Nursing Student Coach
Join Lauren Chapnick, RN, as she takes you through the journey of becoming a nurse! On Nursing Student Coach, Lauren, who is a new nursing professional, along with her knowledgeable guests will give you the tools to succeed in your nursing career. They will discuss ways to reduce anxiety and stress, share tips on studying and preparing for your NCLEX, and so much more - you won't be alone in this adventure! New episodes air every Thursday.
Nursing Student Coach
Peak Performance and Flow State: Mastering Productivity and Self-Care with Jerry Anathan
Ever felt lost in a sea of tasks, distracted, burnt out? Take a breath and step into a transformative conversation with Jerry Anathan, a celebrated peak performance coach. Jerry has a knack for unlocking the optimal state of consciousness – the flow state, where productivity thrives and burnouts are banished. She's here to demystify and share her neuroscience-backed techniques that can help you tap into this power state, ensuring you perform at your best.
Get ready to turn the chaos of your day into a well-charted journey, with planning as your trusty compass. Picture this - your planner, akin to a weather forecast, equipping you to face the deluge of data and distractions. Jerry reveals how smart time blocking and effective planning can be your game-changer, enabling you to navigate obstacles and work smarter, not harder. By mastering self-care and time management, you're set to unlock a life that's not just productive, but also deeply fulfilling. So, strap in and prepare for a journey to peak performance. Jerry is here to guide you every step of the way.
Jerry's contact information: CLICK HERE
Link to purchase Plan For Success digital downloads (both digital planner for iPad and printable PDF pages available): CLICK HERE
YouTube video on how to use Plan For Success and Lauren's tips for time blocking: CLICK HERE
Hi everybody. Real quick announcement before we get into today's podcast, which happens to be all about planning your time effectively and working smarter, not harder. I have a planner for sale and the link is in the description of the show. You can also go to nursingstudentcoachcom and click on the planner tab and you'll find everything you need right there. It is a digital download that you can put right away on your iPad and use with programs like good notes, notability, things like that, and then I also have an option to print pages if you like to have a physical something to work with with pen and paper. And, coming soon there will be a hard copy on Amazon, but for now it is a digital download and a printable PDF file that you can purchase at a discounted rate on nursingstudentcoachcom. I also have a YouTube video that came out today. I'll put all the links in the description of today's podcast and that gives you sort of a step by step how to guide on how to use this particular planner and my strategies for time blocking. And now on to today's show.
Speaker 2:It's the nursing student coach.
Speaker 1:Hi everybody and welcome back to nursing student coach. My name is Lauren Chapnick and I am your host. This is a show for nursing students to be more successful in nursing school. This episode is not only for nursing students. It is for anybody and everybody who wants to get themselves in a better mental state, to be more productive. And we are speaking with Jerry Annathon today. She is a phenomenal person and she really speaks my language. She is all about establishing good habits to be the most productive and get into the best state that you can get into, as she calls it, the flow state, and she is a peak performance coach. She will tell you exactly what that means. She is the founder of Annathon advisors, as well as neuroscience for leadership. She is also a brain health junkie and avid hiker, so I would like to welcome Jerry Annathon. Hi, jerry, I'm so glad that you're here with us. Thank you so much for joining us today.
Speaker 3:It's my pleasure, lauren. Thank you for inviting me, of course.
Speaker 1:So, jerry, you are a peak performance coach. What exactly does it mean to be a peak performance coach?
Speaker 3:Yes, so that's a great question. I work with a lot of leaders, but you know, in day to day life we're always leading, we're leading ourselves, and I think that's really the most important aspect to what I do as a coach. I help people get into what you might think of as a flow state. So I'm very much into flow state research and flow state is really that optimal state of consciousness where you feel your best, you're performing at your best and you're really literally performing at your peak, and that could be anything from studying to doing something athletic or something creative. So I help my clients tap into that through a variety of ways neuroscience, habit forming, behavior, all kinds of things like that.
Speaker 3:So I started as a life coach. I worked with a lot of younger people, people in college. I helped a number of people. Some of my first clients were people who were in nursing or medical school and it's just amazing to see where they are in their lives now. This was 10 years ago, so I understand the struggle of being a student and all of the pulling priorities a person may have when they're going through that experience.
Speaker 1:That's amazing I didn't know that that some of your first clients were nursing students.
Speaker 3:That's so exciting yeah yeah, and a couple of them I'm still working with. The work does pay off and I think it's all about you. Know how do you control the here and now in a way that feels good and avoid burnout at the same time?
Speaker 1:So Definitely so. We are talking about planning your time, and time blocking. So what would you say if somebody has never used a planner before, they've never mapped out their day in advance? Can you tell them why you think that is such an important thing to do?
Speaker 3:Sure, it's sort of a kind of a funny analogy is you know you might really be into hiking and so you decide you're going to do a pretty monumental hike. Well, you might get to the base of the mountain and just have you know you've got your equipment with you, but you have no idea where you're going or what it's going to look like. You don't know what the lighting conditions or the wind or weather conditions are. Having a plan and preparing for distractions and obstacles is super important. Not only will it help the student or the person do more work and do it well, but it also psychologically sets you up for success, because you're beginning to take control of all of the data that's coming at you and organize it in a way that you're controlling it rather than it controlling you. You know, and the basis of that is knowing what goes where and when and getting back to that state of feeling calm about it.
Speaker 3:I think what happens in a lot of cases is that the idea of all this planning creates a struggle in the mind and it sets off neurochemicals like cortisol and norepinephrine and we start to get, we feel the friction. You know, you can just start to feel that sense of friction, you start to tighten up, and if we can sort of methodologically take control of that, of what's coming up for us, it really helps in a number of ways. So I would say, if you've never done it before or you've just done it minimally, you know, just be open to try new ways of planning. Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1:And it's not. It's using a planner and planning out your day. It's not there to bring you more stress or to think that you have to do exactly what's on your plan. It's just a forecast. I think of it sometimes as a weather forecast, and I love your analogy of climbing the mountain, because something as daunting as doing well on an exam or passing nursing school, for example, it's this huge thing. And so how are you going to get there? And play for it, Just that mindset I think is so important, Exactly.
Speaker 3:You know not to go too deep into flow and flow state, but there is a cycle of flow. So we're never always in flow like, oh, everything's great, I'm in flow. We're lucky if we get to flow for an hour a day because of just the way life is set up for most people. But it's that struggle phase when we're planning to plan or sitting down to plan, that's when you start to feel a struggle because at that moment it's still very overwhelming and that's a natural. That means you're getting ready for success. That feeling of anxiety and stress and as we sit down to our desk to do those things, that struggle is the precursor for a flow state. The flow is the actual deep work where you're sitting down to study or you're sitting down to go through those formulas or memorizing terms or processes. That's the flow state.
Speaker 1:You think the flow is when all your neurotransmitters are just connected, like you are just in it, and you are 100% focused on that one thing that you're doing Exactly, you're focused on that one thing. It's like a tunnel.
Speaker 3:It's like a tunnel and not to get super nerdy but there is a chemical release, a neurochemical release. Yes, it creates a state like this particular combination of neurochemicals doesn't happen any other time, unless you're in flow state, and what happens is your prefrontal cortex kind of takes a backseat and it relaxes and allows the release of these five particular neurochemicals. You've got things happening like dopamine, serotonin. All the good things are happening at once and it's optimal. So you don't feel anxiety, you don't feel excited, you just feel connected. It's that state where hours can go by and you don't even know what happens.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's wonderful. It's when, for me, I feel like that's when I'm connected with my true purpose, like that's when the universe aligns with what I'm doing and it feels like what I'm doing is the right thing and I am so focused on it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, is that right? It is, and I know you and I know that you tap into that and you have had to really create the time and the energy and the space to do that and you do it frequently and I think you have a wonderful way of having set up your life. It takes a lot of pre-planning to do that and it takes a commitment to yourself. You're not committing to anyone else to do this kind of work. Thank you, your community to have a more optimal lifestyle. And this was really studied in high performing athletes, people who took a lot of risks. You can watch some of these climbing movies and Alex Honold. It's incredible information that was derived originally from these athletes. But now we're able to take that same kind of those processes and bring them into day-to-day life and that's really the. That's when you really take mastery of your own life, to say, hey, I really do want to do this right, I want to give myself a chance to live in this state that feels so good.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think ironically I just did an episode about feeding your soul and recharging yourself and how you really can't get to the state of being productive if you're not caring for yourself and kind of hitting the reset button by performing things like self-care, like doing your morning routine and exercising and things like that.
Speaker 3:That's absolutely right. Part of the flow cycle includes both this release and the recovery, so those are just as important as the actual flow state itself. So taking that time for what's called active recovery, where you're not necessarily zoning out watching Netflix, but you're taking a walk or you're doing yoga, nidra, or you're doing something really special for yourself, but it's helping you to kind of rebalance any kind of adjustments with dopamine and just getting you back to a nice calm baseline before you go back into that struggle phase and then repeat the cycle.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it takes work and I think all of us probably just want to hit that magic button. It should be like put me in the flow state because I have to study Exactly so planning and time blocking is one way that I definitely do that. But for somebody who's new to time blocking and planning and has or maybe has struggles with it, what would you say? What is time blocking first of all, and how would you start doing it if you've never done it before?
Speaker 3:So time blocking is. There are a number of ways to time block. Basically, the simplest way of looking at it is on a Sunday, I would sit down with myself, have a meeting, map out just an hour. It doesn't have to be a lot of hard thinking, but you're just going to make a list of all the things that you need to get done that week. This is on Sunday and ideally, because self care is so important, the first thing you do for those let's just imagine you're only planning out Monday through Friday the first thing, the most important thing, is to map out when you are going to a exercise, whatever that means for you. It could be yoga, it could be running, it could be hiking, whatever.
Speaker 3:So ideally, every day you're going to reserve some time for yourself for that type of self care. As hard as it is to really believe this and not roll your eyes, that is more important than any other test, any other exam, anything, because without that level of self care you're just not going to be able to perform. It's just the way it is. It's a fact. So I agree, you will feel a change in your neurochemistry when you reserve that time for yourself, because you're actually taking care of yourself. You're saying I'm important and I'm taking care of myself, so you map that out. Then you don't want to have any more than three really high projects, goals or tasks each day. You know I mean three chunky ones. I think one or two is actually enough.
Speaker 1:And I call it your must for the day. What is your one thing? You must get done. Yes, that's great.
Speaker 3:And then you think, well, okay, here's the thing. Let's say, study for exam. Well, that's not very specific, so what are you going to study? What pieces are you going to study? And you put those into a block. You know If it's reading one particular chapter and looking at one research paper, that's awesome. Put it in the time block. And what I like to do, I use a regular planner, like a paper planner, but I also use my. I use the simple Mac calendar on my Apple, but I have, like, yellow means a workout, green means my master's program or you know, a darker green is coaching. So when I quickly look at my day, I'm like there's my yellow, I'm taking care of myself and great, I have a lot of clients today. Or great, I'm doing a podcast or a talk or something like that.
Speaker 1:I love that you can pull out different highlighters if you use a planner Exactly, or do it on your computer. I think that's really smart, and if there's no yellow or whatever color you've deemed your self care, you better put that in Exactly, exactly, your priority, exactly. I love that. And I love what you've told me in the past too, which is don't beat yourself up if one of the time blocks has to move, absolutely.
Speaker 3:That's light. Think of them as little like pieces that you can just pick up and drop somewhere else. That's no problem.
Speaker 1:What about planning the day before for the upcoming day? Can we talk a little bit about that? How important it is Because I do one day at a time. I do make my list for the week on Sunday, right For the week, and then I kind of look ahead and say, okay, I'm going to do one day at a time because you don't know what you're going to accomplish. No, you don't, you don't.
Speaker 3:You know, if there's something like if you know, for example, you've got an exam and you've got a meeting with a professor, at least you can block those out later in the week, like you know the real thing. But for most of us you're right. Oh, I got more done on my project on Monday, so I don't need to do a Tuesday or the opposite. Oops, I didn't quite get to everything. I thought I could Got to bump it into the next day, but the more granular you can kind of chunk things down. So everything from maybe what you're going to wear the next day to what meals you're going to have the next day.
Speaker 3:I know it sounds so like, oh, I'm in second grade and I'm laying out my clothes for the next day, but it honestly takes. It just eliminates all of that need to. You know, it makes us clear, it makes us intentional and it eliminates any distractions that might come our way. So the way you see it on the next day it's like you're not even you know you don't have decision fatigue where you're like what should I work on? You know, should I study for the test or should I send some emails? You know specifically what you're going to do and you do it, so I just give it a try. I know, lauren, when you and I first talked about it, you were like the night before. That sounds good.
Speaker 1:I know now I can't not do it the day before and it just makes so much more sense If you've never used a planner before, if you never really map out your day and you just kind of wing it. You have a day and you say I'm just going to study or I'm going to get work done. Try mapping it out, try planning it a little bit and see how it works for you. Because I think the people who do it and the people who stick to their plan they are labeled as motivated, like they're so driven, they're so motivated. I wish I had that motivation and I always say there's no such thing as a motivated person. Nobody's motivated. They just do it anyway when they don't feel like it and then they get to that place of flow of Exactly no productivity. So if you just take the steps to do it, knowing why you're doing it you want to be a nurse, you want to get a promotion at work, whatever it is then it's such a beautiful thing you can do for yourself to plan.
Speaker 3:It is, it is.
Speaker 3:And you know I think a lot of people are probably thinking but wait a minute, I have how am I going to? You know, I always have to respond to emails. I have, you know, things I need to do for my kids, all of this other stuff. Well, certainly we do. We have that. So chunk those out too. So, for example, we all have those little. So it's as Cal and the Newport would say you know, we have deep work and then we have more like shallow, what I call splintered work. Splintered work would be like returning emails, paying bills, you know, checking our banking account, checking the stock market, whatever it might be those little things that distract us. So you create a time block just for those things and you list them and you just bang them out and you check them off either with your hand or with a digital device, and it feels so good Like you're like getting a little dope. I mean because you're nailing all those little things, but you don't want to do those specific things during your peak time.
Speaker 1:Right, all those extra things like the laundry and scheduling appointments. They feel so important, and then you check them off and you say, oh, I checked off all these things, but then your major task isn't done. So I think the thing that is your must for the day, the one thing that you have to get done, are the two things schedule those first. Yeah, yeah. And then you feel like, if I don't do anything else, at least I got those two things done and that that was the most important thing.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, that's great. Another thing you know when you, if you, if you're using a paper planner or even a digital one, it's fun to. I had one guy that I worked with for years. He had ADD ADHD, like many of us do, and so for him he needed every single piece of every day to have a color, whether, in other words, there were no gaps, there were no non assigned times in his day, and it was everything from eating, working out lectures, talking to his girlfriend on the phone, calling a friend like we built in.
Speaker 3:It's very important to have our connections, our social connections. So, you know, you build in time to reach out to a friend and that gives you a sense of satisfaction as well. It's super. But you can be as elaborate as you want. There's no pressure to be that detailed, but it works for him and it works for a lot of people. You have to find the sweet spot that works for you. And back to leadership. You have to lead yourself. Not only, you know, always doing what's most comfortable or kind of the easy way to get through the stuff, but sitting back and saying how can I most be engaged in this time in my life? You know, how can I make this just an amazing experience that has meaning, and is there meaning in learning the terms for certain neurochemicals or certain pharmacological elements? Sure there is, but you can also really kind of love it and find a way to bond with it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I agree, that's the ideal. Yeah, for sure. What would you say to somebody who has made a plan and then they just didn't stick to it at all and they feel like giving up and they're really down on themselves. Who's like, ah, this is never going to work for me. What would you say to that person?
Speaker 3:You know it's interesting. I was listening to I don't know if you've heard of the Huberman Lab podcast, but he's really interested in bringing science and protocols together. He's great. But I was listening to something on motivation this morning and someone had written in to him saying you know, I go through these bouts of like being totally motivated and then completely like a complete inertia.
Speaker 2:You know and.
Speaker 3:I think it's natural to go through those ebbs and flows. Typically what's happening when we're lacking that motivation, it's not our minds, it's we haven't rested, we haven't like let our sort of neurochemistry even out, we haven't been good to ourselves, so we're literally burned out from even the idea of what might be coming ahead. And so that's the time where you just have to sort of like wipe off your boots and what everyone called lace up your boots, say you know, starting tomorrow I'm going to change this, and so with almost any of my clients that I work with one on one, if they're going through that, you know it's like okay, this Sunday, buddy, we're getting on it you know we're going to start with the protocol.
Speaker 3:We're going to start right after. You're going to start planning your week Every day. At the end of the day, you're going to just be gentle with yourself, be loving to yourself. But you know, let's get a few things done. Let's just see what this momentum might feel like.
Speaker 1:Just start just start yourself. Give yourself some grace. Yeah, take a reset, listen to your body and then just start again.
Speaker 3:Absolutely, absolutely. And, as we know, and more and more research is coming out all the time, we have to get that sleep, even if we're staying up super late to study, we've then got to make it up somehow, you know, trying not to have caffeine within like eight hours of going to sleep, which is really hard, so sure I don't know about that, jerry, but we'll see I know right. And if you can't sleep, don't beat yourself up. Get up and do something you know, yeah, yeah. I agree with you, it's okay.
Speaker 1:Yeah, just get a little grace to yourself and just start again is Right the way I look at it. Yeah, and then you're not gonna stick to it every single day. It's just it's there, it's there is your roadmap, it's there as your GPS and, yeah, you can change course and still kind of get to the end, exactly, yeah exactly and knowing that you know there will come a time.
Speaker 3:You know While you're in that flow state it's not gonna last five hours. We're lucky if it lasts a couple of hours. So you know building in, you know there are different techniques 25 minutes working, five minutes Not working. Come back, start right where you left off, or just sticking with like an hour and a half time lock whatever it. You have to figure out what works for you. But do experiment with it, do it with intention. Make notes about hey, I'm Feeling really good at in the morning and by 2, 30 pm I'm feeling a little bit of a leg. Just start really interacting with yourself in that way and give it one week of experimentation and, you know, make notes about it so you can really see the progress that you make.
Speaker 1:I think that's really good advice and I love the 25 minutes on five minutes off. I do the 27 three, which is 27? I like the 27, it works for me. The 27 three, it's really good.
Speaker 3:The most important thing is to know what you're going to do, so that when you sit down to do it, there is nothing that could take you away from it. Yeah, you know, short of a fire. You know short of a fire. So the biggest thing to plan for Is everything. Yeah, I'm your water Be specific with those time blocks.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, jerry. Thank you so much. This was so helpful and such a great conversation. If there's anybody out there who wants to contact you, what would be the best way?
Speaker 3:Um, I think the easiest way you could go to my website it's a newer website, it's not built out, but there's a contact button there and it's easy to to remember because it's neuroscience for leadershipcom.
Speaker 1:Great. I'll put the link in the description of the show. People can contact you there. Well, thank you so much. This was so much fun and we'll talk to you soon. Thank you, thanks, lauren. Thanks a lot, bye, bye. Well, that's it for today. Jerry, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me. I know that so many people will benefit from listening to that conversation and I thank you so much again. You can go to nursing student coach calm to join our mailing list. I will put all of jerry's information in the links to the show if you want to get in touch with her and, as always, it is my personal mission to help put more great nurses into the world. Thank you for your help in doing that by listening and sharing the show with someone you know and love, and if you could pull out your phone and give us a quick five star rating, I would appreciate it so much. Have an awesome day and we'll see you the next time.
Speaker 2:Bye, bye, thanks for tuning in to the nursing student coach podcast.
