The truth is some days feel like total failures.
You cannot control what happens in the world around you. But here is what you can control: your own actions, responses, and thoughts.
More importantly you can control the intentionality that you have with all three. So, even on the hard days, you can intentionally schedule your time, and if you’re asking, “Erin, how do you do that?” This is the episode for you.
Let us make a habit of winning your day!
Show Links:
- Episode 025: 7 Productivity Hacks to Make It Easier to Work Less & Make More
- ErinHaworth.com
- DM me on Instagram
Show Takeaways:
- Find out why making decisions ahead of time will help you win your day.
- Learn how to create routines that are specific to your needs.
- Discover how to battle negativity bias.
- Discern why reflection and grace are both such great tools to winning your day.
Rather read than listen? ⬇️
Hello, Unstoppable Entrepreneur. Let’s chat about something kinda hard.
Some days feel like total failures. You feel jerked in different directions and your own priorities are pushed to the wayside.
I know exactly what this is like. It just takes one thing to throw everything off. My daughter requires an unplanned trip to the optometrist, which means my afternoon run is not happening and I am having to shift what I work on when because clients are counting on me.
And that other hard truth is that it isn’t always someone else intruding on your productivity.
Sometimes it is your own head. Imposter syndrome is the real deal and I have found myself in the throws of it more often as I reach different levels of success.
And it isn’t just work related stuff that throws you off. The day that I found out someone that was a really good friend during my bartending years lost his battle with cancer was a hard one. He left behind a loving wife and their toddler and countless grieving friends. It is hard to think about creating content when you are debating your own mortality and grieving.
Look, you can’t control what happens in this world. You can only control your own actions, your own responses, and your own thoughts, and the intentionality that you have with all three.
And you can schedule your time to feel like you are winning every. single. day. It is possible.
How? Well, I am so glad you asked.
You can intentionally set your to-dos ahead of time, curate the right mindset, and implement some best practices.
Here are a few things you can do to set yourself up to win every day – in business and in life.
Create & manage your energy. You can’t do anything if you are tired and hungry. PUT IT ON YOUR CALENDAR for you to work out. Go on a walk, do 10 burpees every time you get up to pee, have a dance party to start your day. And pack your lunch and snacks. Pack healthy options that you enjoy. If you make these decisions ahead of time you’ll not only have more energy but you’ll also feel more capable of making big decisions about other things because you aren’t trying to choose between microwave popcorn and heading to Chick-fil-a for the fourth time this week.
Plan ahead. Oh come on, you knew this was coming. At the very least, sit down on a weekly basis and look at what your priorities are for the week ahead – in business and in life. Decide what needs to be done and when. Block the time you need for these things on your calendar or planner. Plan on accomplishing 3 things each day. Just 3. Things often take longer than we think and stuff comes up. Stuff goes differently than you planned. Anymore than 3 and you are setting yourself up for disappointment. I actually talked about this hack in episode 025 so feel free to catch that episode next.
Create habits and routines that support YOU. Do you need time alone or time to connect? What makes you feel like a boss? Incorporate more and more of this into your day and week. Customize your days to make them feel successful. On work days, I feel most successful when I deliver really awesome value to my audience, sign a new client, or dive deep on a new idea and make some real headway. For days when I turn work off, I feel like I’m winning if I spend real intentional time with my family, my daughter takes a nap (and I do, too), and I get some of the things taken care of that often get overlooked – like cleaning, washing the car, reading, more cleaning.
Reflect. It is easy to get in the flow of marking things off of your list and not really pay attention to what you’ve done. Or you don’t get EVERYthing you wanted to get done, done and we feel like total failures. So I am challenging you to do two things here –
- Start a daily gratitude practice. Write down 5 small things you are grateful for every day. Not “my husband” or “my daughter” or “my clients”. But “my husband making my coffee for me this morning.” Or “My daughter crawling in my lap to ask me to read her Green Eggs and Ham for the 4th time today.” Or “Client A for showing up and doing the work so she is seeing the results she wanted to see.” I start my day this way but you can do it as part of your evening routine if that works better for you.
- Create an accomplishments list. I have a client who was beating herself up because she had been cancelling on her trainer one week and couldn’t get herself to write content. She was focusing so much on what she wasn’t doing well that she couldn’t see all the things she HAD done. So we made an accomplishment list. We filled up a whiteboard with things she had accomplished that week. And when we stepped back, we were both impressed. It is easy to focus on what isn’t going right because of negativity bias – yup, real thing where we focus on negative more than positive, no matter how many good things happen. The challenge here is simple – every evening, write down 3 things you did that day that you are proud of.
Plan to pivot. Not everything is going to go the way you plan it. Other stuff is going to come up. Things you can’t even imagine. So here are three ways to make your life easier when stuff does come up.
- Allow yourself to be honest about stuff that may come up. Make a plan for how you’ll deal with it. For example, if my daughter gets sick or has to stay home from school, it is on me to rearrange my schedule to be there for her. But then when my husband gets home, whether at 4pm or 9pm, he knows it’s his turn to tag in so I can get the work done that I had planned to do that day.
- Cultivate a mindset of how to pivot and KEEP GOING. If something doesn’t go the way you plan, recalibrate, make a new plan, and keep going. It is not a reason to give up. We don’t give up.
- Be gentle with yourself. Give yourself some grace. You are human. And a bada$$ one at that.
Action Step:
I always like to end each episode with an action step that you can take right now to help you move forward and begin to implement immediately. Here is your action step for this episode: Considering all these juicy tidbits and strategies for how to win each and every day, I want you to take 15-20 minutes to sit down and create an ideal day outline for yourself. Write out ideally what time you get up, what you have time for, and how you are using some of these tips and tactics to win each and every day.
