Article summary

While “pushing through” your feelings to get things done is a popular approach, it doesn’t work at all for a lot of people.

If you’ve only had partial success with being tough on yourself, or if you find yourself repeatedly procrastinating on your goals, you’ll find a different path in this article!

You’ll learn the neuropsychological explanation of why being gentle and listening to how you feel actually sets you up to crush your goals more effectively than ever.

You’ll also learn the steps you can take on this new path to happy and inspired productivity.

(Spoiler: You’re gonna be invited to see productivity as something that can and should be as enjoyable and pleasurable as possible!)

Let’s go!

“You just gotta push trough”

I’m sure you’ve heard it all before: “You just gotta push through!”, “You need to be 100% consistent in what you do”, and “Hard self-discipline is the only way to succeed”. Etc. 

Even though the message is often more nuanced, there are a lot of people out there basically telling you to ignore how you feel and see your emotions as a weakness or obstacles to be overcome.

While this approach may bring results in the short term, the long-term costs can often be devastating. Getting brain damage from burnout and losing the joy of life are just the start of it.

Luckily, you can be resilient, inventive, and determined without disconnecting from your feelings.

You can be gentle and connected with yourself and still crush your goals.

For many of us, disconnecting from our feelings isn’t even a viable option. I personally get devastating migraines and body aches the moment I try to “push through” how I’m feeling. Needless to say, I don’t get much done in that state.

Even if you don’t have such a clear and strong reaction as I do, you might notice that being tough with yourself doesn’t work for you as promised. Perhaps you feel proud and satisfied after “pushing through” and getting a lot done, but then the emotional backlash comes as procrastination and loss of confidence.

The problem isn’t you. The problem is all that emotional disconnection and harsh self-discipline, and the natural backlash it causes.

You’re about to learn a much more efficient, scientific and gentle way to crush your goals!

You’ll learn a delightful and delicious approach to working, that might just change your life! 

It has for me and for so many of my 1000+ therapy clients and students.

Allow me to present to you… [*cue magical twinkling music*]

The Gentle Path to Crushing Your Goals

This gentle way of approaching productivity is grounded in how the human brain and nervous system work.
The idea is that you can learn to regulate which part of your autonomic nervous system (Play & Connect / Fight & Flight / Freeze) is active. 

In a nutshell, when we’re feeling too challenged or overwhelmed, we go into threat system activation, which means our pre-frontal cortex turns off and more primal brain structures take charge. In other words, we get tunnel vision to get away from the problem and we start feeling terrible. 

All the steps below are effective interventions that lead to your pre-frontal cortex staying online, which means that you can do great work and feel as good as possible!

The 10 Steps to Gently Crushing Your Goals

1. Be a wise and warm coach to yourself

Speak to yourself curiously and constructively, providing warm self-feedback, to lift yourself up.
This kind of self-talk keeps your pre-frontal cortex active, and you’ll be more inventive, resilient, and happy than if you’re beating yourself up. 

Would a wise coach let you get lost in all kinds of unhelpful thinking? Absolutely not! They’d listen to what’s actually behind any distracting thoughts you’re having, and help you get to your next step.

2. Create great systems that support you as you are now

You’re only as efficient as your systems are helpful.
Get inspired by other people’s productivity systems, experiment with them, and find what works for you right now. You might end up adapting it or changing it completely later as you go along. 

Identify what your problems or friction points are, and create systems that support you in getting to where you want to go more smoothly. For example, when I realised that my task management system wasn’t equipped to efficiently handle tasks and planning related to multiple projects, I went from using Apple Notes to Notion, in addition to my calendar. At different life stages, I’ve had great success using a Bullet Journal setup, Workflowy and Trello! 

It’s all about getting ambitious about having your system fulfil your needs. You don’t need to settle for less.
Find the components you enjoy and that you need and make sure your system fits who you are right now - instead of trying to force yourself to be a different way just to make a system work. And keep tailoring it to your needs and desires as you go along.

3. Follow the Pareto Principle religiously

I’m myself a devoted practitioner of the Pareto Principle, and I invite you to join the cult!
In a nutshell, the idea is that 20% of what you do will provide 80% of the results. Often, when you think about it, you already know which tasks you have that actually make a difference.
If you aren’t sure, you need to gather data on what is actually important or not. 

Then you need to ruthlessly murder all the tasks that are not part of the 20%. (So you can do more of the 20% that actually matters!). 

Or at least, make sure you spend 80% of your productive time on the things that really matter, and then 20% on the things that don’t really move you toward where you want to go, but that are nice to have.

4. Prioritize your dreams and deep excitement, 'cause no one else will

It’s up to you to build your own future. So prioritize it. No one else is coming to do that for you. You'll only get it if you go for it.

5. Don’t let Planning Limbo kill your dreams

Whatever your goals are, first make sure they’re deeply exciting for you, and second, make sure you’re taking action toward them. 

While there’s a place for learning and planning, do not let your great ideas die in planning limbo!
 
Only learn the minimum amount you need to take the next action. Always check in with yourself before you prioritize spending time either learning something or planning - Am I doing this to procrastinate on taking action, or is it absolutely crucial to taking wise action?

6. Don’t let Perfection Limbo kill your dreams

Whatever your goal is, make sure you’re focusing on completing it instead of perfecting the end result. That way you’ll get feedback, learn, and take it to the next level. 

See what you produce as a contribution to a conversation, rather than as an end result.

7. Embrace mistakes, challenges, and difficult feelings as a part of the journey

Expect it, own it all, and keep going, with a lot of curiosity, and warmth as you wisely coach yourself.

8. Get help with recurring fears that stop you

Sometimes it’s not enough to coach yourself wisely.
If you’re being a great coach to yourself, and you’re still feeling almost illogically overwhelmed, it might very well be because you’re actually dealing with something from the past. It’s completely normal. Everyone is dealing with stuff from their past interfering with the present moment.

Here are a couple of examples that you might relate to:

You notice that a part of you keeps pushing you to disconnect from how you feel, in order to get things done, even though you logically know that it will provoke a procrastination backlash later, and make you feel unhappy.

Or…

You notice that a part of you is illogically terrified of you actually working toward your goal, and keeps coming up with ingenious schemes to keep you doing other things. 

If you notice these kinds of repeating behaviours in yourself, you might very well benefit from talking to an Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapist. They can help you permanently heal any old feelings of overwhelm that are getting triggered by your current challenges. That way you’ll have a much smoother ride getting things done.

I can tell you from my own personal experience, that nothing else has affected my productivity as positively as taking this step. I’ve also seen it time and time again in my past work as a therapist.

9. Be compassionate toward any difficult feelings that seem to stop you from being productive

If you blame or judge yourself, you’ll only increase the activation of your mind-body threat system, which will make it even harder to get things done.

Be kind, be a good parent to yourself, and keep coaching yourself through any feelings, with as much wisdom and patience as you can find in yourself.

10. Do what you do out of love for yourself

Prioritize taking care of yourself holistically. Do whatever you do from a state of love and care. Whether it’s pushing through tiredness, or taking a day off in nature to replenish. Make sure it’s coming from an intention of taking great care of yourself!

Bonus step: Crushing your goals gets to be enjoyable and pleasurable!

If you find yourself overwhelmed by your projects and plans - Ask for help! 

Get practical help. Get help with learning to parent the parts of yourself that get overwhelmed. Get every kind of help that would make your journey more pleasurable and enjoyable. 

To quote Rachel Rodgers: “Blood, sweat and tears. Ewwww….” 
Getting things done can and should be as enjoyable as possible.

Your next steps

• How did this article make you feel? Great? Uncomfortable?
  • Whatever you’re feeling, why do you think that is?
• What did you learn from reading this article?
• What action steps will you take based on what you learnt?
  • What could be the next, ridiculously small thing you could do to get moving on that?

Lots of love,
Sara