Episode 109: 4 Things to Do in Your Business when You Don't Feel Like Creating

Productivity

30 Mar

Don’t feel like creating or doing much of anything right now? Me either! Here are 4 things I’m doing instead that you can do too to take care of your mental health, your daily energy allotment (which may feel a lot lower lately) all while still staying the course in your business!

Things worth mentioning:

Getting your business organized and streamlined is what will help you become a profitable business in the long run. Learn more about Pretty Productive Life.
Check out the Daily Productivity & Brain Dump Book for templates and focus pages!
Come say hi on Instagram! I’d love to hear from you and know that you’re a listener!

4 Ways to Stay Productive in Your Business Without Creating Anything New

Welcome to the Mindful Productivity Podcast, Episode 109! I'm your host, Sarah Steckler, and today I want to talk to you about how to stay productive in your business—even when you don’t feel like creating. If you’re feeling exhausted or creatively blocked right now, you’re not alone. Many of us, especially entrepreneurs and business owners, have been feeling the weight of stress and anxiety during these uncertain times. It’s completely normal to feel tired and drained, especially with so many changes happening all around us.

If you’re finding it hard to be productive or creative, that’s okay! I want to give you full permission to pause and take a break from creating. But that doesn’t mean you have to completely stop working on your business. Today, I’m sharing four things you can do in your business when you just don’t have the creative energy to produce new content.

1. Make Time to Do Less

We’re all dealing with a lot more mental stress and energy depletion than usual. Whether you’re adjusting to working from home, homeschooling, or simply coping with the ongoing changes, your brain is working overtime. One of the best things you can do right now is make time to intentionally do less. This might sound counterintuitive, but taking a step back to rest and recharge can actually help you regain your creative spark in the long run.

Give yourself permission to slow down and incorporate more breaks into your workweek. Whether it’s unplugging from social media, sitting quietly, or simply staring at nature (which is one of my favorite things to do), making time for less will help you reset and refocus.

2. Do a Brain Dump

I talk about brain dumps all the time, and that’s because they’re so helpful for clearing mental clutter. If you haven’t done one in a while, now is the perfect time to grab a piece of paper and just let it all out. Write down everything that’s on your mind without worrying about organizing it or making it look nice.

Here’s a simple brain dump template to get started:

What I can’t control: List the things that are out of your control, such as how others behave or global events.
What I can control: Write down the things you do have control over, like how you spend your time, your reactions, and how you structure your day.
What I will put my energy toward: This is where you decide what’s worth focusing on. Choose one thing that you want to move forward on in your business.

This simple exercise will help you release some of the overwhelm and give you clarity on what matters most right now.

3. Revamp Your Routine

With all the changes happening, this is a great opportunity to revamp your routine. If your current schedule is feeling chaotic or unstructured, now’s the time to rework it to better suit your needs. Block scheduling is one effective method. Set aside specific chunks of time for particular tasks, whether that’s client calls, creative work, or personal time.

Consider theme days as well. For example, Mondays could be for client calls, Tuesdays for content creation, and Wednesdays for administrative tasks. This helps reduce task-switching and keeps you focused on one type of work at a time.

4. Organize Your Project Workflows

If you’re not feeling particularly creative, another productive thing you can do is organize your project workflows. Documenting your business processes might not sound exciting, but it will save you so much time and mental energy in the long run. Whether it’s how you onboard new clients, publish content, or manage projects, having standard operating procedures (SOPs) and workflows in place will streamline your business.

Start by documenting the steps you take for recurring tasks. Even if you think you know these processes by heart, having them written down will prevent mistakes when you’re tired or overwhelmed. Plus, these workflows will be invaluable if you ever hire someone to help you.

Bonus Tip: Focus on One Thing at a Time

Finally, choose one focus project to work on in your business right now. Trying to do too many things at once, especially during a stressful time, will only add to your overwhelm. Pick one thing—whether it’s organizing your workflows, creating content, or refining your services—and put your energy into that.

You are 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 stressful, unusual. I felt anxious at night. There's one big thing on my mind all the damn time. And because of that, I am finding it really hard to be creative. I thought that I could 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 mastermind 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 momentum 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 can do in your business that are just as 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 listening. 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 Blog. 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 Steckler, 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 want to let you guys know that I actually recorded a live on Instagram at the time of this recording just about ten minutes ago. And I 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 all ready to download it and repurpose it as a podcast and share it. And Instagram 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 happen 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 live, 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. I'm like, okay, cool. It didn't save. I double checked it. I double checked Instagram. There's nothing I can do.
I'm not going to spend 20 minutes having a meltdown about it. I'm just going to get up and get going because every minute I spend upset is 1 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 going to just jump right into it. Your time is valuable. I'm ready to do this. We're going to talk about four things that you can do in your business right now if you don't feel like creating. I thought that I would be using this time to be so creative in my business, and I think that it'll 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 lined up, I was like, once I move, I'm going to do all these things. And now I have my office and I'm so excited and I'm going to go live all the time.
And then the past couple of weeks have 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 going to 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 is to make time to do less. One thing we have to acknowledge right now is that we are using a lot more mental energy on a daily basis. I've been talking to my friends, my other entrepreneur friends, and just like people in general, and everyone is saying the same thing, Holy shit, I am so exhausted right now. I'm not even sick. I don't know what's going on. I've been home more. Some people are like, I've been reading books and watching more TV, and other people are like, I have kids at home and I have no idea how I'm doing all these thousand things. And they rightfully so, are exhausted. But collectively, right now, we are 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 globally, everyone is adjusting rapidly to these new changes to having to home school if you have kids, to just having more people in your household or not. Right? Whatever it looks like for you, you're adapting to that and you have to. There's no other choice. You have to do it quickly. And with change, good or bad, comes more mental energy drain. So one, there's that going on. Two, because you have less mental energy, you are not as 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 can 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 do more. And part of being productive is also doing less. So that's exactly what point number one is that right now you need to make more intentional time to do less, whatever that looks like. Right? Like you can tangibly do less stuff online, unplug from the news, stop scrolling, 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 is, 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 can do in your business right now, if you don't feel like creating, I wonder how fast I can talk today. The second thing is doing a brain dump. You guys know I talk about this all the time, but it's so important. When's the last time you did one's? 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? Seriously, do a brain dump and do one. And don't feel like you need to share it with anyone because you don't. Right. This isn't a Facebook post. This isn't some Pinterest Instagram thing. You're not going to share it anywhere. Don't try to 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. Get out a piece of paper. If you have my daily productivity and brain dump book, this little template is, like in there all throughout it, but you can write it down on any piece of paper.
And here's what you're going to write. Okay, so I want you to have three sections of your paper. These can either be three columns or three chunks, like three big boxes. Okay, the first one is I want you to write down what I can't control, what I can't control. In the second area, I want you to write down what I can control. What can you control? And in the third place, I want you to write down what I will put my energy toward or into. Okay, 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 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.
At Costco the other day, I saw this guy, like, he probably was in his mid 50s and he was picking his nose in Costco during COVID. 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. Whatever. So there's going to be things like that that you cannot control and just write them down so that you can release your energy around them. Right? You can't control that. Another thing you can't control. You Canva control the sales in your business. You can never control this. I know there's some people out there. Yes, you can. You can manifest. Yeah, okay. But my point is, you can impact your sales. You can do more or better marketing. You can have better dialogue. You can increase your sales, but you can never control them. You can never be like, Sally will buy this. Yes. And then she does. That's not how life works, right? So releasing that, especially around like, numbers, right? Like, if you're launching something, this goes without saying all the time. If you're launching something and let's say you want 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 are 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 say control, I don't mean like, I control the world. 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. How the cycle goes. 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. You can control how often you wash your hands and license the doorknobs and all of that stuff. You can control how you react when you find out that they're still not toilet paper. Who the hell is taking all of it? 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 what you are selling. You can control how you price your services, how adaptable you are. You can control how you react if you do have students that are 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 may be things that you're facing in your business. These may not be 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 get to the fun section. What are you going to 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 segue. There are so many free things right now. Fuck. There are so many free things online. I keep getting so many emails. Let's all jump on Zoom. Collectively, there are so many free 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 all of it, and you may feel really good about it. I know I do. I'm like, oh, I'm going to sign up for this free class. I'm going to sign up for that. And then in your head, you're like, I'm being so productive, I'm going to create structure in my life. But then what happens is like, day three, four, five rolls around. You're like, who the fuck keeps you mailing me? Why do these people keep mailing me all this shit? What did I sign up for? What the hell, right? You freak out. So really take a minute right now to think about what you're going to put your energy toward.
And just because it's free doesn't 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 going to put your energy toward. Gosh. I'm so weird. I think the quarantine is getting to me. Okay, so we've gone over two things so far. The first one 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 helped 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 a necessary 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 10:00 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 then kind of almost judge yourself about whether or not this is how deep you want to go with how far you're sleeping at or how long you're sleeping in. Right. It's like I remember when I was a teenager, I love sleeping in. But then if I slept until one or two, I would be really mad because it was like, basically just slept the day away. So I knew that if I set my alarm for noon, I would still feel like I slept in. But it wouldn't be like crossing that threshold, right? So be clear about what that looks like for you. Now. If you are someone that wants more structure and you don't want to stay up until midnight drinking Tuma Moses watching below deck. That's what I've done a couple of times this week. You 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 also can be important to think about. A few things to think about can be block scheduling, right? And what I mean by block scheduling, if you're new to this is creating chunks of time in your week or in your day where you're doing specific things. Right. So you're not task switching. So, for example, I like to schedule time every week to do some podcasting. And especially now that I'm in my new office and I am currently in the process of revamping what my week looks like now with this new place and how I want my life to change, 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 an hour or two for your morning routine where you're getting up, you're making a family breakfast or whatever. It looks like 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 letting that go and moving forward and trying to be more positive. That could be part of your routine. That's fine. But get clear on what your block schedule looks like. Okay. Also, get clear on 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 schedule that time. And so I know what my mental energy is going to look like for those days. But it also can 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 going to talk to you a little bit more about my current course organizer.
Overwhelmed, 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 is 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 memes going around of, like, how people are scheduling out their days for their kids, and some of that may resonate with you and it may not. You get to decide. 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 four. Okay. The fourth thing I want to talk to you about today is taking time to organize and set up your project workflows. Now, a lot of people put this off or they don't think it's that important because they're like, I don't do 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 solopreneur, if you're just starting, you probably absolutely do. I know I do. I know how to do every goddamn thing. But the problem 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 you're tired or you're emotionally overwhelmed, you're going to find that there are days when you miss steps, when things get messy because you can't remember all of it. Right. Our brain is not a storage facility, okay? It's so important to remember that. So setting up workflows or 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 exact step by step workflows for my students inside publish 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 do. 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 workflows are so important is because in the event in the future that you hire someone or you need someone to help you because you get sick or you're just like, I can't do this, I need a break. Whatever. Then you have standard operating procedures and workflows that you can hand over to somebody else and say, here's what you need to do in my business. Here's 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 workflows 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 organizer, you're overwhelmed. We do everything in Google Docs, 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 you don't want everything stored in one place. 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 Docs, too. But it's important to have these things saved somewhere. So I actually recommend setting up your workflows there first. And then if you're in a 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 workflows. 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 file things certain places, that's a workflow.
That's a standard operating procedure. Start documenting it. What you're already doing can be tangible and helpful 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 going to find these inside. Organize your overwhelm there's templates, tutorials, 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 are both low cost offers. These are both low cost opportunities that are going to help you in huge ways. So if you're wanting to move forward right now in terms of revamping your routine or your self care, then go check out my free course, The Selfcare Reboot. That's going to help you do that in less than 2 hours. Okay, you can start that right now. You can find that by going Mindful productivity podcast, selfcare reboot. And the encore to that is the selfcare 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 going to help you set up the foundation of your business. I'm going to help you set up a weekly pulse 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 workflows 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, then now is 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 Mindful Productivity Podcast, you will find a link to it.
You can also go Mindful Productivity Podcast that's O-Y-O. Or if you're on Instagram, you can hit me up. I'm at Mindful Productivity Blog. 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 drift content. You can get started today. You can get 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 in 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, you will feel organized, you will feel rejuvenated, and you will have more mental energy at that point to push forward. Right? And if you want to hustle, if you want to 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 workflows.
All right, you guys, thank you so much for listening to this week's episode. As always, I'll be back every single Monday with new episodes on more content 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.