorials. There's the most amazing productivity and time management techniques that you can use. And I give you templates and step by step. Work flows so you can integrate all of this into your life. And right now I'm offering all of this at a very special price because it is crazy right now. And it would be stupid if we didn't take advantage to organize our business right now. So if you're feeling like this is the time for you, the now's the time to enroll because this price will be increasing and I won't be offering it forever. Right? So right now, if you go over to mindful productivity blawg dot com, you will find a link to it. You can also go to mindful productivity block dot com slash oyo. That's oh, why. Oh, or if you're on instagram, you can hit me up. I'm at mindful Productivity block. There's a link in my bio to all of this, but jump in there. You'll get instant access to everything. I'm not a fan of making you wait with dripped content, you can get started today that started this week. Now is a great time to receive information. If you don't feel like doing stuff or if you're not feeling creative, it's okay organizing the back end of your business, organizing your brain, doing these brain dumps, getting your routine and order for what you need. Now these are things that will help you build momentum when the economy picks back up. When people are able to go back outside again and do things again, you will be organized in your business. You will feel relieved, will feel organized. You will feel rejuvenated, and you will have more mental energy at that point to push forward right in if you want to hustle. If you want to go, go go with a new project, you'll have everything else organized. And that is what's saving my ass right now is the fact that my business is organized on the back end so that I can take breaks and so that when I am having hard days, I know what to do with these step by step templates and more clothes. All right, you guys, thank you so much for listening to this week's episode. As always, we'll be back every single Monday with new episodes on more cons and ways to stay organized and productive and mindful in your life and your business until next week. Have a good one and I'll see you then