What Seasons of Life Have to Do With Feeling Unproductive | 125

Are your systems in place but something still feels completely off?

In this episode, I'm breaking down the real reason you're feeling unproductive, and it has nothing to do with time or systems. It has everything to do with your season of life.

What You'll Learn:

• The three types of seasons every solopreneur moves through (and why one of them is sneakier than you think)
• What your energy, capacity, and schedule are quietly telling you about your current season
• Why the systems that used to work aren't failing you, and what to do instead

If you've ever done everything right and still felt behind, this is the episode that's finally going to explain why.

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Show Notes: https://cheerstoproductivity.com/podcast/ 

Transcript

Speaker 0:00

You have systems and you feel like you're managing your time decently enough, and yet you still feel unproductive and don't know why. Well, this episode is going to give you the answer, and it's probably not what you think

Speaker 6 0:18

Are you tired of competing priorities, a messy task list, and constantly feeling behind? Hey, I'm Lucy Reyes, and I help overwhelmed solopreneurs embrace faith-led productivity through simple systems for life, home, and business. So if you're ready to clarify your priorities, honor your energy, and feel accomplished every single day, welcome to the Cheers to Better Systems podcast.

Speaker 0:48

Hey, welcome to the podcast. If it's your first time listening, hi, welcome. I'm Lucy Reyes, and I'm so, so excited that you're here, and if you're a longtime listener, then welcome back, friend. I'm so excited for this episode. Today, we're going to talk about the real reason why you're still feeling so unproductive. And as a solopreneur who is juggling so many different things, your business, your life, maybe a job, a family, all of these things, you might assume that you already know. You might think, "Oh, I, I know that I need to work on my systems. I know that I need to do better at managing my time. That is why I feel unproductive." But hear me out because that is not always the case. On this podcast, we're talking, yes, a lot about systems because there are so many different types of systems. We've talked about that in the previous episodes. But productivity is an entire umbrella. It's an umbrella where multiple things fall under it. There's not just one way to improve your systems or one way to improve your time management. There are several different elements, several different little levers that you can pull and tweak to increase and better your life. And so I want you to hear me out in this episode because what I'm going to share today is something that a lot of people may not have considered, and you don't need to go and overhaul everything or go and change everything. But once you consider what I'm about to share, it's going to change the way that you look at a lot of different things. So if it's not your time or your systems, then what is it? Well, the answer is probably a whole lot simpler than you think, and it has everything to do with what, where you're at right now and not about time or systems. What I'm going to be talking about today are the seasons of life, and those seasons change. So we're going to be diving into that because the systems and the routines and the rhythms that you have built in the past might have been created for a version of life that no longer exists, and that's okay. That's okay. We're gonna talk about that, too. But whenever your season starts to shift and your seasons change, but your systems, your rhythms, your routines don't change with it, then that's when you start to notice things get harder and it feels like things aren't working, when you feel like you're so unproductive, and maybe you keep blaming just time or systems when that's partially the case but not entirely So before I dive into fully the three types of systems, I want to make sure that you know that I have a free tool that's going to come in handy after this episode. It's the weekly reset GPT, and it's a great way to pause and reflect on where you're at right now. So go ahead and grab that. The link is in the show notes. But all right, now let's get into the full episode So there are three types of seasons because not all seasons look the same. When I'm planning, I'm, I'm trying to get things ready for this podcast, you know, I'm trying to think like, "How can I best explain this in a way that makes sense to you?" Because I know a lot of us have heard, you know, the different seasons, the seasons that you're in, but what does that even mean? Well, I broke it down into three. There's three types of seasons that can shift things for you as a solopreneur. So the first one are predictable. There are predictable seasons. These are the ones that you can see coming and you can plan for. Something like what I'm in right now, which is summer break for my kids. We saw that coming. Holidays, winter breaks, right? Easter break, um, spring break. Like, if you have kids, a lot of the school breaks are very predictable, right? You can plan around them. And even if you don't have kids, other things like holidays, that's something that you can plan for. Depending on what you're doing with your family, you know that things are going to change during the holidays in some way or another. Planned vacations, that's something else, right? And even though seasons... Let me throw this out there too, seasons can be very short. They can be temporary. They can be long-term. They can impact the rest of your life. Gosh, I could probably record another episode on that part alone. That is not what I was trying to get at with this one. But seasons of life vary in length of time. They vary on whether they are short-lived or long-term or really affect the rest of your life. Um, but the first type is predictable. You can predict them. You know that they're coming up. You know, bringing it into the business terms or business realm, if you have a scheduled launch, if you have a summit or bundle coming up, if you have a flash sale coming up, those are all scheduled seasons, right, where things start to shift a little bit. The next kind is the unpredictable seasons, so these are life's curveballs, the ones that don't give us a warning, the ones that don't give us time to prepare, the ones that throw all our plans out of the window. Like, those are the unpredictable seasons. Those are the ones that, like, happened this past weekend to us where my daughter got sick. Then it kinda transpired all throughout the house. And then any other unexpected health stuff, sudden life changes, you know, sudden loss of a job or sudden promotion in a job, these are unpredictable seasons. We don't know that they're coming. We don't know that they happen. You know, when we get a flat tire, we didn't know that was gonna happen. Things like that. The electricity goes out, that is still a little season. Hurricane seasons you know, when a hurricane is coming to your, to your city, and now you're having to plan for it. These are all seasons. Again, remember, seasons can change in length, they can change on impact, they can change in a lot of things. But the third type of season are those semi-predictable seasons. These are the ones that you know are coming or the ones that happen regularly, but the impact is still fully hard to plan around. So this can be something like pregnancy. Maybe you're trying, maybe you're not, maybe you're pregnant maybe you're not. That is something that kinda changes, right? If, for, for females, your cycle. Your cycle changes the way that your body is able to move, how much energy and capacity you have, right? So your cycle is one of those things that falls under this category, too. There are things that you know are coming, but you don't know exactly when. Maybe the promotion can actually fall here. Maybe you've been working towards this promotion, and you feel like it's coming, but you don't know when, or maybe your boss has promised you this promotion, and you don't know yet when it's coming.

Speaker 2 7:57

So these are the three different types of seasons, but now we're going to get into how to be able to tell if the systems that you have built are still stuck in a previous season. So if you're still trying to do the same things that you did before you had the promotion, before you got pregnant, before your cycle came, before summer break happened, like, let's take a look at the three different things that I want you to actively pay attention to to notice if something needs to change. And the three things that we're going to look at are your energy, your capacity, and your schedule. Those three are so, so important in figuring out whether your season of life has changed, and maybe it's time for a change in your systems, routines, or rhythms. So let's start with energy. If your energy looks different than when you first built out your routine, or if something felt more sustainable before and now it feels like too much, then that's a sign that things need to change, right? So let's say your energy has been impacted because you're sick or your kid is sick, and even for that one week, for that one week, and, and honestly, you probably do this without realizing it, but you probably feel guilty about it. So at minimum, just don't feel guilty about the things that happen when your season of life has changed, especially if it's temporary, like a sick kids kid or a... So what? A kid gets sick. I said that backwards. Wow. Anyways, so if you're constantly getting sick or your kiddo is sick, so that was our weekend. That was why that is very prominent in the top of my head right now. Um, she was sick. We were tired because we're taking care of her, you know, every few hours. We're having to go to her bedroom, and, and our energy gets deprived, right? When you have a newborn baby, you're sleep deprived. Your energy is different, so you're not going to be waking up at 4:00 AM anymore to do whatever it is that you were doing if you were waking up at 4:00 AM. Like, that is just not possible. Sometimes with your cycle, your energy changes as well. So if your energy has changed, that is something to pay attention to The next thing is your capacity. So capacity is where things that used to feel easy now feel like a lot. And maybe it's not that you're doing more, but it feels like you are. And this can be physical, mental, emotional. This is all the type of capacity that we're talking about. So for example, managing three clients used to feel easy, but now just one or two feels very overwhelming. That is something to pay attention to if that is the case. Because if it is, then that is where you have to stop and pause to look to be like, "Okay, why? Why is it that it used to be easy to manage three clients and now managing two is hard? What else changed in my life around me?" And sometimes it might be the client, not gonna lie, but in some cases it might not. It might be the same amount of work, but it just feels like more, and that could be a sign that there's other things in your life that are happening that have changed your capacity. And I think the most obvious one is this next one, schedule. Your actual schedule may have changed. So this is just like the example I just shared about summer break, right? The, the example that I am personally in right now. Our schedule has changed and our schedule changes every other week. And if your systems don't follow, if your routines don't follow, then it makes it really hard to feel productive. Because in the summertime there might be, you know, like I've mentioned with my son before, we're doing this on and off week. So on the weeks that he's here, he's not at school like he used to be, he's here. And he is not going to be on the screen all day every day. So we had to adjust his routines from when he was in school. We had to adjust his rhythms. So scheduling can be impacted by new responsibilities, new life circumstances, new demands on your time. If your schedule has shifted but your systems haven't, your systems including your routines, your rhythms, all of those things, then there's gonna be a mismatch, right? So you have to pay attention to the three. They're so important. They're big ones on giving you signs on what needs to change. I myself have gone through so many different seasons of life, i've mentioned I used to have my mom blog while I was working in corporate. My son was way younger, and I didn't have my daughter at the time. That season of life is very different than the COVID period, the COVID era, when I did have my daughter. I had taken a break from the business for almost a year. That break or that season is very different than when I started working on the business again when my daughter was a baby, having two kids and not having my corporate job, which is very different than just a year ago when my sister moved in for temporarily with her partner and her newborn baby. Those are all different seasons of life. Those are all different seasons in life than my current situation right now with our son, and every season is completely different, and I cannot keep doing the same thing that I did years ago. Our seasons of life change whether we like it or not. And that is something that I think a lot of us try to hold onto. We try to hold onto what we wish our season was, and we try to plan, and we try to create systems and rhythms and routines for the life that we wish we had, when really we need to create those systems, the rhythms, the routines for the life we do have and know that, yes, when we get to the life that we want, we will have to change again, and that is okay. That is normal. That is how we evolve. That is how we grow. But we cannot operate with doing things the way that we wish things were. Things are, things are just are. Like, they, they just are, right? So with all of that being said, I want to give you permission, not that you need it, but just in case you feel like it's helpful, I want to give you permission to let go of what's not working Don't see it as wasted effort or wasted time. It served you for a season, okay? All of the systems, the rhythms, the routines that my son had when he was five that don't serve him now, they served for that season. Just like the ones that you want to set up, the ones that you're hopefully gonna go and set up after this episode, those will serve you for this season, and that's great. That's amazing. Your seasons will change, and that's okay. You will never need to overhaul everything. You just need to take it one step at a time, one routine at a time, one system, one habit at a time. Progress in a new season looks different, and that doesn't mean that you're going to be falling behind, but you will be adjusting to a new rhythm that fits your life right now, which is the super smart thing to do. It is smart, okay? Don't see it as wasted time or effort So let's do a quick recap. There are three types of seasons: predictable, unpredictable, and those semi-unpredictable ones. And when your season shifts, your energy, capacity, and schedule also shift with it. Those are your signals that things need to change. And sometimes just recognizing that a season has shifted is enough to help you start making progress. It helps you figure out where things aren't working, you make a small adjustment, and little by little things start to flow again. And sometimes the season is a big- a bit bigger, it's a bit more impactful, it's a bit more long-term, or it's super unpredictable and you're kind of, you don't know what to do which created way more changes than you would have liked. So maybe it's bigger or more complicated, and figuring it out on your own feels so incredibly hard. Well, that's why I'm creating a brand-new offer that will give you personalized support for navigating the changing seasons of your life and business to help you figure out which rhythms, routines, habits, and systems make the most sense for you right now through all of the seasons of life that you go through. But more on that soon. That offer is coming, up in the next few weeks, so I'll share about... more about that later. But right now, a great place to start is to grab my free weekly reset GPT. It's a free tool that helps you pause, reflect on where you are at right now, and really reset for the week, especially if you're trying to figure out what didn't work the week before that you could do better on this week. So it at least gives you a little bit of guidance on a week-by-week basis. So be sure to grab that. The link is in the show notes, cheers to better systems, better routines, and to not letting the seasons of life derail your peace. All right, friend, I will talk to you in the next episode.

Speaker 7 18:34

If this episode inspired you, challenged you, or gave you a fresh perspective, I want to encourage you to take one small action today. And if you want to go deeper and connect with other solopreneurs on a similar journey, come hang out with us inside of our free community. It's where we keep the conversation going. And be sure to follow the podcast so you don't miss what's next. Talk soon, and cheers to more peace, faithful steps, and steady progress, one system at a time.