Psychological Super Powers: How to Conquer Self-Control

Have you done this before? You have procrastinated all day, and you sit down, ready to work on that project. I'm going to write that blog post or write that manuscript. It's 3:00 p.m. and then you say, "Oh, I don't actually have the energy to do any of this. It doesn't even matter that there's a deadline approaching."

I've been there. My name is Caitlin Faas. I'm a psychology professor and coach, and in today's psychological super-power video, we're going to break down what you can do about those deadlines and procrastination.

Ego fatigue

So this would happen to me all the time in graduate school. I would say, "I'm going to read five journal articles after dinner today." I'd set that goal in the morning, and dinner would roll around, and then I wouldn't be motivated to do any of that after dinner. And I would actually feel guilty that I hadn't met the goal that I set for myself. Well, what I didn't know at the time was that it's actually ... There's a term for this. It's called Ego Fatigue, and it wasn't necessarily my fault that I wasn't setting that goal.

Ego fatigue is a cognitive concept that actually describes your self control, a really important resource for your brain. When things are automatic, and just naturally occurring, your ego fatigue is ... You don't have any. You don't have any depletion and you feel really great. You're just running along, you're doing your thing.

As the day goes on, we actually experience a lot of decisions and these decisions add up quickly and wear down our willpower. Even picking a shirt for the day. Making the decision about decaf or not, or adding the almond milk or not. People asking you questions at work. All of these add up so that by the end of the day, a lot of us feel a lot of ego depletion.

Task switching is another thing that contributes to ego depletion. When we check our email, go back to the manuscript, talk to somebody about this, go back to the manuscript, right? All of these things, we think it's just a second, but it really isn't. It's task switching, and it's distracting us. 

The last thing that contributes to ego depletion is creativity itself. It takes a lot of creative energy to be able to write that post or come up with a brand new sentence. One new sentence takes a lot of work. All of those things add up for ego depletion, and at the end of the day you're tired and making maybe poorer decisions because of this ego depletion that's happened. 

My amazing friend, Dr. Amanda Crowell, writes more about ego fatigue on her blog post here.

Let me tell you three tips to help with this:

1. The first is to always do a task at the same time, same routine.

We want you to rest on your routines. So when I was writing my dissertation I would go into my office, even though I didn't have to I could've stayed home and worked technically, but I would go into the office, sit down at my desk, pull up my laptop, put in my headphones, put on the classical music, pull up the document, and start. That routine got my brain ready to know this is what I do, this is when I focus, now I have to make this happen. 

2. The second tip is to make sure that you don't actually break up your writing.

You can take breaks, but you want to focus on the writing task all at once. So, when I was working on my dissertation, I knew that this was the time I was designating towards writing, and I could take a break, perhaps after 15 minutes, or even 25 minutes on some days, but when I took that break, I didn't then task switch to checking my email, for example, because that's distracting and my brain, our brains, can't handle too many of those switches. It actually takes a lot to be able to come back around, to focus when it's time to focus. So stay on the same task.

3. The third tip is to do your creative writing or work during your most productive time.

Figuring out your patterns for that is really important. I'm a morning person, it took me awhile to figure that out in graduate school, but I knew that I needed to go in in the morning and get that creative writing done so that when the evening rolled around, which is not my productive time, maybe I could edit then or work on other tasks, but that was not my creative time. That's still true now.

Find your time. Then, for me, it was really a game-changer in terms of knowing, "I don't have to feel guilty about not being able to work in the evenings." I just needed to be able to harness the right energy at the right time.

So the next time you find yourself with a big creative task that you need to get done, make sure you remember this concept of decision fatigue. It's not your fault that you work best at different times during the day and the key is to harness that energy and figure out what works best for you.

So I challenge you today to think about what's one way that you can avoid decision fatigue this week?

Also, I want to invite you to make sure you download the worksheet that goes with this that gives you tips on what you can do and it can be a visual reminder of how to remember decision fatigue.

Giving Yourself Grace: Permission to Not Accomplish Everything

I want to talk to you today about giving yourself grace.

This is a topic that I've heard from a lot of people lately that they're saying things where they aren’t giving themselves grace. So today, I'm giving you permission to give yourself grace.

The example here is when people ask me how I get a lot of things done during my day or how I'm able to accomplish things on my to-do list.

One of the things that they are asking themselves is what's going on in their lives where maybe they're not able to complete these things. For example, my friends ask me, “How do you get everything done?” When they are a mom of at least one child, if not more, and they have to take care of another human being.

I'm not a mom! I have a whole different kind of time schedule compared to parents. 

Or they ask that question about how do you get things done and they might have a chronic illness or disease that prevents them from being able to have a whole different kind of time right? If you have fatigue, that's something that you're dealing with that takes a lot more time in your day.

Something else that has happened to me – so for example, just today this morning, it's a Monday and I forgot my lunch that was on the kitchen counter. I packed it and I forgot it and I also forgot the computer cord that connects my tablet to the projector for classes, and I forgot both of these things.

Instead of telling myself kind of the negative thought loop of, “Oh, I can't believe you left those things” or “you're so stupid for leaving those things” – things that we wouldn't ever tell our best friend, but somehow we think it's okay to tell ourselves that.

Instead of doing all that, I just remember like, “Hey, it's ok. Sometimes these kinds of things happen” and I don't have to beat myself up for thinking that something it was about me, “it’ll be fine.” The rest of my day can be fine. The rest of my week can be fine, until the rest of the month – completely the rest of the month. All these things help remind us to give ourselves grace.

So what's something that's going on in your life that you might not be accounting for when you're trying to think about all the things you need to get done?

What are some of the things you can prevent yourself from saying to yourself inside your head that you wouldn't say to anybody else, but sometimes we get trapped in telling ourselves that?

Those are two things I want you to think about today. Tell us below in the comments or send me a note because I'd love to hear what your examples are! You have my permission to not get it all done.

How to Make Myself Work During Designated Times

In today's video I want to present to you a scenario that is probably pretty familiar and in this scenario we're going to talk about ways to break past the barriers that we run into when we're working on it.

I want you to imagine that you have something important you need to do like writing a research report, finishing your dissertation, starting your dissertation, writing a report for work – any kind of activity that's got that you know is going to require large amounts of your time and it's difficult to make it happen in 10-minute bursts.

You know you need a stretch of time.

So think of that activity that you might have on your plate and often a lot of people struggle with making the time to find that block of time where they might be able to work on that, but today’s scenario is about you actually found the time.

You made a schedule something like Tuesday, Thursday afternoon you're going to commit to this paper that you have to write and make it happen and you can't wait to get there.

But then Tuesday afternoon rolls around and you realize, “Oh, here I am at my designated time and I actually don't want to do this” and I'm going to procrastinate, look at that Facebook post, look at that Instagram picture, and there are a lot more other exciting things to do like, maybe I should just clean the house actually, go talk to a colleague or do anything other than what I'm supposed to be doing right now during this designated time.

So this happens a lot across a wide variety of domains and I find it happens to me sometimes too, but a couple of the strategies I wanted to talk to you today are about how to avoid those moments.

1. Eliminate distractions

So, the first thing I like to do if I have that time, I actually use Tuesday and Thursday mornings right now on my schedule because I know that I work best in the mornings, so I can commit to that kind of time.

Let’s say it's 9:00 a.m. on Tuesday morning and one of the first things I have to do for myself is to make sure that I shut down all the distractions. This helps if I can close my door. Nobody's going to come into my office or I'm actually at home working – whatever it might be. No distractions. I see a lot of people with cell phones up like, “Oh look, somebody sent me a notification.” I've got the cell phone put away. I've installed the Freedom app on my computer, so that I can shut down all of the Internet and all the distractions that come with that – so Freedom or the StayFocused app.

So nothing is going to get in my way. I can't look at my e-mail. I can't look at anything distracting. That gets my whole environment ready to be able to work on the thing I need to work on. Now even if something is tucked in your email, I'm still going grab all those documents or whatever I need so I don't have to go searching for all the things. I've got it already loaded. So eliminating distractions is the first step.

2. Set a timer

Then the next thing I do is make sure that if it's something I'm really dreading like I cannot even handle the thought of writing the words for that piece or whatever might be, I make sure I set a timer to just get started because if I know something takes me three hours to do – I need a good three hour stretch of time to make progress on this project.

That still seems really daunting and all of us it's like, “Well, I have a lot of time to work on this” and times slips away from me. But instead, I set a timer, I say, “Alright. It’s go time. I have to work on this. The timer is set. I have to spend the next 20 minutes working on this.” And of course the trick to that is it spurs me to keep working. Once I'm in the groove, it doesn't seem that painful usually.

Setting the timer is the Pomodoro Technique and if you haven't heard of that, make sure you look it up. But it's one of those simple techniques that really helps and when you get out of the habit and then you start doing them again, you remember like, “Oh yes. This is a really helpful technique.” So Pomodoro Technique, we said avoiding distractions, getting yourself ready, setting a timer so that you launch into the activity.

I'd also say with that making sure you do something easy first that isn't as complicated and you've broken down your steps to be able to say like –if your overall goal is to finish that paper you can break it down into smaller groups and say, “Okay, I know I need to write this paragraph” and “I know I need to do this part on the analysis” or “I know I need to create this table.” Little details and starting with an easy one can also help with those timer settings.

3. Know why you’re doing it

And then the third thing I remind you or give you a tip on are about actually writing down the reasons why you're doing this. So things like finishing your dissertation seem like “Well yeah, I need to do this, so I can finish my PhD.” Well, that's kind of obvious, but actually writing down the reasons about why is this important.

Do I actually want to do this? Because sometimes we have all these barriers, so like actually making the time happen, when we have the time we don't want to do it. But if we really get to the root of it, sometimes we just don't want to do it at all. I don't actually want to write this paper, it doesn't actually matter if it happens and that's why I've been procrastinating for the past six months.

So remembering why and starting to list those reasons and put them somewhere where you can see them as you work to say, “This research paper is really important for me to read. Even if only one graduate student reads this paper some day when it's published, that's going to be meaningful to me because I feel like I really contributed to literature here. This is important for my scientific endeavor.” All of these different things that are important to you and kind of the reason why you’ve even gotten into this situation in the first place.

And then, if it doesn't seem like there are any good reasons and you really don't want to do it but you still feel like you have to, I always like the phrase that Jenny Blake uses when it's something really difficult she says, “What will bring me joy in this task? How can I do this joyfully and with ease?” Is there any way that I could make this task enjoyable or kind of have a place of joy for it because maybe there's something little in here that writing this report will help the students in the future or getting this finished and completed is going to be really meaningful, some tiny little piece of joy so that it doesn't have to feel so painful.

So those are three tips of avoiding distraction and making sure you set a timer and remembering your reasons why you got into this project at the beginning.

Stop procrastinating. Get that accountability partner and stop procrastinating. Stop this video and get back to work on that project that you're excited about.

If you need a little guidance to get back on track, get access to my tips for reclaiming your time with the form below!

Does it make sense for you to get more education?

Hi, Caitlin Faas here. I help busy professionals like you integrate graduate school seamlessly into your lives with productivity tips and career direction. Today, I want to talk about, is going back to school right for you and is more education right for you in general.

A lot of times I see potential clients have swirling thoughts in their head about “Should I go back and would this be good for me?”

And they're kind of starting to think about what will work out like, “Yeah, I think I’ll be good for this and I think it’ll do that, but maybe it’ll take a lot of my time.” But it’s all swirling up here and only the thoughts that pop up are the ones that kind of keep resurfacing and it's jumbled. It's just very jumbled.

1. Your finances

What I want you to do today if you're in this boat is really break down your cost and benefit analysis. I want you to write this down. I want you to think about “What is this going to do for me financially?” If you don't know how to find the nitty-gritty on what will happen if you go to this graduate program, you should be able to find easily the salaries of someone who has this degree. What is their salary? If you don't know where that is, send me a note and we’ll check because I'm happy to help you figure that out for your specific profession. You should be able see that line by line and you know what you make right now – Write this down.

You know what you make right now, what will I make after this program? What does this program cost me financially and how will bridge in between? There's a lot of conversations in between there and I also have resources for that and can send you some great people that are talking about helping graduate students with finances. So we've got those pieces of cost benefit analysis of your financial situation. You're going to write that down on one sheet.

2. Your time

Then I want you to think about what this will do for your time. You know that going to school is going to take your time, but do you have the time right now? Are you in a place where you can say, “Oh, it's okay if I need to do this in the evenings five days a week.” It's also starting to figure out exactly how much time will this program take me.

You may have a rough idea in your head. A graduate adviser might say to you, “It’ll probably take about this…” But talk to some first or second in years that are in the program. Get a realistic perspective from them. Are they working every single night and weekends or do they feel like there's a good balance and what does that look like for your time schedule? Is this worth the time that you would put in? The answer is a time sheet, so to speak, on your cost benefit analysis.

3. Your resources

And then the last thing would be about resources both professionally and personally like, “What resources do you need to use to make this happen? And so one example would be if you know that this is going to take a lot of your time and maybe you need childcare to support you to do this, do you have resources that can help with that so someone else in the home that is going to take on more of a child care role or you're able to hire somebody because your financial situation is pretty good and you're able to make room for that into your budget or family members – all kinds of resources that you could rely on as you go through this graduate school process.

If you think about these things upfront, you're able to prepare to go into your program much more smoothly rather than some graduate students feel lost in this process while they're in the middle of their program.

I can also help with that. So reach out to me if you're struggling. There are a lot of people going through this process and you're not alone.

Beware of the Nostalgia and Romance When Considering More Schooling

Hi, Caitlin Faas here. I help busy professionals like you integrate graduate school seamlessly into your life with productivity hacks and career direction. In today's video, I wanted to talk about de-romanticizing the idea of graduate school a little bit because when I work with potential clients, sometimes I hear them saying phrases like this,

“Oh, I really miss school. I loved everything about college. I really want to be back in the classroom.”

And they kind of have this image of what was going on during their time in college, maybe a little bit differently than what actually happened. I work with undergraduate students almost every day nine months out of the year. A lot of them are not running around saying like, “Oh this is so great. I just love everything about this.”

But when we’re in the moment, we don't usually see those things. It's looking back on the past and those are some psychological terms from your psychology professor here about when we reflect back on the past and we romanticize it.

1. Check in with reality

If you are thinking about going to graduate school, do you have some of these romantic ideas about it stemming from your past? How much of that is a realistic perspective about what it will actually be like?

And so, ways to find that out would be: have you talked to people in the program that you're thinking about or if you're not ready for a program yet, are you actually talking to people about what their graduate experience was like? Why they went back to school? And not just people who graduated because those are people who are reflecting on the past as well, but people who are in the program right now. Are they somebody who is a first year graduate student? Have you talked to them? What's their experience like right now? For a lot of them, it probably isn't like, “Oh, this is the best thing that ever happened to me.”

They're going to give you a much more realistic perspective both positive and negative, but you're able to walk into it with a more realistic idea.

2. Find healthy perspective

The other thing about the de-romanticizing this idea of graduate school is making sure that you're coming in from a place of a healthy perspective rather than being frustrated with the situation you're in right now.

Are you thinking, “Graduate school is my way out of the current job I'm in because I'm really frustrated with that?”

Part of that is, why do you want to go to grad school? Is it only the reason to get out of your current situation? And the common phrase we think of for that is “grass is greener on the other side” right? Like, “Oh, if I go to school that'll transport me out of this situation into a new situation and then my problems will be solved.” And we know that doesn't actually happen right? But I hear a lot of people say things like this, so that's why I want to bring it up. When you stop and think about the phrases that you're using, either in your head or you're starting to tell somebody that, do a check and say, “Wait. Is this reality-based?” “Is this a healthy approach?” “Am I approaching it with a good intention rather than a fear intention of ‘I'm frustrated, I want to get out of this situation, I am going to run away from this to do that.’”

Those are two things I want you to consider on your graduate school decision journey.

In the meantime, take the next step toward achieving your goals and check out my tips for reclaiming your time. Just leave your details below!

Should I go to an online or traditional graduate school?

Hi, Caitlin Faas, your productivity navigator, excited to talk to you about the differences between online graduate programs and traditional graduate programs and how do you decide which one is right for you.

The first thing I want to say is that not all online programs are created equal.

So when we use the word “online” a lot of programs mean completely different things and that’s something to investigate in a program that you might be interested in. So you might see an ad or go to a website that says, “We offer an online program.” And I want your first question to be, “What kind of online program?” Is it really interactive and they actually treat it like a traditional classroom in the sense that you meet at a certain time and you’re all in a Zoom room or Google Hangouts or Skype – all of these video platforms? Are you watching each other live and talking to each other live? They call that synchronous or is it an asynchronous program where you complete modules on your own and complete the course work on your own but check in once a while with an adviser. And so live programs are blended like this, maybe it’s a combination between those two extremes that I said – so synchronous or asynchronous.

Get the details

An online program that you're interested in should be ready to tell you all of the details about that and some of the really “on top of it” programs that I've seen that are trying to recruit students, they will have webinars and events for you to attend as a potential student so that you can see what the classroom environment is like. I've had a couple of students attend events like that where they learn more about the program and then they're able to make the decision about “Oh, I see. This online program isn’t what I thought it would be” or “I had the opportunity to make it as interactive I want it be.” That can be really convenient especially if you're in an isolated location or you're not able to drive to a particular place.

Does the program fit your life?

Whether or not it’s synchronous or asynchronous can be helpful depending on your life situation. So that’s something to take in consideration as well. Does my life situation facilitate the ability to do this program online? Will I be able to make the time to fit the details of this program into my life?

Sometimes I see people lean more towards a traditional experience especially if it is a clinical program or you need a lot of experience in person to experience the program.

Do you want someone to hold you accountable?

The other reason I see people lean towards it would be if you really need accountability. No matter what kind of online program you are in and on some level you're able to kind of life fade into the background, nobody’s necessarily following through with you. People will try to reach out to you and try to keep you engaged in that program. Typically, you'll just kind of fade in the background or maybe not show up to that class. But in a traditional classroom, if you really feel like you need that “I have to show up, I see people in person” it has a built in accountability to it that not all online programs have, but again it depends on that level of how blended it is – so something to think about. You know yourself best.

Where will the program take you?

And then the last thing to think about for a traditional or online is this general “What will this program be able to offer me?” And “Am I excited about where this will take me for the next steps?” So I want you to think about those things when you're deciding the difference between traditional or online. Either way you go, I want to make sure that you find students that have been through the program no matter what type of program it is and talk to them. Find graduates and friend students, either the program will facilitate that conversation for you or you’ll even find them on your own. Put out a request out there.

Navigating technology

Sometimes people worry about the technology part behind it like, “Am I technologically savvy enough to do this?” But you're watching this YouTube video and you figured that out, you can figure out anything out online as you manage platforms and as you turn in assignments. There’s a lot of help and support behind those programs. So you made it this far and you figured out how to find this video, so I'm sure you can accomplish that as well.

I'm really excited for you. Let me know as you're making this decision what else helps you make a decision and what kind of programs you're looking into. I'm always interested in learning about other programs. I don’t have a program, let me say that, I'm just interested in learning about programs for students to go on to and being able to help you navigate that transition. No vested interest in which way you go either way, but excited for you!

How is time different in graduate school compared to the corporate world?

Getting ready to head into graduate school after years in the corporate world? This video is for you:

Hi, Caitlin Faas, your productivity navigator, excited to talk to you about the differences in working full time and transitioning into graduate school or adding graduate school onto your busy plate.

Let's talk about the time difference.

You're probably wondering what is this experience going to be like? Maybe you've been out of school for so long that it's hard to know whether or not you know like, “Will I be able to pick this back up?” And you certainly will. I am confident that you can do that especially because you found this video and are being proactive, so kudos for that. You're figuring it out.

But let's talk about what happens with when you're thinking about working 40 hours a week for a corporation to when you start this graduate program.

Your final project

The first thing is that there will absolutely be classes that follow a structure with project deadlines, but what we want to talk about today is your final project, capstone, thesis, or dissertation that you'll be writing – whatever the final product is in your specific program.

So think back about what happened in your own undergraduate career and the lessons you've learned from that. I'm sure there are several, especially if you want to undergrad when you were 18 to 22. I teach undergraduate students and a lot of times, for them, being able to do well in a class without reading the textbook is a win. (YES!) But then you grow up and you're over the age of 25 and you realize would it really have killed me to read that book? Could I have learned something in that class? Retained it? – Especially when you're paying student loans. So all of those lessons are really great, yes, those lessons would have all served you well. You're going to be excited about this program. You're excited to read, excited to soak up knowledge, that is great.

Working for yourself

But let's think about what happens to your time management for that final project. In a corporation there's the CEO, there are vice presidents. Somewhere in there is your boss, project managers, people working on teams. Now for your final project, one big difference is going to be that you have to play all of those roles. You become the CEO and the person doing all of the work on your final project. And that's a big shift because now there aren’t people to report to report to so to speak. You've just got to get the work done. You actually have to be the one that creates the work and creates the idea of the work, creates the plan of the work and then execute that plan.

You might say, “But wait, I have an adviser.” And I know you’ll have an adviser, but the difference there is they will advise you on your topic and yes they'll be excited about your topic but they aren't really interested in making sure you follow through on that project. I mean it in the way that they are not responsible for it. And so, they aren't your boss saying, “You must meet this deadline.”

Often times it's completely up to you. You can meet whatever kind of deadline you want. It's a very continuous process. You're not leaving your graduate program at 5 p.m. and seemed like well done with work for the day. I don’t have to think about that project anymore. It kind becomes something that you're thinking about all the time and it's there.

Holding yourself accountable

Now there are ways to help set healthy boundaries absolutely, but it's still kind of - you're thinking about it all the time and having to meet these deadlines. You’ll say, “I'm going to turn this in to you by this date.” And they'll say, “Great.” And then maybe you don't turn it in and they're all like, “That’s okay.” They're not upset with you, “I know, but I need you to hold me responsible.” So there's that balance.

So that's why I want you to think about this today that you're going from having all these roles in a corporation to being all of the roles for your final project. That's why a lot of graduate students get writing partners, accountability buddies, or maybe you hire a coach to be able to help you follow through on your progress. There's a lot wrapped up in that, but I just want to highlight that one shift – that difference and thinking about who am I in my workplace and who am I going to be in graduate school and having to be in charge of all of those steps.

Tell us below about your experiences during the transition!

How to be successful in graduate school

Hi, Caitlin Faas, your productivity navigator, excited to talk to you about how to be successful in graduate school.

On the right track

The first thing is, if you're watching this video, that means you looked up something about "can I be successful in graduate school", which already means that you're amazing, right?

I want you to take a deep breath and know that you're amazing for even trying to look into this and think about it. That’s why I'm taking this video outside. It’s a gorgeous day and I want you to look at the trees, take a deep breath, and know that it’s awesome you're looking this up.

Tips for success

So, how to be successful in school? This is true for a lot of different programs. I've talked to a lot of graduate students about their experiences and I've put it into an email challenge for you that I’ll share below.

A lot of the things that you need to be successful for graduate school aren’t actually the things that you think of first. I asked dozens of past and current graduate students and said, “What do you wish you would’ve known before?” And you already know that of course work is going to be important, that you want to do well in your classes, but those weren’t the things that they wanted to you know.

Former graduate students and current graduate students say, “Oh, I really needed to have my time management system in place and I really needed to realize that I'm good enough for this program and I can do really well in this program. They accepted me for a reason.” And so many different topics like that.

Want to make sure you’re prepared for the next step in your education? Leave your details below, and I’ll send you my tips for reclaiming your time!

Why you have to get serious about delegation

So you need to be convinced about the importance of delegation?

What would be possible if you could delegate 20% of what’s currently on your plate, personally and professionally? Find out in my friend Jenny Blake’s new course Delegation Ninja! Get $100 off with code [CAITLIN]: http://pivotmethod.com/delegate

Delegation and success

Delegation is one of those important topics because any time you talk to somebody who's successful and you ask “How do you do it all?” Well, usually their first response back is, “I don't do it all.” Right? They choose what to work on and they delegate the rest. That's why I want you to tap into delegation today, so let's do one small activity.

I want you to think about something that you hate doing, something on your plate – either work or home, something that you hate doing and despise.

You don't look forward to it all but you feel like I have to do this. Okay, that one task, write that down put it below and the comments so you can share and see that we all have similar tasks we don't like to do. Take that task and I want you to think about how you can delegate it in two ways.

Your time is valuable

I want you to think about the time it takes you to do it and the value for that. So, the time that it takes. You can do this in a couple ways. You can think about what's your hourly rate right for things you do, things people pay you to do. Even if you're making something like $10 an hour if it takes you five hours to do a task, you're already talking about $50 worth of your time. There's a very ratio aspect to that of time for money, right? But there's also value.

So when you outsource or you delegate something to somebody else, there’s a really inherent joy in being able to delegate it and you feel really good when you know you're not the one that has to do it and everybody has experienced this in their lives.

When you go out to eat at a restaurant, when you are not the one making the meal and you have this ambiance of the restaurant and the silver plate comes to you and you're like, “Oh, this tastes so good. This was a great experience.” When you break it down of “I could have made this at home for $5” or “I spent the $25 to enjoy the eating out experience,” there's inherent value that goes with that instead of just the cost breakdown.

Think about both your time and your value – the joy you're going to experience when you delegate that thing that you really hate on your list.

Figuring out what to delegate

And so, if you're stuck on “I don't know how to delegate this,” there’s the do-it-yourself option, trying to figure it out. I help clients one-on-one with finding the time and breaking down steps to make sure that you're figuring out what you need to delegate and how to do it.

But there's also a middle option that I want to share with you today.

My friend, Jenny Blake, has an awesome course called “Delegation Ninja” and she is a true delegation ninja, a bestselling author, speaker and career coach.

She has this course and in it, she's going to teach you how to save between two and five hours a week of your time which is amazing. She shows you all of her systems. I'm super proud to be an affiliate of this course (use code CAITLIN). You'll save a hundred dollars by signing up that way and you will quickly earn back the money that you're going to spend on this course by being able to save that time, right? What is your time worth?

I really want to continue the conversation about delegating with you because it’s one of my favorites!

Tell me below in the comments what you want to delegate!

How to Set Aside Shame so You Can be Productive

Know what your next steps are, but can't seem to get past feeling ashamed? You're not alone. Check out this week's video.

At first, you might think, “What does this have to do with productivity?” But actually, I find that a lot of my clients and students get paralyzed by shame and don't know how to move past it, so that they can take those next steps.

Shame in school, career, and family life

There can kind of be a wall here of “I know what the next steps are, but I'm not ready for it yet because I'm feeling too much shame.” This can appear in a lot of different domains. We're all dealing with shame in different ways – one of the first things I recognize. But in school, perhaps it looks like, “I'm not going to look into those graduate programs” or “I don't want to find out more information about that because I actually don't think I'm good enough to take those next steps.” “There are a lot of people who are better than me out there.” “I'm not good enough.” “I feel ashamed that I'm older” – perhaps on going back to school.

It sounds very similar in the career domain when we say, “I’m in this job and when I look around at everybody else around me, they're much more productive and successful. I feel ashamed that I'm not there too.”

In family domain, if you feel parental guilt and shame about, “I don't think I'm being a good enough parent.” “Why do all these other moms seem to have it figured out and I can barely pull together in a day?” Those issues and all of these different domains we're dealing with on a regular basis.

Working through shame

To relate it to productivity, I want to say if you know what your next steps are, there are two tips to working through that shame, quick tips. We'll talk afterwards about longer term delving deeper into shame. But two quick tips for you today would be:

1. Make sure that you can recognize the shame.

First, sometimes people don't see that they're saying a shame-filled statement. Recognizing when you say these things to yourself would be the first thing.

2. Share it with someone

And the second thing then is to share it with someone. Maybe it’s a trusted friend, a spouse or even somebody you met in an online community that you would feel safe saying, “I feel ashamed about” and fill in the blank. And the reaction – this is why it needs to be somebody you trust or somebody that has a lot in common with you, the reaction is going to probably be “me too” or “I felt that shame before, absolutely.” And that's so important because when we recognize that other people are dealing with shame or we get that “need to” feeling, we say, “I'm so glad that I'm not the only one dealing with this.” That's one of the keys to this that we're not alone in dealing with this.

Those are two quick tips, but if you're interested in delving deeper into shame there are two resources I want to give you today because I'm studying this myself, trying to understand more about it, you could study this for a lifetime because we're all dealing with different levels of shame. I think you'd be surprised.

We all deal with shame

Think about the person you admire most — they too deal with shame. Two people -- Tara Brach is a clinician and meditation instructor who's written several books about dealing with acceptance and self-compassion and shame. She has a lot of great resources. And then Brene Brown as well is known as the shame researcher. She has dedicated her research career to understanding shame and vulnerability. Both are excellent professionals that I admire and turn to when I'm looking for resources about shame.

I hope my two tips have helped you today with thinking about it related to productivity. I'd love to hear from you today that you shared your statement with someone and that you're looking forward to your next steps to being productive on whatever path you're on. I’ll see you next time.

Tell me below how you're implementing these steps!

Feeling unsure about why you want to go to graduate school?

There are many reasons to go to graduate school and in this video, I challenge you to think about one of the related themes!

Caitlin Faas, psychology professor and coach, excited to talk to you today about some of the thoughts I've been having about graduate school.

Identify the “why”

I mentor a lot of students and clients that think about going back to graduate school. And I always start with asking about “why you want to go back to graduate school” or any type of program or certificate. So… “Why?” And there are a lot of great reasons to go back and we can make a whole list of those, but sometimes – Well, this is what I talk about today – sometimes there’s this sneaky thing that comes into the reasons that has to do with “enough.”

Beware of “enough”

And so, people say to me, “If I go back for this program, then I will be smart ‘enough.’” Then, “People will view me as competent ‘enough.’” “If I do this, then I'll feel better about myself” – which is another type of “enough” type of feeling. If I do this then this feeling will happen or I'll be in a different type of mindset or a better place.

Bird by Bird

Something I read this weekend that I want to read to you was from Anne Lamott who wrote a book called Bird by Bird that you may have come across yourselves. It’s pretty famous. She's writing to writers – people who want to become published writers.

In this book, she actually is referencing – in the section that I'm going to read, she's referencing the first Jamaican bobsled team and how there's a movie about it called Cool Runnings. And in that movie, this is the quote, “The coach is a 400-pound man who had won a gold in Olympic bobsled 20 years before, but had been a complete loser ever since. The men on his team are desperate to win an Olympic medal just as half the people in my classes are desperate to get published. But the coach says, ‘If you're not enough before the gold medal, you won't be enough with it.’ You may want to tape this to the wall near your desk." That’s what Anne Lamott says – the quote from her book Bird by Bird.

This really resonated with me because I thought this is the same thing that happens with people who are thinking about school. They'll say, “I'll be ‘enough’ after I complete this program.” And if you ask anybody who's been through a program, there usually isn't a magical…“Now I feel smart enough, now I feel competent enough.” Right?

You are enough.

It was a mindset shift or embracing the idea they are enough through a different process, not necessarily the process of going through graduate school to help them realize that.

My own example, I thought as I completed my Ph.D. or even before, people said I was smart. I felt like I could be smart enough in that program, but even after completing a Ph.D., I still didn’t feel smart enough. And so, again it was a different – through a lot of talking with people and mindset shift, I realized I am smart enough and I always was with or without my Ph.D. That's what I work with clients and students to realize, that if your sole reason to go to school is something about being enough, that is not (pun intended) going to be enough to get you through your graduate program.

So, can we work on the other more concrete reasons that will give you a reason to go to a program, stay in the program, and graduate from the program. I challenge you today to think about do you have any “enough” statements that are floating around in your head, kind of reasons of why you're going back or thinking about going back to school or it may be applicable to another domain.

Whatever you decide, make sure you’re prepared for the next step in your career by overcoming procrastination for good. Get my tips for reclaiming your time below!

The Challenge to Try Something New (Again)

Are you avoiding a new habit or something that could help you be more productive because you've tried it once? Here's encouragement to try again!

Excited to talk to you today about trying things more than once. This sounds like a really simple idea, but I want to give you the pep talk today to be able to think about things that you can do or try again in your life.

Try, try again

Often with coaching clients, I hear things like “I tried meditation once…” or “I tried using a paper planner once…” “I tried you know delegating that task once…” All kinds of different things that we have in our lives that we know can be really helpful. There's a lot of scientific evidence about that this could help or other people have told you in your life that that could be helpful and we say “Oh, I've tried that once.”

And it implies I'm not doing it ever again or that's not for me, I'm not that kind of person, all these kinds of things.

One of the biggest blocks I had about something I thought I was never going to do was about running. I just had this persona of I'm not a runner. I've never run before. It's not going to happen. That's great that other people do it, I'm not going to do it right. It's just like we get into these traps of thinking that's not me. I'm not going to do that again or give it a try.

Well take a step back and really think about how we encourage children to keep trying things like what if you said – first time you're riding a bike, “I tried riding a bike once, it just didn’t work out for me.”

Keep practicing

Everybody knows that one time doesn't work, right? That you have to keep practicing and you have to keep seeing, you know, how goes. This doesn’t mean we have to try endlessly. I mean, maybe eventually decide you just don't like riding bikes, but it doesn't mean that you’ve said, “I tried it once and I'm done.” That's true for a lot of things and again back to the meditation, a lot of people find they have to keep practicing at it or come and go from it over time just to really make it stick. Different ways we can build those habits.

I had that problem about yoga for a long time. Sometimes I would struggle with it, I’d dabble in it, and it's only recently that I really felt like it's really sticking. I really see the benefit and what everybody goes on about all the time. So exercise is a common one, but also the productivity things in our lives.

What are the things that you keep ignoring because you say “I tried it once and I'm not going back” to whether that's the plan or method that you use, the way you take notes, the way your smartphone set up, the way your laptop’s organized, all of those things that we get kind of trapped in our traditional way.

I want to challenge you to think about one thing you can do this week that might be another attempt at something that didn't go so well before, but could be something you’d try again – something simple because it could really make a difference.

Want to stop procrastinating? Leave your details below, and I’ll send you my tips for reclaiming your time.

Why should you care about your LinkedIn Profile?

Watch this video to learn three reasons why your LinkedIn Profile matters.

Ready to learn how to make your profile stand out?

Did you just say “Hmm…I wonder why I should care about my LinkedIn profile?” Awesome. I'm Caitlin Faas, psychology professor and coach excited to give you three reasons why you should care about your profile – Career, Connection, and Proof.

1. Career development

First -- your career. Everybody’s using LinkedIn for the job hunt. Both employers are on there looking for you and recruiters are on there looking for you and they want to find somebody with the right fit and you might be that person. So, if you haven’t been on the job hunt in a while, that might be news and I actually require for all of my college students to make a profile and we try to make it as snazzy as possible, so that they can use it as they look for summer internships or in a couple of years when they're getting ready to graduate. They actually come back and say, “Somebody found me on LinkedIn for a job.” I'm like, “Terrific!” So, career development is one of the main reasons why people use LinkedIn.

2. Connections

A second reason to use LinkedIn is for connections whether or not you're on the job hunt. It’s a way to do online networking and you can send messages to people that maybe you both went to the same college, maybe you're at the same company, but they're up in the New York branch and you're in Michigan. There are all kinds of possibilities there. And even if you're not looking to network specifically with anybody, you think you might not want to network with somebody, it’s pretty cool to be on the receiving end. So maybe, the college student finds you because you both went to the same college and you're 10 or 20 years ahead and they’d like to ask you a question about your company, your experience, or your education background. So, you can both look for connections and people will find you.

3. Proof

So, we’ve got career, connections, and the last reason to care about your profile would be for proof. Even me as an example, I told you that I was a psychology professor but you might wonder “Are we sure about this? Do we know she’s for real?” Well, go look at my LinkedIn profile and you can see where I teach, where are my degrees from. All of those details that you might not be able to either ask because I'm delivering information to you or sometimes it’s just nice to look up somebody that you're connecting with through another venue and say “Oh, I don’t have to ask them where did you get your degree, what year it was, all of that. I just quickly look at their LinkedIn profile.” You can learn a lot about somebody that way.

So, three reasons: Career, Connection and Proof. That’s why you should care. I hope I've convinced you there. So, if I have, then actually doing the work of updating your LinkedIn profile and tips and tricks is available.

Want to take your career to the next level? Leave your details below, and I’ll send you my tips for reclaiming your time!

How to Deal with Feeling Guilty About Delegating Tasks

Do you feel guilty when you try to delegate around the house? Watch this video for some inspiration on how to approach it from a healthy perspective.

We’ve been talking a lot about purposeful productivity and what to do when we’re overwhelmed with our to-do list and how to break things down, in general, to make it more manageable in our everyday lives. One of the things that keep coming up is to delegate tasks and to come up with the things that we don’t have to be the one person that does it every single time, in our relationships, in our family lives, at work – all kinds of examples.

But a really great point that one of the people in our community brought up, thank you Maeve, she brought up “How do I deal with the guilt associated with delegation?” And so, her examples were things like, “I feel guilty when I give this task to another person because I feel like I could be doing it or I should be the one doing it.” For all of us, we’ve all been there first of all. This is the important thing to know. Maeve’s definitely not alone. To think about the things that are happening behind this and then to apply it to our lives is where we’re going to go with it.

Identify mental blocks and societal scripts

An example in my own life would be grocery shopping and in my life, my husband and I recently switched roles on this and so I used to be the one that did most of the grocery shopping and he has recently in the past couple of months been the main one to go grocery shopping for us. I had all these mental thoughts about I should be the one to do this because I have more time. I also had a mental block behind maybe I'm better at it like, “I think I'm better at this grocery shopping thing. I should be the one to do it.”

Then, there are societal blocks or the societal scripts that we know a lot about in psychology and human development about scripts to say things like “Who does the grocery shopping in households?” And a lot of times in the commercials it looks like mom does grocery shopping or the woman in the household does grocery shopping. And then we have these roles, right? Like stereotypical roles. They don’t always follow gender lines but follow a variety of scripts.

And so, I want to challenge you today to think about what are the mental blocks I have behind this task that I want to delegate.

Recognize the positive effects of delegating

I thought about grocery shopping, "I'm better at it. I should be the one to do it because I have more time and I’ll feel guilty if I do hand it over." But instead, what happened as we made this transition, I realized when he was the one to go grocery shopping, he actually spends less money than I do which is really helpful for our budget and so actually he probably is better at it right now.

I also come at it from a positive place of how it helps me. I have more time to do a different type of task because he goes grocery shopping for us. I'm kind of coming to grips with that for whatever the task might be in your head of do you feel guilt because you're feeling like “I should be more productive with my time?” Like, if I just sat at home and said “He’s out grocery shopping and I should be the one doing that and I feel really bad that I'm not being productive right now.” That’s just negative thinking, a negative thought loop that’s getting stuck in my head over and over.

Talk to the people you delegate to

It’s also having that conversation with the other person to say “I feel guilty that this is happening. What do you think?” Often times, we’re really surprised at what people have to say back to us, right? We find that maybe he says something like “You know, I kinda like doing the grocery shopping” or “I enjoy being able to get out and about in the store.” And we’re like, “Uh, that’s kind of one of my worst nightmares.” There are all these kinds of different ways that we react to tasks and so unless we ask the person or tell them “I'm feeling guilty about this.” They may actually be able to say back to us like, “Oh, you do? Why do you feel guilty?” And so, having that conversation can help clear up a lot of issues. They may say like “I really don’t mind doing this for you because of these reasons…” So, that’s something to think about – our mental blocks that are happening and then having the conversation with the person.

Can you relate? Tell us below in the comments!

No Dusting Required: Reasons to Digitally Spring Clean

When's the last time you thought about a digital spring clean? Check out this video for tips or read the transcript below.

Spring cleaning is a hot topic right now. The latest Real Simple magazine has spring cleaning all over and everybody's excited for the fresh start and the second quarter of the year and new goals. But with spring cleaning, I have no interest in telling you about how to dust your blinds –important – but I really don't know how to talk about that.

What I do know how talk about would be digital spring cleaning, which can really be helpful for both work and home life, being productive, and feeling self-improvement. It seems minor and it seems not important sometimes, but we’re like “What's that? Why would I bother?” But the increased time that you save and then feeling non-cluttered can really help.

For digital spring cleaning, I like to go through and make sure on my computer that things are running efficiently.

And so, when is the last time that you thought about checking your virus software and checking that you have the latest versions of things installed. A lot of people don't worry about this until it's too late because they run into a problem like, the computer decided to die on them and they don't know why. Part of that is from digital spring cleaning or any time you do it – any time of year technically, but this idea is that we're cleaning up our digital files and computers. That would be one thing, to make sure virus protection is in order.

1. Uninstall programs you don’t use

Are there any programs on your computer or that you're no longer using? Did they show up on your startup screen and slow down your computer actually and you constantly find yourself closing out of it? For a long time, I had Spotify but I wasn't using it, but it would show up and I kept closing it. Well, about just uninstall that and save myself the time. So, try that.

2. Clean up browser extensions

What's happening on the computer and your home screen, but then also, browser extensions would be important. I'll tend to gather browser extensions especially as they relate to productivity or time management and like, “Ooh, I like this.” I'll try it and sometimes they stick and sometimes they don't for what I'm using or it comes and goes. Maybe I'll use something for a couple of months and then I'll move onto the next thing, so it just depends. That's actually a hack to productivity because a lot of times people think you have to find the one method that works, but for a lot of people including myself, I find that I try different things and see what sticks over time.

So, cleaning up browser extensions, deleting some of those, and finding new ones if you're stuck on something. If you're struggling with something like, “I know I need to do better with organizing my digital receipts, but how do I do that?” Just type it into Google, taking the time to type in “how do I deal with receipts” and maybe you'll find that new browser extension that you enjoy.

3. Declutter your inbox

Then the other thing would be email, so what does your email inbox looks like right now and can you do some cleaning up there? Going through e-mails that are no longer needed and for me a lifesaver recently has been that unroll.me and there are a couple of different versions of this and the one I use is free. But unroll.me gathers all of my subscriptions from e-mail into one email. I get one daily report that says, “Here’s the 400 emails that you would have gotten today if they weren't all condensed into one.” And yes, Gmail’s promotional tag helps organize this but this makes it even easier in one email. That has helped me with digital cleaning and saving time in the long run and also money because I'm not opening those e-mails to be able to spend more money on the latest and greatest or a new swimsuit for summer, which is on the horizon.

4. Organize your desktop

The other thing I see are folders on people's desktops. How are you organizing the files you're saving? Maybe you have a new set of files that you're working on but they're all just getting crammed into one folder. Can you streamline that process and add a short shortcut to your desktop to make sure that you have easy access to it instead of it being buried down into multiple folders? That would be something to think about. The overall message here is even though it seems like it takes time to be able to digitally spring clean, it actually saves time when you set aside time to be able to streamline these processes, delete what's not working for you, clean up what is, find new things that might work for you.

Another way to do that would be to ask people to see what they're doing on their screens and what's syncing up from their phone to their laptop to the cloud.

What's working and what's not working and what can you adopt for this spring to make things more efficient in your life? Keep me posted. I'd love to hear what you're using and what's working for your digital spring cleaning this spring.

How to Stop Letting Work Suck All of Your Free Time

Is work spilling into your home life and you don't know how to keep the balance? Try these two tips for finding that work-life balance.

This is the issue of when work starts to bleed into your free time or it kind of sucks all of your free time and you find yourself saying “Why am I working all the time? I could be enjoying myself.” It's that fine balance between wanting to get things done, be productive and make money; compared to spending time with family, spending time with loved ones, friends, enjoying yourself. It can definitely be a struggle in a battle. Let's talk about that.

I was actually talking about this in a Facebook group with a couple of people and both Laura and Jenna commented that this is the specific issue they have. They find that they're more productive towards the evening, but as they're working in the evening, their husband will come home and he wants to spend time with them or time to make dinner and that turns into evening activities that feel like “I don't want to do that” part because I’m still trying to be productive and I actually feel more productive than I'm working right now. And so, it's this tension between the two. Right?

1. Explore when you are most productive

The first tip would be the statement about when we're most productive. And so, are you saying that some people start to get into the mindset of “I'm only productive when _______." “I'm only productive when I have everything on my desk lined up perfectly” or “I'm only productive at night because I'm a night owl.” And so, I will throw that back to you and question it and say like, are you sure you're only productive at 5:00 PM or do you think you're productive at 5:00 PM because that's when you start to realize that the evening is in front of you and you have to get this done because maybe it's a deadline that’s due that night or you're trying to meet a client's needs etc.

Is it really 5 p.m. or could you also do work at 4:00 PM or 3:00 PM. I'm not asking for the extreme here because this is usually the response I get from clients and students and they’re like, “Oh no, I tried to wake up at 7:00 AM one time and do work. I tried to be a morning person once or twice” or whatever it might be.

I say, “Whoa!” Okay, I'm not asking for that kind of drastic change, not like you need to get up at 7:00 AM if you usually get up at 9:00 AM, instead these are minor changes or minor shifts. So, if it usually feels like 5:00 to 7:00 PM is the most productive, what does 4:30 to 6:30 PM feel like? Is it truly 5:00 to 7:00? Is there something built into your day that's happening there? What if you make a slight shift a half hour back which would give you more time in the evening? What does that look like for you? Play with that a little bit right and track it. It goes back to her tracking principles that we've been talking about in other videos. So that's one way to tackle it. Are you sure that, that's the only time you can be productive?

2. Set time limits and boundaries

And then the other tip would be to think about the time limits and boundaries that you're setting in general for tasks. You may find that you give yourself the whole day to get something done, but does it take the whole day or does it only take an hour or two hours or five hours whatever it might be. And so, is it that the evening time is starting to get cut into because you've let the day kind of get away from you, but now you're starting to see like I need to get this task done. I'm going to make it happen. Procrastination is working to your advantage here. What is that expectation there? Can you also then make boundaries with your family?

"I know you all start to walk in the door this time, but can I keep working until 7:00 PM." For example can I work until 7:00 PM and then we will be able to spend time together as family or as friends or whatever it might be, so that they everybody's expectations are clear from the beginning about when you would be working and when you wouldn't be working, so try that too.

Is everybody in agreement that this can be time that you could work and time that you wouldn't work and are you internalizing that too of knowing that it's going to be okay if I don't work from 7:00 PM until the next morning. Can I accept that this is my work time only and this is free time and I'm going to embrace and live in the moment for those moments and enjoy it while I can?

So what do you think? Share below in the comments!

Overwhelmed by Your To-Do List? Do This Right Now

Feeling like you have too much to do and don't know what to do next? This video breaks down the steps for you.

In today's video, I wanted to talk to you about what to do when you're completely overwhelmed with your to-do list. I see this happen with everyone from my college students, they're really in the thick of it right now with busy to-do lists, and my clients to struggle with “I have all these things to do and I don't know where to start.” Since a lot of people struggle with this, I thought it would be a great topic for today. That's why I say, “What do you need to do if you're feeling overwhelmed right now?” Here's what you can do right now about your list.

Write down your to-do list

The first thing would be, do you have your list? Do you actually have it written down? Because a lot of times I find that people have a mental to do list. They haven't written it down on paper or kept it in an app on their phone, instead it just keeps circling around and around and "I have to do this and I have to pay that bill, I have to pay that bill." You say it mentally in your head but you don't have it somewhere on paper or written down, so that you could actually see it and know that it's there. It keeps popping up for you. Make sure you have that list. I'm sure a lot of you have long lists in front of you and so that's where the overwhelm is coming from. But sometimes I find if you haven't written it down, it then seem like, “Oh, this might be more manageable than I thought because I see it on paper.” It can help. If you're there, start with that. Start with writing it down.

The Eisenhower Box

Then, if you have it already written down and you followed that step, we want to break it up into categories. This is a method that was made famous by Dwight Eisenhower, U.S. president, and it's called the Eisenhower Box. It's breaking down your to-do list into tasks into quadrants and so the quadrants are broken up by urgent, not urgent and important or not important. Okay. So, you have tasks that are urgent and important. On your long list, what do you have to do today?

1. What is urgent and important?

   What is something that is so urgent and important it must be taken care of? This is usually having to meet a deadline today or by the end of the week for your boss for example. Those are urgent and important – must get done. Alright. Let's put those things on your to-do list. Let's put those up to the top. For a lot of people, I find that the list of urgent and important is lengthy, right? That they're constantly living in this world, “I'm only doing the things on my to-do list that are both urgent and important.” So, let's look at what else is on the list.

2. What is important but not urgent?

   Do you have things that might be not urgent but you feel like they're important? These might be things on your list like, “I know I want to exercise” or “I know I want to call my sister” and they're really important to you, but you know that if you don't get to them, the world will not end today. It's not urgent, and so, can you schedule that in? Can you decide – that’s what they say in this method – can you decide on when you will exactly do that thing? So, put a date on it. Put a time even too especially for something like exercise and can you start to build that in. We've been talking in past videos about how habits and new habits are fragile, but let's stick to what we have right now. I'm focusing on, “Okay, that a list I know I want to get to and here's what I'm going to make that happen in the future.”

3. What is urgent but not important?

   The other quadrants on our list here would be things that are urgent, but they're not actually important. We've made them out to be “I must do this right now” and it could be delegated to somebody else. And so, when things are urgent and not important, we want to delegate as much as we can and so this looks different for everybody. But, do you have to be the one that makes dinner tonight? Do you have to be the one that picks up the kids tonight? All kinds of examples around that. Do you have to be the one that does this task for your business? At work, do you absolutely have to be the one that does it? So, that's part of delegating so that it also gets off your plate. Imagine that crossing things off our to-do list so that it is on somebody else's plate.

4. What is not urgent or important?

   And then, what’s our last quadrant, it's things that are not urgent and not important. This is a hard one to recognize, but these are things like watching television for example, if it's not important to you. For a lot of people, it's just something they do to fill the time or all kinds of little things that we do. Do I really need to spend that much time on social media or do I have to go and do that? If it's not urgent and not important, we actually want to delete it, and again, take it off our to-do list. So, we're focused on those urgent and important things and things that are important but not urgent.

Again, to review, Eisenhower's Box has four quadrants:

Things that are urgent, not urgent, against things that are important, not important. All of your tasks, all of the things on your to-do list today are going to fit into those four quadrants. When you break it down that way, it helps prevent some of the overwhelm because we're deleting things off of our list, we're recognizing what has to be done today and we're able to start to think about “You know it is really more important for me to call my brother or sister. How am I going to start to get that into my schedule?”

Now I'd love to hear from you. Share your thoughts and questions below!

Actually Scheduling out Habits for Better Time Management

It sounds so simple, but hear me out. When's the last time you actually scheduled time for one of the new habits you want to create?

Hi! Caitlin Faas, psychology professor and coach, here back to talk to you about the power of scheduling today. So, last week, we were talking about the idea that tracking our time can be really powerful, but what do you do after you've been tracking your time and you realize there are habits or behaviors you want to change?

Schedule new habits into your day

Well, now it's time to think about, how can I add this to my schedule? You may say, “But wait, I have a schedule. I follow a schedule. I go to work at this time and I do this at that time.” And yes, that schedule is also important. But, what about scheduling the new things you want to add into your day?

For example, think about last evening. What did you think you were going to get done in that evening compared to what you actually got done? I know I'll do this, sometimes I'll say, “Oh, things I want to do tonight include: Dinner, spending time with my husband. I'm also going to make sure I practice my guitar, maybe I can fit a yoga class in there, and I got to make sure I'm in bed before 10 o'clock.” Right? And then, I stop and think, “Wait, all of those things added up together. If I actually map it out, all of those things add up to more time than I possibly have in the evening.”

I need to make decisions moving forward about, “Okay, maybe yoga can happen here and here on this day, but I'm also going to fit in practicing guitar. If I do that for 30 minutes every night at this time, it's on my schedule and I know that it exists.”

Be realistic about how long activities take you

When we go to schedule, knowing how much time something actually takes to do is also part of that strategy. I’ll ask you today, what can you work on scheduling in your day and what's working? What's not working? What's taking more time than you thought it actually took or something that may take less time?

Sometimes we think an activity will take us longer. We say we have something to do on our list and it seems so dreadful. “It's going to take me three hours to be able to sort through all the mail that's been piling up.” But then, when we actually sit down to do it, “Ah! This only took an hour. I don't know why I was building it up so much in my head.”

Stop to think about that today and I look forward to hearing from you what you're dealing with in your schedule. 

How to Get Started on Improving Your Habits

We all have habits we want to improve.

Often our habits overlap too. We may have eating habits, exercise habits, cleaning and organizing habits that we want to start. Gretchen Rubin calls this list of common habits the "essential seven" because so many people want to work on them.

But how do we get started on changing our behavior?

That's the topic of this week's video. Check it out below.

I'm excited to talk to you today about how to get started to improve your habits and this is a really common technique, but something that gets overlooked too often and something I even forget to do myself sometimes.

Monitor what you’re doing now

When you want to improve a habit you want to change your behavior, one of the first things we want to know is what are you currently doing? And that means, are you tracking or monitoring your current behavior? I see this a lot with clients when they say, “I want to take control of my time” or “I want to change my schedule.” And I say, “Well, what does today look like?” “What did yesterday look like?” “What are you doing tomorrow?” And all of those moments seemed to be lost. They're not sure and maybe they can get a little bit of it, but without tracking, writing it down or putting it in their phone, they struggle to see where the time has really gone. It's such a powerful step to see all this in person when you can see it on paper, see it on your phone, in a document.

Change your behavior based on what you see

Some ways that this – this has really helped me two ways specifically even here in 2017, one would be that I knew I wanted to know where my extra money was going, that extra income of things I could spend whatever I want on.

But I resisted apps on my phone about it like, “I'm not gonna use that app. I'm just not feeling it out.” But my planner, my paper planner this year actually has a spot to track that extra money. And so, I was just able to write down every day here's what I spent and I get into that routine. Sure enough, all of that financial advice they say about lattes add up, yeah, they really do. And so, I was able to see not only do they add up, I can see exactly where they add up for me specifically, so things like that. That's one way I use the power of tracking in the past couple of months.

Watch good habits snowball

The other way would be from trying to brush my dog's teeth. I have two dogs, Calvin and Rosie, and the vet of course recommends brushing their teeth every day and I thought I probably only brush their teeth maybe once a month when I think about it, which is pretty bad I suppose. But I hadn't thought about this and I said, “Okay. I'm going to track when I brush their teeth.” And I have something on the side of my fridge where I can use a little dry erase marker. And I said, “Okay, I'm going to track.”

And I got excited to get the momentum going of wanting to check off all seven days of the week and then it snowballed of course, right? Because I want all seven days, I want the gold star so to speak – gold star junkie if we haven't met – literally, I give them out to my students – so, I wanted to check it off and then I could start to see the benefits. After a couple of weeks of brushing my dog's teeth every day, I could see that this really is helpful to them and I could make it part of my routine. But it was only through tracking and monitoring that I was able to enact those two behaviors.

So I want to ask you today, what is something that you want to work on in your life – a habit and how can you track it?

Is it on paper? Is it on your phone? Is it a recommitment to tracking that you've tried to track before but haven't been able to do it? What might it be?

I look forward to hearing from you about what you're tracking or monitoring and this new thing that you want to change.

Share your thoughts in the comments!

How to be Productive When Planning Your Next Trip

Do you ever find yourself frazzled and frantic when getting ready to travel?

I used to feel that way until I started taking control of my plans and being productive about it. This week I wanted to share a quick video where I share three tips you can use as you plan your next trip.

I just came back from a trip, but I'm getting ready to go on another trip, and so I realized that trips can be a big time suck for a lot of people and get people off their usual schedule. Some of the things I do to stay productive and when I asked people on Instagram what they would do, these were some of the suggestions.

1. Create a regular packing list

First would be to make sure you have a regular packing list because often we start to decide what we have to pack and we're not sure of the list of items that we need.How many clothes should I pack and what's the weather going to be like at this new place? Do I have that item and buying items last minute for packing. But, having your go-to list in a document on Evernote or Google Drive to be able to say, “Here's my list of what I need to pack and I'm going to stick to it.” It limits having to overthink about it or having to always repack and decide again for the next trip depending on how much time you have, so consider packing list as the first thing.

2. Make a to-do list for before and after your trip

The second thing is to then think about your to-do list before you go on your trip. There are lots of things I want to do all of the time, right? But as the trip approaches, I start to think about what's realistic for me to complete before I go on this trip. I do a front and back piece of paper. I like my paper lists and I say, “Here is everything that has to happen before I go on this trip and it has to be truly must happen.”

And then there could also be a list of things I would like to get done, but probably may not get done. And then on the back, what will be here are things that absolutely must get done when I return home from this trip.

That helps me balance out the anxiety of feeling, “I didn't get everything done that I wanted to get done before I leave.” Knowing it has to get done for the items on your to-do list, so that's the second thing. So, a packing list and your to-do list before and after your trip.

3. Give yourself time before and after your trip

And then, the third thing I would say is I really make sure now that I protect my time before and after a trip. And so what I mean is, if I'm leaving on Friday for a trip, I make it a point to not do anything the Thursday night before that trip and even though I want to go to my regular social event, hang out with friends, spend time doing a regular activity or going out and about, instead I say, “No. I know I'm going to need this rest time before I drive or before I get on the airplane.” And that helps with those last-minute things especially – even just the rest before getting on a plane or driving in a car. I have extra time to do that and I'm not feeling anxious before my trip.

I've also started playing on the other end of a lot of people do this the day of recovery, so knowing that as soon as I get back, is there anything I could do to make sure I don't have five meetings or extra commitments to take care of right after a trip. It's not always possible, but if you can help it or build in an extra day into your weekend, coming home on Saturday instead of Sunday, that type of thing can help.

Another rule I made for myself which keeps me on track for productivity would be to not travel two weekends in a row if I can help it because I know I need that time to rest and recharge at my own home before I go on to the next trip. That has been a really effective way to help balance out the month, so that I don't end up with four weekends gone in a month and then no time to just be able to rest.

Again, those three things were: Make sure you have an ongoing regular go-to packing list that you use, have a to-do list before and after your trip so it helps keep all the things we want to do manageable, and then protect your time both before and after a trip.

Those are just three tips, but I'd like to hear what else you do to help be productive either while you travel or when you're getting ready to travel. I'll see you next time. Thanks.

So which tip will you use next time you travel? Tell me in the comments or share it on social media!