MiTV 262 Transcript
Do you put time in your diary to get the big stuff done in your business and then you turn up to the session and you don’t do it? This episode, I’m going to tell you why you don’t do it and how we’re going to solve it. Hello, and welcome to this week’s episode of Mi TV. My name is Emma Mills. I own a business called Mi PA, and I help business owners move through that messy middle of it just being them on their own, solopreneurs through to getting an outsourced or an employed team around them. And this week’s episode is inspired by a problem I know so many of us have had.
We might have intermittently. And I know we have it because I was talking about it in a mastermind meeting that I’m in
a couple of weeks ago, and the question cropped up that a couple of individuals around the table
planned time in their diary to get the needle moving stuff done. And when I say needle moving, I mean,
like, the tasks that are going to move you forward, your business forward, you’re going to get either
more customers or you’re gonna be more profitable or you’re gonna find new opportunities or
strategies. You’re gonna bring more attention to your business.
You know, all the big, the big stuff that moves you forward. And there’s people that planned time in their diary. They made appointments with themselves. And when it comes to, let’s say it’s 09:00 a.m. On a Wednesday morning, they turn up to the slot with themselves and they’re like, and they don’t do anything, and they don’t do anything meaningful in the session. And the session goes by, and we’re all experts at making ourselves feel really busy, aren’t we? I mean. Oh, yeah. Well, that was busy. What did you actually get done? And, I replied to some emails and we don’t actually work on the stuff that we know we should be doing.
And this week’s episode is why we do that, because when we know why we can solve it and how we’re going to solve it. So for me, there are two main reasons why this happens. And I am not talking from a place of judgment here. I am talking from a place of, Emma’s got this hat. She’s like, got the t shirt. She’s really good at going, okay, I’m gonna have some focus time tomorrow morning getting to it and then finding it
way easier to open up my inbox or open up zero, reconcile some payments, do the busy stuff, get to 09:00 oh, well, I was out that that stuff had to get done. Then it didn’t. Made me feel better. So, I’m talking from a place of, I know how to do this and procrastinate really, really well. But for me, there are two main reasons why we do that. So, number one is fear.
And in my experience, it’s fear of being good enough to get the needle moving thing done. Fear of being or creating stuff that is good enough. In this planned focus time, there’s almost like a feeling of overwhelm with it. And what I mean is that when we plan in this focus time to, you know, we, we turn our notifications off, we turn the phone off, we divert it to the team or you call answering company. We like, set the scene to get stuff done. It’s, it can be quite overwhelming because you can feel like, oh, I’ve got this 60 minutes, and I really, okay, are the pressure’s on, right. Five minutes. Like, what I’m actually doing, I’m feeling now stressed to be creative for to get stuff done. And most often, the things that are the needle moving projects or tasks, they require an element of, like, deep thinking, deep work, creativity. It’s not, it’s not.
The things that move your business forwards are not generally mindless things that you can just do really easily. It’s like bigger project work. And so in that, I know that a lot of our clients, and I’ve had this myself where I’ll turn up to my hour and go, oh, my God, right now I need to write this. A really good example is a couple of weeks ago, about writing an article for a magazine. And I’ll turn up to the session and go, oh, my gosh. Right. So, what am I going to start with here? I’ve only got 60 minutes now. Okay. I’ve set the time on my phone. This isn’t helping. yeah, well, I don’t think it’s going to be any good anyway. Like, I think whatever I’m going to write is going to be crap. Or, I can’t think of any ideas to generate new customers or, like, I think we generate a lot of fear around, are we any good at doing these things?
And in my example in the mastermind meeting a couple of weeks ago, one of the ladies who was planning time into the diary, but not then creating content or, planning her content is because she feels like she’s not good enough at content, or it’s not going to be any good, or nobody’s going to watch it and to all of that fear just completely spins up into time that we procrastinate on because we think that we’re not going to be good enough to get this done or it’s too overwhelming or, oh, actually, now it’s come to it. I just, I don’t think this is going to work or. And so it’s much easier to do the simple, quick inbox checks, like, just like all the little itty bitty admin, because that’s like, oh, I can do this, and it’s good, and it makes me feel productive and, oh, well, I needed to do it anyway, which he didn’t.
So turning up with fear to the session is, for me, one of the biggest reasons why people don’t make the most of the sessions that they book with themselves. And when you couple this with number two, which is we don’t know what to do in that session, there is nothing worse than turning up to an hour and 90 minutes that you blocked into your diary without a plan beforehand, because the first thing that you’re going to do is procrastinate on what you should dedicate your time to. There’s absolutely no way that you’re going to turn up to this hour, which we all know that actually, there are probably hundreds of things we could do to move our business forward. And then having to sift through what’s the best use of my time right now makes turning up to these sessions we book with ourselves very, very difficult.
And, for me, fear and not knowing what to do in the session are the key reasons why people can be really great at going, oh, got it, got it. Absolutely planned out next week. I’ve got 90 minutes every day. I’m gonna get, you know, this is gonna be my time. I’m gonna be put my lo fi beats on. I’m gonna, you know, have my headphones on, ready to go. And then when you actually come to it, there’s a kind of an uncomfortable feeling of, oh, right, okay, what am I doing in this now? It’s not gonna be any good. And so I’ve got just a three step framework that I use to make sure that every time I schedule in time with myself to get the good stuff done, it actually happens. So my solution to turning up to these sessions in your diary that you are scheduling with yourself to get good stuff done is my framework of PLP.
We can’t make a word out of it unless we try, but that doesn’t really work. So PLP number one is progress. Whether you have the phrase of prolific beats perfect. My new one, my favorite one, which I heard on a trip that I went on the other week, is version one, is better than version none. It’s just like, so good that, like, version one, whether you think it’s rubbish, is better than having nothing at all. So step one is progress. Like, just be wedded to the fact of whatever I am going to create, do, write about, learn, or whatever that is. Whether you’re just gonna go into it with, okay, I might not know how to do this at all right now. I might not think I’m any good at it right now, but I will get better. And this is just like the first step on it. So I’m just gonna try. I might surprise myself. I might be writing a blog and I might surprise myself. I might come up with some ideas, some social media posts, and I might get to the end of the hour and I think, okay, they’re not the best, but I’ve got something to work with now in tomorrow’s session.
So we’re gonna. We’re gonna really, really focus in on progress of any kind is better than you dicking around in your inbox for one of the better words. So we’re gonna put the focus sessions in, and we’re gonna be wedded to the fact of. I’m gonna take the pressure off myself. I’m not gonna, be my own worst critic. I’m just gonna go, whatever happens in this now, next 60 minutes, 90 minutes. This progress is better than where I was an hour ago. So, Emma, we’re just gonna roll with it. So my first part of solution is we’re going to be married to the fact of any kind of progress is better than none at all. The l in my Plp. The l in that, is a list. Do not turn up to your sessions without a list of things that would be a good use of time. Don’t go into it thinking. Right. Okay. It’s 09:00 now. Oh. What? Oh, yeah. Last week I did say I was going to start writing newsletter. Oh, maybe I’ll go to that. Oh, and then actually, at the end of the session, oh, no, no. I was meant to create that, social media post because I don’t have anything scheduled for tomorrow.
Like, we’re going to go into the sessions with lists. We’re going to have, whether you just write it in your notepad, your apple note, whatever project management tool you’re using, we’re just going to create an ongoing list that we add to it’s. Like a, it’s like a war chest as things to open up and go, oh, yeah, I can work on that one today. So we’re going to create a list and just add to it ongoing of, the things that we know would be needle movers, business movers. Whether it’s sending out a new email campaign, whether it’s starting to send a weekly email, whether it’s making sure your new leads into your system, get some automated email replies so they get some nurturing and whatever it might be, we’re just going to keep adding to the list as you come up with ideas and inspiration. So you’ve got a reference point to look at of the things that you need to do. So we’re going to, we’re wedded to progress. And number two, we’re going to have a list that’s like our war chest of things to refer to, to get done.
And my final p in my PLP is we’re going to plan what we’re doing in tomorrow’s session the night before. I learned this from Nigel Bottrell. Like, the day doesn’t end until tomorrow’s planned. turning up to a session with a kind of complete Pandora’s box of all these things you could potentially do is just, time wasting. And you’ll know, you’ll know what the really important things are. But when you are kind of in the moment under pressure, that’s when we don’t make the best use of our time. So from our list that we’re going to keep adding to and creating and things that we know will be great to do either now or in the future.
Step three of this is that some tomorrow we’re gonna go. Okay, well, two till three. I’ve planned an hour to myself to get some good work done. And in that hour I’m definitely going to create next week’s social media posts. Or I’m definitely going to, create some ideas for stories that I’m like Instagram stories that I’m gonna do. I’m, gonna write a new email to my list of all new leads that come in. Like, we’re gonna actually go into it with a specific, like, we love specifics in these sessions. A specific task that we can then just focus on and, just do one thing really well or it might be writing a new blog post or, you know, whatever it might be, we’re going to turn up to it and go, I’m just going to start. I’m just going to, like, I’m, all totally in here for the progress that I’m going to make. I’ve got my list to refer to, to plan the following day, and I’m going to make sure that I’ve planned what I am doing in that session today. I’m just going to do that one thing really well. And the satisfaction of just putting your energies into one thing, making progress on it, whether it’s that much or that much, is so satisfying and
the compound effect of it is really, really game changing for your business.
And so, number one, if you do this, do not, please be hard on yourself. Most of us do it. Most of us are the kings and queens of procrastination. Even, like, the. The gurus that you look up to, they will know how to pronounce procrastinate, but they will, they will set themselves up for success by turning up to sessions that they book with themselves and making the most of it. Because just like, if you had a meeting with a client, you wouldn’t not turn up to it. You wouldn’t talk about things that just weren’t relevant, and you wouldn’t kind of dick about doing, like, little things that the client wasn’t interested in. You’d go there with an intention, with an outcome that you wanted. And we’re going to do exactly the same thing on the time that we book with ourselves. I hope today’s episode of MI TV was really helpful for you on making the most of time to move your business forward. And I’ll see you next week for episode 263. See you then. Bye.
