The Truth About Productivity: 5 Myths You Must Stop Believing

Dr. Christine Li [00:00:00]:
So there are lots of myths out there about what it really takes to be productive. Right? I think, actually, preparing for this episode, it made me think we each have our own ideas about what it takes to be productive. I wanna tackle in this particular episode, 5 of the myths that I think are particularly prevalent and also particularly unhelpful when it comes to actually getting productive. I wanna help you to have the easiest, most fun, fulfilling track or route to the results that you wanna see in your life. That's the whole reason I do this podcast and all of these episodes, so let's get down to it. Let's explore 5 myths about productivity that I think you should break up with or not believe anymore. The first one is that you need to force yourself to get important things done, and I think we've all been there at one point or another. You have this important assignment or you have a really big deadline to meet or you are just scared out of your mind about this particular project for whatever reason, and then you decide, okay.

Dr. Christine Li [00:01:12]:
I'm gonna force myself to do this. I'm gonna force myself to stay in this chair and concentrate and look at my screen or write or whatever other kind of work you have to do for your project. But I wanna let you know that I teach people to avoid thinking about using force or the language of force when they are trying to be productive. Because when you think about it, do you really like times when you have to be forced into something for any reason, like forced to brush your teeth, forced to eat dinner, forced to go outside when it's raining, these kinds of things. Typically, human beings, regular human beings do not like being forced to do anything. Even the really pleasant human beings out there don't particularly like to be told what to do or pressured into doing the next action step. So my teaching that I tend to share with the people I work with is to just wipe away all language of force or pressure, or you should, or you have to those kinds of words, because they tend to put us in a stressed out pressured state instead of a relaxed, focused, calm, willing state. And we wanna get ourselves into a relaxed, focused, calm, and willing state.

Dr. Christine Li [00:02:32]:
I believe that that is the best kind of state to get your best work done and to get work done in the first place. So try this out. It's a lot better than setting up a conflict situation where you're fighting with yourself or you're forcing a part of you to sit in your chair when the rest of you just wants to run. Instead of having those two parts of you at war with each other all the time, just decide for yourself, I'm going to do this next project at 4 o'clock We're it's just gonna happen that way, and you don't have to get excited about it. It can actually be quite boring and mundane, and that may resolve that tension for you, and it might make your productivity roll out that much more quickly and easily, and I hope that is the case. So remember, you do not need to force yourself to do anything. Alright. Myth number 2 is that your work represents part of your self worth.

Dr. Christine Li [00:03:33]:
Let me explain. Most people have experienced this in their lifetimes, and that is associating your homework or the next grant proposal that you're writing or the musical composition that you're struggling to create, associating that piece of work with your personal value as a human being. You can tell just by the way that I'm saying it that I have learned about this myth and I have broken up with my belief pattern that there's something about my personal value or worth in anything that I create. And I have to share with you when I look back decades ago, I really did think that way. I really did think that every single test, every single paper, every single grade that I received in school, and we're talking high school and maybe even early graduate school and college, that every single marker of achievement had some sort of reflection or was some sort of comment on how good I was as a human being or how valuable I was as a person, as a student, as a woman. And I am so grateful that I do not do that to myself any longer. These days, I just do my work because I like to work. I like to feel accomplished.

Dr. Christine Li [00:05:00]:
I like to contribute to society. I like to help other people, but I am no longer doing work because I feel insecure or I feel like my self worth is up for debate. I just know that I'm worthy. And I want to share with you at this moment in this podcast that you are worthy too. You don't have to be at a certain level to be worthy as a human being. You don't have to get a certain GPA to feel like you're worthy. You can just be worthy because you are worthy because we are all worthy. You don't have to decide whether you're good or bad based on the content of your next essay for your history class.

Dr. Christine Li [00:05:42]:
You just don't. When you think about it, it's silly to even think that that's on the line, and I don't mean to make fun of you. I just mean to say, let's make your light let's make your light shine, and let's make your work a lot lighter in the process. Let's let you bring your whole self to your work, to your writing process, to your creative process, instead of having part of you be terrified that there's gonna be some horrible judgment coming your way about your work and that you're gonna take it personally and you're going to take yourself down a few more notches. I do not want that to happen for you. I understand that it might have already, but you can restore your your power. You can restore your belief that you're good. You can elevate the way you perform academically, professionally, at home with your family, with yourself, with the promises that you make to yourself.

Dr. Christine Li [00:06:40]:
All of these things will experience a natural elevation when you let go of that connection that you've made in your mind that your work is somehow a reflection of your self worth. Don't get me wrong. You are allowed to celebrate all your wins and you're allowed to do the best work that you can. And I hope that you will, but again, don't make it mean all these dramatic things because it's just going to stop your productivity. It's not going to help your productivity. All right. 3rd myth that I think you should break up with, stress will help your performance. That is a huge myth.

Dr. Christine Li [00:07:20]:
That's not to say that having, you know, kind of, like, you're flatlined on one of those heart monitors. I don't mean that you need to be just like a ghost or, you know, kind of without any energy at all. But this message is for people who tend to have a really activated nervous system who really tend to get panicked and nervous before any new assignment or any time they have to show up publicly or speak publicly, any kind of that kind of circumstance where there's something on the line, where there's some stress. And I wanna let you know that you can teach yourself and you can experience the concept of being calm and still performing well. And I think, again, because of formal schooling, because of what society oftentimes teaches us, because sometimes we believe that in order to do good work, we have to get really riled up about things, that that can inadvertently cause you to develop a stress pattern where the more you wanna achieve, the more you feel that you have to ramp up your stress. And I definitely wanna come in here, insert my voice here in the discussion, and let you know that I feel like that's a dangerous, dangerous pattern, really dangerous because stress can be a really negative factor when it comes to our health. And I also feel that it can really fracture and fragment our concentration. Think about it.

Dr. Christine Li [00:08:59]:
When you are stressed about a big assignment or a job interview or anything else that comes to mind for you, that part of you is thinking, oh, I need to get ready and I need to prepare. But the other part of you is just thinking about all the things that could go wrong. Right? You might not get the job. You might blank out and forget what you need to say. You might say something stupid. I don't know what goes through your mind, but we've all been there where we've kind of thought to ourselves, what is the worst case scenario? Because I feel like I need to get prepared. But I wanna let you know that just because something's important and meaningful to you does not mean you have to freak out. It really does not have to happen that way.

Dr. Christine Li [00:09:45]:
I promise promise promise that. But you have to take my word for this, or you don't have to, but I'm gonna ask you to. And you have to practice. You have to practice writing the essay without getting ramped up ahead of time. You have to practice getting on stage or getting on social media or speaking to someone who's important to you or having a difficult conversation with someone without getting that those nerves, that anxiety, that preemptive, that predictive stress, that anticipatory stress. That's the word that I was looking for. You can just be yourself and you can say the true me is really much more relaxed, really likes to have fun, really likes to be clear and relevant and timely and honest, and I'm just gonna go with that. I do not need to bring my life partner stress in here.

Dr. Christine Li [00:10:40]:
I'm gonna break up with this life partner and choose calm, relaxed, focused, meaningful, purposeful. I'm gonna choose those partners in my life from now on. Oh, I wanted to add one more note about number 3, that stress will help your performance, help in quotes, because research shows that stress can reduce our ability to focus by shrinking the prefrontal cortex, the brain region that is responsible for concentration and decision making. So this basically is telling us that when we feel an uptick in stress, our concentration and decision making are going to be a little bit compromised. And so you want to reduce the stress in all situations wherever possible so that you can stay on task, so that you can be productive and you can make great decisions for yourself along the way. The 4th myth that I've chosen to share with you and to debunk is that if it's easy for you, it must not be that valuable. And I alluded to this earlier on in this episode, and I wanna explain this a little bit more. I think when we feel that we wanna do good work in the world, in our lives, in our career, in our work history, we can fall into the myth type thinking that, oh, I have to get really stressed out about this.

Dr. Christine Li [00:12:11]:
I have to work not only 9 to 5. I have to work from 8 to 10. 8 to 10, close to midnight, I mean. And you can see where I'm going with this, that we might get into the accidental habit of creating more work for ourselves, of thinking, well, if I'm done early, that must mean that I haven't really focused enough or I haven't been thorough enough. And that kind of thinking is just work generating more work. And, again, we've all been there, but, again, I'm trying to share with you these ideas that can really help you not only save your energy and your time from being wasted with just more work, it's just saving all of your your yourself. Right? You can conserve some of yourself for play, for relaxation, for a movie, for an extra an extra conversation with a friend you haven't spoken to in a long time. All the things that life has to offer.

Dr. Christine Li [00:13:12]:
You'll have more time for that when you decide, you know what? If it comes easily to me, I'm just gonna go with that. I'm gonna let my intuition come up with the answers. I'm gonna trust the first answers that come to my heart and mind. I'm gonna borrow the wisdom of chat g p t every once in a while so that I can find the shortcuts so that I don't have to suffer with a stress condition or burnout or misery just because I care about the results that I create. I'm gonna create good work, but I'm gonna find lots of different ways to get through to the finish line, and I'm gonna test these myths that I've been carrying around in my brain and body for all these years. Now the last myth, we finally come to, one that is also an important one to think about. Perfection is something that we should aim for. That's the myth.

Dr. Christine Li [00:14:07]:
When I created these myths, I felt, well, there's a risk that people are going to think I'm actually arguing that perfection is the thing that we should aim for. It's actually not. I think that the belief that we have to be perfect in order to be respected or to do our best is really a big trap. It's a trap emotionally. It's a trap of time. It's a trap of burnout. It's a trap of unrealistic goals because perfection really is an elusive concept even. I mean, whatever is perfection anyway.

Dr. Christine Li [00:14:45]:
What you think is perfect might be very different from what I think is perfect. What I think is perfect these days is having a lot of time left over after work is done. And you might disagree with me, but that's just proof that perfection is really this kind of mythical concept oftentimes. So if you're feeling really worn out, if you're feeling stretched really thin, if you're feeling like your standards are just getting way too heavy for you or the people that you hang out with, you might wanna decide, you know what? Instead of demanding perfection all the time from all the people and every single project that I'm connected with, I'm gonna decide to aim for feeling good. I'm gonna aim for feeling like I'm whole. I'm gonna aim for feeling like I'm powerful instead of deciding that the work needs to be perfect because it's just the latest assignment when you think about it. Our life is just a string of work, so let's not make this particular one that's in your lap right now be the be all and end all. I had one professor teach me that concept that you don't wanna make your current piece of work your life's work because when you do, it's gonna take up all of your time, and it's it's like an unreasonable thing to ask.

Dr. Christine Li [00:16:06]:
Right? Unless maybe it really is your life's work, but then, you know, work accordingly. But, generally, we're not doing our life's work. We're just doing work. So let it be work. Let the work breathe, and let it be what it needs to be. Don't attach your self worth to it. Don't perfect it or demand that it be perfect. Don't force yourself to get it done.

Dr. Christine Li [00:16:32]:
Decide you want to have it done, that this is gonna be great, that this is gonna be easy, that this is gonna be natural and know that you are always good. You're always worthy. You don't need to ramp up the stress to kick out a really wonderful product, project, or result. And I hope for everyone that is interested in this topic and everyone who is looking forward to being more productive and being less of a procrastinator, I wish you every good vibe. I wish you every broken, mistaken productivity myth. I wish that they all leave you alone and that you embrace your natural genius, your wisdom, your zest for life, and zest for getting things done. I think this is gonna be wonderful. Please feel free to share with me on social media.

Dr. Christine Li [00:17:26]:
I'm procrastination coach on Instagram and TikTok. Just write me a note, and let me know what you're gonna do with your newfound energy and your newfound perspective on how to be productive. If you would like an extra worksheet for how to ramp up your productivity and how to steer clear of these 5 myths, I've created a free download for you. All you need to do to get this free download is go to make time for success podcast.com slash productive. Go to make time for success podcast.com/productive, and you'll get that download right away into your inbox and you'll be right on your way. Alright, everyone. Thank you so much for being a listener of the Make Time For Success podcast. I appreciate your time, your concentration, and all the effort that you're putting into your best self.

Dr. Christine Li [00:18:27]:
Take care. I'll see you next week.