Design Your Day: How to be Productive Without Burning Out | Heather Grace Hanson | Skillshare
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Design Your Day: How to be Productive Without Burning Out

teacher avatar Heather Grace Hanson, Life + Productivity Coach

Watch this class and thousands more

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Taught by industry leaders & working professionals
Topics include illustration, design, photography, and more

Watch this class and thousands more

Get unlimited access to every class
Taught by industry leaders & working professionals
Topics include illustration, design, photography, and more

Lessons in This Class

    • 1.

      Introduction

      2:05

    • 2.

      Class Project

      1:40

    • 3.

      Managing Your Energy

      4:21

    • 4.

      Common Energy Drainers

      4:00

    • 5.

      How to R.E.S.T. and Refuel

      4:07

    • 6.

      How to Reduce Overwhelm

      2:28

    • 7.

      Create a Productive Mindset

      3:27

    • 8.

      Prioritize Your Values

      1:14

    • 9.

      What's Most Important?

      4:03

    • 10.

      Design Your Day

      5:55

    • 11.

      Focus & Overcome Procrastination

      3:26

    • 12.

      Congratulations & Final Thoughts

      1:24

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About This Class

Is it really possible to get more done by working less? Yes, it absolutely is! In this class I’m going to explain why and teach you how you can be more productive by working less. 

Burnout is affecting far too many people these days, and not only can it be avoided, but it’s also hurting our productivity. Ironic, right? We work hard and long hours to get things done, and that turns into exactly what prevents us from getting things done. Let’s trade in this toxic burnout cycle for a healthier alternative…

 

In this class you’ll learn how to: 

  • manage your energy and power your productivity with rest
  • reduce stress and overwhelm
  • create a productive mindset
  • prioritize and overcome procrastination
  • design your day in a way that is flexible and works for you

Why take this class?

How we spend each of our days adds up to how we spend our life. I don’t think any of us want to look back on our life and feel like we spent most of it exhausted and overwhelmed. 

A lot of time management strategies focus on how to get more work done in a shorter amount of time, and that’s valuable and helpful. However, if you aren’t also managing your energy, that can easily lead to burnout if you just keep doing more and more work. 

Combining time management and energy management, along with learning how to focus on what’s most important, can allow you to achieve your most important goals while still enjoying life and getting the rest you need and deserve.

This class is for you if you: 

  • feel overwhelmed with all of your work and responsibilities
  • are tired of working long hours but still feeling like you got nothing done
  • want to feel calm and accomplished at the end of the day instead of exhausted
  • are an entrepreneur, freelancer, or have the freedom to set your own hours and schedule 
  • have a 9-5 job and can’t set your work schedule, but you’re feeling overwhelmed and burned out

Resources:

You can download the class workbook to follow along and do the exercises in.

Meet Your Teacher

Teacher Profile Image

Heather Grace Hanson

Life + Productivity Coach

Teacher

Hey there! I'm Heather.

I'm a certified life coach with a special focus in productivity and life design. I'm obsessed with helping you create your ideal life and achieve those big dreams of yours. 

I used to work a typical 9-5 job and spent too many of those years living my life on auto-pilot. Working all the time while life seemed to just be passing me by, until I finally burned out. I realized that life is too amazing to just watch it from the sidelines. I wanted to be a part of it!

So I quit my job and started my coaching business. As a lifelong learner obsessed with personal development, who also loves helping people,  it seems inevitable now that I'd end up working as a coach!

Freedom is at the foundation of all my work. I think... See full profile

Related Skills

Productivity Time Management
Level: All Levels

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Transcripts

1. Introduction: Do you ever feel like there's not enough hours in the day? Do you sometimes feel overwhelmed by all the things you need to do? I've definitely been there. Hi, I'm Heather Grace Hanson. I'm a certified coach specializing in productivity, and I'm a former burned out cubicle dweller. My burnout experience led me down a road to learn how I could still be highly productive while working fewer hours. After leaving my 9-5 job two years ago, I started my business as a life coach and a consultant working with companies to improve employee well-being. I suddenly had to juggle multiple clients and projects of various kinds all at the same time. The strategies I'm teaching you in this class are what helped me to manage all of that and build my business without burning out. In this class, I'm going to teach you how to manage both your time and energy. You'll create a flexible schedule that allows you to be productive without burning out. We'll also talk about how to reduce the stress and overwhelm. Create a productive mindset, prioritize your goals, as well as how to focus and overcome procrastination. This class is for you if you ever feel overworked and overwhelmed with everything you need to do. You want to work less, but just can't figure out how. It's ideal if you have the ability to set your own hours. But you can still benefit from many of the lessons in this class even if you can't change your working hours. How we spend each of our days adds up to how we spend our life. I don't think any of us want to look back on our life and feel like we spent most of it exhausted and stressed out. This class will help you enjoy your days while still being productive and will give you the flexibility to handle any curveball that life throws your way. Let's get started. 2. Class Project: Before we get into the lessons, Let's talk about your class project. As you go through the class, you'll be creating a plan that allows you to work fewer hours by managing both your time and energy and streamlining your goals so you can focus on what's most important and cut out the rest. Before I did this in my own life, I was constantly busy doing so many things that felt important, but I was confused why I had such a hard time achieving my goals. Now I'm able to achieve my goals by working fewer hours and without burning out. This class project can help you do the same. You'll start by creating an energy management plan and a map of your own natural energy flow. Next, you'll do an exercise to clarify your values. What's most important to you right now? Then you'll set your goals, keeping your values in mind so that your actions will be aligned with what matters to you. Finally, you'll put all of this together by creating a new schedule for yourself that will be aligned with your natural energy flow, which will allow you to perform at your best each day, knowing that every day you're getting closer to your goals and you are enjoying the process along the way. Go ahead and download the class workbook now so you have it ready to complete each exercise as you go through the course. Please share images of your completed exercises in the project gallery so we can celebrate your success. Let's get started. I'll see you in the next lesson. 3. Managing Your Energy: In this lesson, we're going to talk about managing your energy. First, I'll explain what energy management is and why it's important. Then we'll talk about how energy works and how you can manage it. Lastly, I'll talk about how you can start tracking your energy so you can begin to map out your own natural energy flow. Energy management is exactly what it sounds like. It's the practice of managing your energy. I'll talk about how you can actually do that in a minute. But first I want to talk about why this is such an important skill to develop. Time management is most often talked about in the topic of productivity. That's an important skill as well. But energy management is often ignored and the danger there is that it can cause you to burn out. When you focus only on time management, it can cause you to continually try and do more work in a shorter amount of time. That can be a good thing when you're trying to reduce the number of hours that you work. However, what often happens is that you keep working the same number of hours or more as you just continue to add more and more work onto your plate. It happens to the best of us because there's no end to the amount of work that could be done. When you're managing both your time and energy though, you're able to work more efficiently so that you can get your work done in a shorter amount of time and you're able to recognize when your energy is either high, low, or average. You can intentionally choose to work when your energy is high and rest and recharge when your energy is low. This way of working allows you to get in a healthy cycle of getting work done without burning out or adding extra stress to your life. How do you actually get into that healthy energy cycle? Everything you think, feel, and do during the day affects your energy in some way, either by draining it or replenishing it. You want to be aware of what drains your energy and be able to recognize when your energy is low. You also want to be aware of what replenishes your energy so that you're able to recharge your energy when it does get low. Your action step in this lesson is to start tracking your energy to gain awareness of what times of day your energy is usually high, medium, or low. A typical energy flow for most people is that your energy will normally be higher in the morning since you've just gotten rest while sleeping the night before. Then time will naturally deplete your energy as it gets closer to bedtime. I'm sure you're aware of the typical afternoon slump that a lot of us experience. That's a typical energy flow that people experience. However, there's lot of variation within that for each person. Because some people take longer to feel fully awake in the morning and others might jump right up and be ready to go. Depending on what times you eat or drink caffeine, that can affect your energy among lots of other factors. That's why it's important for you to track your own energy so you can really know what your own typical energy flow is like throughout the day. I recommend that you track your energy over the course of a whole week to be able to get a good picture of what's typical for you. Make sure to download your workbook now if you haven't already and use the pages in there to track your energy for the next seven days. Don't worry though you can continue on with the rest of the class now, even without having this filled out yet. The key takeaway from this lesson is that energy management is the practice of managing your energy by engaging in a healthy cycle of recharging your energy whenever it gets low so that you don't drain yourself into a state of burnout. Your action step is to start tracking your energy levels over the next seven days to become aware of your unique energy flow. In the next lesson, we're going to talk about some of the most common things that drain your energy. You'll create a list of the specific things that are draining for you. I'll see you there. 4. Common Energy Drainers: In this lesson, I'm going to talk about some of the most common things that drain your energy. This will help you start to gain awareness of what's draining your energy throughout the day, which will be especially important when you design your new schedule later in the course. Because you want to minimize the things that drain your energy, and add in more things to your day that refuel your energy. Let's get right into it. The number 1 energy drainer is lack of sleep. Sleep is the foundation of all your energy, so when it's lacking, you'll always be lacking in energy. The second energy drainer is an unhealthy diet. Your body and brain need basic nutritional elements in order to function optimally. When you deprive yourself of those nutrients, it affects your energy and performance. The third energy drainer is spending too much time with other people. What's interesting about this one, is that spending time with people you care about can initially give you energy. However, if you're spending too much time with people, eventually it will become draining because all of us need some alone time, even extroverts. The fourth energy drainer is spending too much time alone. This one works in harmony with the last one. We all do need some alone time to replenish our energy, however, if you spend too much time alone, eventually you'll become drained from missing out on the social connections that bring you energy. This applies to both introverts and extroverts. Some people will need more alone time than others, so you'll need to find the balance that works for you. The fifth energy drainer is using your willpower. Anytime you're using mental effort to either force yourself to do something or to avoid doing something, it's actively draining your energy. This doesn't mean you want to avoid using willpower. Instead, try to create a situation where you don't need to use your willpower as much. For example, if you're trying to eat healthier, don't keep cookies around. Keep them out of sight, to keep them out of mind. The sixth energy drainer is negative thinking. Negative emotions are draining. If you're ruminating on negative thoughts that will naturally drain your energy. We all slip into this habit occasionally, but try to catch yourself when you do, so you can avoid it as much as possible. The seventh energy drainer is a two for one; making decisions and multitasking. Any mental processing you do during the day will drain your energy. Anything you can do to reduce multitasking and the number of decisions you need to make, will benefit your energy levels. Let's recap those seven common energy drainers. Number 1, is lack of sleep. Number 2, is an unhealthy diet. Number 3, spending too much time with other people. Number 4, spending too much time alone. Number 5, using your willpower. Number 6, negative thinking, and number 7, making decisions and multitasking. These are all listed in your class workbook and there's additional space for you to fill in other things that drain your energy. Get out your workbook now and brainstorm anything else you can think of that drains your energy. In the next lesson, we're going to talk about the importance of rest, and I'll go over some of the most common things that replenish your energy. I'll see you there in the next lesson. 5. How to R.E.S.T. and Refuel: In this lesson, we're going to talk about why rest is so important, and I'll go over the most common things that replenish your energy. Rest is important for two reasons. First and most importantly, it's the foundation of your health and energy. Secondly, when you're trying to optimize your productivity, rest is one of your best tools. I always like to say, replenish energy, save time. Because when you're tired, you do everything slower. When you take the time to rest and replenish your energy, you end up saving time because you have the energy to finish your work faster. Let's review some of the most common things that refuel you. The number 1 thing that replenishes your energy is sleep. A good night sleep will always be the best thing you can do to make sure you have enough energy during the day. Number 2 is a healthy diet. When you fill your body and brain with the nutrients it needs to function properly, you'll increase your energy and performance in anything you do. The third energy replenisher is exercise. Immediately after exercising, you might be tired, but in the long run, it raises your base levels of energy. Number 4 is spending time with friends and family. In the last lesson, I talked about how there's a balance you want to find between time alone versus with others. Make sure you find that balance and give yourself that social energy boost of spending time with people you care about. The fifth energy replenisher is spending time in nature. This is very calming and grounding for most people. Especially if you live in a city, it's beneficial to get away into nature once in a while. Number 6 is experiencing positive emotions. Anything that causes you to feel positive emotions will naturally energize you, so things like laughing and doing activities you enjoy. Playing with my dog, Barkley, always works for me. The seventh common energy replenisher is setting clear and actionable goals. When your goals are clear and actionable, it's energizing to be able to see that path in front of you and motivates you to want to take action. Now I want to warn you about a common mistake to avoid. I call it self-care burnout. It's when you realize that you aren't doing enough to replenish your energy and you give yourself more things to do. Even if they are energy replenishing activities, you need to make sure you're also taking other things off your plate that drain your energy. Otherwise, you run the risk of overloading yourself with things to do. Believe me, I learned this lesson the hard way. Let's recap. Rest is so important because it's the foundation of your health and energy, and it also saves you time in the long run. The seven common energy replenishers are: Number 1, sleep. Number 2, a healthy diet. Number 3 exercise. Number 4 spending time with friends and family. Number 5, spending time in nature. Number 6, experiencing positive emotions. Number 7, setting clear and actionable goals. These are all listed in your class workbook. There's additional space for you to fill in other things that refuel you. Your action step now is to brainstorm anything else you can think of to add to this list. In the next lesson, we're going to talk about how to reduce stress and overwhelm. I'll see you in the next lesson. 6. How to Reduce Overwhelm: In this lesson, we're going to cover a few simple techniques you can use to reduce stress and overwhelm. First, I'll give you a simple breathing exercise you can do, and then I'll go over two statements you can say to yourself to instantly reframe your fears and worries. The simplest way to use your breath to reduce stress is to take a few deep breaths while making your exhale longer than your inhale. The way the breath works is that when you breathe in, you're revving up your nervous system, and when you breathe out, you're calming the nervous system down. By making your exhales longer, you're spending more time calming the nervous system down, which reduces your stress level. This is something you can do anytime and it only takes a few seconds to do anywhere from 2-6 breaths like this. Now for the first phrase, you can use to reframe your thoughts when you're stressed, afraid, or worried, and that is, I'll handle it. This phrase comes from the book, Feel The Fear and Do It Anyway, by Susan Jeffers. Her theory is that what underlies all of our worries is the fear that we won't be able to handle whatever it is we're worried about happening. You can reduce your worry by telling yourself that you'll handle it and even remembering times in the past when you've handled difficult situations to reinforce your belief in the statement. The second thing you can do is to thank your brain for trying to protect you but letting it know that there's no need to worry. This helps because when you try to resist emotions like fear and worry, all you do is hold onto them and sometimes intensify them. By acknowledging it and thanking it, you're more able to release the emotion. Remember, anytime you want to reduce stress and overwhelm, you can take a few deep breaths, making your exhales longer than your inhales, and you can reframe your fears and worried thoughts by thanking your brain for trying to protect you, but there's no need to worry because you can handle it. In the next lesson, we're going to talk about how you can create a productive mindset. I'll see you there in the next lesson. 7. Create a Productive Mindset: In this lesson, we're going to talk about how to create a productive mindset. I'll give you a set of three questions to ask yourself that will help you determine if a thought is productive and help you set new productive thoughts. Let's dive right in. The first question you want to ask yourself is, is this thought true? Frequently the thoughts that hold us back, are judgments we make against ourselves that aren't even true. So it's important to question those thoughts. The second question is, does this thought help me achieve my goals? Just because a thought is true, doesn't necessarily mean it will help you achieve your goals. Productive thoughts should both be true and help you achieve your goals. The third question is, does this thought help me feel the way I want to feel? Our feelings impact the thoughts we have. It's important to make sure both your thoughts and feelings are aligned and feel good and true to you. You can take a thought that you frequently think and ask these questions about that thought. If you answer no to any of the questions, you'll want to re-frame the thought until you can answer yes to all three. Here's an example. Let's imagine someone who is a new coach. They've recently graduated from a certification program and they found some clients initially, but now they're having trouble signing on new clients. They might get discouraged and have the thought, no one wants to work with me. Well, if we run that thought through the three questions, we would find out that it's not true because they've already worked with some clients. Some people did want to work with them. That thought won't help them achieve their goal because they likely won't put much effort into finding new clients if they truly believe no one wants to work with them. I would also guess that thought doesn't make them feel how they would like to. Now there are probably multiple ways you could re-frame this thought to be productive, but one way could be to say, I haven't been able to find new clients in a while, so I might need to change my marketing strategy. This thought has more truth to it, and it removes the judgment they were making about themselves in the previous thought. It will also be more likely to help them achieve their goal because this new thought gives them a way to move forward and keep working toward their goal of finding new clients and it would likely make them feel more hopeful than the original thought. That's just one example of course, but I hope that helps you see how you can use these questions to create your own productive mindset. To recap, in order to create your productive mindset, you want to start believing thoughts that you can answer yes to all three of the following questions about. Is this thought true? Does this thought help me achieve my goals? Does this thought help me feel the way I want to feel? When you can answer yes to all of those questions, then you've got a good productive thought. Now in the next lesson, we're going to uncover your top values. This is a really fun exercise and I'll see you there in just a moment. 8. Prioritize Your Values: In this lesson, you'll do an exercise to uncover your top 3-6 values. This will be important for the next few lessons when you set your goals and design your day because you'll want to make sure your goals and the way you spend your days are aligned with your values. Make sure you've got your workbook handy and let's get started. First, you'll want to look at the list of common values in the workbook and circle all the ones that resonate with you. Once you've done that, go to the next page in the workbook and write down all the values you circled and start to categorize them by putting similar values in the same box. Then pick one word to represent each of the groups, and that word will be your final value. Rate each of your final values on the next page in the workbook. That's it for this short but important exercise. Make sure you complete this exercise before moving on to the next lesson, please upload a photo of your final values from the workbook into the project gallery so we can celebrate your unique values and the values we share as a community. Then in the next lesson, you're going to set your top goals. I'll see you there. 9. What's Most Important?: In this lesson, I'm going to give you two exercises to do that will help you get crystal clear on what your top goals are. As I mentioned in the previous lesson, you'll want to keep your top values in mind as you complete these exercises so that your goals are aligned with your values. The first exercise is called the wheel of life exercise. It's basically a circle divided up into nine sections like nine slices of pie, each section represents an area of your life. You'll see in the workbook that I gave you two wheels. The first one is labeled with some common areas of life you might want to evaluate and the second one is blank, so you can add your own labels. You can use either wheel for this exercise. Once you have each section labeled, then you want to start filling them in. You'll see there are rings or tiers in the circle and you'll want to take a pen or pencil and fill in the tiers of each section to indicate how satisfied you are with that area of your life. If you fill in all 10 tiers that means you are fully satisfied with that area of your life or if you fill in only three tiers, that means you aren't very satisfied and likely would want to improve that area of your life. However, just because you give one area a lower rating doesn't mean you have to put effort into improving it. For example, there are times in life where you might be more interested in focusing on family and not as concerned about advancing in work or vice versa. This exercise though, will help you see which areas of your life have room for improvement and then you can choose where to put your focus and your efforts. The next exercise builds on top of the wheel of life, this is where you're going to finalize your top goals. The first step is to do a brain dump of everything you'd like to achieve over the next few months or the year. You can brainstorm things specifically for the areas you decided to focus on in the wheel of life exercise but also allow yourself to write down anything that comes to mind. After you finish your brain dump on the next page in the workbook, start to group the things you wrote down into categories of similar items. For example, all items related to business you could put in the same box and all items related to relationships in another box and so on. Once you have everything categorized, prioritize and decide which three to six groups are most important to you then choose a phrase to represent each group. Those three to six phrases will be your top goals or your themes for the year. Here's a tip, make sure your top goals are a bit general at this stage but specific enough that you know what it means. For example, if one of your top goals is business, that's a little too vague because there's lots of areas of your business that you could focus on so a better goal might be to build your audience or improve your marketing. Then when you set your monthly and weekly goals later on, you can get even more specific within the theme of building your audience for example. Let's recap in order to figure out your top goals or themes to focus on start by doing the wheel of life exercise to determine which areas of your life have room for improvement. Then you'll want to brain dump all the ideas you have for goals you want to accomplish and group similar ideas together to finalize your overall themes. Now I would love to know what your top goals are, upload a photo into the Project Gallery of your completed workbook page with your final goals listed. In the next lesson, you're going to put everything together and design your day in the final step of your class project. I'll see you in the next lesson. 10. Design Your Day: In this lesson, you'll complete the final step of your class project by designing your day. I'll go over some best practices, and ways you can customize this and keep it flexible. Let's get right to it. This is where we bring time management and energy management together. Go ahead and grab your workbook now, and you'll see a blank schedule in there where you can block out times for work and also times for rest, breaks, fun, family time, etc. You want this schedule to be flexible and changeable. But for now, you'll create a general schedule that feels most ideal for you. Here's a few of my recommendations. There is research that shows that 90 minutes is a natural amount of time for people to be able to do focused work. Anymore than that and our performance declines, and we start to lose focus. A good way to approach your schedule would be to put two or three sessions of work for 90 minutes each during the day at times when your energy is higher. You can look back at your energy map if you don't remember, or just make your best guess if you haven't tracked your energy for a full week yet. Remember, this is designed to be flexible, so you can always change it later if you need to. In between or after each work session, make sure to block out at least 30 minutes of either rest or an activity that replenishes your energy so that you can refuel your tank before starting another work session. There is a few reasons why I recommend you arrange your day in blocks like this. Reason 1, is that blocks are easy to move around. This is what makes this method so flexible. If you have an appointment at a certain time that you can't change, you can just move your blocks of work time or rest time around as needed, while doing your best to keep your energy management in mind by taking breaks and rest time in-between work sessions. Reason Number 2, is that blocks can easily be shortened or lengthened. I recommend 90 minutes sessions because research shows that we have natural 90 minute all trade-in cycles. However, there is always going to be some variation from the average. You might find that you start to lose focus after 60 minutes of working. If that's the case, then you could change your work blocks to 60 minutes with breaks in between. Or if two-hour blocks seem to work for you, then you can do that. Pay attention to your body and mind to find out what's working or not working for you, and make any adjustments you need to find the ideal schedule for you. Reason Number 3, for arranging your day in blocks like this is because it allows you to more easily work fewer hours, and manage your energy better. What people usually do is they work for eight hours, but they aren't actually working those full eight hours. They might work for a bit, then stop and scroll Instagram for awhile, or get up and go get some coffee, and just take random 2-15 minute unplanned work breaks whenever they feel like it. There is nothing wrong with that, but all that stopping and starting again makes your actual work take longer. You spend eight hours working here and there, and don't have rest time until the evening. When you intentionally focus on your work for specific blocks of time though, without getting distracted by other things, then you can get the same amount of work or maybe more, done in a shorter amount of time. While also having gotten in some real rest time during the day, by having intentional blocks of time built into the day to replenish your energy. As opposed to having random small breaks that are more like pausing your work time, and they aren't actually replenishing your energy. Another thing I recommend you do is to batch your tasks. In each 90 minute work session, it's best if you can focus on just one task, project, or a group of similar tasks. This helps you stay focused and get more work done because anytime you switch to a different type of task, it takes a while for you to get in the flow of doing that new task. If you're doing more than one thing in a work session, you can group similar tasks together, like maybe you'll write multiple blog posts at a time. But you focused on just writing that whole time. Batching your work like this, combined with focused blocks of work time, will save you so much time. Let's recap. A best practice for designing your day is to put 2-3 blocks of 90 minute work sessions on your schedule with breaks in-between for rest or energy replenishing activities. Scheduled those work sessions at times of day when your energy is normally high, or medium high if possible. You can customize the schedule as needed by moving your blocks around and shortening or lengthening them as needed. Just making sure to keep your energy in mind to make sure you're getting rest as you need it throughout the day. Now it's time to go to your workbook and design your ideal day by blocking out your times for work, rest, and everything else. Then please upload a photo of your completed schedule. I can't wait to see what your ideal schedule looks like. After you've done that, come back and watch the next lesson because I'll be talking about how to focus, and avoid procrastination. You can make the most of this new schedule you've just created. I'll see you in the next lesson. 11. Focus & Overcome Procrastination: Now that you've completed your class project and designed your day, in this lesson I'm going to give you five tips to focus and overcome procrastination, so you'll be ready to put your plan into motion. Let's not procrastinate and let's dive right into the lesson. Tip Number 1 is to clear out any distractions. Don't make it harder to focus than it needs to be. If there is anything around you that is likely to distract you, like your phone, put those things out of your sight, and don't forget to clear out any digital distractions. Close any browser tabs you don't need. Close your email and turn off anything that might give you a notification that would distract you. Tip Number 2 is to do a brain dump. We just talked about clearing physical and digital clutter and this tip is about clearing mental clutter. Take a few minutes to brainstorm and write down all those thoughts and ideas in your mind so that you can relax knowing you won't forget anything. Tip Number 3 is to get comfortable with being uncomfortable. One of the main causes of procrastination is that you're avoiding the uncomfortable feelings that come up when you think about or sit down to work on certain projects or tasks. Usually when you do finally start working on whatever you were avoiding, the uncomfortable feeling goes away pretty quickly. You can overcome procrastination by just getting used to feeling uncomfortable for a little while when you start working. Tip Number 4 is to focus your vision and thoughts on one object for a few minutes. Research has shown that focusing your vision can help focus your brain. The most effective way to do this is to take an object on your desk like a pen and focus on it. Look at it for a minute or two and notice all the details about it, you've never noticed before. After spending a couple of minutes focusing that closely on an object, it will be much easier to transition right into focusing on your work. Tip Number 5 is to make boring tasks more fun by turning them into a game. There's so many ways to do this, but my favorite way, and I think one of the easiest ways is to try and get your tasks done as quickly as possible. Think of it like a race, and the prize is being done with those tasks you don't like doing. It always helps me get through my e-mails really quickly. Sometimes I'll even set an alarm with an annoying tone that will go off at a certain time. If I get the work done before then, I get to turn the alarm off early and don't have to hear that annoying sound. Now let's do a quick recap. In order to focus and avoid procrastination, first get rid of any physical and digital distractions. Next, get rid of mental distractions by doing a brain dump. You can get yourself to focus on work by first focusing your vision and thoughts on one object. You can also overcome procrastination by getting comfortable with being uncomfortable. Lastly, you can make boring tasks more fun by turning them into a game. Now I've got some final thoughts for you in the very last class video. I'll see you there. 12. Congratulations & Final Thoughts: [MUSIC] Congratulations, you made it to the end of the class. We have covered so much. Let's review. You've learned how to manage your energy and created a map of your own energy flow. You've learned how to reduce stress and overwhelm and how to create a productive mindset. You uncovered your top values and set your most important goals. You have also designed your day to align with your energy and learned how to focus and overcome procrastination. The most important thing I hope you take away from this class is that the key to being productive without burning out is managing both your time and energy. Now if you haven't done this already, please upload a scanned image or photo of your ideal schedule that you've created. Also, I'd love for you to share what your favorite part of the class was. Whether it's some new information you learned or an exercise you enjoyed doing, I would love to know. If you enjoyed this class, please leave a review. Also, make sure to follow me here on Skillshare by clicking the green link right above this video. Thank you again so much for participating in this class with me today and I'll see you next time.