 So we're going to talk about productivity and this core belief that we all seem to be carrying here about I'm not doing enough I'm not doing enough and this is a question from Lara and I'm going to answer Lara's question with some pointers about what to do with this kind of belief and you know a real it's It's it's it's a felt sense that I'm not doing enough. I need help. I need help doing more, right? So we're going to talk about well some of the thinking patterns around this and also Ways to simplify things so Lara's question is David I want to thank you for creating your in-depth course. It was insightful and helpful and This is the course on procrastination on my website and I've been struggling with this issue for as long as I can remember I Felt relief and support from you with every video I watched from the course and your understanding of the issue really spoke to me and Your generosity and compassion was palpable You have been a godsend truly so thank you Lara for that If I may and you may I Would like to request some support with making a schedule for working from home for adult professionals So I've been following your scheduling system Enjoying my breaks and working in 30 minute slots So if you don't know the the approach I take is a big elaborate plans for the day are actually unhelpful Because quite often we make these good intentioned plans well intentioned plans and then fail to follow through on them and then feel guilty So my approach is all about ending a cycle of feeling the emotion of guilt Once we can remove guilt by not making elaborate plans But taking it step by step making small commitments and having really clear boundaries with your work The guilt goes away and the productivity just naturally improves by itself So that's been working for Lara and what I have found is I am not able to keep up with the workload Because I only end up doing a few hours of work per day. I Enjoy what I do, but I would like To also be able to get more done Please let me know if you can help me out or perhaps this will be a good topic for a video Thanks for the work that you do So Lara, thank you for that and I want to just point something out. Okay What you're doing here first of all is Fantastic, you should be giving yourself a lot of credit for the fact that you're actually consistently engaging with the work But we'll talk about that. But one point I wanted to make is that So many of us have this idea that I'm not doing enough Right now the Bureau of Labor Statistics actually did some research on this and they observed people in their daily work And what was the average amount of hours that people were actually working, you know, not talking with colleagues or not taking, you know Online shopping or something like that, right? You remove all that stuff and they found out that on average People are doing about two hours 53 minutes of actual work per day so Let's just Gain a little bit of perspective here about the significance of this problem Okay, the fact that you're doing a couple of hours of work a day Okay, maybe you want to improve on that you're open to improving on that. That's absolutely fine But you have to give yourself credit this we don't want to start framing this as oh my god I'm I'm terribly unproductive and I need to do something urgently about this Let's start off with some validation for where you are and that goes to everybody watching this video We have to validate and come to accept and encourage ourselves from where we are right now today Self-improvement is all about someday in the future. I'll be good enough and I'll be okay And then I'll deserve some validation and self-compassion It's essential that we start to give ourselves some validation right now Where we are so because that's going to be more helpful moving forward here So I just wanted to point that out, right? We we we go into these social comparisons of other people must be doing a lot more work and in truth I mean, there's statistics on it. It's about like two hours 53 minutes a day So we got to see where we are right now as a win and with procrastination if you're struggling with productivity and We're not doing enough All we really want to establish here And maybe you're not you're not doing as much as Larry's right? All we're trying to do a procrastination fundamentally is raise our baseline of consistent daily effort from what is our typical baseline if we have procrastination as an issue It's nothing days will go by when I don't do anything. I certainly had that issue So all the success here to start off is raise my baseline from I can't do anything today I procrastinated all day. I didn't do anything to I did something today The difference between something and nothing is everything, right? So yes, we can look at increasing how much we actually do But it is a success already if you have consistently raised your baseline to some small step forward towards this goal as opposed to been paralyzed by procrastination and not being able to take any action at all what I always say is yes, we see we see where we are right now as a win and Once we start to develop this consistency The philosophy becomes can I can combine consistency with rare moments of Greatness or rare moments of days when I can and feel inspired to do a lot more work so Why I like that is it's about emotional realism There's not it's not going to be the case that every single day. I'm going to be hyper productive Some days I'm not going to feel so good and all I'm looking for is can I raise my baseline from zero to anything? that's the consistency piece and then there will be days when you feel more energized more motivated and Those days you can enjoy and see how far you can go with your productivity So combining consistency with rare moments of greatness Because it's emotionally realistic to do that Now what I would say a few pointers here is Okay, if you if you really want to start to look at now, can I really start to push on my productivity? The first session of the day the first productivity session of your day is by far and away the most important one Okay, so that's because if you if you can do something productive early in your day it will make it much more likely there's a this psychological momentum that starts to build and Because of the the positive emotion that you will feel from that first session. It starts to make subsequent productivity sessions Seem a lot more enticing Okay, so what I would suggest is what we're trying to do productivity is get out of indecisiveness So when you wake up in the morning you do your morning routine, whatever that might be You might even do some journaling or self-reflection or something like that But then pick your start time for your work first thing do it early, okay? Now if you know anything about my system of boundaries with work I'm not saying be productive first thing I'm just saying end the decisiveness and pick a time for when you intend to start early in your day If you don't follow through on that There's an many videos. I've made about what happens when that happens in when that occurs Which is really about enforcing a boundary With it and stepping away from work, but I'm not going to get into that too much here The point they're making is pick your start time very early. That should be your first priority every day Because all we're trying to do is get out of the indecisiveness Okay, procrastination is really in decision I should start don't want to start when should I start maybe I'll start soon And then this this pattern of maybe I should start soon goes on all day So what we want to do is make a decision Now it should be a loving decision. It should be a compassionate encouraging decision about well Maybe I need some rest first with that this point in my day. I'm going to start So that's the first thing we can do make that decision as early as you possibly can That will help and also if you can hit that first one it will make all subsequent productivity sessions very very Very easy much easier the other thing to talk about here is yes We're focused on productivity here and there is a part of us that needs productivity and needs to take responsibility and That's a very valid emotional need, but I would also suggest Look at your other emotional needs outside of productivity. There's a book I have on my website It's called forget happiness. It's all about what are your emotional needs? And the idea is if you can find out about these other emotional needs that you have outside of productivity and Start to meet those emotional needs what you're going to find is you're developing emotional compliance with yourself There's no longer this emotional stuff that is resistant to taking steps forward with productivity because it feels that they feel that they're their needs have been met There's five basic emotional needs in the model that I use and you can find it find that in the book But meet your own emotional needs master meeting these other emotional needs. You can do that very quickly It's not actually that hard to meet your own emotional needs It's not actually that time and energy intensive at all But that will certainly lead to a lot more compliance in your in your desire to be productive productive So the other thing is boundaries. Okay. Now again, we're just looking for a baseline and consistency with your effort here So you might say to yourself, okay We're talking about boundaries with your work Try and have a minimum amount for yourself every day for okay Zero is not great. I want to avoid days and I'm not doing anything towards my productivity goal What's the minimum I'm looking for here? And again, as I said, if you can reach that minimum, it could be 30 minutes Give yourself a pat in the back. The other thing is what is your maximum for today? So you're talking here Lara and this question about well I'm doing a couple of hours a day and it's I'd like to do more now I am not hearing what is an upper limit for the amount of work that you're going to put in this project Every day and that's an issue because all we're trying to do a productivity We're not trying to become super disciplined or anything like that. The only issue of productivity is That your nervous system needs to be compliant Now your nervous system when it hears all I have to commit to today is 30 minutes It was okay. I can do that so it seems achievable. This is why we have minimums Minimum today is 30 minutes if I can do that pat on the back and now I'm into kind of bonus territory anything I can add to that is helpful But we also add but there is an upper limit to the amount of time I'm going to put into this Now whatever that number is going to be for you Lara is a personal choice but just by having an upper limit of Today the maximum I'm going to do is four hours It could be five or whatever the number is for you personally When your nervous system hears you make that that commitment to limiting your exposure to this project It starts to become much more compliant because it realizes. Okay, she's not going to expand all our energy Which I need to keep her safe. The nervous system is all about safety. It doesn't care about personal gold If there's an upper limit the nervous system will hear that and say okay, I can I can do that That seems okay Now I'm not saying you have to reach the upper limit I what I'm saying is if you get to the the upper limit that you said you must stop working for today Once you make that commitment to your nervous system to your body You have to step away from it. So be super strict with that. Again. I've said this in many videos before the person who can't stop work is This is in the workaholism kind of category we're talking about here the person that can't start work is the procrastinator Both of them have a problem with boundaries Right when should I start when should I finish? It's the same problem. So boundaries in this whole issue is essentially important to look at Now one final thing about the psychology behind this This is not a trivial point. I'm going to make here We have this this inner dialogue it comes from childhood It comes from self-help to be honest and self-improvement. I'm not doing enough. I'm not doing enough I'm not doing enough and we look around and we make comparisons and everything else If you take it day by day and stop worrying about the intentions for tomorrow next week I need to become much more productive. I Want you to start changing your story about today. Just focus on today Today I Did enough work for today now. I'm not talking about tomorrow or next week Your story really that inner dialogue the self-talk should become I always do enough work each day Every day I do the perfect amount of work This is the kind of dialogue that we want to be talking about here And remember it's not saying just because I did this much today It means I'm going to do the same amount tomorrow You can be open to doing more tomorrow and next week, but today I did enough work I always do enough work every single day. This is the story We want to be telling ourselves because it's that encouragement piece. That's missing for most of us so take a day by day and Give yourself some some positive feedback on that's okay. I did something today. That's that's good enough for today So Laura, I hope that's helpful The big thing I guess from today's video is this social comparison of other people are doing more than me Statistically speaking, that's probably not as true as you think it is So just keep that in mind and for anyone watching this the takeaway I want you to take from this video is just focus on increasing your baseline From nothing to anything anything you can do any small step towards your goal Here's a really great thing. You don't even