77: Overworking and Underworking.
Highlights:
When emotions are high, intelligence is low.
When our thoughts are all over the place, we will feel emotionally all over the place too.
Whether you are overworking or underworking, it is not serving you or your business.
Overthinking is the cause of both overworking and underworking, so this is the problem to solve.
There are two simple, actionable tools to manage overthinking.
Many business owners come to me feeling tired, overworked, and maybe even burnt out from chasing their to-dos day after day.
My job is helping busy business owners get more done by hustling less.
To tackle this, we need to address the root cause of WHY you’re exhausted and always behind.
There are two reasons: You’re either overworking or you are underworking in your business.
We’ll start with overworking.
Overworking is spending more energy than the value of the outcome you are producing.
Overachievers and perfectionists love overworking! As perfectionists, we often produce this piece of work that is very well thought and well researched, but we overthink it so much that we exhaust ourselves and end up giving less value.
Overworking, overachieving, and perfectionism all come from overthinking. When we overthink, we lose sight of the purpose, and we produce less because we “spend more” energy thinking than creating.
For example, an okay writer can produce 4 blog posts, 1 email newsletter and 5 social media posts in a week. The sum total of their “okay-ness” (that’s totally a word) is 10 assets to help their audience and grow their business.
A perfectionist can painstakingly write 1 blog post, 1 email and 2 social media posts in a week. So they end up creating 4 assets. That’s 60% less productive! Sure, their work is great, but their impact is considerably lower AND they suffer the frustration and exhaustion that is not sustainable in the long run.
I’m not saying that you shouldn’t care about what you publish, of course not. But imagine this compounded over a year. Which writer do you think will be happier, have a larger reach and a thriving business? (Because, remember, the “okay” writer is helping someone every time they write.)
Now, let’s look at underworking.
Underworking is underestimating what it actually takes to create the result you want.
Because of overthinking and the mental exhaustion that comes with it, we often feel like we’re working all the time. Or we believe we’ve tried everything and nothing is working, and maybe the result we want just isn’t realistic for us.
But the truth is that results in business are just math. There is a certain equation, or puzzle to solve, in order to achieve it. If you aren’t there yet, it’s because you’re still figuring out one or more elements of this equation.
That’s really it. And if you can start to see your business goals as puzzles or equations that you’re currently working to solve, you can take some of that frustration and fear out of the process.
But for many of us, we underestimate how much time, or how many posts, or how many sales calls it will take…and then we do a few (and it feels like so many!) and think “Whelp, that’s a bust!” And we give up and try something else.
Once again, though, overthinking is the cause. But this time, our thoughts spiral into a laundry list of “evidence” as to why we shouldn’t keep wasting our time on these things. We tell ourselves it'll never work out, because we would already be there if it was meant to be.
When you are underworking, you’re focused more on reasons to quit than reasons to keep going. It’s basically hedging your bets…against yourself! And you never win when you bet against yourself.
So…it all leads back to overthinking. Now what?
The antidote to overthinking is to take one small but immediate action.
As soon as you catch your brain starting to spiral, take a breath and tell yourself “I don’t need to have it all figured out, I just need to take the next step.”
And then take that step. By getting yourself out of your head and into action, you’re changing your state; Your physical state and your emotional state, because you are disrupting the pattern of thought that creates the stressful experience.
That one action will make the next action easier, creating momentum instead of a standstill.
If you repeat this process over and over, you’ll ultimately train yourself to manage your thoughts instead of spinning in them. That’s not to say that you won’t have spiraling thoughts anymore! Nope, sorry, that’s part of having a human brain. But you can work with them so you can get more done with less exhaustion and stress,
Finally, if you are an overthinker, doing thought work - uncovering your hidden thoughts and limiting beliefs, and learning to let go of them - will be a game-changer in your life and business. We all have mental blocks that cause trouble, but overthinkers tend to have them running at warp speed!
If you’d like to find yours, use the Power Thinking Workbook inside Maverick HQ. When you join, you’ll gain access to the entire collection of resources to help you and your business thrive.
Linsi Brownson is a certified business and life coach, and seasoned small business owner. Over 15 years, she has owned ecommerce, services-based and agency businesses ranging from a team of 1 to 25.
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Transcript
You are listening to Be Brilliant in your Business, the podcast for small business owners to be focused, energized and in charge as you build the business you love.
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Are you ready? Let's go. Hey Mavericks. Welcome to the show. Today, we're talking about overworking and under working, and why we do it and how to stop it. So my business is helping busy business owners get more done by hustling less not by doing more stuff, but actually by doing less. And so naturally, I talk with a lot of business owners who are very tired. And they come to me knowing that they're kind of overworking because they're feeling maybe burnt out. And like they're just chasing their days, or chasing their two dues day after day. And no matter how much they get done, there's always something else that needs to get done. So who here doesn't relate to that, right. But here's the thing, if you are exhausted by your business, or by life, in general, just too much going on, and you're not getting the results that you want, you're actually probably under working, if you aren't getting the results that you want, but you're just totally exhausted. That's a sign that you're overworking.
So that's what we're going to talk about today. And don't worry, I'm not going to tell you to add more stuff to your to do list. I'm also not going to tell you to outsource or jump in and hire someone to take things off your plate. We're going to talk about this from the root cause because if you are overworking or under working, it is a result of overthinking, which is basically letting your mind run amok and not thinking objectively and strategically about what it takes to produce the outcomes that you want. So if you try to solve overworking, by just doing less, when you tried to solve under working by doing more than really you're just playing hot potato with the problem, you'll just keep passing that problem back and forth to yourself bouncing from overworking to under working. And you'll find that you burn your hands a lot with this hot potato, and you're not actually solving any problems. So it's not effective. And we're going to talk about what to do instead.
And if you identify with these overworking and under working, if you know you're doing this and you want to get it sorted out once and for all, then you can come and talk with me one on one. And we'll do a clarity session together. So this is my free consultation. And what we're going to do is lay out what it is that you really want, and what you're working toward or what you're wishing for. And then I have some great questions to ask you. And then I will tell you very honestly, what is getting in your way, what steps you want to take. And I'm going to give you my recommendations on what you can be focusing on to start getting momentum again. So come and talk with me if you want to do that.
But I want to start by defining overworking and under working just so that we are all on the same page here. So overworking is spending more energy than the value of the outcome you're producing. So I want you to think about this like overspending like money. And I'm going to give you this example of overspending on a pizza. So I was having this conversation recently with some of my friends about $100 pizza. Now, we could talk about the market and some of the nuances of this hundred dollar pizza. And that's a whole different conversation, right? But I want to put that aside for now. And let's just agree that in general, you would probably consider paying $100 for a pizza to be overspending on the pizza, right? So when you are overworking, you're doing the same thing. You are producing a result that you like a pizza, but you're putting in more effort than you're really getting in return. overachievers and perfectionists love overworking, we have this unwritten rule that good enough is basically the equivalent of failure, right? And we have this belief that the harder we work, the more valuable something becomes. But it's simply not true.
Especially as entrepreneurs it's the law of diminishing returns, there is a point with everything where the more you put in, the less you get back. And it's really important to understand where you land inside that equation. Because if you keep overspending your energy, if you keep overworking, you will create energy debt. And many of us know this as burnout. So I want to give you an example of a client, who was overthinking and overworking on her writing on her blog. So she came to me, she presented this problem in the context of wanting to hire someone to take over writing for her because it was too time consuming, it was frankly, pretty painful for her to do. And so she's telling me this, and she's saying, I need to hire this person so that I can just focus on my zone of genius. And I love that she said that because my clients, especially those of you who've listened to the podcast, you guys know that I talk about things like focus and staying in your zone of genius quite a bit, right? So sometimes you guys try to convince me of this thing that you want to do you want me to agree with you. And you use my words, in order to get me to do it.
So she presents me with this problem that she wants me to tell her Yes, you need to stay focused and hire someone to take this over. That is a good business decision. I asked her why it was so time consuming for her to be writing and what was making it so painful. And why she thought that this wasn't in her zone of genius. Now I know her so I have some insight. And I had a couple hunches about what might be driving all of this. And so she told me how long it was taking her and all of the things that she was doing and why it was painful. And we just got everything out on the table. And I drew a line from her actions, all the things she was doing back to her thoughts. And then we could see how much was actually going on inside of her head. And that was all causing her to do this, like deep dive into perfectionism that was taking her for ever. Right. So she would produce this extremely in depth piece of work that was really well thought it was really well researched. But frankly, was hard to read. It was not all that compelling, because she put so much time and energy into making the words just so. But she was forgetting the whole purpose of the writing, which is to engage her readers to give them value. And then to show them how she can help them show them how she can take that further. But she was overthinking it so much that she was exhausting herself and then writing this exhaustive thing that was overwhelming to her readers. So what she was doing with all this overthinking was more work and actually giving them less value. And then because of all that, because she put so much into creating this long exhaustive piece of writing, she actually convinced herself that because it was so deep, and what was the word that she used academic. So she convinced herself that it would be an appropriate given the context for her to make an offer to them or to have a call to action. So she put all this work into creating something that had a non existent return on investment. Right? So she would get nothing from it except a bunch of overwhelmed readers. So she got trapped in her head instead of staying in the mind of her readers and her potential clients. You see what I'm saying?
So overworking, overachieving perfectionism, all of these things come from over thinking. And the result that you produce is either going to be the result that you want plus negative consequences, or it's actually diminishing the value based on how much effort you're putting in.
So that is overworking and under working is when you don't have the results because you haven't met the requirements to get it. Now, it doesn't mean that you're not working, it doesn't mean that you are laying on your couch scrolling on Instagram, it might be that sometimes, right? I talked about numbing out in Episode 75. But under working simply means that your efforts are falling short of what it actually takes to create that result. The best example of this, I think, is when you have a client goal. So let's say you want to new clients, and you typically get client one out of every five people that you Have a sales call with or one out of every five proposals that you send. Now, if you're working with me, I help you make that conversion rate higher. But that's a pretty average conversion rate for many of us service providers. So then that means that in order to get to clients, you will need to have 10 sales calls, or you have to send 10 proposals. And if you're not doing that, if you're not consistently having those calls or getting those proposal requests, then that is the reason you don't have the result. Because the numbers simply don't add up. And so what I mean by under working is that usually, instead of putting the energy then into going out and booking those 10 calls, or lining up those 10, proposals, doing the direct actions that create those results, you're busy creating content or engaging with people on Instagram, taking a LinkedIn course, or researching the best CRM, or the best lead gen software, right, and you can have these really great reasons. And this can all sound like very justifiable action.
But the honest truth, I really get into this with my clients is that most of us when we are under working, it's simply because we're afraid of looking stupid. We're afraid of rejection, we're afraid of people thinking that we are pushy, or salesy or greedy or desperate. This one was my favorite desperate, this idea. Like, I don't want people to know that they can work with me, because then they'll think that I'm not in high enough demand. Oh, my gosh. So deep down, we have this fear, and we respond to it. By coming up with lots of things we can do, instead of taking the massive action, the true thing that is going to generate the results that we want. So we need to solve this from the root cause, which is overthinking, we all know what it's like to overthink to sort of spin around in your head, weighing pros and cons, making lists, making decisions and then being flooded with the what ifs of everything, right? When we overthink, we lose sight of the purpose, we become very buzzy with emotion.
Because every thought that we have produces an emotion. And if our thoughts are all over the place, then our emotions will be all over the place to if you've ever heard that, when emotions are high intelligence is low. I don't remember if that's a direct quote from someone, but it is a fact. So when you are overthinking, you are buzzing with emotion, and you lose your ability to be objective and to be strategic. And then the reaction to that is to overwork to push harder use your willpower and force and use negative self talk to propel yourself forward or to under work to distract yourself with busy work and other things to take lots of little actions that don't add up and to spin around in doubt, and confusion.
So these are the direct result of overthinking. So how do we solve this? There's one really simple answer. But I'm going to start with a practical exercise. And I've talked about this before, I really want you to do it. The first thing I want you to do is to put your thoughts down on paper, when you are overthinking your thoughts are not doing you any good inside your head. So I want you to grab a piece of paper and write at the top of the page, write down what your problem is. But I want you to write only the facts of your problem.
So with the client example I gave you with the blog, her problem might be eight hours to write a blog post. And then underneath that, you will write down every thought that pops into your head about the problem. So if you think it, you got to write it down, you will get a page easily probably front and back of a page doing this. Everything you think about this problem. You really want to make room for all of your thoughts. You're sort of just letting your brain vent to you like you would a stressed out friend. So give yourself that opportunity. Get it all out of your head. And then here's how you solve overthinking. You make a decision and you move forward. Whatever decision you make is non negotiable. And all of the thoughts that challenge your decision because they still will, right? They simply don't get a vote here. So it's important that you take that moment to hear them out and get them on paper. Because when you don't do that, then they're just going to remain noisy and get noisier in your head. But as soon as you get them out onto paper, then you make your decision about what you're going to do what you're going to choose to think. And you don't look back. Because here's the thing, you can't please all of your thoughts. And that's fine. Just choose the thoughts that are clearly aligned with the result that you want to create.
So, to summarize, overworking isn't serving you or your business, and under working isn't serving you or your business. And both of these are caused by overthinking, which is letting your brain run you, instead of you running the show. And you can solve this by getting your thoughts on paper and then making a swift decision about what you're going to think what you're going to do about it and moving yourself forward. You want to always come back to the result that you want, and what you need to think and feel and do to get there. All right. I hope that that has been helpful. If you would like to make your first decision to move this forward. by scheduling a clarity session with me, you can go to the clarity session.com and find a good time. All right, I will be here in your ears. Next week. Have a great week, you guys.
Hey, I know that running a small business can feel complicated. So let me help you uncomplicate it. I teach people how to harness their creative brainpower to take clear and focused action to accomplish their goals without burning out. I offer a free one hour consultation where we uncover what is really getting in your way right now. And I'll show you step by step how to create an aligned business that you will love to build. In this conversation. I'm going to give you the foundation to work confidently every single day. And it's going to be super simple. I want you to have the time, energy and freedom for everything that you want in life. And I want you to start having it right now. To find a time that works for you visit linsibrownson.com