38. How to Get It Done

Hi. I am Deidrea Kiesling and welcome to The Success Minded Woman episode 38. How to Get It Done.

You are in the right place if you have a lot of to do lists and unfinished projects and don't know how to get it all done.

That was me  before I came up with this process and honestly, I still do it. I think that might be one of the reasons why I decided to do this podcast today as a reminder. There is a way to get things done.  And how to let things be undone. And that is what we're going to talk about today, how to get it done.

So the first thing to consider when you're stuck in how to get things done is. You're probably in some form of overwhelm.  That is the number one reason that most of us aren't taking action is because we feel overwhelmed.  And overwhelm can come, can be caused by a lot of different things. It might be from too much information.

Um, Consuming too much information, having doubt, having confusion, having lack of focus, lack of clarity. And when you are feeling overwhelmed, it leads to procrastination, it leads to confusion, it leads to doubt, it leads to worry, it leads to people pleasing, it leads to perfectionism. And all of that limits the results that you will achieve.

So it's so important when you notice yourself feeling overwhelmed.  And how to get out of it. And if you haven't listened to last week's episode on Nervous System Resilience, you need to listen to it because she, Leah Davidson, who I interviewed, gives us some amazing tips and techniques on how to calm our nervous system, which when we're an overwhelm, we're, we've triggered our, uh, fight flight fright, fight, flight, freeze response.

And we are.  We can't be thinking on purpose where we're not in our prefrontal cortex when we're triggered and overwhelmed. So it's so important to notice when we're in overwhelm and to overcome it.  So when you find yourself in overwhelm in that just where you're just feeling stuck. The first thing you want to do is just do some breathing to calm yourself down and get your prefrontal cortex back on board so that you can make some decisions and have some clarity of thoughts and then take action from there.

So you want to take a hundred percent responsibility. This is one of the keys in how to get things done and overcoming overwhelm.  No excuses. No alibis, no justifications, a hundred percent responsibility. And remember that overwhelm is caused by your thinking and not your external circumstances. And so notice the thoughts you're thinking when you're feeling overwhelmed.

Those are going to be the insights that will give you the information on what you need to change to reduce the feeling of overwhelm. And so then you want to redirect. Your thoughts to better feeling thoughts. So an example is  I have so much to do and there's no way I can get it all done.  That sounds very stressful.

You can redirect to, you can do some breathing  and then redirect to, I'm figuring this out. I will focus on one thing at. a time.  And remember that motivational triad that I've talked about in the past? As humans, our brain, we are hardwired  for survival. The primitive part of our brain, our motivational triad,  is  designed to seek pleasure, avoid pain, and be as efficient as possible.

The motivational triad is our comfort zone. It worked for us great as humans when we were evolving out in the savannah and in caves, but in our modern world, it gets us stuck. We get into too much. Um, too much information. We have too much opportunities for distraction and we don't focus. And when you start anything new,  so anything new, a new project, a new idea, a new endeavor, um, a new project on your to do list, your brain is sending you signals that it's dangerous out there and you should stay home and stay safe and signals such as overwhelm.

So overwhelm can be just your brain giving you alert. To there's something dangerous and it was trying to keep you safe. So that's why it's so good to notice when you're feeling overwhelmed and calm yourself down and get your prefrontal cortex back on board and think things, think thoughts on purpose that will move you in the direction of.

What you want to be doing, and you have to notice when you're in overwhelm, and it could be things that you're avoiding, like seeking pleasure or buffering through Netflix or social media, or, you know, those kinds of things that are taking away from getting into action that's going to move you towards your goals.

All of those things are your brain doing what it's designed to do, which is keep you safe and keep you in your comfort zone. But a lot of those things that you want to get done are outside of your comfort zone. And so you have to be willing to be uncomfortable  to step and take action out of your comfort zone.

I'm going to walk you through a six step process on getting things done.  Step one, pick one project or goal that you want to complete  within a certain timeframe. It could be a year, a week, a month.  a quarter, whatever it is, but just pick one project or goal that you're going to go all in on and then decide by when, by when will you have this complete.

So decide and commit, decide what goal or project you want to achieve and commit to that. Take a hundred percent responsibility for your results. Decide how you want to think and feel. While you're doing it and at the end when you achieve it and write out your goal, your project and the feeling you want to have while you're doing it and when you achieve it and then post it somewhere where you can see it daily.

Decide on the date by when this will be done and hold yourself accountable. Self trust, self integrity is what you want to develop and what you want to tap into.  To back up your decision and your commitment.  And part of what you can do for your commitment, and I love doing this, is getting some kind of journal or binder or something that's specifically dedicated to this one goal or to this one project.

You can put a cover page on it. You can give your goal or your project a name and put the date that you're going to have it completed by and put everything, all your tracking, all your activities, all your notes, put everything in this binder, this spiral, this.  Document wherever is, but keep it all in one place.

It really makes it in my mind, it becomes official, right? It's an official project that has a folder or file or binder or something. So I want you to put in the beginning of your binder, your journal, your whatever it is for your project. I want you to answer these three questions and then put them in there, put them up someplace where you can be reminded of this every day.

Number one, why do you want to achieve this goal?  Why will you do it no matter what and who will you be accountable to?  So answer these questions, write them out, and then you can remind yourself. You can read them every recommit to your goal every day. It's so important that you commit  to doing this for yourself.

And these three questions will help you. So I'll say them again. Why do you want to achieve this goal? Why will you do it no matter what and who will you be accountable to? And you're going to want to pick some deliberate intentional thoughts, affirmations you can think during this process. And again, you can pick the ones out that work for you and put them in your binder, your, your journal, wherever you're managing this goal, this project.

So remember that our feelings come from our thoughts. So I'm going to give you some thoughts. Thought feeling combinations that you can work with. So you can take these or come up with your own. So here's, here's some thoughts.  I'm doing this no matter what  my goal project, whatever you want to call it, is important to me because.

I'm figuring this out. I will take massive action until this is done.  I am willing to be uncomfortable. So those are just some thoughts you can create, create others that work for you. And here's some feelings that I  work with that you, I think are the kinds of feelings you want to have while you're going after a goal or working in a project.

You want to feel committed. Excited, empowered, disciplined, willing, responsible, self integral, have self trust, focused. So, find the feelings that you're feeling. That you want to have when you're going after your goal, when you're going after this project.  And then I want you to write it down. And I want you to write it down with what your goal is, the thought that you're going to think, the feeling that you're going to have, and then the actions that you're going to take to create the result that you want.

And I did an example of this, uh, for you. So that you can see how it works. So at the top, I wrote my 30 day goal. So my goal is that within 30 days I will achieve it. So my circumstance is my goal is I will have five clients in 30 days. So that's my circumstance. That's my goal.  My thought. Is I'm a hundred percent committed to getting this done.

My feeling is committed and my actions. And this is where I wrote a whole long list is basically my action plan of what I'm going to do over the 30 days to achieve my goal. And then the result of that is, and I'll just tell you a little bit about my actions on a plan. I'm going to put things on my calendar.

I'm going to do what's on my calendar. I'm going to manage my mind. I'm going to get coach. I'm going to review my obstacles and strategies. I'm going to take daily action. I'm going to. Do all the things that I say I'm going to do to get my result of five clients in 30 days. So that's just an example.

Very snapshot view. My, my actions actually will have a whole plan. So I just gave you the highlights, but I wanted to give you the concept of it. Okay. That you, you're, you, you're, you have a goal, you assume it's done. Okay. And then you decide what are you going to think? What are you going to feel? What are you going to do?

To get the result  and remember this is most likely going to take you out of your comfort zone. So I love this quote. It's one of my favorites and I can't remember if I've said it yet on the podcast, but here it goes. Discomfort is the currency to your dreams.  So you have to be willing to be uncomfortable in the service of your goals and dreams.

So just know that that's always going to be along for the ride.  And here's two more quotes from two of my  mentors.  First one is,  what will happen is what you are a hundred percent responsible for making happen. That's from Jim Fortin. And this is an all time. A big quote of mine that I love, success is my duty.

That's from Grant Cardone. And I believe that for all of us, our success is our duty. It is our responsibility to be successful, to be our best selves, to achieve whatever we are capable of doing and being in the world and the contributions that we are here to make. It's our duty to be successful.  Okay, step two, make a list.

Do a brain dump and get everything out of your brain and onto a piece of paper or computer screen or whatever you use of everything that needs to be done in order for this goal or project to be completed. And I like to do this on an actual piece of paper. So list everything out that you can think of and then review the list and then ask yourself, do you have every single thing that needs to be done in order to achieve that goal or complete that project?

Slow down  and think. And then you can add more to the list and add more to the list. And I love the metaphor of GPS. Um, I talked about that I think back in episode three.  Now at this point you might start feeling overwhelmed or you might start feeling a sense of relief that it's all out of your brain.

Either way, it's good to do this step of the brain dump. And then notice that our brains are not designed to be a container. For all of our massive to do lists, our brains are meant to be processors, not Tupperware.  So I love using it as a way, as a metaphor of Tupperware, that Tupperware causes overwhelm.

When you are using your brain as Tupperware, of holding, holding all your old thoughts and  baggage, basically, in your brain. You're not leveraging the power of your brain to be a processor of information, of, of ideas, of inspiration, of creation. So you want to Unburden your brain of its Tupperware duties by doing a brain dump and getting it all out on paper and then remember to breathe and redirect your thoughts and feelings that you picked in step one to calm yourself down and remind yourself of what you're doing and the feeling that you want to have while you're doing it.

So I like this idea. You want to slow down to speed up. So when you catch yourself feeling frenzied and overwhelmed, you want to breathe. Calm yourself down,  and then you want to redirect to the thoughts that you've already picked out. So some of the thoughts that I mentioned before, you can say that I'm doing this no matter what.

I'm figuring this out. I'm 100 percent committed to getting this done. I will feel calm and in control because I know I can trust myself to do what I say I will do. I have plenty of time to get this done. So feeling calm, committed, decisive, whatever those feelings are that you want to feel. But remember to slow down, to calm down, and then you can speed up.

And when you get into action, it's very important to know the type of action that you are in. Because if you spend all of your time in passive action, you will not get the results that you want. And so massive action is action that's taking you. Towards a result, it's action that you take until you get the result.

When you are in massive action, you are creating, you are actually doing something and creating a result. You, you, the result could be not what you want, but something is happening. You are creating something in passive action. That's when you're taking action, but it's not leading to a result. You're spending time in consuming in learning and researching and studying and training and reading a book and listening to a webinar and listening to a podcast, which all of that is great.

And I love that you're listening to this podcast, but at some point you have to stop consuming information and start taking action. And that is the difference between passive action. Which is what you're doing right now,  listening to this podcast, but you can turn it into a massive action by stopping this podcast and doing these steps that I'm telling you to do or listen to the podcast and then go listen to it again and get out your journal and go through this process.

That is the difference between passive action is listening to this podcast and massive action. Um, doing what you're learning, implementing on the action steps recommended in this podcast and everything you want, all your goals and dreams and projects and to do list, everything  comes from massive action, taking action until you get the result that you want.

Because as long as you're taking action, you're in the game and whether you're winning  or  I like to say failing. You're not failing. You're learning. You're learning what's working and not working, but all of that comes from massive action. So get into massive action. Step three is to identify all the obstacles and strategy.

Make a list of everything that could get in your way of achieving this goal or completing this project. Just make your, make, just ask yourself, what are all the things that could get in my way? And this will include a lot of your thoughts. Like, I don't have enough time. I don't know what to do. I don't know where to start.

I've tried before and it didn't work. I have too much to do.  Dan Sullivan says that we can turn obstacles into strategies. And the way to do that is first, you have to identify all your obstacles and then we can come up with the strategies. I talk a lot more about planning for obstacles in episode seven.

So you might want to go back and listen to that.  But for here, the main things that you want to think about when you're thinking about your obstacles and your strategies is  what is between you and your goal.  That's your obstacles and then ask yourself what is hard about it  and then ask yourself What do you think you need help with and answer those three questions?

And these are your strategies and the skills you need the answers to these questions will be your strategies Which will be the exact steps to accomplish your goal And then add that to the brain dump that you just did that where you listed everything So what is between you and your goal?  What is hard about it and what do you think you need help with?

Some common obstacles that I've seen in myself and my clients are  people pleasing, procrastination, perfectionism, overwhelm, lack of accountability. Lack of self trust. Distractions such as alerts on your phone, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, anything that is keeping you distracted from focusing on your tasks and goals.

Not wanting to do what we put on our calendar when it's time to do it.  Not knowing how.  Have you heard of Google? Don't ever let  not knowing how keep you from taking action because you have Google.  You have YouTube. Don't ever believe yourself when you say you don't know how. It's okay if you don't know how.

The thing is that you can figure things out and you know where to go to get information.  And my number one strategy, which is I'm constantly having to remind myself, Oh yeah, this is I'm doing things now is to lower my expectations, to lower my perfectionism. And here are some quotes that I love that remind me and you of this.

So here's  70 cent perfect is perfect. A hundred percent perfect is failure. That's from Jim Forton.  This next one, embrace B minus work. That's from Brooke Castillo. And I think we've all heard this one, progress, not perfection. And done is better than perfect. Step four. Schedule it on your calendar. Don't be dramatic.

Be realistic and put your list in order and then determine how much time each task will take and add it to your calendar for each date and time you want to block your results. Not your activities. So when you have a list of everything that you need to do in order to achieve your goal or project and you break it down and put it in order, then you want to decide what break it into small.

I liked from consulting. We called it deliverables, things that we were delivering, not just things that we were working on, but actually what we were delivering. So I like to think of this, your results as deliverable. So when you block out. Okay. Time on your calendar, you want to block out for results, not activities.

So, let's say that you need to research something, that's part of your finding out information that you need to achieve something. You want to block time in your calendar for researching that, but you want to have a result at the end of this. So, you want to have maybe be answered.  researching to answer a question.

So how do I do this? So whatever it is that you're looking for. So you would put time in your calendar to research that, to answer that question, how to do this, and then the result of that time that you spent would be the answer to that question. So you don't want to just spend time just  Googling or consuming information, even though, I mean, that might be part of what you need.

I think for a lot of things, we have to research things if we're doing something new, which is totally fine, but you want to have a result from your efforts. And I can give you an example.  Yesterday, I was wanting to create this little.  Workbook booklet thing. So I wanted to create it for a workshop and I wanted to have it printed like professionally printed.

So I, I had a lot of steps that I needed to do. I needed to decide on the content, the format. I need to get a template and Canva. I wanted to find out how much it was going to cost. So I wrote all those things. things down and I put them in order. And for me, the first thing I wanted to do is find out how much it was going to cost because it was going to cost too much.

I wasn't going to do it. So I blocked myself time for like 30 minutes and I did all this research on what it would look like, how much it would cost with the different formats of color and black and white and glossy and matte and blah, blah, blah. And so after that time, actually I spent, I think I spent an hour on that and then I made a decision.

I didn't want to do it. It didn't cost. It was more than I thought. I didn't have enough time to do it. So I just made a decision. So the result of that time on my calendar was  the result was that I made a decision not to do it.  Another example of blocking your calendar for result is what I'm doing right now.

I blocked my calendar today to do two podcast episodes. I already did one. This is my second one. So my Result from this activity is that this podcast is done. So if I take a break right now, I won't have completed my activity. It won't be done until this podcast episode is put in the folder for my producer.

So I hope that gives you a flavor of how you want to plan for results and block your calendar for results. Because this really helps you understand where your time is going. Have you ever had that thought where you're just like, where did the time go? Well, this will, this will help you understand where your time went because you are blocking your time for results.

And I want you to do this level of planning and calendaring to the level that it gives you calm and  Relief from the overwhelm of all the things to do. I don't want you to take this and you have to think that you have to block everything on your calendar because. Um, some for some, for some of us that feels good and controlling and we know what we're doing for other people.

It's too constraining and controlling and we need more flexibility. So you'll have to come up with the, what works best for you. I really like, especially in productivity and um, getting things done. It's really about this. This is a guideline, a framework, but the details you have to figure out for yourself, you have to do what works best for you.

I, I. I truly believe this a hundred percent that there are no, there is not one best way to do things like, especially like a productivity method. There is not one best way. There is only the way that works best for you. And so you have to experiment with what level of detail and tracking and calendar blocking will work best for you.

I know for me, I like to have guidelines of time that I'm going to do something for a result, but I can't put myself into like an hour. I'm going to get this done because sometimes it'll take me more than an hour. Sometimes I will say I'm going to get this done in an hour and I do, but I like to give myself some flexibility.

So you really have to figure out what's going to work best for you, but I want you to take responsibility and accountability that you will do the things that you say you will do.  And it does help if you can make a list when you make a list of everything you need to get done to estimate how much time you think that will take.

And and that will help you with blocking your calendar and scheduling your days of what you're going to be working on. It really helps you focus in time constraint on what you're doing. There's a saying that says, um. You do want to be aware of where you're spending your time. They're Parkinson's law is the idea that you, your work will expand to feel the time allotted for its completion.

So you do want to put time boundaries on your doing your tasks. And this log. can come into play when you have a lot of different deadlines and managing projects. So if you're given a two week deadline to complete something, sometimes  if you're anything like how I used to be, you'd wait until the day before and do it all.

Um, so you need to figure out kind of how you work and how much urgency and pressure you need to, um, to be productive.  And that's why when you break. Break things out into smaller  items, smaller tasks that are more manageable and easier to do. You get a lot more wins and, uh, you know, achievements and completions on the way to your goals.

So that's why it's so good to chunk it down and then to calendar it or, you know, block it by day or even by week, but just set. Some time boundaries of when you're going to get those specific tasks done. And then step five is daily planning and accountability. You have to plan for your results. You have to plan how you're going to spend your time and you have to decide to take action.

I like to say, take action daily, even if it's just five minutes, but daily action, the direction of your dreams. My mentor, Mary Morris, Morrissey says, baby steps will take you all the way up Mount Everest. So get into action, do something daily, even if it's five minutes to move in the direction of your dream and planning is.

What you do so that you know what you're doing. So to have a plan,  so a plan can be all kinds of things. It can be this big list with due dates and tasks and all this or can just be simply  writing on a piece of paper what I plan to do today. These three things and then looking at the end of the day. Did you accomplish those three things?

And if you didn't, you can ask yourself why or why not? And then you can move those things to the next day and you will start to learn what your cadence is and what, how much you can actually accomplish in a day. And again, there's a lot of different ways to do this. And once again, do what works best for you, but you want to write.

things down. You want to have some kind of daily, weekly, quarterly plan, monthly plan so that you can track your results and you can track your activities. So again, whatever works best for you. But you have to have some kind of planning, tracking and accountability. So this Process is you'll have accountability to yourself because you have something written down.

You see whether you did it or not, and then you can say why you did it or why you didn't do it. You can be accountable to yourself, but I love having other people as accountability partners. So  for me, I, I can't imagine doing any of my goals or projects without an accountability partner. So I encourage you to find someone to help you be accountable.

And that's why I believe  100 percent in having a coach and support to help with accountability, because that's one of the things that where we can help each other. So I encourage you to get some form of accountability to support you in your goals and dreams this year. And stay tuned, because next week, I'll be announcing a new training that I have coming out that will help you with this at the end of coming out at the end of January.

So I'll give you all the details of that next week.  So as I wrap up today's episode, Think about how you can use this six step process that I walked you through on how to get something done that's important to you, a goal, a project, something that you want to achieve this year, this month, this quarter.

What is it that you want to achieve and how do you want to think and feel and how do you want to think and feel about yourself and your accomplishments and how you showed up for yourself in 2024? So for me, these are some of the ways that I want to think and feel about myself this year. I am proud of myself and how I showed up this year for myself, for my family, for my business, for my clients, for my podcast listeners, for my friends, for my community.

I'm so happy and grateful that I showed up fully for me for my dreams and goals and for you.  So I am so glad that you're here. Thank you for listening. And I've got some exciting things coming up this year for you. So I'm so glad you're here.

If you love what you're learning here on the podcast, and you want to start. Implementing these concepts into your daily life, then you must get my free course where I will teach you how to get 10 hours back a week. Imagine what you could create with 10 more hours a week. So go to the dreamacademy.  com slash free course and learn about the magic wand of time.

Thanks for listening. Bye.