Ep140: Ever wonder why it’s so hard to stick to your plans?

00:00 Before we get going, I have an invitation for you. If you're ready to find out how much easier it becomes to get things done when you have Make It Happen Club in your life? The doors are open to new members right now and i would love for you to join us! So Make It Happen club is a calm quiet sanctuary where you get the clarity focus and motivation you need And now, onto today's episode.

00:51 Welcome to Unfrazzle, a podcast for solo business owners with a big vision who are ready for a kinder more sustainable approach to productivity. I'm Louise Miller and each week i share bite-sized insights to help you step away from the hustle stop faffing and stay focused so you can make your brilliant ideas happen and make a bigger impact in the world Before we dive into today's episode, if you enjoy what I'm sharing here on Unfrazzle and you'd like to support the podcast You can buy me a cuppa by going to BuyMeACoffee.com slash Louise Miller and making a one-off donation. I'll pop a link to that in the show notes Okay grab yourself a cuppa and let's get started

01:31 Have you ever sat down to plan your month, written a list of everything you need to do and then closed your notebook feeling really fired up and ready to go but by the end of the month you haven't got nearly as much done as you'd like? Now in all of my years working with small business owners I have yet to meet a single one who is a complete novice and completely clueless when it comes to planning. And my guess is that's true for you too. You're a smart, capable human. You've read the books, tried the apps and watched YouTube videos yet still things that would make the biggest impact aren't getting done – at least not in a way that feels good! So you might be getting things done but at what cost? Maybe you are scrambling or working into evening or firing up your laptop once kids are in bed

02:11 So why, when you're a smart cookie with so much productivity know-how at your fingertips is it still so hard to follow through with your plans? Well after 10 years of doing this work here's what I believe to be true. It's not that you can't do it, it's that doing it alone is genuinely harder! So let's address the elephant in the room which is the unhelpful and I would go as far as saying damaging myth that you should be able to do it yourself. Back when I was starting out The internet was showing me people like Gary Vee yelling that if I wasn't succeeding it's because i wasn't trying hard enough, I wasn't hustling hard enough and working hard enough. And I'm sure that his intention was to inspire but all it did was make me feel there was something wrong with me that if I wanted any level of success I was going to need a personality transplant

02:59 The internet was full of people telling everyone to just get on with it. The JFDI mob would have us believe that it's as simple as putting the thing in your calendar and then doing it, and if you can't then you're a moron who doesn't want it enough! And so we get embarrassed don't we right? Then we try harder and harder to figure it out on our own often keeping quiet about the fact that we're struggling Which is bonkers really isn't it? I mean we're not ashamed to get support with other things. People are quite happy to join a gym if that's going to help them exercise regularly but for some reason planning on your own with no support and no structure is supposed to be easy And if it were as simple as knowing what needs to be done and then just deciding when to do it, that would be one thing. But I think you know by now that is not that straightforward because we humans have these pesky things called emotions and responsibilities outside of work. Unexpected things crop up, family emergencies happen, menopause does its thing so do you really believe that you should be able to negotiate all of that on your own? That it should be easy

03:58 So I'm not suggesting that you need to invest a huge amount of money to work with someone one-on-one on this. For many people, just having someone hold the space for them is enough when it's just you and a notebook sitting down to do your planning there is a high probability that you're going to skip it particularly when things get busy which is when you need it the most but when you have a space to show up too even if that space is online you're way more likely to protect the time right? Someone is expecting you to show up somewhere and say you'll show up And I think we can all agree that's part of the battle, isn't it? Actually showing up to do the planning. We know we should be doing it, we know we're capable of doing it but are we doing it? But another benefit is not just about showing up right when you're in a calm quiet guided space your thinking slows down and you're able to access a different quality of thought than you do when you're scribbling your new to-do list in a stolen moment in between calls

04:54 When someone is guiding you through a process and when you trust that the process has been carefully designed so it actually works, then you no longer have to worry about whether you're doing it right. All you have to do is follow the prompts and by the end you'll have thoughtfully considered plan that makes it easy for you to take action Now one of my clients once said that she used to feel that she shouldn't need that kind of support but eventually, she realised that thinking that way wasn't helpful because the reality was that she did need that kind of support which meant absolutely nothing about her competence. She was...she is a very capable business owner but trying to plan on her own wasn't working. That was the reality and instead of wishing that it weren't, she decided to do something about it so as I said right at the start, it's not that you can't do your planning yourself

06:27 Thank you for listening to Unfrazzle. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and share it with a friend who needs a dose of calm productivity in their life and I'd love it if you could leave me a rating or review as that will help more people discover the podcast And if you're struggling with productivity right now, take my free assessment to find out what's really getting in the way of you getting things done. It takes less than three minutes to complete and I'll send you tailored resources and insights that will help based on your score You'll find that at louisemiller.uk slash quiz and there's a link for that in the show notes So thank you so much for being here and I look forward to seeing you next time