Episode 93: Clear as mud?

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!

01:32 Clarity is a crucial part of any successful attempt to be productive. Without it, progress is slow and laboured but when you get the clarity that you need that's when you'll really be on your way to getting the important stuff done So today I want to share with you a few examples of ways in which clarity is important for productivity and hopefully get you thinking about where that clarity might be lacking in your life and what you might do about it so some examples for you Your to-do list. Do you have a clear picture of the tasks that need to be done in your business and in your life? If you don't, how might you address that maybe instead of having multiple notebooks post its an app so you might want to gather everything in and capture all of your to do's in one place And then there is meeting your goals if he doesn't have clarity around the next step that you're going to take to help you meet your goal How will you ever take it

02:24 So take some time to reconnect with your goals, reconnect with the vision underlying them and then make sure you're really clear on the steps you need to take that will get you there. You may not know every step right now and that's okay but make sure that you always have clarity around the next action you need to take no matter how small that step is in fact the smaller the better actually because the smaller the step the more likely you are to take it so do you have the clarity you need to help you take action towards meeting your goals? And then procrastination, right? Often we procrastinate when we're not entirely sure what we're doing. So next time you're finding it hard to focus or maybe you're putting something off and you feel like you're in that procrastination mode ask yourself whether you need more clarity and if the answer is yes think about how you can get that clarity maybe you need to ask for help

03:13 Boundaries If you don't have clarity around your boundaries that can be really harmful because it's hard to enforce those healthy boundaries if you're not really sure what they are. So, if you're fed up of taking on too much or working more hours than you want to I would suggest sitting down with a cuppa and thinking about your boundaries so for example what time do you want to start and stop work each day? How many client calls do you have time for in a week? Do you want to respond to emails during the evening

03:56 And there will be times when you need to be a little bit flexible with these boundaries, but getting clear on what they are is the first step towards taking back control. So let's just take a moment to think about the importance of expectations or rather clarity of expectations Do you know what other people expect from you? Or are you guessing Sometimes, and I have certainly been guilty of this sometimes we add more to our plate unnecessarily assuming that people need more from us than they actually do. So if you're not sure what someone needs from you ask! For example, you might incorrectly assume that your partner is expecting you to take responsibility for certain tasks around the house or maybe you think that a client is expecting a really lengthy update on a project when actually they would prefer just a few headline bullet points

04:45 Is there any way where just getting real clarity around those expectations could help make things feel easier for you? So can you see, there's lots of different ways in which having this lack of clarity can trip you up when it comes to trying to get stuff done. If there is something that you've been putting off I would encourage you to take a few minutes to think about whether you have the clarity you need to move forward Chances are there is something missing A quick example of what I mean by that if you want to be on more podcasts If you don't have clarity around what value you would be offering to the audience of that podcast, it's going to be tricky to take that action and be successful in that. if you don't have that clarity, you might find that you never seem to get round to pitching for those podcasts and you might not really know why but maybe is just because you haven't given it a thought and you haven't got the clarity on what you're actually asking for and what you are going to offer when you're making that pitch

05:41 So I could go on about this for a long time, there's so many different ways that lack of clarity gets in our way and stops us from taking action. So what i just want to encourage you to think about as you're moving through the rest of this week is if anything is feeling off for you this week ask yourself if a lack of clarity is contributing to the problem and then think about what you might do to address that. As always I hope that this helps and I look forward to seeing you again soon Thank you for listening to Unfrazzle. If you enjoyed this episode, please 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 and review as that will help more people discover this podcast. If you would like to hear more from me to help stop faffing and take back control of your time, you'll find the link to join my mailing list in the show notes and I would really love for you to join us! So thanks so much for your support and I look forward to seeing you next time