0:00:00 - Joanna Newton
Have you ever had a ton to do but had no idea where to start? You might feel overwhelmed by the sheer volume of everything on your to-do list and think it's absolutely impossible to complete. Maybe you're not sure where to get started and you don't know how to decide what to do first. I'm going to tell you, a lot of people have that feeling all of the time, and there's a name for it. It's called decision fatigue, and it's something that we're going to dive into in this episode today.
0:00:31 - Michelle Pualani
I love this topic. It was Joanna's idea to talk about decision fatigue today, and it's one that I'm very familiar with from working in the healthy habits and personal development, personal growth realm Right. So we are going to help you understand what decision fatigue is if you are potentially experiencing, and then what to do about it. Now, as an online business owner, content creator, coach, someone who essentially governs their own schedule, their own time, this is something that you have to think about. It's something critical to your success how you invest your time, how you invest your energy and what that looks like. So let's start with.
What is decision fatigue? So the Oxford dictionary definition is difficulty in making a good decision, experienced as a result of the number of decision one needs to make. We don't realize it, but we make thousands of decisions Every single day, from the moment we make up in the morning until the moment we go to sleep at night, and those decisions are going to be gradations and levels of essentially difficulty. So some are going to be a lot easier, some are going to be a little bit more challenging. What we're going to get into today is all about how can we make that decision making process easier for ourselves so that we can improve our ability to make those more challenging decisions and we don't get overwhelmed or fatigued from a lot of those smaller decisions along the way. So why is this important and who does it impact? Anyone who has to make a lot of decisions in a day that's pretty much all of us but especially if you are the type of person who governs your own schedule and your own work in an employee position. Yes, you have to make decisions, but a lot of times you're being handed tasks, you're being handed things to do and you're more executing what it is that you have to do, as opposed to being the point of yes, no, this or that in the process.
Being the person who is relied upon, this really impacts those people whose decisions affect other people down the line. So, whether you are maybe head of household in your personal life, whether you are the person who typically makes the decisions in a relationship or in your work environment, whether other people are relying on you to make key decisions so that things can move forward, it's also really important for those who maybe are in a difficult life situation or a state of uncertainty. Oftentimes, with that experience, we are sitting in a place of procrastination. We're sitting in a place of avoidance because we're unwilling to make decisions, and that might not be your fault in what you're going through, but the amount of decisions that you're trying to handle or navigate at any given time could be impacting that procrastination, that avoidance and that lack of motivation to do the thing that you really want to do.
And then, lastly, this definitely impacts and affects people with perfectionist tendencies. So those of us who always want to get it right, who always want to make the right decision I know that I experienced this for a very long time when I went to restaurants. When it came to making the decision of what to eat, I would get so overwhelmed about picking the wrong decision that it was very challenging for me to make the decision in the first place. And then I felt like, no matter what I chose, I was always going to be disappointed because I felt like the other thing would have been better. So if you experience that sense of always wanting to get it right, this is important for you to help you make decisions faster, to help you take the action and not regret or feel guilty about that choice.
0:04:07 - Joanna Newton
The effects of decision fatigue on our life is so real, and what's really interesting for me is I've done a lot of things to set up my life my personal life, my work life in a way that makes me have to make fewer decisions, and it's something I actually didn't even realize I did, and in this episode we're going to talk about a lot of practical strategies to help you avoid and prevent decision fatigue in your life. I've done a lot of things to make my life easier, set it up in a way where I'm not making an overwhelming amount of decisions in a day because I have so many important decisions to make in a day that I can't control. I do a lot of work to control the things that I can, and one thing that really sort of enlightened me to this issue were vacations and I know this sounds really weird, but I would go on a vacation either with my family or to see other family, and I would be so overwhelmed with the amount of decisions that I had to make. And this especially happens when I go on vacation with other people or with my more extended family, and it's always a wonderful time. It's always great that people would be looking at me to decide what we're going to eat, where we're going to go, what's the itinerary, what's the schedule. And I would not be expecting it because there'd be a bunch of people Like, why is it all on me, right? And I would feel this sense of fatigue on a vacation with all of these extra decisions to make. And actually recognizing that has helped me have better vacations, because I kind of plan ahead. Oh, I know I'm going to be expected to do all of this. I can figure out a way to do it in my own time in a way that's more efficient.
And so I think a really important thing is recognizing that decision fatigue is real and that there are actually things you can do to make it better in your life, because there are some pretty like definite signs of decision fatigue that people experience that can affect things like your productivity, your mood, your enjoyment of life, and so some of those things are procrastination, like if you're feeling like you're procrastinating or not getting started on tasks that you normally want to get started on, that normally you have no problem starting, but you're in like stuck in procrastination mode. That could be a sign that you're experiencing decision fatigue. Things like brain fog, exhaustion, things like that can really affect your feeling, can really affect how you feel and be a result of decision fatigue, and I'm not talking about if you have those feelings on a chronic basis. As I was doing some research for this episode, that was one of the things that they brought on as an important distinction. If you're always exhausted, that could obviously be a sign of other other health issues or other things going on. This is when you're normally one way and all of a sudden, you're now procrastinating. You now are experiencing brain fog. You aren't sure what to decide on.
Another thing kind of on the opposite of that is like impulsivity. Are you just making impulse purchasing decisions? Are you grabbing an extra snack at the when you go shopping the checkout line right, you're just like grabbing stuff that that you normally wouldn't do. Are you being more impulsive? That could also be a sign of decision fatigue At the bottom line. You're just not yourself when you're experiencing decision fatigue and you need to learn how to combat it in both your personal and professional life in order to be the best version of yourself. And what's great is, as we talk today, you'll learn there are some really practical things you can do to help and prevent decision fatigue in your life. And our goal here we want to be the best version of ourselves, right? We want to be business owners. Having, you know, having our side hustle, just like experiencing the fullness of life. So figuring out strategies to combat this in your personal and professional life is really important.
0:08:02 - Michelle Pualani
Focusing on the personal first. This actually makes me think back to my wedding weekend, and we know, if we've ever planned a wedding some of us, yes, some of us not so much maybe but if you've ever planned a wedding or even a large event there are so many decisions to be made, some small, some larger, some not so essential or important, and some that are going to completely change the direction of the entire event. Now, wedding weekend, I remember at our rehearsal dinner and it was a small wedding. It was during COVID times, so we only had about 25 people, so it wasn't like 300 people were relying on us. There wasn't a lot to think about in that regard, but there were a lot of smaller decisions and almost when it's smaller and you're trying to do everything yourself, you get more overwhelmed by those things because you don't necessarily have the support. So, in any case, during that weekend, I remember at the rehearsal dinner that I didn't want to talk to anyone, like I kept avoiding conversations. Everyone kept coming up to me and making conversation, talking about just general things, like things that should not have impacted me in the way that it did, but I think by that point I was so overwhelmed and in this state of decision fatigue that I just didn't care, like I was really detached from the experience and didn't want to converse with anyone. So realizing that the impact of decision fatigue can really have on your circumstances, on your experience and then on the experience of others. So impacting people in your community, impacting people in your circle, impacting people in your programs in this way, if you're not sitting in that leadership role and really guiding them with intentionality. So, in terms of your personal life, there are a lot of things that you can start to think about that really set you up for success professionally, because it will enable your experience to be that much more smooth, that much more intentional and free up more space and decision making power during the times that really matter. So developing some routines and consistency around your personal life will really help you move through your daily decisions more easily.
This was like everything that my her healthy habits was about when I got that started. It was really about taking your life and looking at from when you wake up in the morning all the way until you prepare for the next day ahead that evening and go to sleep, and every single part of that is an opportunity for you to get rid of the decision making process if you can, and just formulate routines, consistency, habits, whatever works for you, to help you improve that process, to help you ease that process, to help you just move through your day in a really cohesive, really comfortable, kind of flowy way. So some of the tangible things that you can think about are food. You have to eat. So what does that look like for you? Does it look like eating at the same times every day? Does it look like meal prepping or meal planning in advance? Does it look like doing your grocery shopping at a set time so that you have the food in the house? Does it look like knowing where you're going to order from, or having a personal and private chef, or even just doing a meal plan and service that gets delivered to you? There are a lot of alternative ways on the budget friendly scale, to start to think about those options and how it integrates into your daily schedule.
The next is fitness and exercise. You know that you need to be moving your body. If you don't yet, dm me, let's have a conversation about it. The science and data shows that when you have an integrated fitness, exercise, workout routine schedule in your life, you have better focus, better energy, better mental clarity, improved sleep and everything about your working and your daily life will feel a lot better. So make sure that you have the time, make sure that you have something in your schedule that you enjoy to do. Make sure that that fitness or that exercise is actually something that you look forward to doing, so that you keep it in your schedule, so that that routine is there, and then you don't have to decide what class am I going to sign up for? Where am I going to go? How long is it going to take me to get there? What am I going to wear? All of those questions, I like to say the who, what, where, why and when need to be just decided upon ahead of time and have that in your weekly, daily, consistent schedule so you don't have to worry about it that it just happens.
Sleep is one of those things that we take for granted, and there are so many things in our culture and our society that lead us down the belief system that sleep is not important. I'll sleep when I'm dead. Only the week sleep. There's a really great book by Ariana Huffington, the Sleep Revolution, that I highly encourage you take a look at that really helps you understand why we need to sleep, the benefits of sleep, how to get the best sleep, how to prepare yourself in the evening so that you get the deep and restful, restorative sleep that you need for hormones, for brain function, for focus and mental clarity. Again, for allowing yourself to be the most thoughtful person during the day so that you execute, so that you show up in front of the camera bright, bushy, tail ready, so that you show up in everything that you do, just that much more badass and ready to kick butt.
And, lastly, home care tasks. That's anything outside of what we just talked about. So that is laundry cleaning, making sure that the dishes get done, ensuring that your home environment is set up the way that you want it to be. Again, this looks like creating the routines and consistency in order to make it happen, creating the small atomic habits, those little things, those micro adjustments that really make it easier to execute on a consistent and regular scale. So that means maybe not putting off the dishes until it gets so overwhelming, but maybe just doing a couple at a time throughout the day so that it's not so much to deal with. Maybe you have planned for every single time you eat, you put all of the dishes in the dishwasher. I know it seems simple, but these are the things that are going to diminish the amount of decisions that you have to make when you set up these simple processes and practices throughout your day.
0:14:05 - Joanna Newton
As with everything we talk about on this podcast, I want to remind our listeners, as you're listening to these practical tips, advice, strategies, that we are not expecting a one size fits all approach. So if we're talking about meal planning as a way to reduce decision fatigue and you're like I don't want to do that, that's not the thing for me, that is okay, right? I just want you to start thinking about the things that have to happen every day, every week, every month, and come up with strategies to make them less daunting for you. If you love making all of your meals individually, that's fine, but maybe you discover a strategy for the shopping part that's going to make life easier. So the point is to just think through all of the things you do and figure out ways to make them be less daunting from, like, a decision making standpoint. One of the things for me and our household with me and my husband is we have a pretty big lawn we did not think about this when we bought our house of this year's size of the lawn and mowing the lawn every other week at a minimum. It really needs to be done every two weeks in our summertime for how fast the grass grows, and mowing it every other week became such a burden deciding which one of us was going to do it, when we were going to split it, what time we were going to do it, when the amount of time it took. And we decide we're going to mow the lawn Saturday morning. But then we slept in a little bit because we wanted to relax and really want to get breakfast. And then, oh no, now what are we going to do with the lawn? It was a constant state of who, what, when, where, and then it rains. And then, like you're like, I was going to do it Sunday morning, now it's raining, now I can't mow the lawn, now it's going to go a whole nother week and it's going to be too long. Like it was a major stressor in our lives. So we decided to find someone else to do it. We say to the guy come every week or every other week. He comes every other week. I don't even have to tell him to come, he's going to come every other week. If it rains the day he was planning to come, he comes the next day. Like it is up to him and we don't have to think about it.
And yes, it costs money. Yes, not everybody has it in our budget, but for us, the amount it costs just totally gives us the energy to do other things. It's spend time as a family or do other work things. That earns additional money. It makes total sense.
So when you're thinking about the home tasks, personal tasks, think about that thing that weighs on your head. That's like oh no, if it's, what am I going to eat for dinner every night? That's something that stresses you out. That's a good thing to come up with a strategy for, and this is going to be a process, right? You're not going to do all of these things all at once, but think in your head what's that thing that causes like stress all of the time in my personal life? And then how do I make that part better? So I'm going to start talking about the concept of outsourcing and automating in your personal life in order to reduce your decision making needs in a day, in a week, in a month and all of that. A lot of these things are things I do on a regular basis that help me run my own business, take care of my child, still have time for myself, my husband, all of those things, the biggest thing that I did that made the hugest difference in my time was automating all my bills.
If your bills aren't automated, seriously think about getting everything automated. I literally have one bill that's not automated and it's because I live in like a small town and it's my water bill and in order to get it automated I have to send mail in a blank check to, like our town municipal center and I literally don't have a checkbook. So I haven't done it and I always forget to pay that bill. So that is a sign that that's a problem. But all of my bills are automated so I don't even think about paying them. They just get paid. It's that simple and if you're not automated, consider doing that. If you're nervous about forgetting about your bills or budgeting, then come up with a budget to make sure the monies and the account when those bills come out of your account. I also try to like quarterly, go through all of my subscriptions and like think, okay, what am I not actually using to not get those automated bills to balloon? Automating your bills is a great way to reduce decision fatigue. You know, if you have a partner who's going to pay the bill, what account is it coming from? All of those things, if you just automate it. You have a conversation with your partner who's paying for what? What account is what coming out of? Then you don't have to think about it again.
Another big one is grocery shopping. This is one thing that I found took up so much of my time, and different things are going to work for different people. There are tons of grocery delivery services out there. There's ways to get repeat orders on a regular basis. You have to think about what your eating habits are. You know what works for you, but you need to eat. Michelle said this earlier eating is something that you have to do.
For me, I use a grocery delivery service and it's on my app, and when it's time to order, I put everything in. I order it. It comes the next day, and one of the great things about it is you get this little list of everything you usually order, so I can go down through the list of my often order things. Put in all the basics. Then I think to myself okay, what couple of meals do I want to make? Put that in, hit order and I'm done For me. I tend to do this. My daughter, all the parent sleep people are going to like, yell at me, but she falls asleep on me every night. It works for us. Just go with it. I do the grocery order while she's falling asleep on me Perfect, you know what I mean. That's and that's what works for me.
So think about something that will work for you to make grocery shopping easier, whether that's auto deliveries that are delivering the same things every week. You know you can be in a co-op that gives you fresh fruits and veggies every week. There's all kinds of options out there. Do some research, figure out what works for you to make that simpler. Another big thing are just general auto deliveries. So if there's something that you use and use up on a regular basis, putting that on auto delivery so you never have to think about it is fantastic. I get my vitamins and supplements. Those are on auto delivery. I just get them right when they're going to run out. I have a dog the flea and tick medicine. I have that auto deliver. It just comes to me. It's something I don't have to think about and make decisions about on a regular basis. Think through what are those things you are buying all of the time and is there a way to auto deliver them instead of having to think oh no, I'm out Now I have to make a person. Now I have to think how much do I want? What brand do I want? Do I want the same thing? You're just cutting that out of your life.
Another big thing is pre-scheduling home car maintenance. So if you have a furnace that needs to be checked twice a year, a lot of times you can get that just pre-scheduled in advance. You can do that. You can call, you can say come every six months and you get those dates locked in. They show up, you never have to think about it again. Your car maintenance pre-scheduling those things can make a really, really big difference in your life because you're not worried about that. How many times do you think, oh, I have to get the furnace checked. And so then you have it on your list to call for like three weeks and you've thought am I going to call today? No, I don't have time, I'll call tomorrow. Am I going to call today? I'm going to call tomorrow.
I think this is why dentists, most dentists I don't know if everyone's dentist, but my dentist when you're leaving your last appointment, they just pre-schedule your next appointment for you. They say this is your appointment and maybe I end up having to reschedule it. But if it's on the calendar, I will either reschedule it as it's getting closer and it was the wrong date, or I'm just going to go to it, right, because it's already scheduled for me. I didn't have to think about it, it just happened. And so just think about those kinds of things in your life that you can pre-schedule, just get on the books. Another big thing for me is alarms, reminders for specific, regular tasks. If you need to change certain filters, your fridge filter or whatever it is like, put it on your calendar or in a project management tool. Set an alarm or reminder on your phone. That way you're not thinking, oh, do I have to do it all the time Because that's a decision. Having to think about doing something clogs up your brain space. But if you know, oh.
I know what do I have to change the refrigerator filter and you're thinking about it all the time. When did I do it last? You got to look up things like figure it out. You don't have to think about that, you know? Oh no, no, I know I have a reminder for whenever that's due. I'm not going to think about it until then. So clearly there's like a myriad of things that you can do in your personal life to just make things easier, and I think it's just important to realize you just don't have to do everything the hard way. Right, you can find systems, find ways in your personal life to just reduce the stress and the burden of all of the decisions that you have to make in your home.
0:23:04 - Michelle Pualani
As you're listening and thinking through these things, you might consider like why is this important? This is mundane. We're not talking about important business things that I really need to focus on right now. But just imagine that six, seven, eight figure business owner and then imagine the things that they prioritize throughout the day and how they lead their life. And if you want to get to a future version of you, whether that's in life or in business, I want you to start thinking like that person would.
These people are typically not shopping for themselves all the time. They're typically not worrying about these things. Because you also also have to think about the investment of your time and energy. And how much is your time and energy worth? Not necessarily what it is right now. Say, if you're like, oh well, I only make 10, 20, 30, $50 an hour, it's not that important. I want you to think about what your time should be worth as a business owner $100 an hour, at least $1,000 an hour, $10,000 an hour how would you reprioritize your time and your energy differently if that were the case? So even though, again, right now, you think, well, I just have to do these things or they're not that important, they don't take up that much time. They don't take up that much of my mental space. They do. It all starts to add up, it all starts to impact you, and when you could be investing that time in filming content, in writing the email, in putting together the product or the program, in starting to network, collaborate, record that podcast, whatever that looks like for you needing to think about how you're investing your time, your energy and your resources differently so that you start to reflect the decision-making process of the business owner that you want to become. So those are all personal ways in which you can do that Important because you're investing your time energetically and your mental capacity personally, which will then be reflected in your business decisions. We don't just flip a switch and say, okay, now I'm a business person and I'm going to completely wipe the slate clean from our personal lives. Oftentimes we carry over all of those personal decisions, all of those thought processes and all of those belief systems and the way that we're operating at that level.
So what you can do here is start to think about your business differently, and so we're going to talk about some more tangible approaches that you can take in your business. You can still take a lot of the things that we talked about and apply them to your business. And what does that look like? As you're mapping out your time, your consistency, your habits, your routines, your schedule. What does that look like on a daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly basis for you? And how are you investing that time strategically and then setting up your daily actions, your habits, the things that you're doing, so that you're not making a lot of small decisions, so that things are already pre-decided, so you can move right into the action and the execution of that thing that you want to do. One of the places to really get started with this is to know what we have talked about on the podcast so far your mission and your core values. What are you doing here Really like? What are you doing here? What is your business for? What are your services? Who are you? How are you showing up in the world Really understanding those foundational principles so that you can make decisions more easily?
I'm actually going to bring up a point this is a really great thing that one of my business mentors mentioned recently in terms of alignment he speaks to. This is James Wedmore. He talks about not really suffering from decision fatigue because he focuses on intuition and alignment. Yes, we're taking care of some of the action things. Yes, we're taking care of some of those little finicky details and decision-making things that we have to deal with in our lives. We're figuring out better automations, better systems. Now the intuition and the alignment comes into play when we are following our purpose, when we are in alignment with our passion, when we understand our mission and what it is that we're here to do. Now, if you're not quite doing that yet in your business because you are freelancing and you're making money or you're in a work environment in which you feel like you're not really fulfilling that purpose, that's okay. But still understanding what is the mission, what is the vision, what are the core values and the grounding principles behind what it is that I'm doing, when you understand that your yeses and your noes become a lot easier because you go back to your core values, you go back to your mission and you let that be the decision-making alignment, the intuition, it'll start to feel more natural, instead of like you're throwing everything up in the air or at the wall and just kind of figuring it out as you go. This next point has been huge for me.
When I was in fitness, in the health space. We for some reason, as human beings, we create goals of things that don't relate to what it is that we actually want in our lives. This comes from our environment, our external circumstances. It comes from comparison. It comes from looking at what everybody else is doing and thinking, oh, I should want that too. I should do that thing too. I should have that goal as well, because they do.
But it's not always right for you. Oftentimes you will add things to your plan, to your goals, to your roadmap, to your strategy, to your daily actions and choices that don't apply to you. You don't need to be doing them. They don't align with that mission. They don't align with your core values. They don't align with how you want to show up in the online space.
I heard a very expensive coach once and her main model for outreach was posting in other people's Facebook groups.
Not a bad thing.
If that's your deal, you feel comfortable with that, go for it. For me, that did not align with my attraction, marketing and my ability to connect with my audience and how I wanted to build my brand, thinking for the longterm of what I wanted and what aligned with my career path and with my destiny as a personal brand. That just wasn't it. So I did what she said for a while and I tried it and it always felt icky and it always felt uncomfortable and it felt like I was forcing it and I would procrastinate it and I would put it off, and then I would guilt myself and shame myself, for why am I not promoting myself in this way? Why am I not doing this thing? And I finally realized that it was out of alignment, it didn't meet my personal goals and it wasn't what was right for me. So, looking at the things that you're doing, looking at the actions, looking at your habits, looking at your schedule and really getting critical with yourself and deciding does this align with how I want to show up in my business?
0:30:00 - Joanna Newton
It's so important to just constantly be looking back at that roadmap, at that plan, and when you have a new project or new idea coming at you to think, does that align? And so part of that is also making sure that that plan, that roadmap, the core values, your mission, that those things are actually documented. One of the things that I observed in the corporate world is that we spent a lot of time in high level leadership discussions re-discussing the same things over and over again because we weren't sure what we decided. Right, like you're having this conversation, I'm the one in the background being like hey guys, we actually talked about this, this was our conclusion. I'd have to kind of interject and remind everybody of what we had decided as a leadership team. And so, making sure those things are actually documented, written down. It might feel very time consuming, but it's gonna save you time in the end because you come across a new idea. You can say, okay, let me look at my mission, my core values, my roadmap for this year. Does this fit in? And that actually leads me to the next thing that I wanna talk about, which is something that, like, I don't hear people talk about, and it's something I'm gonna take credit for on this podcast as a Joanna Newton original idea, is that sometimes you need to decide when you are going to decide, and I'm gonna explain what that means.
When I worked in the corporate world, I worked for a lot of visionary CEO types, and in my business, I also work with a lot of visionary types full of great ideas, fantastic things to do, and one of the things that I found time and time again is that we'd lose track of our goals. Where we wanted to go, because of the new shiny concept or idea, there'd be something that needed to be dealt with, and all we could do was focus on figuring out that one thing, and then what would happen is the daily tasks that actually make you money, the things that bring in revenue, the things that are working all of the time just get pushed to the side and forgotten about, and then all of a sudden, you're not getting close to do your goals. You don't know why, and it's because every week there's a new shiny thing. So I developed this tactic that kind of tricked people into like holding on ideas, which was to just say like hey, fantastic idea, like I'm not gonna shoot down that thing, but today we're focused on X. Why don't we bring this up next month, when we have more time? And then I would take ownership in my role to bring that up idea later on. But see, this also works for me, for my own self and my own business and my own work. You're working on something Today, as an example.
Lots of great ideas come up of things that I wanna do, but I had a tight deadline for a client. I have to get that done. I have to get that client project done, but I don't wanna forget that fantastic idea or thing that's coming. So lots of people then turn their idea to that fantastic thing, try to make all of the decisions, what to do, figure it out, but instead I say, okay, I have time on my calendar Friday morning, I'm gonna hold space on my calendar Friday morning, I'm gonna jot down all the ideas that I have right now real quick so that I've captured them, so that they're there. But I'm gonna decide about that idea on a Friday. Then I can like push it from my mind. It's not forgotten, it's not going away forever. But I've said you know what, I'm gonna decide about that on Friday, I'm not gonna decide about that today, and I think that even works even longer term than that, I will say this is fantastic, but we don't have space to think about it for six months. No problem, you put that on your roadmap in a project management tool and say I'm gonna work on that six months from now. That's gonna give you so much freedom and brain space to stay focused.
Practically how I do that is using a project management tool for my business. I swear by Mondaycom. Mondaycom is like the most amazing tool I've ever used. I use it in my current business and I've used it in every role I've had since I discovered it for maybe five years now. You can create yourself an idea board with all of your things and set a date to it, and it will remind you to decide about that thing when you are ready and then you can space that out and you don't have to make all of those decisions in every single moment as they come into your head. You can save some of those decisions for later.
I do this in my personal life too, like if I'm going on a vacation with my family and they're like we're gonna go do this vacation or this thing, people will wanna know, like when are we going? What are the details, what are all the things, what is all of this? And I'll say, hey, I'm gonna start planning that on this day. I will not think about it, do anything for it or anything until that day arrives, because I don't have the brain space and I think getting in the habit of deciding when you are going to decide can really help you focus on what it is that you had already decided you were doing that day, that week, that month. This decide when you're going to decide is a great way to do that, and this even works on a little bit more of a micro level, and I'm gonna talk about how I maybe plan for a launch of a new course or a new product.
There's a lot that goes into launching a new course or a new product. Now forget about the creation. Pretend it's already created for a second and you're just thinking about everything you wanna do for the launch. There might be live events, there's gonna be social media posts, email campaigns, paid ads all of these different things that you have to do to get ready for a launch. That can feel really overwhelming. Right, you have to sit down, you have to make a ton of decisions really quickly about a lot of things, and one thing I found in the corporate world, or even with my clients, is sometimes those launches get delayed and delayed and delayed because there's too many decisions to make.
So, instead of trying to make all of them at the time when I plan a launch, my goal isn't to decide everything. My goal isn't to figure out every perfect messaging piece, every perfect graphic, all of the things. My goal is to make a plan of what has to happen by when. So, as I'm looking at what needs to be done, you might need to build like a live webinar funnel. That's likely the first thing that you need to do everything.
So I might say, okay, we're gonna get that live webinar funnel done by this state, and then we're gonna get these emails done by this state, these social posts done by this state, and I decide, oh, I'm gonna work on it every Tuesday morning. It's gonna be my Tuesday mornings are gonna be my day to work on this launch, and I'm gonna pick which things are happening, which day. I'm deciding when I am going to decide, rather than trying to decide everything in that moment, so I can say I don't have to worry about that launch email sequence, I'm gonna do that next week. And then all of a sudden, my stress and like the decision fatigue of this is gone. All I'm doing today is the funnel page copy Great, I'm gonna write that today.
And I can worry about the social posts. I can worry about the emails. All of that's next week, right? So deciding what you are going to decide can just free your brain up to work on the thing that's most important in that moment, in that day time. And it sounds so silly, but a lot of times when I push off the planning, when I push off the time I'm gonna sit down and decide what I'm gonna decide, then I'm really stressed about that project. But if I sit down and take even just an hour to say, okay, these are all the things that have to get done for this project, this is what I'm gonna do each of them, all of a sudden that fatigue of what to do it just like fizzles away, because I know when I'm gonna make those decisions and.
I've spread them out so we don't have to make them all in the same moment. I find it very empowering and it like really allows me personally to be pretty productive, and it's important to find a tool that's gonna support. You know, everybody's different. Everybody has things that work for them. So, whether that's putting it in an Excel spreadsheet, putting it as calendar reminders of tasks, using a project management tool like Mondaycom, asana, trello there's a notion there's a million of them but finding a way then to document all of that as a plan is really gonna make this process so much better for your business.
0:38:19 - Michelle Pualani
Really finding a strategic approach to reduce the amount of overwhelm that you have is so critical to pull out of this Working with clients. For me, just the project management of getting it all up on the board and being able to reverse engineer the process is really important. You have that launch date set the launch date and then say okay, working backwards. This is everything that I have to do and this is the order in which I'm going to do it. Save the decision-making process. You don't have to do everything at once, so oftentimes we feel overwhelmed when we don't have a clear strategy or a roadmap. So finding that or seeking a mentor, getting the support in order to help you curate that, is very important to minimize some of that overwhelm. Again, some of the things that you can automate in your business that can, more tactically, make this really effective for opening up the space for creativity, allowing you to feel more calm, feel more presence in your business and really feel a sense of alignment in how you're showing up on a day-to-day basis. Joanna talked a lot about automating paying your bills, anything that you have to regularly pay for, having that set up, having it situated and making sure that budgeting-wise, financially, you're on track to make sure that those are covered. Also, we've talked a little bit about going through your subscriptions and recognizing what am I not using anymore, what is not relevant to me, clearing that out. Automating any emails. So we have a podcast guest strategy in order for bringing people onto the show. What that looks like for us is templated outreach a spreadsheet with the information that we need for booking as well as for link delivery. Having a Google form in place so that we're not managing email responses about someone's title or bio or their picture. So just allowing yourself to create the systems and set up the automations that better support an onboarding process, email responses or DM responses.
When it comes to social media platforms, there are so many integrated tools that you can use. If you're doing things consistently regularly over and over again in your business, figure out how to systemize or automate that thing. Project management tools that Joanna talked about super helpful, anything that can link up and automate the system. So again say someone pays for something. You wanna be able to send them everything that they need, whether that's via email or via Zapier or via Kajabi, your actual online portal, making sure that they have everything they need right out the gate so you don't have to do it manually, adding them to a group, having all of that kind of situated and figured out, so you don't have to think about all the steps as they come through to you live.
Being able to schedule out emails is one of my favorite hacks in Google. That's something that I love to be able to do is when I think of something, even if it's for a week out. If I need to follow up with someone, for example, I just connected with them, I need to follow up in a week or so so we can talk about the collaboration, that partnership, that affiliate, instead of using like a full on CRM tool, which can sometimes be really cumbersome. I'll create the email right then and then I will schedule, send it in Google for about a week. Super easy, super simple, whether that's your Slack or whether that is on again, a certain platform that you use, just finding those little ways to not overwhelm your time, your energy, your schedule. And then this is a really big one for me.
For a long time I would get competitor newsletters and other people in the industry personal development, fitness, health and wellness. And then, as I segwayed into business, marketing, digital marketing and all of those things and it got overwhelming trying to manage that in my inbox as well as tried to read and consume and then it got me out of creation mode and into consumption mode. So being able to unsubscribe from those and be really critical about your email inbox and what's coming into you so that you don't have to look at I cannot stand, but I don't know how people do this like a thousand unread messages. If you are that person, dm me. We need to talk, Because when you get into your email inbox and you see that that is sending a signal to your brain that you have all of these outstanding tasks and things that you need to do. So if you can keep your inbox clutter free, that is huge.
And then I wanna share this at a different time, but I just went through a digital detox and like a digital declutter to start the new year and that was so helpful and impactful in freeing up these literal space for me to think about creativity and content creation, as opposed to managing and navigating all of the clutter in my photos, in my drive, in all of these places in which I'm meant to create.
So that meant cleaning up apps. It meant cleaning up and getting rid of photos and videos and better organizing my albums and just going through everything. So that it was a nice refresh as we start the new year, so that I feel confident and I feel really clear about how I'm showing up on a daily basis. And that is so incredibly helpful to just think about. How can I declutter my space, how can I focus, how can I organize and now can I make this process a lot more simple and a lot less cumbersome for myself so that I do the things that I know that I need to do instead of procrastinating and instead of avoiding them.
0:43:38 - Joanna Newton
I know as we're talking about these things. These might not feel like things six, seven figure business owners worry about and think about, but I will tell you it is because doing these things will help you get to be able to be a six or seven figure business owner. Because if you're not worried, if you have these things automated, if you're not worried about this, you can be so much more productive. I'll tell you, all of the things we're talking about are things that I do in my daily life, like I don't wanna like toot my own horn in, like a weird way, but I'm a very productive person.
0:44:16 - Michelle Pualani
I'll toot your horn. You are a multi six figure business owner. Your business hit over $500,000 in sales last year. So listen up people. If you are doing less than $500,000 in sales, then pay attention, because this will help you not just be more productive, but allow you to create the space for the work that matters in your business and in your life.
0:44:39 - Joanna Newton
It's so true, woohoo it's true, and these feel like silly things, but when you sit down to work and you only have a couple of hours and everything's in the right place, you have all the templates, you have all the things, your email is clear so you can see what you need to do, your computer desktop is clear so you can get those files that you need to attach to the emails. When everything is in the right place, you can do so much more, and so taking the time to do that is so, so important. And one little thing that we do in our business that makes the world of a difference is we have a really specific pass off between sales and ops. So when something is sold, obviously that has to then be serviced. They have to go into onboarding, they have to go in that process. So we have a really simple sales tracker where we're tracking all of our deals and, as it's being worked on, the person selling it either myself or my business partner Brandon put in all the details along the way that happen Links to the scope of work, links to their website, all of their details, all of their stuff. When the deal is sold and we mark it sold in our tracker, it automatically moves to our service section and all of that information is transferred over. So this seems like really, really, really simple, right? But by doing that, by taking that sales process, all of that information gathering and automating that movement to ops, there's a reminder all of the spaces are filled. That sales person doesn't have to send an email in the process. Here's this client, here are their details, here's their scope of work. That's literally two hours of work of catch up that no one is doing because it's automated, right. So this is huge and an amazing way that you can scale. Once, you can automate things.
And so, when you're developing processes for regular tasks, documenting is key, right? Just as an example, that onboarding process, right, that moving from sales to ops, it's documented. We do it the same way every single time, and it used to be just me and Brandon doing it. Right, it was documented. All of the steps are there, it's happening, everything's happening. But then, once it's documented and you do it the same way every single time, then you can start to outsource, right, you can hire someone to take pieces of it, because there's rules, there's documentation, there's a process, and when you do it the same way every time, you're not making decisions. You're not saying, hmm, what should we do next? Should they get an email? Should I call them? Should I set up a phone call? Should I do this? Should I do that? Should I set up their folders? You're thinking. You're saying here's my checklist, I'm gonna do it, and you're not wasting time, wasting decision energy on something that happens every single time.
A really good example of this is our podcast episode. We have our checklist of everything that has to happen for a podcast. We do it the same way every time. The same person does the same actions every single time. It's all there, it's easy, it happens and no one is thinking oh, you know who's gonna write the show notes this time, who's gonna write the outline? Who's gonna do this, who's gonna do that? It's already decided for us so that we can keep going, keep creating content and keep making episodes without having to make every single little decision.
So thinking about something that you do on a regular basis should be documented. You should have a system for it. I will go back to my project management tool. It should belong in a project management tool with a template that you can copy and paste over and over again. So you're just not thinking about all of these little how-tos every single time. You're just doing that.
Now think about, you know, the day that her first podcast is larger and we have someone helping us. Now we have a system that we can integrate someone into. We say this is how we do it. Here's a document and record of every other time we did it. So now you have templates, you have things to do. How much faster is training when you can say this is what our show notes look like, these are examples of our things, this is how we do it. Now you're gonna take these pieces and now it's your job, and then you're able to outsource, train, give that person direction, because you've done that work and I know that it can feel daunting to do that planning work, but it's the only way you're gonna be able to scale and grow.
0:48:56 - Michelle Pualani
And we're gonna wrap up this conversation on outsourcing. So, when it comes to levels and gradations of how you're thinking about this, a lot of times you're gonna be doing it a lot by yourself to get started. You're gonna be putting the systems, the templates, creating them. You're going to be kind of doing all of these things in order to get yourself to a point where you don't have to think about it anymore. But eventually you're gonna wanna outsource. This includes in your personal life, whether that is a personal assistant, potentially a driver, potentially care for the things that you don't wanna deal with anymore and that can look like dog walking, it can look like child sitting. I don't have a kid. You know what I'm talking about Having someone care for the things in your life.
0:49:40 - Joanna Newton
Child sitting. That's like my favorite thing you've ever said.
0:49:43 - Michelle Pualani
Having those people in your life, a team that really supports you, so that you can focus on the genius that you bring to your business, is really important. So, really quickly, as we think about hiring people really intentionally focusing on how they align with your core values and the trustworthiness of those individuals being on your team, you have to be the leader that they need in order to fulfill their role. You can also start to invest in them on a smaller scale to start, and then give them more things over time. So I like this example from the four hour work week by Tim Ferriss is that when he talks about outsourcing and bringing on team members, he starts smaller. So giving them, say, about $10, decision-making choices Things that would maybe only cost you about $10, whether that's time or someone's investment or refund, whatever that looks like. Giving them the decision-making up until that point and then, once you feel like they're ready, going to the next level $100 things and then $1,000 things and allowing them to grow with growth and educating them along the way. So guiding them through that process of when they're able to make decisions for themselves, micromanaging them and needing to be looking over their shoulder all the time is not a healthy working relationship. It's also not a great way to think about outsourcing, because the reason you're outsourcing is to alleviate your time and energy, so you don't wanna be continuously investing hours of your time in order to make sure that a team member is doing their job properly. That takes some training, that takes the right person, it takes that trustworthiness between you and them and again, you can grow with growth over time. And then also what Joanna was talking about in terms of having the systems and the templates it's a lot easier when there are processes in place that they can follow, and then it's not necessarily about the output, it's did you follow the steps? And if you can get the steps in place and if they can follow the steps, then everything else in terms of managing them and in terms of investing in them and in terms of trusting them to do their job properly is a lot easier.
But as you scale, as you grow, there will be a time in which you have to be able to relinquish some of that control. So I know right now you might have the sense of no one can do it as good as I can, or it's only gonna get done if I do it, or I don't want anyone else doing it because I don't know what they're gonna produce. Through that process you have to start to relinquish some of that control and trust that someone else might actually be able to do it better than you can. You just haven't seen that quite yet. Finding the right person, having the right relationship and fostering their development and their growth because you are the leader in that case scenario is really critical and important to establishing a team that is gonna support you so that again, it takes time, it takes energy, it takes brain capacity, it takes your investment off the table. It helps alleviate some of that so that you can again focus on the creative things that really and truly matter in your business.
0:52:48 - Joanna Newton
Our goal here for those of us who are listening, that are business owners, creators you have a side hustle. Your goal is to create something that goes beyond trading your time for money. You don't want to just be trading time for money your entire life. That is not how you build wealth. That's not how you build a large business. But I think part of the problem is is sometimes you have to make less money to do that in the long term. Bringing on someone. You can feel like if I pay someone to brand my social media, then I'm going to lose out on that couple thousand dollars a month. I'm not gonna be making that, but then theoretically you're gonna be able to move on to something else and eventually you're gonna have a growing, breathing business that could make money. If you took a break right, where you can be earning money if you take a break, if you take time off.
Coming from a background where we did not grow up with money, who we did not grow up with anything, the concept of paying someone to mow your lawn was like you don't do that. That's not something you do. If you can do it yourself, you do it. I had a crazy small budget for my wedding. I am literally a person that I rolled my own napkin, like I rolled my own silverware into napkins for my wedding, to save money, because I just did everything I could do myself myself to stay within budget. But I'll tell you when I changed my mindset about outsourcing things, about finding hacks, spending money on a grocery delivery, all of those kinds of things. I always saw the ROI at the end of the day and there might be moments where it's like, not immediate, right, you've gotta spend money to be able to make more money. And you're gonna have these moments where, like, your income goes up, you have to spend more money to support that.
You might experience a plateau as you're working through it and then you're able to reach that next level and that next level, but taking time to think about what you can automate, what you can outsource, what you can do, is the only way you're gonna be able to reach those like higher level of successes. So if that's what you want in life, that's something that you need to think about and consider.
0:54:55 - Michelle Pualani
Recognizing that decision fatigue is a real thing and that you might be suffering from it in some way in your business, but also learning that a lot of these tactics that we talked about today are easy to implement on a small, incremental basis. Remember that you don't have to do everything we chatted about at the same time. Pick one thing, one takeaway from today that really stuck out to you, that you feel like you can implement today or tomorrow, and then allow that to open up the space, the energy, the creativity and the ability for you to focus on the things in your business that truly matter to you, because that's what this is all about.
