Overwhelmed Working Woman: Boost Productivity, Master Time Management, Overcome Overwhelm & Stop People Pleasing
Overwhelmed Working Woman is a podcast for accomplished women who want to feel more calm, in control, and focused without adding more to their already full plate.
This top 2% podcast is hosted by Michelle Gauthier, who has over 7 years of experience coaching hundreds of overwhelmed working women.
Each episode offers simple, practical strategies to help you reduce overwhelm, improve productivity, and stop people pleasing. You’ll learn surprising time management hacks, how to do less without guilt, and why the path to calm begins with changing how you think.
If you're ready to reclaim your energy, focus, and peace of mind you’re in the right place. Start with listener favorite: “The Power of a To-Don’t List.”
Overwhelmed Working Woman: Boost Productivity, Master Time Management, Overcome Overwhelm & Stop People Pleasing
#154| 5 Ways Self-Criticism Sabotages Your Productivity & How To Overcome It For Better Productivity & Success: Overwhelm, Productivity, Time Management & People Pleasing
Are you constantly working but still feeling like you’re falling short—no matter how much you accomplish?
If your productivity feels like it's slipping through your fingers, your inner critic might be to blame. In this episode, we break down five sneaky ways self-criticism steals your time, drains your energy, and keeps you in a cycle of stress and overwhelm—especially for high-achieving working women.
In this episode, you will:
- Learn how perfectionism secretly inflates your to-do list and keeps you stuck.
- Discover practical strategies to break free from overthinking and fear of failure.
- Get mindset tools to combat unrealistic expectations and comparison traps so you can reclaim your time and mental peace.
Press play now to uncover what’s really slowing you down—and start creating a calmer, more productive day.
Featured on the podcast:
What's Causing Your Overwhelm? quiz
Wondering why you're overwhelmed? Take my "why am I overwhelmed" quiz to find out the source of your overwhelm, and what to do about it.
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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 Worki...
No matter how much you do or how much you succeed, there's a voice in your head telling you somehow it's not enough. 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. Hi friend, thanks for joining today. Today we're going to talk about our own worst critic, our own self-criticism and the five ways that your inner critic hijacks your time and just makes your productivity take a hit. It also steals your energy and probably causes you to feel even more overwhelmed. When you listen today, you will learn the five ways that self-criticism is really impacting what you're getting done, not in a good way. I will give you some relatable examples and some tips, of course, on how to stop that, so you can gently talk back to that inner critic and think about yourself in a better, more positive way, in order to be more productive and manage your time better and feel less overwhelmed and, honestly, just feel overall happier. But before I do that. I want to remind you that on my website I have a free quiz, and that quiz helps you get to the bottom of why you're feeling overwhelmed. I've been a coach for eight years and I coach specifically on this topic, and I noticed that there are about four things that are usually the main cause of overwhelm. So when you take the quiz, you'll find out which one is most prominent for you and what to do about it. So at the end, when you get your result, you don't just get your result. You also get a tool that you can use to make some improvement in whatever area is causing the overwhelm for you. So, for example, you might be overwhelmed because you have a habit of people pleasing self-criticism or self-sabotage. You might be overwhelmed because of time management and productivity issues. No matter what the answer is, you'll find out more about that particular problem that's causing your overwhelm and I will give you some tips on how to start feeling better, no matter what the answer is. I made this quiz because I found it so fascinating that, after talking to hundreds of people, there are really just a few things that tend to be the cause of overwhelm. So I took that and I combined that with my previous love of taking fun quizzes in like Teen Magazine and Cosmopolitan, etc. This is kind of like that, except you're not going to get your dream man. At the end you're going to figure out what's causing your overwhelm and what to do about it. Anyway, the link will be in the show notes. Check it out.
Michelle Gauthier:Let's dive into today's topic. So what you'll learn when you listen today is the five sneaky ways that your inner critic is totally taking control and wasting your time and your energy and probably making you feel more overwhelmed than you already were. You will also learn what to do about these. Let's dive in and look at the top five ways that self-criticism is ruining your productivity. The first one is perfection analysis. If you're a perfectionist or a recovering perfectionist I'm raising my hand you might be very well aware that this is the idea that you can't share anything until it's flawless, that everything has to be perfect, and what that means is you would avoid something like launching a new business idea or finishing a pitch instead of working on the slides for an extra two to three hours or really finishing anything, because if it's not perfect, it's never finished, and that means your to-do list just keeps getting bigger and bigger. You think no, I need to spend a couple more hours working on this before it's good enough. I think it's obvious why this one really harms your productivity because you spend so much longer than necessary, because you're trying to get it to perfection. And the reason why you're trying to get it to perfection is because you're trying to control the way that other people are thinking about you and the way that they see you.
Michelle Gauthier:Sometimes I'll say to my clients what would B minus work look like in this particular situation? Try asking yourself that question. If you're really hesitating to call something good enough, ask yourself what would B minus work look like. Sometimes I'll say that to a client and they look like they're about to faint and say, no, I can't do that. So if you can't do B minus work, can you do A minus work as a start, b plus work as a start, and what does that look like for you? Ideally, instead of having a thought like I can't share this until it's perfect, you can think a thought like I have done really good work on this project and I'm ready to share it. It's okay to know that it isn't your absolute best work, because you simply can't do your absolute best work on everything at all times or you're going to get like one thing done per day.
Michelle Gauthier:Number two on the list of things that sabotage your productivity is overthinking. Overthinking can definitely ruin your productivity because it wastes so much time. Let's say, for example, you've got a 15-minute Zoom call and you take like 20 minutes to decide what to wear for it. If you're a person who's an overthinker, you probably struggle with making decisions, and the longer you put off a decision, the more time you're wasting. Once you make the decision and just start going in that direction, you're getting back to productivity. What I would recommend that you do instead for this particular one is to literally set a timer for small decisions. Give yourself two minutes I'm not joking. Set a timer on your phone. Give yourself two minutes to make a decision and then move on. I'm not talking about the decision to like take a new job or move to a different state or some big thing. Just give yourself two minutes, make a decision and move on. Literally, set that timer and move on and let yourself out of that decision jail. Giving yourself less time to make decisions doesn't mean you're careless. It frees up that mental bandwidth to do the actual work for what actually matters.
Michelle Gauthier:The third way that the inner critic can sabotage your productivity is fear of failure. When you have fear of failure, you are very likely to take no action. Let's just imagine that you have heard me say over and over that planning your week is the way to feel calm and you go to plan your week and you open up your planner and you leave it blank because committing to a plan feels risky, because you know you might not follow through. And if you write it all down and you don't do it, then you have failed. So your inner critic just says forget it, it's better to be overwhelmed than to try and fail. So what to do instead on this is to embrace imperfect action. Make a plan, flexible plan with room to adjust and remind yourself I even have a sticker that says this progress over perfection always. These first three that we have talked about, all three of them really keep you completely stuck for perfectionism and overthinking and fear of failure. They all just keep you stuck where you are.
Michelle Gauthier:Number four is comparing yourself to others. This is totally human nature to do this. So if you have, let's say, the person who has an office next to you, for example, and does the same job as you. She seems super on top of it. She does great work. She seems like an awesome mom too, and even though you're doing fine at work, you kind of assume that you're failing or doing less because she's doing so much better. Air quotes and your inner critic says that she's better than you and that you're behind or not doing something right. What I suggest that you do in this situation is just to remind yourself to stay in your own lane.
Michelle Gauthier:I like to think about it as run your own race, celebrate your own wins. Remind yourself that you don't know the full picture behind everyone's highlight reel or what they're posting on Instagram. I can tell you, as a person who hears, over the course of the week, many, many people telling me what they're struggling with. We all have struggles. If there's anything that being a coach has taught me, it's you just never know. Somebody who seems like they have it all together can really be suffering on the inside too. It's probably not even true. Even if she seems like she's doing such a better job than you, it's probably not true. And second of all, let's assume she is, let's assume she's. You know, you're making 90 sales and she's making 100 sales, or whatever the metric is that matters in your job. Even if she is, it's really irrelevant. It has nothing to do with your performance. Stay in your own lane, celebrate your own wins.
Michelle Gauthier:Then the last one another one that I see very often is setting unrealistic expectations for yourself. Let's go through an example of setting unrealistic expectations and how that really sabotages your productivity. Okay, so let's say today's Monday. Let's say that you are sitting down to your desk in the morning and you write down a list of 18 things that you have to do and by the end of the day you've gotten through like three of them and you feel like a complete failure and your inner self critic says you should be able to do it all. Why can't you get more done? The problem here is not that you got three things done, but that you had the expectation of getting 18 things done. So when you set yourself up with unrealistic expectations, you will definitely be disappointed in what you actually do get done, and when that happens, it makes you not productive because you're not motivated to try to keep going.
Michelle Gauthier:So when you are getting ready to do something, whether that be, sit down and make your to-do list for the day, or just about to go on a vacation with your family, be sure that you're setting reasonable expectations. Let's just use the family trip one. So if you're going on a trip and you're like the weather's going to be amazing, our travel should be smooth, my children should pack on their own and not forget anything. All the food's going to be wonderful, everyone's going to be happy the whole time. You know whatever it is and I know that nobody listening would actually write down those as realistic expectations, but often our brain creates those, even unconsciously sometimes. So actually check your expectations.
Michelle Gauthier:A great way to make realistic expectations is to think. If I was a betting person, if I was betting on what would happen, what would I predict will happen? So if I think about a trip with my family, I would say probably there will be some troubles with the travel. Maybe the flight's delayed or we can't check into our hotel room right away or whatever other minor inconvenience might happen. I definitely would predict that of the three of us, one of us would be unhappy at least once on the trip, or frustrated or bored or whatever, and that probably none of the three of us will agree on the restaurant where we want to eat, etc. Etc. And it's not being negative, it's just being realistic. So when I say, hey guys, where should we go eat dinner and I'm the only one who wants to go somewhere, or two of us want to go somewhere and the third doesn't, I know, I'm expecting that. And when you have realistic expectations and those things happen, you don't suffer because you're like yep, I thought that's what was going to happen. So, in summary, all five of these are common.
Michelle Gauthier:They happen to all of us all the time, and self criticism might feel like it's pushing you to do better, like negative self-talk is going to motivate you somehow, but it's really not. It's a waste of your brain time, of your thinking time, a waste of your energy. It really slows you down and stops you from being productive. Sometimes people think, well, I have to talk to myself like that in order to speed myself up or get myself to keep working. But it's really slowing you down when you are overthinking, being perfectionistic, comparing yourself to others, giving yourself unrealistic expectations all those things is when you notice you have a negative thought about yourself.
Michelle Gauthier:Do the best friend check. What would I say to my best friend if she were in the exact same situation as I am now. So let's go back to that example of making our list of 18 things to do on a Friday and getting three of them done. If your best friend told you that would you say you're such a loser, why can't you get more done? You would not say that to her, you'd be like good job you got three important things done. That's awesome. Cheers to you. So just check in with yourself and see what you might say to your very best friend if she was in the same situation. All right, friends, try to be kind to yourselves today and don't forget to take that overwhelm quiz. Have a great week. 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 michellegauthier. com. See you next week.
