Episode 200: 7 Simple and Effective Mindful Productivity Tips
Let’s get back to basics and talk about simple and effective ways you can manage your time and energy, and get things done sustainably in your life and business!
Find the full transcript of this episode below.
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Transcript:
Hello. You are listening to episode 200 of the Mindful Productivity Podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Steckler, and wow, I can't believe we did 200 episodes. If you've listened to any of the episodes, or this is your first one, thank you so much for being here and being a part of this podcast. It brings me so much joy to produce this just about every week. And I love sharing all these different mindful productivity tips with you. Business and life lessons and so much more. So in celebration of our 200th episode, I thought it would be fun today to kind of recap seven simple and effective mindful productivity tips. I've talked about all of these things more in detail way back when on the podcast, but I thought it'd be fun to kind of summarize them up and do a quick recap. Because sometimes we forget how simple productivity and staying true to ourselves and taking care of ourselves really is. And we need to come back to these simple and effective ways of being and living and producing things in our life and business, right? Things don't have to be as complicated. And sometimes you just need that reminder, that little pep talk to be like, oh, yeah, there are tools available to me.
I don't need something brand new or supernova to take action and be effective.
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.
Real quick. If you're listening to the podcast and you've been enjoying it, it would mean so much to me if you'd leave a review over on Apple podcasts. Written reviews help the podcast grow so much and I would appreciate it. All right, let's go ahead and jump in to these seven simple and effective tips. The first one, and could you guess it, is to do a brain dump regularly and do things to clear your mind. If you've listened to this at all, you know that I love brain dumps. And there's a huge reason why brain dumps are so effective in helping you declutter your mind, get out of your way and really just take that mental plaque out of your brain and put it on paper. And yes, paper writing it down does so much more than typing. And I know maybe some of you aren't a big fan of paper, journaling or planning, but I'm telling you, if you get a scratch pad, a notebook, or if you check out my brain dump book, it is going to help you so much with taking action on this. It's also great because you're not talking to an audience, right?
You're not making a post on social media, you're not even talking to someone else. No one else needs to know what's going on with your brain dump and it can help you in huge ways. I try to do these every morning. In my business, sometimes that doesn't happen. But if you're new to brain dumps, I recommend doing them at least once a week, dumping out all of your thoughts and ideas. And this is going to help you because one of the biggest productivity mistakes that a lot of people make is that they do a todo list which is actually a brain dump, and then they start working from that space or that list or that big messy piece of paper and that is not how we take effective action, right? You actually need to do that brain dump before you're making a todo list, before you're mapping out or outlining your next project. It is going to help in huge ways. If you want tips on how to structure your brain dump, and if staring at a blank page feels more overwhelming than not, then I will leave links below to other resources. I have other podcast episodes and blog posts that walk you through how you can easily structure your own brain dump in no time.
The other part of this first tip is to regularly clear your mind in other ways. So going on a walk, getting out of your regular environment, whether you work in an office or at home, switch things up when you can go to a coffee shop. I like to do a lot of planning outside. Even in the winter, I will find places and parks that have like gazebos. I'll bundle up and I'll bring my bulldog with me and I'll do planning there so things that don't necessarily involve technology or me needing the internet, I will do a lot of like my curriculum development and stuff like that in those places. I can also do my brain dumps there. But seriously, getting out of your regular space is going to help you and it's going to give you some new energy and really take you away from the work that you're doing. We all need those breaks. My second tip here is to make a top three list. Every morning I at any given time have a massive todo list. It is never ending in my daily dashboard and my notion set up. There is a big todo list.
Just like I have a lot of emails in my inbox, I'm not an inbox zero person. I don't have like a perfectly organized to do list where it's like perfect because there's only three or four things every day. No, it's ongoing, it's huge, it's massive. Luckily though, I use notion to sort and filter things so I'm not always seeing everything at once and I only see what I need to at a given time. But one thing that can really help you is to make a top three list every morning. Basically, what are the top main things that you really need to get done? What are things that are actually due today or things that can't wait? This could even be something like on your schedule, like, I've got a counseling appointment or I need to take the cat to the vet, whatever it is. What are the top three things that have to happen today? And if you don't have any actual deadlines, what are the top three things that you would love to accomplish so that by the end of the day you're feeling good? Some of those things can be non business related to like for today, one of my top three is I need to vacuum.
I cannot believe how much cat litter gets peppered around this house within 12 hours. It's just wild. But anyway, so vacuuming. Maybe doing a brain dump, maybe you have something you need to update on your website or you need to email someone back or check your email. What are those top three things? Just make a list. And if you hit those top three things, it just feels good. It also helps you start taking action and build some momentum in your day instead of hitting that kind of wall of paralyzing where it's like, where do I even begin? I don't know what to do. You know what, forget it. I'm just going to open up my phone and scroll through TikTok. Kind of helps you avoid that phase of not doing anything and getting stalled. Tip number three is to celebrate your successes. We don't do this enough throughout the day, chances are that you're doing tons of things every day more than you realize. And maybe you're not making a todo list for them or you're not checking them off or you're not aware of all you're doing because you're just kind of chaotically running around.
That is me a lot of the time. And so by the end of the day when we don't have that self awareness of what we've actually done and accomplished, we can feel like we didn't do anything and that day can feel like a wash and it doesn't really help our self esteem or our selfefficacy side note, you do not need to do or accomplish things every day in order to feel good about yourself. But I like to know what happened. So for me it's less of a, oh, I feel good if I did enough. I feel good when I know how my time was spent, if that makes sense. So make that list of your top three things and then celebrate your successes as you go. So if making a long to do list is not for you, you can also just make a list as you go throughout the day so this can be a success list or whatever you want to call it and what you've accomplished. I have a template inside my mindful productivity guide that helps you make a success list every month. And I like this because I'll write down the things that happened to me that I had no control over, like I saw hummingbird today or things that I did that actually got results in my business or my life.
But celebrating your successes is going to help you feel good not only writing them down, but also sharing them with other people. So if you have some business buddies or some coworkers or family members, friends that you talk to, make a practice of. If you talk to these people on the regular or daily, make a practice or a time when you're winding things down for at the end of the day, hey, what were your successes for the day? I know it sounds cheesy, but it is so nice. My husband and I do this at the end of the night when we're kind of winding down. It's like, hey, what were the highs and lows? Same kind of idea, but share with your friends. So I have two amazing women that I've been talking to every day for years, and we talk every day on Foxer. And it's amazing because you can send messages back and forth and voice messages, text messages, whatever, and we talk throughout the day. So it kind of feels like I have actual coworkers, which I really love, but we're constantly sharing our bizarre, right? So. Like. When I was applying to different summits recently.
I would share like. Hey. I got into another summit. Or hey. I got so many new opt ins from this new freebie or funnel I created. Or other people will share. Like. Hey. I was going to take a nap today. And I ended up just kind of not having to. And I actually had more energy than I thought after going on a walk. So we celebrate all these different wins, and it's really fun when you celebrate them with other people too. So keep an ongoing list of your successes, big or small. It could even be something like, I didn't freak out when it took my dog 45 minutes to poop. I retained my patience or hey, I actually unloaded the dishwasher or took a shower today. Whatever it is, those are all wins in my book. All right, tip number four. This is so important. I want you to make sure that you're scheduling breaks and fun things into your work related projects and any project for that matter. So my husband and I, I feel like I'm saying this ongoing. We never know when it's going to happen, but at some point in the future, we're going to have to move again.
And this time around, moving is so stressful. I want to really make sure that we're scheduling in things within that time frame when we do it. That also give us breaks and are fun, right? So even scheduling in time like, hey, let's make sure we go to that restaurant that we want to go to before we move, right? Let's make sure that we have a movie night or whatever. Make sure you're scheduling in those breaks. For example, if you're creating a project in your business and I go over this more in depth inside of the Mindful productivity cycle episode, which I will link below as well, but making sure you're setting up those breaks, I think it's step six in the cycle. So if you're mapping out your project, right, and you're aware of and we'll get to this in a little bit too, and you're aware of kind of the things that start draining you a little bit, really make sure that you're scheduling in time. So it could be something as simple as, hey, next Tuesday when I'm working on batching out my podcast episodes, I want to make sure that I schedule time to go to a coffee shop and get that avocado toast I like and my favorite latte and actually work there for 2 hours.
Making that something that you really enjoy or hey, I want to actually buy myself something. So I want to go to Target and give myself $20, go to the dollar section and whatever and get myself some cute holiday decor, right? What are things that you can do to break up your project and when that's going to also help you do is get excited about the progress you're making. So if we had a marathon to run, it can be nice to have those checkpoints along the way, right? A lot like video games, right? So when I was little, playing Mario or anything else on Nintendo, you always get that really big adrenaline rush when you hit a checkpoint, right? And you know that once you hit that checkpoint, right, if you die or whatever in the game, you're going to jump right back there. You don't have to start all over again. So in a similar way, creating these little wins, these little breaks, these little fun things and your projects are things that you can look forward to and you also need to schedule those breaks, right? So actually put on your calendar or put on your to do list within your project, like go take a nap or go for a drive, or if you can swing it right, like go spend the night in a hotel by yourself or whatever it is to make sure that you're getting those breaks.
One thing I love to do when I'm in between doing live rounds of my course published with purpose, is I like to actually schedule time where me and Bella are going to a cabin. I love going to national parks and they have these cute little cabins. So I'll actually book a cabin for a night or two somewhere I can take my dog. And that'll be part of my project planning. So I'll actually go there and they typically don't have Internet or WiFi. So I will use that time again to do brain dumps, to do planning and mapping out in my business, quarterly planning, those kind of things with different templates I have. And it's really, really fun and it's always nice to look forward to. All right, tip number five, track your time. This is something we just don't do, and it's so helpful. And you can use something like Clockify me, which I love because you can break down projects and then look at how much time you're spending on specific stuff. So, for example, when I was creating the Energy Driver Habit Tracker, I was able to see how much time was spent on creating the video and the content around the training for it versus actually building out the entire Google Sheet.
And by the end of it, I was blown away that it took me, I think, like 55 hours to put it all together. But using Clockify can be great because you can color code things and be like, this is how much time I'm spending checking my email, or this is how much time I'm spending recording podcasts every week. And you can easily click it and go and run that time. And you can also edit it too, so if you make any mistakes. And when I look at time tracking, I don't like to get too nitty gritty, so I'm not going to stop in between and try to break down how much time I'm spending on particular emails. No, no, it's just one big gap of time. How much time am I spending? And when you can start it and stop it, you can look back at the end of the week and be like, wow, I spent 5 hours checking email. That's ridiculous, right? I'd like to get it back down to an hour, and I don't like to check it once a day. So it gives you key insights to what you're doing and how you're spending your time.
And then from there, you can see how effective you are. This really helped me out in a huge way. When I a couple of years back, when I was like, really struggling to make, you know, a whole lot of money in my business, I started really looking at my time spent and realized, oh, I'm not actually spending time on money making activities. I'm not actually spending much of any time on marketing. I'm doing a lot of stuff behind the scenes. I'm tweaking my website, I'm tweaking curriculum, inside courses, but nobody knows how they can work with me or the offers that I have. So tracking your time can be a huge wake up call, and it can also let you know that, hey, maybe you don't need as much time as you think to complete certain projects and tasks. All right, we have two more to go in this quick Snappy. Episode number six is I want you to get curious about everything that you do in your life and business and start noting the things that are energy draining versus energy producing. So there are things in your business that you most likely love doing that you could do all day, every day.
Shout out if you love looking at stock photo templates, for example. I feel like I could look at that kind of stuff or Tweak stuff in Canva for hours and hours every day and never get bored of it. Obviously those don't really drain me. So there can be like, producing energy producing tasks and neutral stuff and then draining tasks. More draining tasks for me tend to be when I'm on. So, for example, I love recording this podcast, but I know that if I do too many of these episodes in one day, it's really going to drain me. And I wouldn't want to do that before doing a live webinar or doing a joint venture with someone or even recording stories or doing a live call. In my business, I wouldn't want to do a bunch of energy draining tasks ahead of time because I wouldn't be able to show up fully in the ways that I want, right? And So sometimes we don't even realize what drains us and what drives us, and So getting curious can help a lot. And you can also kind of do this inside of your time tracking as well.
I like to keep track of stuff in Notion, so the more that I learn what tasks drain me or drive me, I'll actually mark certain tasks in my Notion Task database as very like, heavily draining or neutral or not. And that way if I'm having a day where I just don't have the energy or I have Tons of energy and I feel like on top of the Moon, then I can kind of hit those specific tasks, right? So if I've been putting something off for a long time because it's a more draining task and I'm in a great mood and I feel like I have a lot of energy, then I'll go ahead and tackle that and I can actually sort and filter my tasks by those different energy ways. So get curious. Right. You won't know how things affect you if they're emotionally draining, mentally, physically draining, until you test them out. It's kind of like kids being curious, right, and trying New things. You're not going to know that lemons taste A Certain way and are Not that fun to eat by themselves until Your parents give You A slice and record you, right?
It's like the new trend now, watching kids react to tasting lemons. I love it so much. But you're not going to know until you start experimenting, right? And here's My 7th Tip for today, and this is probably the most important thing that you can do. It's going to help you so much reduce Your overwhelm and reduce A lot of frustration and that is to capture everything in one place. So, for example, I love to use Notion for this surprise, but I have a whole place, I call it my Life Dashboard, where everything goes in Notion, and it's not just sprawled out on one page, there's pages within pages, like a wiki style site where everything's organized and searchable so I know how to surface things effectively. For example, I have a database in Notion that's all about the projects that I'm working on, curriculum development, podcast creation and content creation, different summits or bundles or collaboration events I'm doing with other people. Each one of those things is its own project within that Notion database, and I can easily link to it. And what I do, for example, when I get accepted into a summit or a bundle I've been doing a lot of those lately, is I will create a project for that specific bundle.
I will put an image in there of the actual bundle title and everything so I can visually see it. And when I display my projects in Notion, I like to have an image tied to them. So I'll actually do like a gallery view in Notion and show the images so I can easily click on stuff, and I will then link to specific stuff. So for example, I don't know if you knew this, but if you I keep bumping my microphone. If you go into a specific email in your Gmail and you copy that link, you can link that anywhere. So you can link that into Notion, and then when you click on that, it'll take you right back to that exact email you were working on. So I'll label all the emails I'm getting from, let's say I'm doing a big summit about Care Bears and how cool they are and all the different rainbow colors I would take, and make a label inside of Gmail for the Care Bear Summit. And then every single email that I get from that person about that summit with info and updates, all gets that label. And then I link important emails inside of that Notion project under important hot links or reference links area, and I do the same thing for the information page, and I write down important deadlines and I create tasks that are linked to that project with those specific due dates and deadlines so everything becomes available in that one spot.
So if all of a sudden someone's like, hey, I got a question about the Care Bear summit, or the host emails me and goes, hey, I actually need this one specific thing from you, or I need a coupon code or whatever, instead of going, oh my gosh, where is that? I go into that project database area, and then there I have it. I have all the links to the product I'm offering, or the presentation I'm doing, the link to. It in Vimeo, the link to everything in Thrive Cart, what they need from me, my verbiage, my bio, my headshot, I have all of that in one place. And you might think that some of that is repetitive, but if I know that I need specific things, instead of having to navigate to my marketing or branding area where I do have my bio in my headshot, I duplicate it and put it or link it into that project as well. So, again, it's all there. The more that you can capture everything you're doing in one place, the more time insanity it's going to save you. And it's also going to help you remember really minute details that you might forget otherwise.
And if you have a team or a VA or you're working with another person, it's going to help so much to have all those things in one place, right? It makes sense. It's why we have a kitchen and we have everything we need to cook in that one place. We don't keep pots and pans in the bedroom, right? Unless you live in like New York City or something and you have limited space. So think about your digital brain and your digital life the same way. All right, if you enjoyed this podcast, let me know. I'd love to hear from you over on Instagram. I'm at Sarah Steckler. You can tag me, let me know there. And again, make sure you head on over Sarah Steckler.com because I have more notion trainings and resources that I'm going to be sharing soon, as well as the launch of the Revamped pretty productive life which helps you get organized in the back end of your business with all of Mindful productivity podcast, strategies, tips and resources. So very excited about all of that. I hope you have a wonderful week ahead. Thanks so much for listening. And again, you can find all of the links mentioned on the show below this episode where you're listening or over on my blog.
Have a wonderful day, a great week ahead and I'll talk to you next Monday.
