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29. Making Space for Stress-Free Work with Noreen Music
7 Plays6 months ago
“The line between urgent and important gets really blurry.” (Cue text message DING!)
In this episode, we sit down with Noreen Music, the visionary behind Organize My Space to learn how to protect entrepreneurs’ most valuable resource—time.
Learn how creating a planning practice can help you feel more organized, present, focused, and effective. By cultivating a stress-free and harmonious state of flow, Noreen shares how we can replace rigidity and overwhelm with abundance, freedom, and fulfillment.
In this episode, you’ll learn how to:
- Filter commitments to combat overcommitment
- Overcome "poisonous perfectionism"
- Swap between CEO Brain and Worker Brain
- Break free from digital distractions and screen sucking
- Achieve a flow state needed for deep work
For more inspiration, subscribe to Unbound Turnarounds on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts!
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Transcript
Introduction to Business Unbound Podcast
00:00:03
Speaker
Welcome to Unbound Turnarounds, a podcast all about the challenges women business owners think about constantly, but rarely voice. We're Nicole and Mallory, entrepreneurs, friends, and co-founders of Business Unbound, a community helping women alleviate the headaches, heartaches, and backaches so work actually works for life. This is your safe space for the ups, downs, and the turnarounds.
Season Focus: Time Management
00:00:34
Speaker
Welcome back to Unbound Turnarounds, everyone. To remind our listeners, we are in season three. And in this season, we are digging into different aspects of time management. And that's because it's really our number one commodity.
Guest Introduction: Noreen Musik
00:00:49
Speaker
So today we're going to get into some productivity and efficiency hacks, which we're very excited about. So I am thrilled, Nicole, for you to introduce our guest and get her on. Yes. So today we have Noreen Musik, and she is the owner and driving force behind Organize My Space.
00:01:08
Speaker
So her passion is helping us find lasting freedom in our homes and businesses through transformational organizing services and productivity strategies. And the end result is a stress-free, calm state of flow in all parts of our lives. And we all need some more of that.
00:01:24
Speaker
So, out of that state just comes more abundance, more time freedom, deeper satisfaction in our lives and our businesses, and just greater success overall, whatever that success means to us. So, Noreen, thank you so much for being on the show. Thank you so much for inviting me. I'm happy to be here.
Understanding Productivity
00:01:42
Speaker
And that just gets me excited. When I hear you say that, that excites me for people.
00:01:48
Speaker
Yes. Well, and that's why we're so excited that you agreed to be with us today. So let's just get going. Now, I actually met Noreen recently at one of her presentations about business productivity hacks, and I contact her the very next day. I said, please come on the show. Season three is literally about what you just presented about today. So to start off, can you just share your definition of productivity when it comes to business?
00:02:17
Speaker
Yeah,
Overcoming Productivity Barriers
00:02:18
Speaker
so productivity is actually quite simple, but it's not. Productivity really is just our measurement of our efficiency. So what is it that we're putting into our work and what is our output? So it sounds very simple, but it's also very layered and very complex.
00:02:38
Speaker
So what we really try to do when when I say, you know, we are creating more efficiencies, we are trying to
00:02:48
Speaker
you know, boost somebody's productivity, we are taking what is generally really complex and difficult and frustrations and barriers and time that we spend on things that don't matter. And we're trying to take that complex and make it simpler so that the input
00:03:09
Speaker
is simpler, easier, way more focused on what somebody's most important work is. And so the output expands without a greater input. And when you are an entrepreneur and you have limited time resources, limited funds,
00:03:30
Speaker
really honing in on your input to maximize your productivity, your efficiency, and your output, that is where the magic happens. Yes. This speaks to me big time this month, especially. Mallory and I have been talking about our own time-related stories in the background, and this is something that I think we have had to revisit over and over and over. Definitely timely for all of our listeners, I'm sure as well.
00:03:58
Speaker
When you're thinking about the common barriers that you see with clients to productivity, specifically related to work, what are some of those things that you're just like, oh man, when I talk to this person, I can just see there are four or five things that are just holding them back and maybe we can't see them.
00:04:21
Speaker
Yeah, there are definitely a handful of common barriers that I see with many of my clients and it doesn't matter what industry they're in. I work with folks that are in politics, that are lawyers, that are doctors, that are in oil and gas, that are entrepreneurs, healers, creatives.
00:04:42
Speaker
And these barriers are the same. And the number one thing that I see, especially with us women, is that we say yes to everything. Yes, we feel like in order to get ahead, in order to be successful, we need to just keep piling everything onto our plates.
00:05:12
Speaker
and what ends up happening, we end up where we are focusing a mile wide and an inch deep and we become overwhelmed and stressed as opposed to when we filter what we say yes to, when we really critically look at what makes the most impact, what is the most valuable
00:05:38
Speaker
thing that we can do in our business, what either creates more client satisfaction, increased revenue, decreased expenses, those kinds of things. When we do that, then we focus on an inch wide and a mile deep and we just become so much more laser focused and we create more success in what we're doing.
00:06:03
Speaker
So when we say yes to everything, we're not very effective in anything. So not a mile wide and an inch deep, but an inch wide and a mile deep. Such a good analogy. Okay, and I think you might have some more. So that was one. What other barriers are coming to mind for you?
00:06:27
Speaker
So the other thing that we, especially as women in business, we cannot be overly confident in our abilities. There's a lot of women who feel like they need to take another course or just do a lot of research and education and they're afraid of just putting something out there the way it is. Like we have this sense of we have to be perfect.
00:06:56
Speaker
There's this, you know, sort of, I call it poisonous perfectionism. And the poisonous perfectionism, yes, we have to have a sense of excellence in our work. And what we want to put out there is good quality. But when it goes too far, that way, that sense of perfectionism, that sense of we're not good enough, we don't know enough.
00:07:22
Speaker
then we tend to not put out there what we need to. And I always say to my clients, okay, if my client is struggling with poisonous perfectionism, what is the minimum viable product that we could put out there? Let's say you want to offer a new service or create a new course or launch a product. What is the minimum you need to do to get that out there?
00:07:52
Speaker
Because we all know that once you get that out there, you're going to learn, you're going to discover that what you thought you should have done here, you need to do something a little different and you'll iterate. And the more that we do that, the more we let go of, okay, I don't know enough, I have to keep researching, I can't launch this thing. The more we let go of that, the more we learn that, oh, it's okay to put something out there that's only like,
00:08:19
Speaker
I don't know, 50% complete or 70% complete. Nobody else knows the difference. And that is a really powerful thing is knowing what is your minimum viable product to put out there.
00:08:34
Speaker
That's a great point. And we've actually heard that come up a few times on past seasons, just that feeling of, I'm not prepared enough, right? So you just keep preparing forever and you don't put something out there. And I think the other flip side of that is that we want to have the perfect thing put out there because what we see is everyone else's finished product.
00:08:58
Speaker
And we don't see the 12 iterations that happened before that. So it looks a lot to people, especially new business owners, like, well, these people just knew what to do because here's this perfect end result. And what we don't see is how that sausage gets made. And that's the part that people can relate to.
00:09:18
Speaker
Yes, you're absolutely right. Absolutely right. And it's such an important part of the process. It's such an important part of learning and failing forward and being open to feedback and just letting go of that sense of perfectionism. There's a balance between being paralyzed and not moving forward and poisonous perfectionism. There's a middle ground there where we actually
00:09:46
Speaker
you know, get a lot of things done and our productivity increases, our success in our business increases because we're willing, you know, to take those risks and put that work out there. Okay. So this might be a hard question for you to narrow down, but I want to know what your top favorite few productivity hacks are to manage time, attention and energy more effectively.
00:10:13
Speaker
Yeah, so the number one thing for me is when people start a practice of planning.
Productivity Planning Strategies
00:10:21
Speaker
And I find that when you plan well, you give yourself the opportunity to really focus on your priorities. What are those big rocks that you need to be focusing on right now?
00:10:39
Speaker
And so when you plan in advance, it's just like when we do any kind of planning, like when we plan a vacation well or when we meal plan, you know, things just work better. We've already made the hard decisions in advance. I think of planning like when I sit down and do my planning once a week and I'm looking at my week ahead,
00:11:02
Speaker
It's like I've got my CEO brain on. My CEO is sitting down and I'm making the hard decisions about what I'm going to work on in my business, what I need to focus on. And I'm doing that hard thinking. And then when, you know, Monday morning comes.
00:11:20
Speaker
And my employee brain gets to take over and just get to work. You know, my boss has already given me my marching orders and you just get into flow much easier. And so planning is just, it is the secret sauce of like the most successful people on the planet. So planning would be my all time number one productivity efficiency hack.
00:11:50
Speaker
The clients that I have that have adopted planning and really put that planning into their rhythms and routines have seen more success, achieved more of their goals, and just really feel that sense of satisfaction at the end of the day, the end of the week, that they've done what they've planned. So planning would be my all-time number one productivity efficiency hack.
00:12:18
Speaker
I love that one. And I feel like I'm like probably getting like a B plus on that because I do it. But then I think the flip side is that then I don't always stick to it. I don't know if that's a negative or positive because sometimes you have to be flexible. But I also think sometimes I do the easier things instead of the harder things first. And instead of like following what my CEO said, I'm like, I'll just knock out these easy things and not, you know, eating the frog first. But okay, what else what else is on the top of that list for you?
Avoiding Distractions and Screen Sucking
00:12:48
Speaker
So the other thing that really is a productivity hack, if you can master this, is to stop screen sucking. Sucking the screen sucks your time.
00:13:05
Speaker
It sucks. There's a time and a place for social media. There's a time and a place to binge on Netflix. There's a time and a place for that. We all need to relax. We all need to. But in the middle of the day or when you go to your phone because you're looking at your calendar and all of a sudden you find you're not
00:13:28
Speaker
even going to your calendar you're on instagram or you're on tiktok and then all of a sudden you know half an hour an hour or more goes by and the screen has sucked away your precious time so there's many ways that we can try to avoid this you know i have some clients where i say can you please take those apps off your phone
00:13:52
Speaker
If you are sitting down to do some deep work or you really need to focus, put your phone somewhere else in another room, just not accessible. You can close all the open browsers that you have and just have one screen so that you don't see a multitude of different screens behind the one you're looking at. You just see what you're focusing on.
00:14:19
Speaker
You know, because social media, they want you to keep scrolling. They want you to keep liking video after video. And so we just go down these rabbit holes that we don't need to go down and it adds no value.
00:14:35
Speaker
screen sucking. Yes, I think it's, you know, you come back to that illustration you had about your CEO brain telling you what needs to be in this week. And it's like, I don't know any CEO that would be like, you know what, also try to find me 55 cat memes while you're at it. And if you want to prioritize that and do that first, that would be even better. Like that doesn't make any sense.
00:15:01
Speaker
right, that no one would say that. And no business owner would be like, this is what adds value. This is how I get more clients. I am reaching my goals by losing myself on the internet. Right. And that, you know, I have some clients that really enjoy spending a little bit of time on social media. And so I say, OK, then make a deal with yourself, where if you spend, let's say, 25, 45 minutes doing some work, then reward yourself.
00:15:30
Speaker
with five or 10 minutes on social media. So that's okay. That's okay to do, you know, but everything in balance. It's just when you spend that 45 minutes on the screen scrolling, when you really should be working, that's when it causes an issue. And I think we talk about it in our time management course about
00:15:53
Speaker
utilizing time blocking and model calendars, all things I'm sure you're really into or have opinions on. But what I practice is because I actually don't like social media. And one of us has to do a little bit for our companies, right? So it is a part of business ownership. So I think, you know, like you said, setting a timer, maybe that's for the fun stuff, but I really like just blocking, like,
00:16:16
Speaker
once every two weeks to schedule all my stuff at once. And then I can interact and engage here and there, but that way I just feel like it's done and it's blocked and I don't have to find time for it every day. That's for someone who doesn't like it, so it's probably a little bit of a different story, but I know that's how we work around using social during the business hours. Yeah, yeah, that's a great way, a great way to do it.
00:16:39
Speaker
And I feel seen by the part about rewarding yourself because I feel like I do this all day. It's just constant carrots and sticks with me. So I will have like on my Mallory nose, I turned off social media in like 2020.
00:16:53
Speaker
never really went back. So my Facebook feed is off. There's nothing on my phone. I found a way to turn off the YouTube feed. I was like, I don't want your suggestions. I am here for horse riding vlogs. That is it. But sometimes I'll look and see every day what new vlogs are happening. Because for me, that's my hobby. That's me learning about the things I'm interested in. But I might say, hey, I need to work on these three emails. And once they're done,
00:17:20
Speaker
I can watch this writing vlog from today, you know, and I'll just keep that open and just give myself a little bit of a carrot for that. But I did hear a phrase the other day that I feel like you will appreciate, which was this or nothing. And it was a way to say, you know what, if it's doing this task that I'm supposed to do, or sitting here doing literally nothing, nothing, no phone, no TV, no nothing,
00:17:45
Speaker
probably you're going to pick the task that you should do. And so I've been trying to keep that in the back of my mind and just be like, this or nothing. Those are your two options. And you pick either one, you have the choice. But that's just something I'm keeping in my mind.
00:18:02
Speaker
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00:18:22
Speaker
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'Eating the Frog': Tackling Tough Tasks
00:18:51
Speaker
And you know, Mallory, you mentioned something else too, which is one of the other productivity hacks that I really like to reinforce with my clients is eating the frog first. I mean, we all know, you know, Brian Tracy famously coined this because of the Mark Twain quote that if, you know, Mark Twain said that if he had to, if the worst thing he had to do in a day was to eat a frog, he would do it first.
00:19:18
Speaker
And what this does is it really helps us retrain our brain into I'm going to do the hardest thing that I have to do. I'm going to do the thing that I dislike the most. I'm going to do the thing that I'm resisting.
00:19:35
Speaker
because I'm gonna get it over with, I'm gonna do it first. And so usually across the board with any and all of my clients, we schedule in first thing and it can be even prior to when their official workday starts is a power hour.
00:19:50
Speaker
And that just that time for them and they're they're not looking at their calendar, they're not looking at their email. The very first thing they're doing is if they had to pick one or two things, the only things that they had to accomplish in a day and pick those one or two things, those are the things they do first.
00:20:10
Speaker
and they could be the most unpleasant, you know, what they've been procrastinating on, whatever. And if that is a practice that is done on the regular, I say every day, but even if it's three to four times a week, that also is where serious progress happens.
00:20:29
Speaker
And we do retrain our brains that I can do hard things and this wasn't as bad as I thought. And I thought doing my taxes would take me, you know, 3000 days, but it actually, you know, I'm done. And so that, you know, eating your frog is such a great productivity hack and it, you know, it stood the test of time for a reason because it really does work.
00:20:59
Speaker
So here's a follow up question on that specifically. So we're big fans of eating the frog. I like the challenge that it gives me of saying, hey, if I have in half an hour to do everything that I hate, like how much of it can I get done? You know, in a half hour, how much can I knock out? But what about the days when
00:21:15
Speaker
maybe you just don't have the energy for the thing that you don't want to do the most. Where's the balance of training your brain to do the hard things, creating a structure for them, planning them out, but then still giving yourself a little bit of grace to say, you know what? Today is not the day, and maybe that doesn't make me a failure. Do your clients have this struggle too? They do. With anything in life, it's not an all or nothing.
00:21:45
Speaker
You know, of course we want to try to build in these structures and these systems, but within these structures and systems, we're real people that have real lives. And sometimes we didn't get a really good night's sleep. And so we are tired and it's okay to just be okay with that and to not focus on eating your frogs every single morning. That's why I don't say to clients,
00:22:11
Speaker
You have to do it five days a week. I say April three to four. Three, four, if you can get five, amazing. You're a walk star. But it's okay for us to allow life to happen. When you are more organized and you have these really good, strong structures and systems in place, you find more breathing room. You find more white space.
00:22:39
Speaker
And in that breathing room and in that white space, you are allowed to take a break. You are allowed to be more creative. And that's that's really where the incredible magic happens in people's work. And it's part, you know, science and part intuition and part
00:22:59
Speaker
You know what? You have to be in the right headspace to do a certain work. Like I'm not always in the right headspace to do taxes. I am not a numbers gal. I can do it, but it's not my favorite thing. And if I'm really not feeling it, that's okay. But I also know that I have done a lot of other work and I'm on top of things. And so,
00:23:26
Speaker
And I usually don't leave my taxes till like, you know, the 11th hour on the last day of the deadline. But that being said, if there is something that we're in a work environment and there is a deadline and we have to get it done, sometimes we have to do it whether we feel like it or not. And that's okay. That's okay for us to do that. Like we can do lots of things that we don't feel like doing because we have to. Other people are relying on us.
00:23:56
Speaker
And so training, you know, eating the frog does train our brain to do it when we don't feel like it. Well, and it ties back to the piece about what's the, you know, the viable product, what's the minimum viable product. And maybe if you're not in the best frame of mind for that particular tough task, well, maybe you can get it 50% done. And that's okay for today. That's still more than nothing.
00:24:24
Speaker
And then it's easier to finish I find once you start. I've already I'm just, you know, finishing the last little bits. So it does all come full circle. And even flipping this concept on its head where there are some people that
00:24:42
Speaker
really do need to get all those little small niggly things done first before they tackle the big stuff. It's me. It's me. It's me too. A hundred percent. Yeah, sometimes that's me too, where I feel like if I just need to knock out some emails, I just need to do, you know, I need to feel like I'm somewhat accomplished and I've done, I've been productive, but I've focused on sort of the quote unquote busy
The Myth of Multitasking
00:25:09
Speaker
work.
00:25:10
Speaker
then I can feel like I can be fully present with this thing that, you know, this frog that I need to sit down and eat.
00:25:18
Speaker
And so that's where sort of getting to know your work rhythms and how your brain functions. Sometimes you just need to eat that frog first. You need to get to it because you know, you're going to put it off and put it off. And by the end of the day, you, you, you didn't do it. And it's lingering now for another day or two or more. And sometimes you do need to just knock off those little things so that you can give yourself that focus time.
00:25:48
Speaker
Okay, I feel like since, yeah, I feel like since we are having confession here, we need to talk about the elephant in the room for me at least. And that is multitasking. And I don't want you to come for me. But I'm admitting that I have a problem. And that is step number one. For many, many women, I know it feels like the right thing. It feels like the right thing to do.
00:26:13
Speaker
Why do one thing when you could do pieces of 20 things that are all also on your list? It's like cookies that I can't stop eating. I'm like, you know what I could do while I'm doing this? 20 other things. It doesn't make any sense. I can't just even go cook dinner and just do that. That's not an option. Please counsel.
00:26:41
Speaker
all of us out here who understand the theory that multitasking is not as helpful. But like, that's our jam. That's, that's where we live. Please help. Yes. Yeah. And you know, that has become our jam, Nicole, because we are just so inundated with so much information with so many things. And so
00:27:07
Speaker
If we look at the root cause of our deep desire to multitask, it's because we're not planning. It's because we're not focused.
00:27:21
Speaker
So multitasking has been sort of the solution that we've, you know, the band aid that we've tried to put on the fact that we are, are all, many of us are very overwhelmed and stressed out and we're, we're just, we're not getting our most important work done. We're not planning, we're not focusing, we're not doing deep work. And so multitasking, it just doesn't work. I mean, our brains are not wired that way. We cannot,
00:27:49
Speaker
be fully present with one important task and focus on another and be fully present with another important task. We may think that we are really good at writing six emails, all with different subjects, all at the same time, but we're not. Mistakes happen. We take far longer to do that.
00:28:16
Speaker
We really, when we mono task and we really look at one screen at a time, finish it as much as possible or to its completion before moving on to the next thing, we feel more satisfied because we get to
00:28:35
Speaker
highlight that off, check it off our list, it's done. We do love that. Yeah, we've done a good job. We weren't distracted and forgot some information or whatever. It just works far better. Now, that being said, we live in a world that's all gray, rarely are things black and white. There are instances where we can do double duty.
00:29:05
Speaker
If you're standing in line somewhere, go ahead, check your emails, onto a bunch of emails. If you're folding laundry and you need to make a phone call, make a phone call while you're folding laundry. It's perfectly okay to find opportunities where our time can do double duty. I have one client, she's a politician in the US, and she's so busy. So she says to her team, she sends them a text on Slack
00:29:32
Speaker
when she's going into her vehicle to drive, you know, where she has so many different engagements. And so she lets her team know I'm available. I am your captive audience. You need a quick meeting with me. You need to ask me questions. Now's the time. So while she's driving, she's meeting with her team if they need her. And so find opportunities for, you know, having your time to double duty.
00:29:59
Speaker
But when we're focusing on urgent or important work, we really need to monetask. We really need to focus on one thing at a time, because we're not as effective as we think. So this is a great, great point. When I hear you say this, I can be bought in, my question is a little bit about showing ourselves some grace again, because like you said, the core of wanting to multitask
00:30:27
Speaker
is actually maybe not planning quite enough.
00:30:31
Speaker
But what do we do when we live in this society that, like you said, inundates us with data all the time that we can't plan for? And so it's almost like you create this battle plan for the day and 10 minutes in you get an email that needs something. You get a text from a friend to, you know, like that's part of it for me is just being available for friends and the people that I want to stay connected to and balancing that
00:30:58
Speaker
with work and it's like there's almost no times when I'm not having a conversation with a friend while I'm working. And so how do we do that when both things are important and we don't know where else to put them?
00:31:14
Speaker
Yes, absolutely. And there's so many competing priorities. Competing priorities, exactly. Yeah, for sure. And I guess it's a matter of understanding really at the moment what is our most important priority. And I think that in this world, we have really gotten the lines between urgent and important, very blurred. Everything seems to be urgent.
00:31:41
Speaker
And is it really though, the things that other people say, this is urgent, this is urgent. Is it urgent because they've neglected to- Right, they didn't plan. They didn't plan. And so it's their urgency, not really mine. Is something really truly urgent or is it important that you have to give it enough time?
00:32:03
Speaker
Now, again, if you're planning properly and you're planning where you only are focusing on one to three big rocks, accomplishing those things in a week. So then as a consequence, your calendar has breathing room. You know, you've got good, good blocks and meeting times and so on, but you've got breathing space there. You then have time for those things, for that phone call.
00:32:30
Speaker
with that friend for that emergency that comes up. You know, when we say yes to everything, then that is a problem. When we filter, you know, we filter what we say yes to based on our priorities.
00:32:47
Speaker
If your priorities are your friends and you say yes to them, that is a great filter. If something comes towards you to do this project or volunteer in this way and it will interfere with that one filter or it doesn't pass that filter, then maybe you consider saying no to that extra thing. We need to protect our time, so we need to plan it well
00:33:15
Speaker
but we also need to protect it for what is most important to us. And only we get to decide what that is. Okay, so I want to flip this a little.
00:33:29
Speaker
So I am going to guess that most people who know me, if they had to pick three words to describe me, organized would be one of those words. It's just like what I do and who I am, okay? I mean, it's my whole career for my other companies, systems, processes, right? So running companies organized, that's kind of my thing business-wise, but even just in my personal life. That being said though, what should I be on the lookout for
00:33:59
Speaker
that being overly organized could be a detriment to me. Do you ever see that with clients where it's the other side of it, kind of the other side of the coin? Is there anything that pops into mind for you when I say that? Yeah, I think when we are too rigid with our systems and our practices, we definitely need to set up the wireframe.
00:34:24
Speaker
But let's let our intuition and let natural consequences and let our creativity within that wireframe
00:34:34
Speaker
And so, yeah, I see there's there's consequences to being on either side of the ditch. You know, when we are absolutely nothing gets done. We are just we are procrastinating or we're a perfectionist. And so we get paralyzed in that and we don't do anything.
00:34:57
Speaker
We constantly focus on work that doesn't count. We're not planning. We're just always chasing our tail or we are way too strict and rigid and we don't allow any kind of fluidity into our work and any
00:35:14
Speaker
sense of joy and fun. It's great to be organized and create this strong foundation, but we are building it so that we can dance on top of it. We're building it so that we can enjoy our life and the things that we love to do with the people that we love the most. And so we can never forget that productivity really is a means to an end.
00:35:44
Speaker
We do it so that we free up time and we're not so stressed and overwhelmed. And we feel like we're contributing good and positive and wonderful things into the world because of our work. But then we can spend more time with our husband or our kids or our wife or our friends or our dog or exercising or out in nature, whatever it is.
00:36:12
Speaker
We need to build these structures that we can dance on top of. That's a good reminder. I feel convicted by this. I know. How is that also my problem? Oh no. I know because I feel like I do have a hard time sometimes noticing and appreciating the joy. Almost like the structures when then things don't go my way as it was so beautifully planned. Then it's like I have a really hard time
00:36:36
Speaker
adjusting to that and then I get it's I still get stressed so it's like the planning didn't actually work so it's too much so that it's a beautiful reframe thank you for that lovely that lovely phrase we can't leave on either side of the ditch there's somewhere you know somewhere in the middle there I end up multitasking the things that are supposed to bring me joy too which is just
00:36:59
Speaker
I'm like, okay, I'm going to make time for this thing that I really like, but also I'm going to make sure that I'm checking email during it so that I can taint it with as much other things that I don't like as possible because that makes sense. This is a great idea. Now, you used the word deep work earlier, but we didn't really talk about that.
00:37:22
Speaker
to an extent. So I want to just make sure we have time to talk about what your thoughts are on deep work and then how that impacts productivity. Yeah. So deep work is this beautiful space where, you know, when you are like you've got the perfect surroundings, there's no distractions.
00:37:42
Speaker
You've got a hot cup of coffee. It's your favorite, you know, coffee. Kids are gone. The email's off. Your email inbox is at zero. And you can just get into whatever you're doing.
00:37:57
Speaker
Well, that doesn't happen. That doesn't happen. Now, that doesn't mean the deep work is not possible. It's possible when we do a few simple things to help us get into that deep work. Planning, of course, is number one. We need to plan our priorities and we need to tie those tasks related to our priorities to our time.
00:38:25
Speaker
So we have to make sure that that time is scheduled.
00:38:29
Speaker
And then once that time is scheduled and the time comes, of course we need to make sure that our environment, both internal and external environments are as distraction free as possible. So whatever that looks like for you, whatever those internal or external distractions might be. And then we have to make sure that we are breaking down tasks.
00:38:55
Speaker
usually deep work means we are going to be working on a project or a task or something that is is bigger or multifaceted and so if we we say you know oh create website or like that just seems way too big you know we have to break it down so that it is
00:39:18
Speaker
you know, research website platforms. What are the small little steps that we need to take to break that bigger thing? And then we get into the flow. The other thing that's important when we are tying our tasks with our time is to keep in mind our own brain power.
00:39:40
Speaker
So there's some tasks that need that really active brain power that, you know, your brain is just on fire. And for most people, not all people, for most people that's like first thing in the morning or kind of mid-morning, some people it's later in the evening, like, you know, after dinner and so on, people's brains are on fire. You'll know the best when that is for you, typically.
00:40:07
Speaker
So what does that task need? Active brain power or proactive brain power, active brain power, or just very low brain power. And so we have to tie our tasks to our calendar in a time that we know typically we have that particular brain power. That's what is meant by doing the right task at the right time.
00:40:34
Speaker
We get into flow better. Like if if you would tell me to start a project of, you know, create a new website on Friday afternoon, I will tell you to pound sand. I am tired. I am looking forward to the weekend. I am like, no, it's not going to happen.
00:40:52
Speaker
You would ask me that same thing on a Tuesday morning, middle of the morning. I'm like, I'm on fire. I'm like, yes, I, you know, I have all these ideas and we can do this and that, and I'm going to look into that and we can, you know, these colors. Absolutely. So we have to know when our brain power is the most proactive, active or inactive. And that really, if we set ourselves up well, we plan well,
00:41:21
Speaker
we set up our environment and we break down tasks, the chances of us getting into that beautiful flow state where we just produce incredible work vastly improves.
00:41:39
Speaker
You know it when you feel it and just to pay attention to the time of day that you usually feel that way is important. And like you said, it's different for everybody. I have about two hours in the morning and then don't talk to me in the afternoon.
00:41:57
Speaker
And then at night, I'm like, hey, whatever anyone needs, it's fine. Anytime between five and midnight, it's no problem. This is my workday. But the afternoon, it's like, the sun is out. Don't talk to me. I'm unavailable. Exactly. And knowing that is really powerful. Knowing that about yourself and when you work best and when you don't. And in the afternoon is the time where
00:42:25
Speaker
you're either out in nature or you're outside or you are like just returning phone calls or you're doing kind of mindless work that you don't really have to focus on. Yes. Okay, so we're looking at...
00:42:42
Speaker
when we see you on the screen here. So people can't see this, but we see you and we see this beautiful stack of your book.
Noreen's Book on Productivity
00:42:49
Speaker
So tell us about your book, The Unexpected Entrepreneur. Yeah. So I wrote this book for female entrepreneurs to help them with their productivity.
00:43:00
Speaker
practices so it's called the unexpected entrepreneur now you're here make a difference while making a living and so I wrote it it's got all of my best productivity hacks tips I wrote it so that each chapter is sort of standalone if you
00:43:18
Speaker
are challenged with emails and how to manage all of that. There's a chapter on that. If you want to learn how to do planning, there's a whole chapter on that. There's also resources that people can download and get through the book. Tons and tons of valuable resources. So really, I poured everything into this book.
00:43:39
Speaker
I know that not every person can sort of afford my one-to-one coaching. And so this really is a great step and a great resource, especially for those starting out entrepreneurs, those small business owners, maybe they don't have a lot of time or resources to contribute to being more productive and efficient. But there is such a return on investment for this kind of stuff.
00:44:07
Speaker
For every minute you spend getting yourself organized, you see the results. It's absolutely incredible the return on investment that you get. I know that some people think, oh, yes, but I don't have the time.
00:44:22
Speaker
Well, that's the point. If you say you don't have the time or you don't have the resources to look at ways that you can create those efficiencies right by taking what's complex, taking what's, you know, what we talked about at the beginning, taking what's inefficient, taking all of those things, breaking down the barriers and the friction that exists to creating something that's more simple,
00:44:50
Speaker
in flow, you're super clear, and you actually achieve goals and create more success and time freedom. That's what productivity and efficiency is all about. Huge.
Client Success Story and Future Plans
00:45:03
Speaker
And I want to end on that return on investment piece and just have you share if any story comes to mind from someone that you've worked with to give us kind of a visual of the before and after, like what can that return on investment look like, not just in dollars or amount of clients or any of that, but like mental white space and joy and the things that you told us like productivity is for this reason. You know, it's not just for the sake of organizing.
00:45:33
Speaker
It's to create room for joy and a more joyful life. So are there any stories that you can share with us to just say, Hey, here's a before and after like this is a transformation that efficiency and productivity can give you.
00:45:48
Speaker
Yeah, there's so many. It's hard to pick just one. But one that really comes to mind is about two years ago, I was working with a woman. She's the president of quite a large HR consulting firm out of San Francisco.
00:46:07
Speaker
And she was not very organized. Her email was bottlenecking her entire team. She was chasing her tail. She would be late for meetings, miss meetings.
00:46:22
Speaker
she was the issue in her company and she recognized that to her credit an amazing view of herself there and so we worked together she went through my productivity mastery program and then she you know did one-to-one coaching after so we we kept meeting on a monthly basis just to really embed the routines and the systems and so on
00:46:46
Speaker
And her original goal was that she wanted to have her business to the point where she could sell it and retire. And so she knew that at the point that she was at, there was no way she could do that. She couldn't sell the business in sort of the state that it was in because of her disorganization and her lack of practices in that way.
00:47:12
Speaker
and so we really worked on it and her at the top she influenced her entire team and and so the ripple effect of her working with me just transforming her practices how she
00:47:29
Speaker
how she handled her emails her tasks her calendar everything about her work she was so committed and dug in there and the return on investment her and i just connected not that long ago she is about a year away from selling her business and her business is has completely transformed it is grown
00:47:51
Speaker
She actually has me meet with every new employee and I set them up with the productivity practices that her and the rest of the team are on the same page with. I'm so proud of her. She did the hard work. She recognized, first of all, that she needed it.
00:48:14
Speaker
She did the hard work, she committed to her vision, and she's making it happen. And so I am so proud of her. That's huge. And it, like you said, it's the way that it can make your everyday life feel, that's the reward, right? Not even everything needs to be different. You don't need to change everything that you're doing to have it feel like you changed everything that you're doing.
00:48:41
Speaker
And you know what you know what her ultimate goal is after selling her business is she wants to start a foundation a rescue foundation for cats living on the street.
00:48:54
Speaker
And she's got this big heart for animals and that is what's driving her. And so here she's this incredibly successful president. She runs this big company, but her heart is she wants to retire so she can save
00:49:14
Speaker
hats on the street. I'm like, it's so good. I know. I know. Beautiful. Well, it sounds like people can find resources from your book that's accessible to anyone. We are going to have all of your information and how to get in touch with you in the show notes so people could check out maybe some of your other offerings and your coaching as a place to start. But I think you have given us lots to think about and lots for people to look into if they need a little bit more support.
00:49:43
Speaker
Wonderful. Well, thank you so much for the opportunity and it's been a lot of fun. Thank you for sharing your time and wisdom with us. We will chat with everyone next week.
00:49:57
Speaker
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