How To Get The Work Done When You're Overwhelmed Or Don't Feel Like It

Hey, friend. Welcome back. So, in this episode, we're gonna be talking about how to get the work done when you're overwhelmed or you just don't freaking feel like it, right? Here's the tea.

I understand ... I understand this inside and out, okay? I am literally gonna tell you something. Can I be really real with you?

Today is one of those days where I do not feel like getting the work done, and I am overwhelmed, and I do not feel like it . So, all of the above. And so if you're ever in this space, like, just so you know, I mean, this is so human. Like, this is something that every single one of us goes through.

Mental health can 100% be a contributor of that feeling, right? Like, being stressed out, being overwhelmed, getting down on yourself, feeling defeated. That all can really add up and really impact you pushing through and getting the shit done when you want and need to get the shit done. I feel you, friend, 100%.

And that's why I'm gonna be breaking down to you, uum, a little bit of mindset shifts as far as how to actually get through and work through all of that shit. But I'm also gonna be giving you really great tangible advice to reduce your overwhelm and make projects a little bit easier to get through, okay? So, if you are ready, if you're down, if you are freaking over having to do all this shit and not feeling like doing it, then I'm so excited to share with you my s- super unqualified personal life, personal experience, personal advice. Okay?

So, let's go . Let me guess. You are a hustling, bustling hairstylist behind the chair, working so hard to build a beautiful career for yourself, one that gives you time, freedom, and energy to spend with yourself, your family, and your friends. But you feel like you're always working in your business even when you're not behind the chair.

My name's Hunter Donia, and I help you automate your systems and implement really beautiful strategies so you can grow your business without the overwhelm. And this is the Modern Hair Stylist podcast. So, before we get into this, I wanted to bring one of my very close friends, like, we've been besties since we were babies, to share just a little bit of wisdom with you. I think that she is, like, absolutely excellently the most hardest working, comes from nothing person that I know to tell you the tea right now.

So, here it goes. Get your fucking ass up and work. It seems like nobody wants to work these days. You have to- That's so true.

You have to surround yourself- Yeah. with people that wanna work. Okay, I'm ... I'm so sorry.

I'm so sorry. I just had to do that . I'm obviously super kidding, okay? I'm obviously very, very kidding.

If you don't know what that is, it's a meme, okay? That's all we gotta know. Okay, anyways, anyways, anyways, anyways, let's get back into it. Let's get really serious.

So, here is the tea. I understand you, okay? It is so fucking hard to tell your brain to do something when you just do not feel like doing it. You are looking for a million ways out of it or around it or how to push it back.

You are running to the pantry, and you're eating a snack instead. You're texting your friends instead. You're scrolling Instagram instead. I feel you.

I understand you. I was doing this an hour ago, okay? I was literally doing it an hour ago, all right? So, I understand.

Here's how I got out of it. I literally went up and looked at myself in the mirror. I said, "Hunter, do you care about yourself?" I said, "Do you give a fuck about yourself?

And do you want to move the fuck forward? Do you want to take another step closer to your goals? Because if you do, then right the fuck now is when you need to get this shit done, okay? And nobody's gonna do it for you, all right?

You are the only person that is able to do this, and so you gotta go do it right now, all right?" And guess what I started to do? I said, "Okay, damn it, uh, I am gonna go and record this podcast episode," because you wanna know the tea? I deserve to be giving you this podcast episode because it moves me forward in my career.

My audience, the people, you listening to this, you deserve this from me, right? And th- the community, the world, everybody. Everybody deserves this from me. And action is the only freaking way that I am going to fulfill what I deserve.

It's the only way that I'm gonna move closer to my goals. And the more I make excuses, the more I sit the fuck around, the more that I try to pu- put it off, the bigger of a hole I dig myself into. And I just don't wanna dig myself into a hole, and I refuse to. And I...

I am somebody who gets the work done. I am somebody who does what I need to do to get to my goals. I am somebody who shows the fuck up for myself. And I have to tell myself that.

I have to tell myself that, and I have to believe it. And I will never believe it if I don't take action. I just read Atomic Habits, and I was like, "Yes." I was like, "Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes."

I was like, "This all makes so much sense. I need to be telling myself the right narrative, the right story, and I need to make sure that I am showing the fuck up for myself and believe that I am the type of person that shows up for myself and act on that." So, if you're sitting here, you're listening to this, and you're like, "Oh my God, I feel this so hard. I totally relate to, like, not feeling like getting the work done when I need to get the work done," I wanna ask you what type of person are you.

And you are in full control of this, okay? You are in full control. You are in the driver's seat. You have the choice.

My therapist says, "Once you're aware of something, there is no excuse for it anymore because you are in full control of your actions."So, are you going to be, or are you, somebody who procrastinates and doesn't get the work done because they don't feel like it? Or are you somebody who shows up for yourself and gets the fucking shit done and works hard for what they want? That's what you have to decide right now, and it's completely up to you and it's your decision, period.

So, that's my little pep talk for you, my friend. Okay, so now that I'm done with my rant , hopefully you're feeling a little motivated and hopefully you are deciding to be the person that you need to be to show up for yourself right now, whenever you're listening to this, and for future reference, okay? So now, let's talk about tangible ways to make projects or the work that you have to do as easy and broken down for you as possible, which is my first tip for you, is making the things that you're doing as easy as possible. So, this looks like breaking big projects down into little pieces, listing out every single thing that has to be done, creating systems that hold you accountable to getting things done, so that way there's sense of urgency and it's easy to get things done because you have to get things done.

And scheduling and setting aside proper time to do these things, and an intentional time to get stuff done, right? Versus just getting things done, like, in between, in between the daily, uh, schedule of yours, right? So, that's my tea. Let's break these down more specifically.

So, tell me if you've been here before. You are like, "Okay, you know what? Today is the day I'm gonna batch a month's worth of social media content." You're like, "Today's the day.

I'm not screwing around anymore. I'm gonna sit down, I'm gonna get this shit done." So then, you start. Like, you sit down and you're like, "Okay, let's get started," but then you're paralyzed.

You're like, "Oh my gosh, I don't even know where to fricking go with this. I don't even know what to do," and you just get overwhelmed and you back out and you don't get it done. Why? Because we're attacking a monster without a plan.

We're attacking a monster without dissecting the different parts of the monster and what times and what places and what would be smartest to attack which parts first. So, the tea is, with this big ass monster, w- how are we supposed to defeat this monster if we don't understand the anatomy of the monster? How are we supposed to defeat the monster if we're just, uh, gonna try to attack the entire thing when there could be a better, more planned out strategic way of bringing it down, right? And so, with projects such as this one, instead of taking this massive, huge task, I want you to break it down into smaller pieces.

I want you to take apart every single task that has to do with this big project. So, what that looks like is taking the project and breaking it down into, okay, what are all the things that I have to do for this project? Do I have to research first? Um, figure out, like, what exactly I wanna talk about?

Do I have to, um, look at my, my marketing plan and my marketing board to see, like, w- and, and remind myself of, like, what my content pillars are, uh, the exact person that I'm trying to speak to and what my specialty is? Um, do I then need to write down all of the caption ideas that I have? And then, do I have to finally write the captions, and then do I have to pick the pictures to add to the captions? Do I have to edit the photos?

Like, I want you to take any big project that you have and write out every detail about the actions you need to take to get there, okay? And then I want you to create a project plan for it, where a certain part, like, one of the small parts, is due by this certain date. The, this other part is due by this certain date. So that way, you're not just attacking everything at once and you know step by step by step what to do and what to get done in what order.

So that way, when you sit down to attack the monster, which is your project of, let's say, batching content, you have a plan. The plan has your back, okay? You're creating a friend who has your back when you're attacking the monster. It's literally a system that says, "Okay, when you are going to go ahead and do this, I'll show you the way.

I will hold your hand through the process." That's what you're creating for yourself. And you wanna make sure that with anything that you ever do, if you get overwhelmed really easily, if you wanna get it done as efficiently as, and as quickly as possible, that you do take a little bit of time to plan out what you're going to be applying and acting out prior to actually starting, because it will reduce your overwhelm, it will make things way easier, and it'll be more efficient in the way that you do it. That's how you should be freaking taking your projects.

Instead of just being like, "Yep, I'm gonna work on my business today," and then just, like, doing whatever you gotta do with no plan and then just feeling overwhelmed because there's so many places and so many things that you could be doing, you actually have a se- certain set of things that you could do. I put everything into Asana. Um, not everybody loves Asana. Some people like Trello.

Some people like a daily planner. Um, whatever. I put all my projects and I break them down into Asana so that way I can show up and I have these assigned due dates for, like, "Okay, I can see what tasks I need to do f- uh, today, to complete a bigger project that's going to be due later," right? And it's so satisfying, satisfying to, like, click it and check it off.

It's, like, the most beautiful thing ever. So, I use Asana as my project management tool. I would literally not know what to be doing every single day if it was not for my Asana. That's what I recommend.

Now, let's talk about if this is a recurring task.So, batching a month's worth of social media content. Here's the tea with this, friends. If this is a recurring task, then what we want to be doing is creating a standard operating procedure, okay?

An SOP. SOPs are something that you'll find in any successful business, and what it does is it gives a set plan for an operation in your business. And this is another one of your friends, another one of your systems, that makes things easy for you to get things done, because you have a plan to fall back on, a simple roadmap for yourself to follow, something that's holding your hand. So for example, a, with, if I had a month's worth of social media content to plan out, and I was going to break this down into a recurring task month-to-month, what I would do is something like this.

This is not my actual SOP for this. This is just, like, an example, and you'll have to take this example and run with it for how you see fit and what makes most sense for you and your business. So on the first Monday of the month, on the first Monday of every month, what I do is I go ahead and I write down all of my caption ideas, right? I look at my marketing board that has all of my ideal client profile on it, all my content pillars, all of my strategy, all of those good things.

I write down a c- a lot of caption content ideas so that way I can just get the ideas out of my brain, I can be really set and excited for m- working with them in the future and I make this as easy as possible. Boom. Done. That's it.

That's all you do that Monday. The second Monday of the month, what I go ahead and do is I write out the paragraphs for all of those captions. I write a rough draft for each of the captions for each of these ideas. Boom.

Third Monday of the month, every third, third Monday of the month, I grab the photos that I want to include in these, uh, for these captions, and I match them to the captions. Boom. Done. On the fourth Monday of the month, I edit the photos, I finalize the caption paragraphs and the rough drafts that I created, I m- mash them together like I already did, and I put them into my post scheduler.

I call it a day. Boom. And then you would do that monthly. That would be your standard operating procedure.

And you could break those Mond- like, those monthly, weekly tasks down so tiny and small. Like, literally be so specific with them, so that way when you sit down and you're, like, overwhelmed, it's just like a, "Okay, just follow step one, follow step two, follow step three." That's why in my programs, in my course, I share with you the what, the why, and the how, and I break it down to you step by step by step, and I give you the checklist and the action plan, so that way it's not like I give you just a really cool idea and you c- you take it and you're overwhelmed by it. It's like, no, it doesn't work.

It does not work. You can't just take something, a m- a massive big idea, and just, just like run head into it without being overwhelmed. You need to break it down into tiny pieces. And having a set plan, especially for recurring tasks such as this one, is really, really helpful for me, and it's really, really helpful for you if you, uh, decide to implement it, period.

Okay, my next tip. Are we ready? Let's go. My next tip is creating systems that hold you accountable.

So we all know, we've all been there, we will procrastinate and procrastinate and procrastinate and hold something off until the very last minute, and then we put out our best freaking work. We work hard under pressure and we get 'er, done, and out. And so if there's something that you are procrastinating, if there's something that you're like, "Ugh, I know I need to do this, but I just don't really feel like doing this, and there's nobody besides myself holding me accountable to getting it done," I highly recommend you have some sort of system, some sort of person to hold you accountable to getting it done. So that could be your in-salon assistant, right?

Because your in-salon assistant could possibly be needing something from you to be able to get done a project that you've assigned to them, right? You could be, you could have your clients hold you accountable to a project. So you could say, "By this date, I'm going to be giving you this. By this date, s- this system is gonna change."

And so that way, you are gonna damn well n- need to make sure that you actually change the system, that you did the work, that you created the resources, whatever it may be, by that date, because you told somebody that you would be accountable to them by that date. So it's super simple, but it is so powerful to have it so that way. Somebody is waiting on you. You told somebody something's gonna get done, and you need to get it done because they're waiting on it, right?

And it needs to be something or somebody that you, that really matters, right? Like, it needs to be something that, like, there is urgency behind that, and you can't just get away or, like, like, brush it off your shoulder if you don't get it done, because that person is something, is somebody that's important and, and is holding you accountable, right? And my last but one of the most important tips is schedule it out. Use a calendar.

Use a planner. Have something that controls your life. Like, my Google Calendar controls my life. My Asana controls my life.

Have a system, something where your day is planned out.... Planned out, and you are putting in intentional time blocks for when you get specific things done. So you've broken down the project into different pieces. You've put out the email to your clients that you're gonna get this resource to them by this date.

So now, let's literally put in your calendar when you're gonna get each of those small tasks done, and I'm talking about down to the hour and how long you actually work on those things, right? So that way you're very clear that between 11 and 12, you will be working on writing out all of those caption ideas, right? So that way you have a specific time, a specific space that's planned ahead for you to be working on that task and nothing else, right? Nothing else.

My last little thing that I wanna leave you with, my friend, is you are only human. You can only handle so much. You cannot do all the things e- as much as you want to, but you can strategically plan ahead and you can make these things as easy to get done as possible in an efficient way, and you get to decide whether or not you show up for yourself and you get them done or not, right? But that does not mean that every single time is going to be perfect when you wanna show up for yourself and you don't.

That doesn't mean that you should get down on yourself and tell yourself that you are shit because you don't do exactly everything that you wanna get done. It means that we are only human and we have to show ourselves love and self-care, and we should not burn ourselves out into the ground, but we should be taking care of ourselves in productive, um, high efficient ways, all right? So, I hope this episode was helpful for you, my friend. So excited to catch you in the next one.

If you're enjoying The Modern Hairstylist podcast, I want you to do me a fricking huge favor right now. Are you cool with that? Please tell me you're cool with that. I want you to leave this a five-star review if you would like to, okay?

And a little short little testimonial blurb if you're listening to this on Apple Podcasts, just talking about your experience of listening to The Modern Hairstylist podcast, okay? It helps me reach more beauty professionals just like you trying to grow a sustainable business and, uh, kick some ass and change this narrative of this industry, okay? So if you're down to help me out, if you're down to be a part of something cool, I would really appreciate it. Okay, peace out, girl scout.

Bye-bye.

End of transcript. © 2022 Hunter Donia LLC.