Overwhelmed Working Woman: Boost Productivity, Master Time Management, Overcome Overwhelm & Stop People Pleasing
Are you sick of juggling a million things, and pleasing everyone BUT you?
What if I told you that you could achieve more and find your calm by doing LESS?
In this podcast for accomplished working women, discover where you're going wrong with managing your overwhelm and the exact steps to feel more composed and productive.
Tune in to learn unlikely time management hacks, tips to feel less overwhelmed, and surprising ways to do less with your host Michelle Gauthier, who has over 6 years of experience coaching hundreds of overwhelmed working women.
If you want to to start reclaiming your time, setting better boundaries, and nurturing your mental well-being, you're in the right place.
Get started by listening to fan-favorite episode "The Power of a To-Don't List."
Overwhelmed Working Woman: Boost Productivity, Master Time Management, Overcome Overwhelm & Stop People Pleasing
#120| How Prioritizing LESS Is The Key To Your Most Meaningful Productivity and Overwhelm-Free Life: Overwhelm, Productivity, Time Management & People Pleasing
Are you constantly feeling overwhelmed, like you're running on a never-ending hamster wheel of responsibilities? What if the secret to feeling lighter and more in control wasn't doing more, but actually doing less?
In this episode, we dive into Amy’s story—one that might sound a lot like yours. Amy was exhausted, overcommitted, and struggling to keep up, believing that pushing harder was the only way forward. But through coaching, she discovered a surprising truth: doing less strategically can actually lead to greater success and well-being. If you've ever felt stretched too thin, this episode is for you.
In this episode, you will:
- Discover why giving 100% to everything isn’t always the key to success and how scaling back can actually improve your results.
- Learn how to manage your energy—not just your time—so you can work smarter, not harder.
- Find out how letting go of unnecessary commitments can create space for a more meaningful, overwhelm-free life.
Hit play now and learn how small shifts in your approach can lead to big changes in your productivity, energy, and peace of mind!
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Life can be overwhelming, but on this podcast, you'll discover practical strategies to overcome overwhelm, imposter syndrome, and negative self-talk, manage time effectively, set boundaries, and stay productive in high-stress jobs—all while learning how to say no and prioritize self-care on the Overwhelmed Working Woman podcast.
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We have always been taught that success means hustling harder. But what if the real key to an overwhelm-free life is simply prioritizing less?
Michelle Gauthier:You're listening to Overwhelmed Working Woman, the podcast that helps you be more calm and more productive by doing less. I'm your host, Michelle Gauthier, a former Overwhelmed Working Woman and current life coach. On this show, we unpack the stress and pressure that today's working woman experiences and in each episode, you'll get a strategy to bring more calm, ease and relaxation to your life.
Michelle Gauthier:Hey friend, thanks for joining Quick Hit Thursday. Today I'm going to tell you a story about a woman named Amy, and when you hear Amy's story, listen and see if you hear some parts, bits and pieces of her story that could apply to you. When you listen to today's episode and you listen to this story and the things that Amy learned throughout her coaching, you will learn that constantly pushing yourself isn't the answer. You'll learn the power of cyclical living or an energy management. You'll learn the power of managing your own energy and how to identify what really matters to you so that you can let go of the rest instead of trying to do 100% of everything all the time. So by the end of this short episode, you'll walk away with a little mindset shift that will help you feel lighter and more present and more in control of your time. So let's get started. Let's talk about Amy.
Michelle Gauthier:So Amy had a to-do list that never seemed to end. She woke up every day with a plan get the kids to school, crush her work deadlines, squeeze in a workout, make dinner, clean up the house, put the kids to bed, respond to emails and if she was lucky and her body cooperated with her, get five hours of sleep before doing it all over again the next day. She felt like she was running on a hamster wheel, in constant motion, with very little progress and an overwhelming sense that she was always behind. So she was constantly moving but never felt like she was getting ahead. It was just Groundhog Day, every day, every day, and one night in the middle of the night when she couldn't sleep and she was scrolling Instagram, she came across a post from a life coach who suggested that maybe the solution to not feeling overwhelmed was actually to do less. She thought this was complete BS and that this person must be totally crazy. But she was so miserable that she started following her and looking at what she said and thinking hmm, maybe I need to talk to this person. Eventually, she decided that she was going to set up a time to talk to this life coach. We'll just call her Michelle for the sake of example. She reached out to Michelle and ended up saying you know what? I don't really know that I believe that this is going to work, but I'm so miserable I'm going to give it a try.
Michelle Gauthier:So the first thing that Michelle and Amy worked on is the idea that more effort giving A plus effort across the board and absolutely everything in your life doesn't always equal more results. And she asked Amy to look for places in her life where she was going all out and to see what would happen if she backed it off a little. So, instead of going from A plus work all the time, if she went to A work or even A minus work, with a goal of getting to B minus work and Amy was very resistant to this idea, but again, she was so miserable she was willing to give it a try and during her next session she came back and told Michelle's story about how, just last week, she stayed up until two in the morning working on a pitch for work. She wanted every single slide to look beautiful and be super clear and have beautiful graphics and to make sure that she could articulately explain everything. So she practiced a bunch of times and she stayed up until two in the morning and the next day she turned in the pitch. She gave the presentation and the feedback she got was great work, thanks, that was. It spent half the night practicing and perfecting this pitch and it started to make her wonder what would happen if I would have stopped working on that at like 11 pm or 10 pm, or maybe even just worked on it during work hours. Would the results have been that different than the great work? Now that she had her mind open to that idea, she was continuing to look for areas in her life where she could maybe just do a little less work, hustle a little less harder than she had been before.
Michelle Gauthier:Next up, michelle queued up the idea of managing her energy, just like you would manage your time. So she started talking to Amy about where in your typical day do you have the best energy? What kind of tasks should you do? And for Amy it was the mornings. What should you do when you're full of energy? What should you say for the afternoons, when you're feeling a little bit more sluggish? And then what would really help you out in the evenings? And what she found out was that Amy was really tired in the evenings and she was forcing herself to work. So, for example, the work that she could have done maybe in an hour or two in the mornings when she was doing it in the evening was taking her much longer. Plus, she had lots of distractions. So they talked about how to strategize her days so that she could work with her own energy and they even talked about over the course of a month how her energy ebbs and flows and what she could do, what she could allow herself to not do when she was in the time when she wasn't feeling super energetic.
Michelle Gauthier:So that week she experimented a little bit. Instead of pushing through afternoon brain fog, she took a 20 minute walk. Now everyone in her office was like what are you doing? Where are you going? Why are you going outside? But she shifted her creative test to the morning, when she felt the sharpest. She took a 20 minute walk in the afternoon and even though that 20 minutes was away from her desk and she wasn't accomplishing anything air quotes she got so much more done when she got back to her desk because she was present and she was focused and less exhausted. She also found she had a ton more energy during the day when she didn't work at night.
Michelle Gauthier:Now that Amy was kind of getting in the groove of these two concepts of managing her own energy and not doing A plus work all the time, she started to think all right, I'm going to look at my planner and say what can I let go of? When she looked down the list, her first response was I don't know what I can let go of. I have to do everything on this list. But she pushed herself. Do I really need to attend every unnecessary meeting? Anybody who's worked in corporate can imagine. You know those meetings where you just have to show up and you don't even really have to pay attention, but it definitely takes away your attention from doing anything else. She started to really question those things and Michelle challenged her to think about the 80-20 rule that 80% of her results came from just 20% of her efforts. Could she just apply that to her life? So she started like getting rid of stuff that she didn't need to pay so much attention to. She unsubscribed from emails that she never read. She said no to social plans if she really didn't want to go. I'm just saying that as one sentence, but that was a big shift for her, because it was tough at first for her to say no, but she learned how Letting go of the pressure to be perfect at work so to sometimes miss a meeting or to sometimes do a pitch that's a B minus instead of absolutely perfect, and every time she made the choice to let go of something, she started feeling lighter.
Michelle Gauthier:A couple months later, after working on this consistently, she came to her session and told Michelle I feel better, I feel lighter, I feel better. It's not the kind of better where it's gone forever and everything is magically solved. It's the kind of better where, every single week, she's making little choices that are making her own life better. She said my workload hasn't changed, my boss hasn't changed. I still have tons of responsibilities at work, but she had changed, and that made her feel in control of her time and more focused and more present and more alive. So all of that more that she got feeling more focused, more present and more alive came from doing less. She finally understood the truth that more doesn't equal better and that prioritizing less makes room for what really matters. So, in summary, be like Amy. Open your mind to the idea that doing more does not equal better results or achieving more, and that you have the option to manage your own energy and use it where it's best spent, and that you too can let go of unnecessary things when you let go of just little things over time. Let go of little things that you don't need to do. You create all this space in your mind for more meaningful, overwhelm-free life. That's it for today.
Michelle Gauthier:If today's episode resonated with you, I would love if you would share it with a friend who needs to hear it. And if you heard this episode and you're thinking I'm Amy, that's okay. I know exactly how to help you reach out to me. There is a link in the show notes for you to send me a message. Tell me. I feel like I'm Amy and I want what you're talking about. That Amy got and I would love to set up a free consultation to work with you one-on-one and, as always, if you could rate and review and subscribe to the podcast, that would be amazing. The way that it works is when we get better ratings and more subscriptions. When a woman opens up her podcast app in types like I feel overwhelmed or I'm a people pleaser, this podcast is what will come up as a solution for her. So the more that you do that, the more the podcast gets shown and the more we can help more women feel less overwhelmed, just like you're hopefully feeling today after listening to this episode. Have a great week.
Michelle Gauthier:Thank you for listening to the Overwhelmed Working Woman podcast. If you want to learn more about my work, head over to my website at michellegothiercom. See you next week.
