Mindset Mastery is a weekly newsletter about the psychology of self-employment from Jenni Gritters. If you’ve been reading this newsletter for a while and you receive value from it, I’d encourage you to sign up for a paid membership. By doing so, you’re also helping me make business coaching for self-employed folks more accessible to all.
This week, I’m resharing an edit of a newsletter that I wrote back in 2022, when most of you weren’t on my subscriber list! It’s all about finding your version of productivity, which is the topic we’re focused on in my group coaching program, SUSTAIN, this month. Enjoy!
Time management can be one of the biggest challenges of shifting away from full-time work because there’s no one to hold you accountable every day and deadlines often come every few weeks, if that. How, then, do you shape your day in a way that serves you? Where’s the middle ground between over-busy and burned-out, and active procrastination?
Let’s start with story time: Leila showed up for coaching last year with a fixation on productivity. She worried that she was unproductive, and she told me right away that she needed to figure out a way to maximize her productivity so she could make more money in her content marketing business. She’d been trying all sorts of hacks but they weren’t working for her.
My first question was: What do you mean by “productivity?”
If we head over to the dictionary, we’ll find that productivity is defined as “a measurement of output per unit of input.” The input is typically your time, energy and effort. The output can be labor, capital (money) or any other resource. Usually, productivity is expressed as a ratio that reveals a device or person’s efficiency. It basically assumes you’re a robot.
Productivity is impacted by many different factors, including how much expertise and education you have in the area of work, what your support system looks like, how you’ve set up your environment, whether or not you feel motivated by the project, how you manage your time, and also a little bit of luck.
Leila told me that her definition of productivity was really just about time management. She wanted to dig into her daily and weekly schedule together because she felt inspired by gurus like Tim Ferriss who peddle 4-hour workweeks. She felt like she should be getting more done in less time. Often, she got to the end of her workday and had a dozen items left unchecked on her to do list. Then she spiraled with stress and criticized herself, which caused her to slow down even more.
What she wanted was a hack, like time blocking, a pomodoro timer, or a better way to make a to do list.
What she needed was a look at her mindset, expectations and unique way of working.
Hear me out: The world of self employment education is flush with content about the “best ways” to set up your day and manage your time. And sometimes those tips can be really inspiring! But before we compare ourselves to other people, we need to first assess what our own unique style of working looks like. In my experience, every person can achieve “productivity,” but the set up will look different for each of us.
In so many ways, productivity culture has become like diet culture. It says: “If your days look a certain way, you’ll be loved, supported, praised and happy.” And y’all, that’s just not true! We are not robots. We experience varying levels of energy every day. Every person I know has a different version of what works best for them.
Here are a few versions of highly “productive” work set ups that I’ve seen in my clients’ businesses:
Amy likes to wake up and exercise, then eat breakfast and read the news, before she starts work. She typically dives in around 10 am, and ends her day at 3 pm. She used to be a lawyer, so the majority of her assignments are ghostwritten articles for attorneys and website copy for law firms. She can complete this work quickly and without stress, so her hourly rate is quite high. After she finishes client work, she usually spends an hour or so each day working through an online course on graphic design, which she’d like to add into her service offerings eventually.
John typically wakes up around 6 am and dives into his creative writing projects immediately over a cup of coffee. By 8 am, he’s drafted 1,000 words of his novel and needs to take a break. A few hours later, he comes back to his laptop and responds to client emails, sends an email to his two assistants with various tasks to complete, and works through edits on his journalism stories. Then he likes to take a video game and workout break in the afternoon before making dinner. You’ll often find him finishing up his fact checking and research projects between 7 and 10 pm.
Julie’s monthly schedule is atypical: She works for three weeks straight, then takes a week or more off each month to focus on her outdoor hobbies: Skiing, hiking, backpacking and paddle boarding. During her “on” weeks, she keeps a 9 am- 5 pm schedule, and works right through her lunch breaks. During her “off” weeks, she doesn’t answer emails and deletes all work-related apps off her phone.
All of these scenarios are different, yet all of them work well. Each would be considered “efficient” and “productive” because the individual in question makes good use of their time, based on their values, interests and needs.
So the first question to ask yourself, when it comes to productivity, has nothing to do with the “best advice” on time management and why it’s not working for you. It’s really about this: How do you prefer to set up your days?
I cannot express enough how important it is for you to accept your unique way of working. Many of us are critical of our work styles because they are not textbook (and this is likely why we work for ourselves). Often, creative people struggle in full-time jobs that require you to sit at a desk from 9-5. You may have internalized others’ opinions of you while holding those jobs, and you may feel guilty for wanting to work in a different way. But let me tell you: The self-criticism and guilt take up bandwidth. They slow you down. They keep you trapped. It’s time to let it go!
How you work is how you work, so we need to optimize for that instead of trying to force you into more conventional molds.
And remember, productivity isn’t just about the shape of your day. It’s also about the support you have and the kind of work you’re doing, as well as your environment and the way you feel physically, mentally and emotionally.
Back to the story: Leila and I eventually realized that her productivity problem wasn’t really about her schedule. In fact, she was incredibly diligent about sitting down at her desk from 9-5! Her blocks had more to do with the type of work she was taking on. One of her biggest clients was a tech firm that asked her to write about topics she had no background in, which meant she needed to spend a lot of time deeply researching and she felt bored. Plus, when she got mad at herself for her slow pace, she often needed to take breaks or struggled to focus. And she was working in her kitchen most days, hunched over a laptop, where she routinely skipped meals and exercise because she felt so guilty for her slower work pace.
In these cases, solutions are always experimental. Leila decided to try a few things:
First, she wanted to talk to her client about keeping her assignments in her areas of interest and expertise, rather than taking on any assignment they sent her way.
Second, she decided to set up a designated desk space in her apartment.
Finally, she blocked off 20 minutes for lunch and 20 minutes for an evening walk.
And wouldn’t you know it — within a few weeks, she felt calmer and her work was getting done more efficiently. This was just the beginning, but it showed her that she had control over her productivity. And it was evidence that she wasn’t doing anything wrong in the first place!
The best — and most challenging— part about working for yourself is the freedom of time. We can make space for what we love but only when we’re intentional and self-aware about what we need.
With love,
Jenni
Want to dig into your version of productivity? Come hang out with us in SUSTAIN! Our first teaching call is tomorrow morning, Tuesday March 12th, at 10 am PST.
Curious about my background? I’m a writer and business coach based in Central Oregon. I have two small children and I work part-time so I can spend a lot of time with them. I’m obsessed with teaching people how to build successful businesses that support their human needs first. Check out my coaching offerings here, and follow me on Twitter & Instagram.