A few weeks ago I wrote about self-awareness, the magic ingredient for success. I strongly believe that the better you know yourself, the easier you’ll find it to get stuff done.

There are so many productivity ‘solutions’ out there, it’s very easy to become overwhelmed or confused. To try too many new things at once and then give up because it’s not working quickly enough.

If you’ve been in a room with me in the last twelve months (whether that be virtually or in real life), chances are I’ve talked at you about Gretchen Rubin! I adore Gretchen’s books about happiness and habits, and her ‘Happier’ podcast makes cleaning the bathroom so much more fun!

Today I want to share a short piece from Gretchen…

Six months before I quit my job I was suffering from stress and anxiety. I was managing a team of five in Higher Education and felt the pressure daily. It came from outside of me (frequent, perplexing changes to government policy, staffing issues etc) and from within me (perfectionism, feeling responsible for absolutely everything etc). It’s really no wonder I became ill!

A few weeks ago I was asked what I want to bring to the world through my business.

The answer came to me in a heartbeat. Here’s what I said:

I want to see an end to busyness as a badge of honour.

I used to be the person who always answered, “how are you?” with “busy”. I’ve also spent years surrounded by colleagues who were terrified of anyone finding out if they weren’t busy.

What is this obsession with being busy?

How often does it get to 6pm and you think, “where did today go?”, or you had an hour between clients and you’re not quite sure what happened to it?

Whether your relationship with time is one of lack (there’s never enough time to do all the things) or of abundance (there’s all the time in the world…yet still things don’t get done), it can be really useful to face it down. To see, nose-to-nose, exactly where you’re spending your time.

When you’re busy with a never-ending to-do list, a business to run, a home to run, kids to take care of and yourself to take care of, it’s easy to feel you have no choice but to keep going.

If, like many of us, you feel there’s never enough time, you’re probably used to cramming as much as you can into every single minute with your head down and your game face on. 

You may know that your current way of doing things isn’t working - it feels difficult, heavy, and exhausting – but you’ve convinced yourself that you simply don’t have time to do anything about it.

I’ve lost count of how many people have told me over the years that their biggest source of stress and frustration is their inbox.

It IS stressful though, isn’t it?

All those unread emails. Never quite sure whether there’s something important buried that you’ve forgotten about.

As we enter another new year, you may be expecting me to write about a productivity hack that will help you sort your life out in 2018. Never fear - I have loads of tips and new resources up my sleeve to share with you throughout this year! But right now, I want to take advantage of this time of reflection to go a little deeper.

Way back in January I set myself a theme for 2017: ‘slow and simple’.

Over the last few months I’ve strayed from the slow and simple path and realised that perhaps I ought to take some of my own advice. Today I’d like to share my experience and offer four tips if, like me, you have a lot on your plate.

How much sleep did you get last night? Did you wake up feeling refreshed and ready to take on the world? Or are you still groggy now, dragging yourself through your day feeling sluggish, irritable and unable to concentrate?

In this week’s Getting Stuff Done Gold, I’d like to introduce you to Kelly Exeter from A Life Less Frantic (you can see why I like her already, right?) and Swish Design.

How much time do you spend sitting at your desk? It’s easy to get to the end of the day and realise that apart from the odd trip to the kitchen or bathroom you haven’t budged.

I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you how bad that is for our health, but have you thought about how bad it is for our productivity?

Productivity is all about doing more, more, more, right?

Not from where I’m sitting it isn’t.

I tried cramming more and more in and the result was stress and anxiety.

With all the productivity know-how in the world, there are still only so many hours in the day. Do you really want to spend all those hours trying to get more and more stuff done?

I’ve written before about how stressed I became in my last ‘proper’ job. When I was at rock bottom, I was desperate for a solution, and so began my frantic google search for things like ‘help me slow down’. It was from there that I discovered the joy of decluttering!

I threw myself into it with as much gusto as I could muster. It felt AMAZING. I got rid of over 2000 things and our house suddenly felt like an oasis of calm.

But then something interesting happened.

Have you experienced overwhelm in the past? Are you feeling overwhelmed right now?

This month’s tip is for you.

(This approach works brilliantly when the thing that feels overwhelming absolutely has to get done. Just take a moment to check in with yourself: does everything that you think needs to happen really need to happen? If the answer is yes and you feel like you’re drowning, read on.)

Ah, procrastination. We all do it, don’t we?

What we’re doing bores us, so we switch to something more interesting.

What we’re doing is difficult, so we switch to something easy.

We can’t decide what to do, so we scroll our Facebook feed waiting for inspiration to strike.

We all know how it feels like to sit down with a plan for the day, only for something to pull the rug out from under our feet and throw everything into disarray. The annoyance, the frustration, the sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach when you realise that the lovely calm day you were hoping for just ain’t gonna happen.

A couple of weeks ago I had such a day.

I recently saw something somewhere on the t’interweb that really made me stop and think. I can’t remember where I saw it, or exactly what it said (great story, Louise), but basically someone was questioning the merits of being organised.

Everyone talks about being organised as though it’s some great virtue. But is that really the case?

Even though we’re using less and less paper these days, general detritus still tends to accumulate on and around our desks as we work. Scraps of paper, mugs of cold coffee, things you’ve printed off, notes you’ve made during phonecalls. It all builds up.

If you just get up and walk away at the end of the day, chances are you’ll start the next day feeling a little ‘off’. If you were feeling drained, frazzled or overwhelmed the day before and you haven’t tidied up, you’ll be reminded of that negative juju the moment you sit down the next day. One bad day can easily turn into a bad couple of days, which can soon escalate into a bad week.