Full Transcript: TUT - Episode #28 - Get more done in 2024

Welcome to the Transformer Unicorn Tales. I'm Katie, your ever transforming host. This is a podcast about awesome transformations, food for thought, and occasionally unicorns. I am so excited that you're here listening to this. Let's get started.

Hello and welcome to the Transformer Unicorn Tales podcast. If you're listening to this when it comes live, or if you're watching this on YouTube, Happy New Year! This is the second of January when this comes live. If you're listening at any other time, Hi. [Laughs] And if you're watching it on YouTube, again, I'm in a new room. And if you're listening to it, maybe you want to check out my other room in my house. Yeah, let's get started, I would say.

So, I decided to put this as the first episode of the year because I think it's a really important thing to talk about at this point. Also, because I was thinking about doing it last year, at the end of the year, but then I forgot. [Laughs] So, we're going to do it now. I think it's still on time. Because you might be in this situation where you're like, "Should I be doing more? Should I be planning more things for this year? How do I even do all of those things?" And I feel like everyone is just setting so many goals for themselves. Help!

So, I used to be a Getting Things Done trainer, we just tell my friends, family, anyone who would listen, colleagues, workshop people who wanted to join my workshops. The question that I would get the most often is, people that cross their arms and then go like, "Yeah, but what if I don't want to achieve more? What if I don't want to do more?" It feels like a productivity scam to make people just push out as much as they can.

And my answer, every single time, and that is why I named this episode "Get More Done, But Then It's Not What You Think" is because getting more done doesn't mean that you get more of your work done, or more of your goals done in the sense of things that we normally consider productive. For example, going to the gym, eating more healthy dishes, meal prepping, what comes up in January, all of those New Year's resolutions. Because another thing that happens when you use getting things done or any other system where you plan things is that you don't just plan the work, you don't just plan these normal productive, but in brackets again, normally considered productive things, you also create more space for other things, like your hobbies, or rest, or fun.

So, my answer every time when people cross their arms and go like, "But I don't want to be just like a robot and produce, produce, produce, produce." What I then say is, yeah, but when you're getting things done, you can also get more naps done, you can also get more walks done, you can also get more sleep done, and that's the beauty of these systems, at least the ones that I'm a fervent follower of, which is like, for example, getting things done.

And then the next question is often, "Okay, but what if I don't want to plan my whole life? I don't want to plan all my breaks and everything?" Again, not the goal. Not what we want to be doing here. But what this system is trying to achieve, or like when you set goals for yourself, is not necessarily that you get more productive, more things that you can push out of your body, like, "I don't know, that's how I say it." Like good work, I don't know, like more kilos lifted or something. But that you, in general, just have a life that is more in alignment with your values and with your higher up goals. If you want to spend more time with your family, then these systems and planning and setting goals can help you to spend more time with your family. And it doesn't have to be, you know, spending more time going to the gym if that's not what you want.

So, I just wanted to make it a short episode to remind people that when January comes around, which is right now if you're watching it live again, that you don't have to be more productive this year. You don't have to set goals that other people might be setting. You decide for yourself and goals can again be related to anything. It can be that you want to rest more. It can be that you want to do more yoga. It can be that you want to do less yoga and you want to replace that with weight training. That's my thing. Just putting out my personal thing here.

So, I just wanted to share that today to let you know that goals don't always have to be more and better. And I wanted to start with that. So like, you know, it's not what you think. This was the part between the brackets and then how do you get more done, which is maybe that's why you're listening. You're like, "That's cool, Katie, but I'm actually the person who wants to get more done. Like, I'm ready for this new year. First check-in. I'm not ready. I feel like I made my plans. I set my goals and stuff like that. But in this moment, I'm like, I'm not ready to get started. I don't know."

So, if that's you, totally fine. And then how I get more done, again, the more it can be anything. It doesn't have to be work. It doesn't have to be normally considered productive stuff. Is my most favorite thing is, of course, getting things done. So, you can always look into that and I talk about this a lot all over the place. If you have any questions, reach out to me. But getting things done is a system. There's a book. There are courses. There are trainings. There are videos and this video. So, yeah, that would be like my number one go-to. And then with the little star, although it is very clear also in the book, wherever you learn about it, it's not just there to increase your productivity in the sense of more work done, more, I don't know, more money making, whatever. It's also there to help you get clear on what you actually want and how you can reach, like your higher goals in life, which you actually, how you want your life to look.

And then number two is something that I'm trying. So that was actually the reason why I decided to start recording today. But then I thought, and if I just started the productivity stuff, then people would be like, "Keep it, I don't want to be more productive." So, we first set the side note, like, it's not what you think. And I'm going to go to how I am going to be more productive when it comes to the traditional sense of being productive and getting more done. I recently read this new book. So, if you know me, I love getting things done and I just love adding stuff to it. I have a second brain that's, again, another book, other story. You can look into it. I have tried healthy, again, other story, other thing. You can look into it. I would advise against it. There are always like these other things that you can try when it comes to productivity. So, what I'm trying now, actually today when this episode comes live, is called a 12-week year. And what that means is that instead of setting year goals, which I, so like last year, I think already like the year before, I found out, you're like, "Year goals do not work for me." Because things change from one day to another, like, completely in my life. And then year goals are like completely useless at that point because it's like, "Okay, everything changed." The idea of the 12-week year is that you have 12 weeks, you set a goal for 12 weeks, and you pretend that that's a whole year that you have. So instead of like spending, you know, 12 months on something, you just shorten it to three months. And that is way more also for our brain, just like relatable and understandable and more, like a timeframe that we can imagine, right? Like three months, we can like think about, "Okay, I'm going to start this project, do this project, and then get to a goal."

Again, I'm not going to tell you now an detail about this thing. Again, there's a book, there's a website. You can read about the 12-week year. But yeah, that's what I'm going to get started with. And I will be sharing about my journey and my findings and my results on my Instagram. So if you want to find out more about that, you can follow me there. And maybe I'll make another podcast episode after the 12 weeks to tell you how it was. But that's all I wanted to share for today. So I didn't really go into the how to get more things done because there's like so much information about all of these things. So I just did some name dropping for you, getting things done. Second brain, building a second brain. 12-week year is what I'm doing currently. And there are like so many other things that you can try. And I would just suggest try different things, see what works for you. Remember, the goal is not to be a machine, to be a robot and just like produce, produce, produce, produce. The goal is to work towards a life that you want, the life that makes you happy. And that is like kind of what I also just wanted to share today. If you feel overwhelmed and all the things that come with January, you really knew me. Yeah, so that's all I wanted to share today. And I will see you back next week because I think I haven't made this announcement yet. We are back on the weekly schedule because my podcast, I'm going to like amp it up a little bit. And that means like Katie, I'm doing the weekly recordings again. So I'll see you back on next Tuesday. I think you're awesome.

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