Maximizing Your Day: Top Productivity Strategies Unveiled

Dr. Christine Li [00:00:00]:
Hi everyone. Welcome back to the Make Time for Success podcast. This is episode number 164.Recently I've gotten a few comments that have made me consider about the kind of content and style of episodes I want to have in 2024 on this show. And I'm going to start leaning towards having more solo episodes where I'm just describing some of the tips and strategies that I've developed and I've used over the years, and also some of my thoughts about what might be most helpful to you when it comes to things like beating procrastination, becoming more productive, and living your best life. And I thought that we would start doing that new trend of having more solo content today. Today I'm going to be talking to you about these individual habits that you can consider adopting that will each help you to maximize your day, to make you feel like you've got control of things, that you're not a spinning top, that you're not spinning out of control, that you have some sense of where you're headed and where you're going to eventually arrive. And I would love to have each of these tips to give you a sense that you have lots of possibilities and lots of options for shaping the day that you have and the days in front of you in a way that is meaningful to you and that will really be effective for you.

Dr. Christine Li [00:01:49]:
So essentially, we're going to boost your effectiveness, your productivity, and your joy all in one episode, I hope. And let's go listen to this one. I'm going to share seven ideas for how to maximize your day.

Dr. Christine Li [00:02:04]:
Let's go listen to this episode together now.

Dr. Christine Li [00:02:12]:
Hi, I'm Dr. Christine Li and I'm a psychologist and a procrastination coach. I've helped thousands of people move past procrastination and overwhelm so they could begin working to their potential. In this podcast, you're going to learn powerful strategies for getting your mind, body and energy to work together so that you can focus on what's really important and accomplish the goals you want to achieve. When you start living within your full power, you're going to see how being productive can be easy and how you can create success on demand. Welcome to the Make Time for Success podcast. Hi there.

Dr. Christine Li [00:02:55]:
I'm going to get right to the

Dr. Christine Li [00:02:59]:
Information that I want to share with.

Dr. Christine Li [00:03:00]:
You today because today's topic is maximizing.

Dr. Christine Li [00:03:05]:
Your day top productivity strategies unveiled by yours truly. And one of the best things to do to maximize your day is to make sure you get down to it. You don't want to be spending all this time thinking about things, hyper planning about things, worrying about things, you want to just get things done right. So that's our focus for today. And I have a list of seven things to talk about with you today, and I'm just going to get going. Number one is perhaps the most basic and the most fundamental of all of these things. And that is to practice your ability to focus on one thing at a time. So the tip is to focus on one thing at a time.

Dr. Christine Li [00:03:52]:
Again, a simple tip, but I know that in day to day practice, this can be a little bit tricky, because oftentimes we're feeling overwhelmed by the day's work, by assignments coming in left, right and center, the needs of our children, the needs of our parents, the needs of ourselves, paying bills, all these things. It can feel like a constant flow of tasks and to do list items and that overwhelm can prevent us from feeling like we can focus at all. But I want to double down on this tip, because when we are able to focus on one thing at a time, you can feel accomplished. You can feel like you're concentrating. You can feel like you're paying attention to the details that are important for the one thing that you're focusing on. And when we're not focusing on one thing at a time, we get distracted. We end up kind of furthering the overwhelm. We can end up feeling like we're not really doing anything really well, and in the end, we're just kind of contributing to the cycle of feeling like we're not doing enough.

Dr. Christine Li [00:05:06]:
So really straighten up your process. Learn to focus very intently on one thing at a time. And I think you'll find that the rewards will come quite soon after you start this behavior. If you ever find that your anxiety is elevating because you're thinking. But what about the entire rest of my list that I'm not tending to? I want you to practice calming yourself down and then refocusing once more, because that's the practice. Focusing, relaxing, focusing, relaxing. Paying attention to what's important, and relaxing and expanding our attention to cover all the different things that are coming at us is just the equivalent of being distracted. So, to summarize, the first tip to really focus on is to develop your focus and have it be trained on.

Dr. Christine Li [00:06:00]:
One thing at a time.

Dr. Christine Li [00:06:01]:
Make it boring. Have it be boring. Just do one thing at a time. The second tip that I have for you is to make sure that that one thing that you're focusing on is very easy to do.

Dr. Christine Li [00:06:13]:
And the way to do that is.

Dr. Christine Li [00:06:15]:
To break that one thing down into even smaller parts. This tip helps you to make sure that you remain motivated throughout the process of getting that thing done, and it keeps you away from feeling like you need to start dreading your work. Because we all have been there. We all have gotten to a point of dreading the work right in the middle, right when we could be headed towards the finish line. We end up thinking to ourselves, oh, this is too much. There are too many parts to this one thing. So break it down to the smallest.

Dr. Christine Li [00:06:50]:
Part that you can figure out.

Dr. Christine Li [00:06:54]:
Do it intently, do it with joy and then celebrate. Once you finish that part, you want to string together the separate parts of that one thing that you're focusing on, and then you have yourself a win. And the benefit of using this strategy.

Dr. Christine Li [00:07:10]:
Is, I would say, massive because we.

Dr. Christine Li [00:07:14]:
End up preserving our well being. We don't get overwhelmed. And my favorite thing to say really is when we feel well, we do well. So we want to conserve our energy, we want to conserve our good mood. We want to protect our productivity momentum. And we do that by taking really.

Dr. Christine Li [00:07:35]:
Small steps and staying consistent and moving towards the end goal.

Dr. Christine Li [00:07:41]:
The third tip that I have for you is to learn how to say no.

Dr. Christine Li [00:07:46]:
I was going to say a proper.

Dr. Christine Li [00:07:47]:
No, but really just being able to say no is a skill and it's a really valuable skill. And I have found that many of my clients, before they start to work with me, have trouble saying no. I think I myself had trouble saying no back in the day, and that is really a big trigger for needing to procrastinate. Because if you can't say no, you end up having so many different things on your plate. Not only do you have tasks and projects on your plates, but you have everyone else's expectations directed towards you, that everyone is waiting for something from you and you're not able to say, I need some time. I really need to give this project back to you because you haven't practiced the skill of saying no. You haven't learned to really properly protect your time boundaries and your energy boundaries. And again, I want to say I sympathize.

Dr. Christine Li [00:08:47]:
I was definitely there. Sometimes I can make the mistake of saying yes when I mean no, but these days I really try not to. I have found that many people who tend to be people pleasers or like to make sure that people are happy also have this difficulty of not knowing how or when to say no. It's not that they don't want to, it's that they haven't had the experience and they are afraid of letting people down. Perhaps this is you, dear listener, today feeling overwhelmed with all the responsibilities that you have. I want to let you know, first of all, congratulations on being a kind, responsible human being. But I also want you to know that I think it's time to try to learn the skill of saying no appropriately. Because I do believe, and I've seen it time and time again, that when we spend all of our time concerned about other people, we end up pushing away our own needs.

Dr. Christine Li [00:09:53]:
Those needs that are so important, our needs for rest, our needs for time, our needs for some blank space in.

Dr. Christine Li [00:09:59]:
Our schedule, our need to be able.

Dr. Christine Li [00:10:03]:
To say no and to protect our boundaries. So don't get your energy all twisted up in the people pleasing pattern. Instead, here's a suggestion. Use this tip the next time your intuition tells you I don't have the time, I don't have the bandwidth, I.

Dr. Christine Li [00:10:22]:
Don'T have the desire, I don't have.

Dr. Christine Li [00:10:24]:
The energy, just say no. Let it be a simple, straightforward, clear no. And then what's going to happen is you're going to feel an uptick in your anxiety. You're going to think, oh boy, now this person's going to maybe get mad at me or be disappointed or be frustrated, or now need to go to someone else for help. But I promise you that in the end, it is better for you to take care of your own very real needs ahead of taking care of somebody else's. Because that person is an adult. That person is capable of taking care of themselves. They have other possibilities for help in their life, and you cannot be stuck thinking that you're the only person who could get them out of their jam.

Dr. Christine Li [00:11:15]:
You need to take care of yourself. You need to listen to your intuition. And again, you need to learn to say a proper no. When you do this. It actually ends up allowing you to create wonderful yeses for the people in your life, that you will feel reenergized, you will feel more confident, you will feel like you have more command of your time and your responsibilities, and that will enable you in turn to be really wonderful when you say yes to people, because you'll be confident in control of your time. You won't be feeling resentment or fear that you won't be able to accomplish things.

Dr. Christine Li [00:11:54]:
You'll know exactly what is going to happen.

Dr. Christine Li [00:11:58]:
And I really want that for you. I would love for you to feel comfortable saying no without fear, without anxiety, and with a really solid sense that you are doing yourself and your day the way your day is going to run a favor. The fourth idea that I have for you is to learn how to delegate. Well, as I was preparing for this content and this episode today, I had the thought about, we say Oprah time or Beyonce time. And by that, I think typically we mean that Oprah and Beyonce have the same 24 hours in the day that we do. But I want you to know, and you know this already, that they also have teams of people helping them to do all the things that they get done. And I would say generally, high performers really do have backup. They have the teams.

Dr. Christine Li [00:12:54]:
They have the assistance. You may not know about them, but they have the coaches and people to help them do things more quickly.

Dr. Christine Li [00:13:03]:
So I want you to consider, could.

Dr. Christine Li [00:13:07]:
I delegate what I'm doing to someone else? Can I develop the skill of delegation as a new skill for me if I haven't been doing it already? And I think the answer oftentimes is yes. That it may not be an extra staff person, but it might be sharing responsibilities with a friend or a neighbor or one of your children or a lot of your children. There are so many different possibilities for alleviating the pressure that you might be feeling by your workload, by your current.

Dr. Christine Li [00:13:40]:
To do list or your shopping list.

Dr. Christine Li [00:13:42]:
Or your list for what you want to get done in life. You can decide, who do I need to call? Who do I need to lean on? Who can I think of who might know how to do this better than I do? Can I lean on them in a meaningful way that is kind and friendly.

Dr. Christine Li [00:14:02]:
And not abusive, of course, so that.

Dr. Christine Li [00:14:06]:
We can feel more like we're shining like Oprah and Beyonce, that we're getting so much done in a particular day, because we have the freedom to say, I need your help, I could use your help. I think that's a beautiful thing. The other thing that is the benefit of learning how to delegate well, is that you, by doing so, learn the skill of communicating really effectively. Because in order to delegate well, we have to communicate exactly what we need and want to have happen. And by needing to do that, we have to, ourselves, be really straight about what we need and want to have happen. So it's this beautiful process of straightening out and clarifying and being really specific about what we want to have happen, how we envision this thing going down. And I think that's a really healthy.

Dr. Christine Li [00:15:06]:
Skill for maximizing your day.

Dr. Christine Li [00:15:09]:
Now, for those of you who are saying, well, who am I going to delegate to? If you don't have anyone that you think you can ask for help or hire or delegate stuff to. I want you to know that you can do an internal process of delegation as well. For me, this looks like taking care of business line by line.

Dr. Christine Li [00:15:33]:
And by that I mean I look at what I have to do and I almost imagine reducing my workload.

Dr. Christine Li [00:15:41]:
So I will either get rid of some of the things on my to do list and I'll just say, that's not important right now. I'm delegating this to the future. I am telling myself this is not important enough to even be on my list. And I also do things like I shorten the amount of time that I allow myself to spend on certain things so that I make my overall workload feel a lot lighter. So there are lots of different styles of delegating and shifting how you are and how you are relating with your workload so that you can make it feel like you're maximizing your time and.

Dr. Christine Li [00:16:20]:
You'Re not stripping yourself of all the.

Dr. Christine Li [00:16:24]:
Energy and willpower that you have in your day. So this is a way of maximizing your day. Number five on my list today is, I think, a lovely one. You want to learn how to anticipate problems before they happen. In all honesty, totally being real with you now. This is not my strong suit, never has been, because, as many of you know, I have a long history of being a procrastinator. And if you know what that's like, you know that when you're procrastinating, you're.

Dr. Christine Li [00:16:57]:
Not really thinking about warding off future problems.

Dr. Christine Li [00:17:01]:
You are actually tending to all the problems that you didn't really take care of in the past.

Dr. Christine Li [00:17:06]:
So you're basically catching up on things.

Dr. Christine Li [00:17:09]:
In the past time frame and you're not really taking care of what's about to come.

Dr. Christine Li [00:17:15]:
And I want to share with you.

Dr. Christine Li [00:17:19]:
That I have begun to make this lovely transition from being in that past mind frame and that time zone to getting to be comfortable with anticipating what I might need in the future. I'm starting to get to be a better planner. I'm starting to pre plan things like trips that I'm taking medication renewals, getting ready to medicate my dogs on a monthly basis and making sure that that happens. All these things, big and small, are starting to get a little bit easier for me because I've stopped procrastinating so much, first of all, but also because I've learned that there's a little bit of joy that comes when you have a view into the future before the future is here. So this may be as simple as looking at your planner or your calendar.

Dr. Christine Li [00:18:17]:
Wherever you keep your appointments and meetings.

Dr. Christine Li [00:18:21]:
Look at that and take a close look at the next two weeks, the two weeks coming up in the future, and think to yourself, what would I need to put in place to make this next two weeks go super well, super smoothly, where I'm not feeling anxiety unnecessarily, where I'm showing up on time as best as I can, where I have the right refills already called into.

Dr. Christine Li [00:18:48]:
The pharmacy, I have the right clothing.

Dr. Christine Li [00:18:51]:
For the event that I need to go to on the weekend, whatever it is for you, take a glance at the planner and envision yourself succeeding at these things in the future. This is a beautiful skill because it helps you to anticipate any problems, but it also helps you to show up as your best self, not feeling like you're behind schedule or that you've forgotten your planner or a pencil that you really needed or some other tool that you needed, or you forgot to communicate with someone, that you needed backup in any way. So learn this habit of getting out of your own way. Limit your procrastination and then foresee what are the deadlines that I need to meet, what's coming up for myself, what do I need to pack, what do I need to prepare, what do I need to order so that it's here? In a couple of days, you will feel like, yes, you're putting in a little bit of extra effort, but you'll also feel like in the end, you're doing a huge favor to yourself. You are allowing yourself to have things run really smoothly every day. Number six on the list is to make decisions with confidence. This is something that is, I think, unique to each one of us.

Dr. Christine Li [00:20:13]:
I think we each make decisions with different styles, with different inputs, with different.

Dr. Christine Li [00:20:22]:
Anxiety levels, with different levels of indecision. And we want to really get to know our own style of decision making. And I'm going to say that once you understand your style and pattern and your hang ups about making decisions, I want you to guide yourself towards being more confident when you are needing to make a decision and making those decisions decisively. I think oftentimes I see people stuck when they're procrastinating and stuck in indecision. Oftentimes because after all, when we are needing to make a decision, we need to give up something and go towards the other thing.

Dr. Christine Li [00:21:04]:
We're basically cutting off our choices and.

Dr. Christine Li [00:21:08]:
Saying we're picking one, not the other. And that can generate different feelings, it can generate fear. It can cause us to feel like, well, I'm just going to wait on this one. I'm going to ponder this. Perhaps you've been there yourself, but I.

Dr. Christine Li [00:21:23]:
Want you to consider that when you.

Dr. Christine Li [00:21:27]:
Don'T ponder so much, and when you use your intuition and you used your best guess, and when you used your sense that you would love to conserve more time and get things moving and keep things moving, that a quicker decision made more decisively, with confidence might actually be better than hanging out in indecision, feeling like you're stuck, feeling like you're waiting for some omen or message from the universe, when really you likely know already which way is the best way.

Dr. Christine Li [00:22:00]:
To travel, what is the best decision to make.

Dr. Christine Li [00:22:03]:
And I'm going to reinforce that tip.

Dr. Christine Li [00:22:06]:
By letting you know that typically we.

Dr. Christine Li [00:22:09]:
Don'T really learn anything from keeping ourselves in an undecided state. But what we do learn when we take action, when we do make that decision, is very, very valuable. We learn what happens when we choose. We learn the benefits of choosing what we did. We learn the lessons that come from choosing when things don't work out as we had hoped, or if they go south, but it's all better. All of those options are better than staying in this stuck place. I would argue, and I do think this kind of carries out in real life, that we learn the most when we are taking action and we're making decisions and we're willing to face what the outcomes are.

Dr. Christine Li [00:22:58]:
All right, we are at the last.

Dr. Christine Li [00:23:01]:
One now we're at number seven. And that is to be in charge. Take care of your fundamental daily habits. Your daily habits are things like getting three square meals a day if that's what you do and that's what you like for yourself. I know people have different eating habits these days. That is movement every day. That is your sleep pattern every day. Those are, I would say, three of the core fundamental habits that I'm talking about.

Dr. Christine Li [00:23:31]:
And I have seen that many people who are feeling stressed, maybe people pleasing, maybe doing too much productivity wise and.

Dr. Christine Li [00:23:45]:
Not relaxing enough, that all of these.

Dr. Christine Li [00:23:49]:
Fundamental things like having breakfast and getting exercise get pushed to the bottom of the list. They get pushed to the end of the day and then what happens is they never get tended to. We end up missing out on wonderful breakfasts and keeping ourselves fit and healthy and in shape, and we end up missing out on friendships and socializing and relaxation time. And I just don't want that for you because I've seen the damage that ignoring our self care and our fundamental habits can have. And it can be really quite heavy to see people who are dragging and lacking energy feeling like they need to tear their hair out to get the energy and the motivation to do the next thing. When really you can tend to yourself and your self care habits first. Make sure they happen by doing a proper schedule. Doesn't have to be a rigid schedule, but the schedule has to include these fundamental habits for everything to go smoothly.

Dr. Christine Li [00:24:59]:
All right? And I really think perhaps tip number one, focus on one thing at a time is super important. And number seven is really important on this list too. We need to remember the core fundamentals of taking care of ourselves, because again, when we feel well, we do well. And of course I want you to do as best as you can. I never know how to say that stuff with english grammar, but I want you to do as best as you are able to do. I have heard so much the experience of people neglecting their self care and fundamental habits that I recently decided to create a simple spreadsheet and I decided to call it the daily Habits tracker. And it is something that you can tailor to your own list of habits because my list of habits is different than your list of habits. So I decided to create this to offer you a bit of help, an easy tool that you can use to start to put on your screen, on your computer screen and in this spreadsheet, the list of what you think is fundamental for you to keep track of.

Dr. Christine Li [00:26:12]:
And then I have of course, Sunday.

Dr. Christine Li [00:26:14]:
Through the rest of the week.

Dr. Christine Li [00:26:16]:
You have days to literally keep track of these core fundamental habits that you've decided you would like practice with.

Dr. Christine Li [00:26:25]:
And it's easy to get and it's free.

Dr. Christine Li [00:26:29]:
Go to maketimeforsuccesspodcast.com tracker to get this free download again. It's the daily habits tracker made by yours truly and you get it by going to maketimeforsuccesspodcast.com tracker. You can use it, you can copy.

Dr. Christine Li [00:26:48]:
It, you can go to town with.

Dr. Christine Li [00:26:51]:
It, and I hope it brings you lots of calm and a feeling of confidence over the fact that you can change the way each of your days goes. If you use even two or three of the habits that I've spoken about today and mentioned to you and discussed with you today, I think you're going to feel like you're beginning to maximize every day, day to day, and I really hope that that comes true. All right, thanks for spending time with me today. I really enjoyed putting this list of tips together for you and I'll have more for you next week when the next episode drops.

Dr. Christine Li [00:27:27]:
Thanks so much for being a listener.

Dr. Christine Li [00:27:29]:
Of the Make Time for Success podcast. Take care.

Dr. Christine Li [00:27:32]:
Thank you for listening to this episode of the Make Time for Success podcast. If you enjoyed what you've heard, you can subscribe to make sure you get notified of upcoming episodes. You can also visit our website, maketimeforsuccesspodcast.com for past episodes, show notes, and all the resources we mentioned on the show. Feel free to connect with over on instagram too. You can find me there under the name procrastination coach. Send me a DM and let me know what your thoughts are about the episodes you've been listening to, and let me know any topics that you might like me to talk about on the show. I'd love to hear all about how you're making time for success. Talk to you soon.