3 Things You Need MORE Than Time to Be Productive

The #1 thing busy moms think they need to be productive is more time, but that’s a lie. There are actually THREE crucial things you need way more.

Without these three things, you’re unlikely to be truly productive—even if you had all the time in the world!

In this episode, you’ll learn why and how prioritization, energy, and self-worth that’s unchanged no matter how much you do (or don’t do!) are at the heart of everything it takes to get things done and FEEL GOOD doing it.

BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER:

• Why productivity is so much more than just output or the amount of things you get done
•  Why knowing your short- and long-term priorities and aligning your time with your top-priority tasks is essential
•  How trying to be productive outside of your unique “peak performance windows” only leads to unnecessary stress and self-sabotage
•  The many ways that early life experiences often result in protective responses that underlie your desire to be productive and need for achievement in the first place
•  How even good childhood experiences likely led you to subconsciously equate your self-worth with your productivity; why it’s so important that you work with a trusted, trauma-informed coach to disentangle them; and how much more productive you are when you work from peace—NOT pressure

Want to steal my signature formula for prioritizing tasks? Grab my FREE Pinpoint Your Priorities Playbook HERE. (You can also get my fillable, printable Pinpoint Your Priorities Digital Worksheet HERE.)

Want to learn more about your body’s four natural energy rhythms? Snag my FREE guide entitled, “Empowered: The Hidden Secret to Getting MORE Done Easier Than Ever” HERE.

HOMEWORK:

 Pick ONE of these three things (prioritization, energy, or nervous system health) that you want to commit to learning more about and improving moving forward. Email me or send me a DM on Instagram to let me know which one you're choosing and why so I can cheer you on and recommend additional resources to help.

COMING UP NEXT:

Don’t miss next week’s episode where I’ll dispel three huge MYTHS about time that are preventing you from being efficient and effective with however much time you have.

The Moms Making Time Society™ is an online membership that equips you with EVERYTHING you need to prioritize yourself and your passions so you (and your family!) can flourish. Lock in the founding-member rate while you can!

CONNECT WITH AMBER: Website | Instagram | YouTube | LinkedIn

Ready to finally get to the root of your problems and change your life FOR GOOD? Book your free 60-minute consult to learn more about working 1:1 with Dr. Amber.

Transcript

0:00

Every woman I know is convinced of the same lie. You think time is the reason you're not productive. If you just had more time, then you'd get it all done. You'd feel like a success. You'd be happy. You'd have the perfect life. Don't kill the messenger. But time actually isn't the problem. It can be a contributing factor, yes, especially if you are in a season of life with young kids where sleep is completely insufficient and unpredictable and you're constantly interrupted by little loved ones needing you. But even then, the three things we are going to review today really will open your eyes to what is actually holding you back from being productive. Welcome to More Time for Mom, where overwhelmed moms get science-backed strategies to overcome the hidden sources of stress stealing your time and joy. I'm your host, Dr. Amber Curtis. Ready to make more time for you? Let's dive in. If you are listening to this episode in real time, it is mid-May, otherwise known as May-cember, where moms are usually going crazy with a million kids' activities, an end of the school year, tests, and festivities. I know I'm just trying to keep everything straight in my brain, and so I absolutely would not expect you to have much time to get things done right now. I know that it is a super busy, crazy time of year. And yet, this episode is going to be crucial for helping you increase your productivity long term. Now, in retrospect, I should have made three separate episodes, one on each of the three things that you need more than time to be productive. So bear with me. We are going to go through them all three together in this one episode, and I'm going to go through them in order of increasing importance, from least to most important. They are all important, but you will especially see how numbers two and three matter so much by the time we are done. Drum roll, please. Okay, the first thing you need more than time to be productive is a prioritization method. When you don't know your priorities and have a reliable system for organizing your tasks, you'll end up using 10 minutes of available time scrolling instead of starting to look up a new pediatrician. You'll sit down to work and start by checking email instead of an hour of dedicated writing time. These are just two small examples of why prioritization is a prerequisite for productivity, no matter how much time you do or don't have. As mentioned in episode 1, the problem with to-do lists, not all tasks are equal. Your brain will always lie to you and make you think that you should focus your precious time and energy on the things that are do the soonest or are simplest and most fun to complete when real productivity is about using your gifts of time and talent in accordance with your unique calling and purpose. So I really want to just pause for a minute and underscore that you cannot be productive unless you are aligning your efforts with your larger purpose. Productivity isn't just about the output you can produce for the amount of input in terms of time and energy you put in. It really doesn't matter what output you produce if that output is not in alignment with your true priorities. The great news is that only you get to discern what that is. As a little tangent, many of us get to midlife and realize that we don't really know what our true calling or purpose is. Maybe you've been such a responsible, high-achieving, perfectionist, people-pleaser all your life, and you've always said yes to everything because it's what you thought you should do. And then especially if you are a busy mom, it's, of course, easy to lose sight of what you enjoy and who you are apart from all the things you do for your family on a regular basis. Knowing your priorities means you have some overarching, guiding vision for your life. And it's totally okay and normal if that changes, especially, again, as your capacity fluctuates in different seasons of life, depending on how old your kids are and so forth. But you want to have both a short and a long-term sense of what matters most. And then refer back to episode one to steal my signature 5Ds formula for prioritizing your tasks. This is what's really going to help you make sure that when you get time to work, you are actually maximizing that time for the things that are most high priority. You can find the link to my free Pinpoint Your Priorities playbook in the show notes in case you didn't already grab a copy, but that will really get you started. And then we'll keep talking about priorities and crafting your life vision in future episodes. The second thing you need more than time to be productive is energy. The real hard truth is that more time does no good if you don't have the energy to do what needs doing. Now, I simply define energy as the physical and emotional capacity to do the task in front of you. And this varies so much. Most women have no clue how amazing your body was designed to give you specific types of energy at certain moments of the day, week, month, and year. Maybe you were never taught about these kinds of things. Maybe talking about your body was taboo or gross in your family growing up. But the reality is that every woman has four natural energy cycles that are automatically occurring within you at all times. Let me say that again to underscore how important it is. The reality is that you have four natural energy cycles that are automatically occurring within you at all times. When you don't know your energy rhythms, You'll try to start a vigorous new exercise program at a time when you have super low energy. You'll feel horrible during and after the workout. You'll never want to exercise again. And then you'll wonder why you can't ever seem to be consistent with your health. You'll push through to give a big work presentation, even though you feel really fatigued. Then you'll spend the next week cringing at how embarrassing it was and berate yourself for not doing a better job. These are just two small examples of how not knowing your unique energy rhythms will always sabotage your productivity, even when you do have lots of time. I gave a brief overview of what these four rhythms are in the last episode, episode 10, entitled Why Everything Always Feels So Hard, and I also have a free guide called Empowered, the hidden secret to getting more done easier than ever that summarizes them so you can just grab that from the link in the show notes. But for a quick recap, the four cycles are your circadian rhythm, which is the 24-hour internal body clock, sometimes known as your sleep-wake cycle, that governs how alert you feel at different times of the day, when you get hungry and kind of like all of your natural biological processes that are occurring. Secondly, you have an ultradian rhythm, which refers to recurring periods of expenditure and recovery every single day. So this is something that repeats multiple times in that 24-hour period. The two most common examples are your sleep cycles at night, along with your moments of focus and your ability to get into flow state during the day. The third rhythm is your infradian rhythm, which refers to monthly hormone fluctuations, very affectionately known as your menstrual cycle, which itself is composed of four different phases, And as I cover elsewhere, each one of these phases equips you with a different type of energy and different superpowers that you can harness to get incredible things done. But conversely, the whole overarching point from all four of these rhythms is that if you are trying to do tasks that are out of alignment with your natural energy fluctuations, you are not going to be productive. Everything is going to feel so much harder. And because of that difficulty, your brain is going to associate that task with problems, right? With difficulty and with bad feelings that will make it not want to do that thing again. The fourth rhythm you have to know is your circusseptin cycle, which is just a fancy way of saying your weekly fluctuations in your ability to focus and produce. otherwise referring to how your capacity shifts across the seven days of the week. Now, we could also delve into how seasonal changes moderate all of these, but the bottom line is that these four natural energy rhythms affect everything about you. They affect your physical well-being, like how awake or sluggish you feel. They affect your physical health and susceptibility to illness, chronic disease, or even serious afflictions like cancer. Violating them is linked to so many poor and problematic health outcomes, along with early death. These rhythms affect your emotional state, meaning your ability to tolerate stress. And life is inherently stressful, right? Everything could be perceived as a threat. So, you need to know how your pre-existing energy situation is contributing to or exacerbating the threat and the stress you are perceiving. They affect your mood and anxiety level, how you interact and connect with others. And then, of course, they affect your mental clarity, which determines how well you can focus and get things done. So if you were to think of this as a flow chart, I want you to first think of your four natural energy rhythms as the start of it all. And those rhythms determine your physical well-being, your emotional state, and your mental clarity, which then determines your ultimate level of productivity. So again, that means that whatever time you have to get things done, whether it's a lot of time or a little time, your productivity is going to be a function of the energy you bring to the table in those moments. It is absolutely essential to know and be able to identify ahead of time when you will versus won't have much energy. I break these down into what I call your peak performance windows, which are those optimal chunks of time when all four of your energy rhythms are at their highest and everything just aligns, the stars align, and you are your most super productive self versus, at the other extreme, what I call your good luck getting anything done windows. They are the valleys, the lowest of the lows, where the four rhythms are each at their lowest and combine to make it nearly impossible for you to be productive. The key thing to take away here is that nothing is wrong with you if you are struggling to be productive in a low energy moment. It's not your fault. It is simply just part of your body's natural process. And the huge skill you can work on here is knowing how these rhythms work for you because, spoiler alert, how they operate in conjunction with one another is completely unique to every person. Then the goal is to be able to purposely plan in which kinds of tasks to tackle or avoid in each of those different windows. This is what I absolutely love helping clients do and it just changes everything when you learn to work with instead of against your body. You will be more productive than you ever imagined while also honoring your body's natural needs and limitations. So energy is so key and matters way more than time. Again, no matter how little time you have, if you've got peak energy, you will be amazed at how much you get done. The third and most important thing you need more than time in order to be productive is belief in your own self-worth and complete separation of your self-concept from whatever you do or don't do. You've got to be approaching work from peace, not pressure, if you truly want to be productive. Otherwise, it will all be forced and unpleasant until you completely burn out at some point. Ask me how I know. I work with so many women who are at the brink of burnout, if not in full burnout mode altogether, and they just wish they'd had the tools they needed to avoid that despair. But you were never taught or allowed to hear your own intuition and body's physical signals. we've got to step back and wonder where you ever adopted any other idea. And the reality is, as I just want to honor and validate, this may not be something you have ever cognitively even considered. So many of the women who come to me and want to work on productivity coaching have been so accomplished in their life, and they possess such incredible traits. They're so responsible. They're so meticulous in their attention to detail. They are always trying to learn the greatest productivity strategies and time management tips, and they are just really proud of how much they've accomplished thus far. as you should be, but you may not have considered that that drive that is one of your greatest traits could actually stem from a protective response you developed in childhood. There is really something to that eldest daughter syndrome. Even if you're not a firstborn girl, if you are a high achiever, you probably developed this pressure to perform in order to keep your parents happy or to win attention and affection from those you loved. Now, this is starting to get really deep and personal, so I want you to take a deep breath and just explore these possibilities with me. They may not be accurate for you, but they are extremely common, especially in the kind of women I work with. Is there any chance that as a child, You subconsciously perceived that your physical and emotional safety, your connection to your caregivers, depended on what you did and how happy you kept them. Could it have been that your parents were unhappy and sweet little you picked up on that and wanted to do anything in your power to make their lives better? Could it be that one of your parents was extremely critical and so you were so sensitive to doing anything quote unquote wrong that you got hypervigilant about doing everything extremely well and trying to do it perfectly so that you wouldn't make them more upset? Might it be that your parents were so busy that sweet little you was searching for something you could do that would get their attention and have them pause what they were doing to focus on you. These are just a handful of possibilities. There is so much more. It's so nuanced and really personal, of course. But it all comes down to neurology. Neuroscience shows us that children's brains are so brilliant. so perceptive, so malleable, but they develop so rapidly, especially in the first five years of life, where most of your experience, most of what you pick up on, is not what is verbally expressed to you, but in what is modeled to you and how you are treated, how you feel in your body. You may or may not have heard the common saying that neurons that fire together wire together, but that means that the neural connections that get reinforced repeatedly over time become the strongest habitual brain patterns that are probably now dictating 70 plus percent of your daily thoughts and actions. All of this occurs because of myelination. Myelin is that fatty protein that builds up around nerve fibers in the brain and facilitates faster transmission of nerve impulses between the brain and the body. This process creates neurotags where the brain then uses these strengthened connections to predict what will likely happen in every new situation based on what you've experienced in the past. So for instance, if you were constantly praised by your parents or teachers or others for doing a good job on things when you were a little girl, right? Let's take a very positive example. But if you were praised your brain naturally got wired to associate producing something that pleased other people with the dopamine and oxytocin chemical rewards that made you feel good, which subconsciously told you to do more of that same thing to get more of the good feelings in the future, to the point that now you might not know how to tolerate bad feelings or how to get things done unless you're getting praise and recognition and validation from others. This is just one tiny example of how something even positive like external praise can have a huge negative long-term impact if you're not aware of it. So it is really crucial to know how your unique brain got wired, what beliefs and thoughts are so deeply ingrained in you that you would consider them automatic and not even realize that they're there. The great news is that you are not stuck or doomed to stay in those old patterns. Because of neuroplasticity, you can change however your brain got wired to not only create new neurons, but also to strengthen new alternative neural pathways that make new thoughts and behaviors the default. This is really like overriding your old programming and writing a whole new programming system for your life. In order to be productive, you have to believe that you do not have to do all the things. You need to be able to give yourself that permission and not need permission from others To do something you want or to say no to something that you don't want to do. You've got to be able to make peace with your current season of life. For this you can refer back to episode 2 where we talked about the difference between capability and capacity. But if your brain is wired to think that you've got to always be producing and achieving, then you are especially going to struggle in these seasons of low capacity and make it mean something about your self-worth, which it absolutely does not. You need to know that good is more than good enough for everything you try to do but especially for even the smallest tasks that you've been pushing yourself to extremes to get done. You need to not compare your productivity with what you see anyone else accomplishing because their situation is fundamentally different than yours If you don't know how your brain works, then you are probably going to feel incredibly threatened by other people's success or other people who make it look easy when you are struggling. You're going to think something is wrong with you when it's not. All of those things, as you surely know, are so much easier said than done. When you don't know how your brain is wired or how to regulate your nervous system, you will be constantly striving but feel like nothing is ever good enough. You'll feel worthless unless you're getting external recognition and praise. You'll move from one thing to the next to the next, maybe not even completing a single thing, and get caught up in shiny object syndrome because you think that new thing is going to be what finally makes you enough. You'll want to do what everyone tells you and rest but not understand that being still and not having something tangible to show for your time is going against everything, everything your brain was wired to believe from a young age. You'll want to adopt a more positive mindset, but be unaware of how those new beliefs are actually subconsciously interpreted as a threat by your nervous system, which will lead you to self-sabotage and return to your same unhealthy coping mechanisms. These are just a few small examples of why knowing how to work with your brain is imperative if you want to transform your life, implement lasting change, and truly be productive. exploring your neurotags and desiring change can evoke so much threat at the level of your nervous system. It's really important to work with someone experienced in nervous system regulation and integration so that you can truly integrate all of the new thoughts and behaviors that you aspire to. These are all things we are going to keep talking more about in future podcast episodes. Your homework is to pick one. just one of these three things, prioritization, energy, or neurohealth, that you want to commit to learning more about and improving moving forward. Then email me through the link in the show notes, or send me a DM on Instagram, at solutions4simplicity, and let me know which one you're choosing and why, because I would love to cheer you on, and I'm always happy to recommend additional resources. Join me back next episode where we are going to unpack three huge myths about time that are preventing you from being efficient and effective with the time you do have. It's the perfect sequel to this episode, so definitely join me back next week. Until then, remember nothing you do changes how wonderful and worthy you are. Have a great day. I know more than anyone how precious your time is, so the fact that you spent it listening to this podcast means the world. Make sure to subscribe, and if you got value out of this show, I would be so honored if you'd leave a review and share this episode with another busy mama who needs to hear it. We've got this.