83. Calendar Stressing You Out? It’s Time to Uncommit
The lessons we’re taught around productivity often center around being more committed or disciplined to our goals and business vision. However, I’m taking a different approach this week and showing you how being less committed or uncommitting could be the solution to your productivity issues.
While you might think uncommitting is about doing less, it’s so much more than that. The belief that you should be doing more right now is spreading you thin. It’s forcing you to take temporary action, and it’s making your schedule feel stressful or overwhelming. The truth is, no amount of focused time-blocking mastery is going to help you be more productive if you’re over-committed, but uncommitting can.
Tune in this week to learn the power of uncommitting and when the practice of uncommitting might be called for in your business. I’m showing you how uncommitting can be helpful, the value of doing an audit of your current commitments, and how you’ll free up your time and mental bandwidth when you uncommit.
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What You’ll Discover from this Episode:
What uncommitting means.
How believing you should be doing more causes you to do less.
Why forcing yourself to do more is not sustainable fuel.
Who the practice of uncommitting can be a good option for.
How to free up your time and mental bandwidth by uncommitting.
Listen to the Full Episode:
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Full Episode Transcript:
Hey designer, you’re listening to episode 83. This is the one where I’m talking about uncommitting. So often productivity talk is focused on being more committed or more disciplined, but I want to take a different approach today and share how being less committed is actually the solution for some of you when it comes to your productivity problems.
Welcome to The Interior Design Business CEO, the only show for designers who are ready to confidently run and grow their businesses without the stress and anxiety. If you’re ready to develop a bigger vision for your interior design business, free up your time, and streamline your days for productivity and profit, you’re in the right place. I’m Desi Creswell, an award-winning interior designer and certified life and business coach. I help interior designers just like you stop feeling overwhelmed so they can build profitable businesses they love to run. Are you ready to confidently lead your business, clients, and projects? Let’s go.
Hello designer, welcome back to the podcast. We are in full-on spring here in Minnesota. I hope you are as well. We have this lovely woman who comes and helps get the yard ready at the beginning of the season and we just discovered a mama duck who has a little nest right by our house.
We were getting the flower beds cleaned out and putting some new mulch down. And there was this mama duck. So she’s all cozied up between a pine tree and our house and snuggled in. And so now I’m eagerly awaiting little ducklings. Hopefully I’ll see them waltzing down, or waddling down I should say, to our lake. But I hope you’re having an awesome spring and I’m excited to bring you this idea.
It’s been a while since I did a productivity-focused episode and this concept of uncommitting has come up with a few clients recently, and also for myself with planning my summer slowdown, which you can hear more about in episode 80.
Before we get started, I do want to give a quick shout out to a listener and reviewer of the podcast. This review that I’m going to read you is from Calmradery. I love that. And they titled their review, openness and clarity. They said, “Thank you for all of your openness and sharing specific terms and steps in the process of growth.
I’ve been doing a lot of similar work with different coaches for my interior design business, but wishing I knew about Desi earlier, as the mindset element really completes the understanding, perspective shifting and real meaningful change. Thank you for all you put into this and to all of the guests for opening up.” Thank you Calmradery. I so, so appreciate you taking the time to leave a review. And I’m so glad to hear that this is exactly what you’ve been looking for.
As a reminder, I’m still hosting the podcast giveaway. So if you go over to wherever you listen to your podcasts, even just open up the app right now and tap the five stars, leave a review, let me know what you love about the show. And then submit a quick form that’ll be linked in the show notes so that I know how to enter you in the giveaway. You’ll be entered to win a one-on-one coaching session with me and we can work on anything you like.
As we get started talking about uncommitting, I want to first talk about what it is. And I think a good place to start with is actually talking about commitment. And the way we’re talking about it today are the things that you’ve decided to do in your interior design business. Those are commitments, things you’ve decided to do.
Now, these might be pen and paper, put in Asana, real like these are happening commitments. Or they might just be kind of floating around in a little nebulous cloud of, I’m kind of committed to these. It could be either, but it might be business initiatives like reworking your contract, doing marketing maybe in the form of a monthly newsletter or personal outreach. It could be your actual design projects and the number of projects you take on at once.
It’s the things that you’ve decided to do or that you’re committed to doing. And another person might be on the other side of the commitment or the commitment might be made internally with yourself.
When I look at the definition of commitment, it is loyalty to an activity or cause with wholehearted dedication. And when I talk about committing today, it’s really the opposite of being dedicated. It’s a releasing of attachment to doing the thing or things, probably the things.
You could look at uncommitting as just doing less, but it’s really not that simple. It’s much more layered because uncommitting is very challenging when you hold the belief that you should be able to do more or that you should be doing more. And that belief is really spreading you thin and causing you to actually do less.
So you believe you should be doing more, but that belief causes you to do less. And then you feel very, very stressed in the process. When you’re telling yourself you need to be more committed to something, it’s really a should. I should be doing this.
But underlying all of that is, I know I’m probably not going to do this, either because I don’t have capacity for it or it’s just really not a priority right now. But I’m going to keep telling myself that I should do this so that hopefully I eventually feel bad enough and behind enough and I can force myself into some kind of commitment.
Now, sometimes this works, right? You get yourself into temporary action from that forcing, but it’s not sustainable fuel. And you’re not really committed to doing the thing. What you become more committed to is escaping the negative emotion that you’re creating around not doing, but still telling yourself you should be committed and doing. I really want you to hear that. And that is why I wanted to talk about this idea of uncommitting today.
As I mentioned, this came up with a client recently in a private session and comes up frequently with clients. And this particular client was feeling overwhelmed and like there was not enough space in her day to get all the things on her calendar done, both her client work, her business back end work, and then the way she wanted to be supporting herself as the human behind the business.
And one of the things that she had noticed was that she was continually putting a marketing activity on her calendar, but then moving it. And her calendar was really starting to look like this game of Tetris. Everything really had to stack together perfectly if it was going to get done. And of course we know no plan is ever perfect.
And instead of making another list, instead of shifting those calendar blocks around again, making another plan, it was really time to uncommit. There are times when we want to look at, are you having focused work periods? Are you planning your day with results in mind versus just in doing to do? Those can be strategies, and I also want you to consider that those alone sometimes are not enough. Sometimes you really do need to uncommit.
This type of uncommitting can be helpful for those of you who really have the scheduling and time management skills dialed in. And also those of you who are newer to the approaches I teach here on the podcast and in my programs.
Uncommitting could be a good option for you if you have tons of tasks and projects that have been on your list for years. What I’m picturing right now is like you open up a parchment scroll and it just drops to the floor and rolls away with all the things you have told yourself you should be committed to.
Uncommitting could also be a good option if you have that to-do list that you just never seem to finish. Maybe it’s something that’s on the computer or a pad of paper or notes scattered about in a gazillion different notebooks.
Uncommitting might also be a good option for you if those shoulds follow you around like a gray cloud and are constantly popping into your head throughout the day. Maybe they don’t have anywhere to live except in those random moments when they pop into your head and take you away from what you actually already committed to doing.
And uncommitting might be a good option if whenever you look at your list or your calendar, you feel anxiety, stress, and overwhelm because you’re thinking you need to do the things except when you actually look at the calendar, there just simply is not time. And that might be when uncommitting is called for with the things that are on the calendar or uncommitting to things that haven’t made their way onto the calendar, but you’re thinking that they should.
A common tendency when you’re experiencing that kind of stress and overwhelm and the calendar is not working for you and you just feel like you’re always working or it’s always bleeding into other parts of your day, we often think that the thing to do is find time to do all the things, but it’s not realistic.
This goes back to why it’s so important to set your work hours, understand how long things take and map out your plan so you can actually see if the math of your day or your week works. No amount of focused time blocking wizardry is going to help you if you are just over committed.
I really want you to hear this. Designer CEOs are very committed and they also uncommit. The difference is they know what they’re committed to and they’re committed to those needle-moving activities in their business that fit within the parameters of how they want to work and they let the rest go. Maybe indefinitely or maybe for a “not right now” time period, but there’s things they’re doing and then there’s things they’re not doing. And this is going to make you so much more effective, so much more productive and really increase the experience that you have of working in your business.
Now that you’re considering all this uncommitting, you might be wondering, okay, Desi, how do you do this? How do you free up your time and mental bandwidth through uncommitting? And the very first thing you need to do if you don’t already have this is give your ideas and those projects and pseudo commitments a place to live. You need to capture the ideas and get them out of your head.
I highly recommend this being digital, but if you want to do it on paper, you can. The first list I want you to make is a list of all the things you’d like to do. All the things you could do. The things you think you should do, but aren’t currently doing. I call this a parking lot. I picture it as a nice safe spot for my ideas to sit.
At the bottom of all of my quarterly plans that I make. I always have a parking lot that gets evaluated on a quarterly basis. And that’s when I really look at those potential projects and see if there’s anything I want to pull out of the parking lot and execute on, or if I want to sell the car, which really is just delete the project because I no longer see it as relevant.
It’s a safe place for them to land. It’s a safe place for those cars or my ideas to be because I know that it’s always going to be there. I don’t have to hold onto it. And it’s a clear uncommitment, I’m not committing to it. And then if I have a new idea or project I want to implement, but I’m already committed to other things, I can always put it in that parking lot for safekeeping, knowing I’m going to revisit it later.
Okay, so that’s the first list. The things that you aren’t doing in any capacity, but kind of think you should be doing or think might be a good idea, or that might help you in your business. The second list I want you to make are all the things you are committed to, meaning that you are doing these things in your interior design business in some capacity. Even if they’re kind of half finished, scattered, or half hearted, still make this list. I want you to think of everything that you are somewhat or fully committed to.
And once you have both of these lists, you’re going to audit them. I’m going to give you some specific questions you can ask yourself as you do this audit to help clarify what you’re going to be committed to and what you’re uncommitting to.
The very first thing you need to look at on both of these lists is does this thing align with and support my quarterly and yearly goals? If it does not, it needs to go. If it is supporting your goals, then you can keep it for future consideration, but that doesn’t mean it’s an automatic commitment.
The next thing I want you to ask is, do you know what you mean specifically by this commitment on the list? If it’s super vague, I want you to uncommit until you not only have the capacity, but also the clarity on what it is you’re setting out to create and how it contributes to your overall goals.
The next thing you can ask yourself is, do I have a plan? If you’re thinking maybe I should be committed to networking, do you have a plan for this and how it fits into your business? Do you know when you’re going to do it? What type of networking? If not, I want you to consider uncommitting until you have the opportunity to break it down and really understand what it is you’re setting out to do and what it’s going to require of you in terms of resources.
The last thing I’d have you ask yourself when you look at this list is, am I even interested in doing this thing? Trying to be committed to something you have zero interest in, haven’t bought into, or don’t really understand why it’s important is going to be an uphill battle. And you can just decide that’s not part of your plan right now.
And if it is something where you’re like, yeah, I can kind of see this, but I don’t quite understand how this fits or why I would be motivated to do it, maybe get some coaching on that resistance or start reflecting on that yourself. So that way you can remove the resistance, gain clarity, and be ready to actually commit if you decide it’s something, it goes back to question one, it’s something that contributes to your goals.
So now you’ve probably seen some things on both of those lists that you need to uncommit to. Those are the ones that just can go. And you can put those somewhere else if you want to save them, like the parking lot. Or you could just decide, you know what, if they’re important I’ll decide those later and I don’t need to hold onto these anymore.
But what you’re going to do is you’re going to review the list of what’s left, of the things that support your current goals and business vision. And I want you to take your best guess about what you need to prioritize and what you need to let go of, right? Because there can be things that would be helpful in your business, that would be supportive of your vision and goals, and that you need to uncommit to. It can be both.
You might not have the capacity to do all of those things. And this is a space for radical honesty. You have to decide what’s going to move the needle the most. And what do I actually have capacity for? Not what you think you should be able to get done or what you got done in the past when you had different circumstances that are no longer relevant, but what you can actually get done.
So you might need to uncommit to things you want to commit to. Committing and uncommitting really at their core are decisions that you make. What am I doing and what am I not doing? You fully commit to uncommitting. And the beauty of this is then you can be really all in on what it is you decide you are doing. And then you can be fully into the next thing that you decide you’re doing once you’ve concluded with that first thing.
I do not want you to use time management or time blocking to try and twist yourself into a pretzel. And I know this can be hard because everything feels important or like it could be helpful. And like I said, some of these things that you think you should be doing might actually be helpful.
But in believing that they’re helpful and trying to be committed to too much at once is actually going to slow down your progress and give you less effective results, both with things that you’re actually committed to and then also you’re going to be just contributing to stress and overwhelm that’s going to continue to build.
It’s kind of like never taking the trash out and you just keep putting things in the bin and in the bin and hoping that somehow the rubbish is not going to overflow. Somehow you can just shove it in there well enough and it’s all going to fit. And I think we can all agree it doesn’t work that way.
And if you’re thinking, oh, but I can’t uncommit to these things. They seem important. I want to do these things. Uncommitting feels hard. Yeah, it does. It does feel hard. I totally am there with you, right? But I also want you to know you already have this skill of uncommitting. You’re already not committed to certain things in your business.
I’m sure that there are hundreds, if not thousands, of strategies and ideas you could be potentially implementing right now that you don’t even have awareness of or that you have decided you’re not going to do. You’ve already uncommitted in certain ways.
So you have that skill and now you’re just strengthening that skill. Look at uncommitting as a move that’s going to support you and your business and your productivity because holding onto too many commitments at once will make you less productive.
Uncommitting makes you more productive and that’s because you’re focused on the highest yield activities that directly contribute to the goals you’re currently working on. Remember, not your future goals, right? We have a vision for the business and we want that all to align, but don’t be trying to solve for a problem that requires you to solve for something right in today, okay? That’s going to be the most effective and efficient way to approach your productivity.
When you uncommit, you’re also just going to free up so much time from all the dabbling without finishing. And then you free up that mental space of all the thinking and worrying about what you should be doing and how you’re not doing it and planning to do it and then needing to replan because you didn’t do it in the first place because you weren’t actually committed.
Uncommitting constrains your focus. And this is something that I talk about in episode five, The Power of Constraint. When you limit commitments, you give yourself the opportunity to get good at the thing you’re focusing on. So the process of doing something becomes quicker and easier and the quality improves. Remember, that’s what I talked about a couple of weeks ago in episode 81 about quantity creates quality.
It allows you to also finish things faster because of the focus and constraint. If you’re not dabbling, you’re doing. And focused doing is going to give you a better outcome.
This week, I really encourage you to put this into practice. Even if you don’t do the full list and full audit, look at what you’re you should be doing this week or that you’re pseudo committed to, and then get clear on just one thing you’re going to uncommit to. I would love to hear what that is for you. You can send me an email, desi@desiid.com, or send me a note on Instagram @DesiCreswell.
Before we wrap up, I’ll also put a quick note in here about private coaching. If you are interested in working together one-on-one in the fall or winter, now is the time to put your name on the waitlist for private coaching, that’ll be linked in the show notes.
And then in the next episode, I’m going to be sharing details of my special summer series for you. Go ahead and subscribe to the podcast now, if you aren’t already, so that you do not miss this announcement and also have the context for the work we’ll be doing together this summer. And that’s right, together. This is going to be interactive and I can’t wait to tell you about it. Until then I’m wishing you a beautiful week. I’m going to go check on that mama duck, see how she’s doing. And I’ll talk to you in the next episode.
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Thanks for joining me for this week’s episode of The Interior Design Business CEO. If you want more tips, tools and strategies visit www.desicreswell.com. And if you’re ready to take what you’ve learned on the podcast to the next level, I would love for you to check out my signature group coaching program, Out of Overwhelm.
Welcome to The Interior Design Business CEO, the only show for designers who are ready to confidently run and grow their businesses without the stress and anxiety. If you’re ready to develop a bigger vision for your interior design business, free up your time, and streamline your days for productivity and profit, you’re in the right place. I’m Desi Creswell, an award-winning interior designer and certified life and business coach. I help interior designers just like you stop feeling overwhelmed so they can build profitable businesses they love to run. Are you ready to confidently lead your business, clients, and projects? Let’s go.
Hello designer, welcome back to the podcast. We are in full-on spring here in Minnesota. I hope you are as well. We have this lovely woman who comes and helps get the yard ready at the beginning of the season and we just discovered a mama duck who has a little nest right by our house.
We were getting the flower beds cleaned out and putting some new mulch down. And there was this mama duck. So she’s all cozied up between a pine tree and our house and snuggled in. And so now I’m eagerly awaiting little ducklings. Hopefully I’ll see them waltzing down, or waddling down I should say, to our lake. But I hope you’re having an awesome spring and I’m excited to bring you this idea.
It’s been a while since I did a productivity-focused episode and this concept of uncommitting has come up with a few clients recently, and also for myself with planning my summer slowdown, which you can hear more about in episode 80.
Before we get started, I do want to give a quick shout out to a listener and reviewer of the podcast. This review that I’m going to read you is from Calmradery. I love that. And they titled their review, openness and clarity. They said, “Thank you for all of your openness and sharing specific terms and steps in the process of growth.
I’ve been doing a lot of similar work with different coaches for my interior design business, but wishing I knew about Desi earlier, as the mindset element really completes the understanding, perspective shifting and real meaningful change. Thank you for all you put into this and to all of the guests for opening up.” Thank you Calmradery. I so, so appreciate you taking the time to leave a review. And I’m so glad to hear that this is exactly what you’ve been looking for.
As a reminder, I’m still hosting the podcast giveaway. So if you go over to wherever you listen to your podcasts, even just open up the app right now and tap the five stars, leave a review, let me know what you love about the show. And then submit a quick form that’ll be linked in the show notes so that I know how to enter you in the giveaway. You’ll be entered to win a one-on-one coaching session with me and we can work on anything you like.
As we get started talking about uncommitting, I want to first talk about what it is. And I think a good place to start with is actually talking about commitment. And the way we’re talking about it today are the things that you’ve decided to do in your interior design business. Those are commitments, things you’ve decided to do.
Now, these might be pen and paper, put in Asana, real like these are happening commitments. Or they might just be kind of floating around in a little nebulous cloud of, I’m kind of committed to these. It could be either, but it might be business initiatives like reworking your contract, doing marketing maybe in the form of a monthly newsletter or personal outreach. It could be your actual design projects and the number of projects you take on at once.
It’s the things that you’ve decided to do or that you’re committed to doing. And another person might be on the other side of the commitment or the commitment might be made internally with yourself.
When I look at the definition of commitment, it is loyalty to an activity or cause with wholehearted dedication. And when I talk about committing today, it’s really the opposite of being dedicated. It’s a releasing of attachment to doing the thing or things, probably the things.
You could look at uncommitting as just doing less, but it’s really not that simple. It’s much more layered because uncommitting is very challenging when you hold the belief that you should be able to do more or that you should be doing more. And that belief is really spreading you thin and causing you to actually do less.
So you believe you should be doing more, but that belief causes you to do less. And then you feel very, very stressed in the process. When you’re telling yourself you need to be more committed to something, it’s really a should. I should be doing this.
But underlying all of that is, I know I’m probably not going to do this, either because I don’t have capacity for it or it’s just really not a priority right now. But I’m going to keep telling myself that I should do this so that hopefully I eventually feel bad enough and behind enough and I can force myself into some kind of commitment.
Now, sometimes this works, right? You get yourself into temporary action from that forcing, but it’s not sustainable fuel. And you’re not really committed to doing the thing. What you become more committed to is escaping the negative emotion that you’re creating around not doing, but still telling yourself you should be committed and doing. I really want you to hear that. And that is why I wanted to talk about this idea of uncommitting today.
As I mentioned, this came up with a client recently in a private session and comes up frequently with clients. And this particular client was feeling overwhelmed and like there was not enough space in her day to get all the things on her calendar done, both her client work, her business back end work, and then the way she wanted to be supporting herself as the human behind the business.
And one of the things that she had noticed was that she was continually putting a marketing activity on her calendar, but then moving it. And her calendar was really starting to look like this game of Tetris. Everything really had to stack together perfectly if it was going to get done. And of course we know no plan is ever perfect.
And instead of making another list, instead of shifting those calendar blocks around again, making another plan, it was really time to uncommit. There are times when we want to look at, are you having focused work periods? Are you planning your day with results in mind versus just in doing to do? Those can be strategies, and I also want you to consider that those alone sometimes are not enough. Sometimes you really do need to uncommit.
This type of uncommitting can be helpful for those of you who really have the scheduling and time management skills dialed in. And also those of you who are newer to the approaches I teach here on the podcast and in my programs.
Uncommitting could be a good option for you if you have tons of tasks and projects that have been on your list for years. What I’m picturing right now is like you open up a parchment scroll and it just drops to the floor and rolls away with all the things you have told yourself you should be committed to.
Uncommitting could also be a good option if you have that to-do list that you just never seem to finish. Maybe it’s something that’s on the computer or a pad of paper or notes scattered about in a gazillion different notebooks.
Uncommitting might also be a good option for you if those shoulds follow you around like a gray cloud and are constantly popping into your head throughout the day. Maybe they don’t have anywhere to live except in those random moments when they pop into your head and take you away from what you actually already committed to doing.
And uncommitting might be a good option if whenever you look at your list or your calendar, you feel anxiety, stress, and overwhelm because you’re thinking you need to do the things except when you actually look at the calendar, there just simply is not time. And that might be when uncommitting is called for with the things that are on the calendar or uncommitting to things that haven’t made their way onto the calendar, but you’re thinking that they should.
A common tendency when you’re experiencing that kind of stress and overwhelm and the calendar is not working for you and you just feel like you’re always working or it’s always bleeding into other parts of your day, we often think that the thing to do is find time to do all the things, but it’s not realistic.
This goes back to why it’s so important to set your work hours, understand how long things take and map out your plan so you can actually see if the math of your day or your week works. No amount of focused time blocking wizardry is going to help you if you are just over committed.
I really want you to hear this. Designer CEOs are very committed and they also uncommit. The difference is they know what they’re committed to and they’re committed to those needle-moving activities in their business that fit within the parameters of how they want to work and they let the rest go. Maybe indefinitely or maybe for a “not right now” time period, but there’s things they’re doing and then there’s things they’re not doing. And this is going to make you so much more effective, so much more productive and really increase the experience that you have of working in your business.
Now that you’re considering all this uncommitting, you might be wondering, okay, Desi, how do you do this? How do you free up your time and mental bandwidth through uncommitting? And the very first thing you need to do if you don’t already have this is give your ideas and those projects and pseudo commitments a place to live. You need to capture the ideas and get them out of your head.
I highly recommend this being digital, but if you want to do it on paper, you can. The first list I want you to make is a list of all the things you’d like to do. All the things you could do. The things you think you should do, but aren’t currently doing. I call this a parking lot. I picture it as a nice safe spot for my ideas to sit.
At the bottom of all of my quarterly plans that I make. I always have a parking lot that gets evaluated on a quarterly basis. And that’s when I really look at those potential projects and see if there’s anything I want to pull out of the parking lot and execute on, or if I want to sell the car, which really is just delete the project because I no longer see it as relevant.
It’s a safe place for them to land. It’s a safe place for those cars or my ideas to be because I know that it’s always going to be there. I don’t have to hold onto it. And it’s a clear uncommitment, I’m not committing to it. And then if I have a new idea or project I want to implement, but I’m already committed to other things, I can always put it in that parking lot for safekeeping, knowing I’m going to revisit it later.
Okay, so that’s the first list. The things that you aren’t doing in any capacity, but kind of think you should be doing or think might be a good idea, or that might help you in your business. The second list I want you to make are all the things you are committed to, meaning that you are doing these things in your interior design business in some capacity. Even if they’re kind of half finished, scattered, or half hearted, still make this list. I want you to think of everything that you are somewhat or fully committed to.
And once you have both of these lists, you’re going to audit them. I’m going to give you some specific questions you can ask yourself as you do this audit to help clarify what you’re going to be committed to and what you’re uncommitting to.
The very first thing you need to look at on both of these lists is does this thing align with and support my quarterly and yearly goals? If it does not, it needs to go. If it is supporting your goals, then you can keep it for future consideration, but that doesn’t mean it’s an automatic commitment.
The next thing I want you to ask is, do you know what you mean specifically by this commitment on the list? If it’s super vague, I want you to uncommit until you not only have the capacity, but also the clarity on what it is you’re setting out to create and how it contributes to your overall goals.
The next thing you can ask yourself is, do I have a plan? If you’re thinking maybe I should be committed to networking, do you have a plan for this and how it fits into your business? Do you know when you’re going to do it? What type of networking? If not, I want you to consider uncommitting until you have the opportunity to break it down and really understand what it is you’re setting out to do and what it’s going to require of you in terms of resources.
The last thing I’d have you ask yourself when you look at this list is, am I even interested in doing this thing? Trying to be committed to something you have zero interest in, haven’t bought into, or don’t really understand why it’s important is going to be an uphill battle. And you can just decide that’s not part of your plan right now.
And if it is something where you’re like, yeah, I can kind of see this, but I don’t quite understand how this fits or why I would be motivated to do it, maybe get some coaching on that resistance or start reflecting on that yourself. So that way you can remove the resistance, gain clarity, and be ready to actually commit if you decide it’s something, it goes back to question one, it’s something that contributes to your goals.
So now you’ve probably seen some things on both of those lists that you need to uncommit to. Those are the ones that just can go. And you can put those somewhere else if you want to save them, like the parking lot. Or you could just decide, you know what, if they’re important I’ll decide those later and I don’t need to hold onto these anymore.
But what you’re going to do is you’re going to review the list of what’s left, of the things that support your current goals and business vision. And I want you to take your best guess about what you need to prioritize and what you need to let go of, right? Because there can be things that would be helpful in your business, that would be supportive of your vision and goals, and that you need to uncommit to. It can be both.
You might not have the capacity to do all of those things. And this is a space for radical honesty. You have to decide what’s going to move the needle the most. And what do I actually have capacity for? Not what you think you should be able to get done or what you got done in the past when you had different circumstances that are no longer relevant, but what you can actually get done.
So you might need to uncommit to things you want to commit to. Committing and uncommitting really at their core are decisions that you make. What am I doing and what am I not doing? You fully commit to uncommitting. And the beauty of this is then you can be really all in on what it is you decide you are doing. And then you can be fully into the next thing that you decide you’re doing once you’ve concluded with that first thing.
I do not want you to use time management or time blocking to try and twist yourself into a pretzel. And I know this can be hard because everything feels important or like it could be helpful. And like I said, some of these things that you think you should be doing might actually be helpful.
But in believing that they’re helpful and trying to be committed to too much at once is actually going to slow down your progress and give you less effective results, both with things that you’re actually committed to and then also you’re going to be just contributing to stress and overwhelm that’s going to continue to build.
It’s kind of like never taking the trash out and you just keep putting things in the bin and in the bin and hoping that somehow the rubbish is not going to overflow. Somehow you can just shove it in there well enough and it’s all going to fit. And I think we can all agree it doesn’t work that way.
And if you’re thinking, oh, but I can’t uncommit to these things. They seem important. I want to do these things. Uncommitting feels hard. Yeah, it does. It does feel hard. I totally am there with you, right? But I also want you to know you already have this skill of uncommitting. You’re already not committed to certain things in your business.
I’m sure that there are hundreds, if not thousands, of strategies and ideas you could be potentially implementing right now that you don’t even have awareness of or that you have decided you’re not going to do. You’ve already uncommitted in certain ways.
So you have that skill and now you’re just strengthening that skill. Look at uncommitting as a move that’s going to support you and your business and your productivity because holding onto too many commitments at once will make you less productive.
Uncommitting makes you more productive and that’s because you’re focused on the highest yield activities that directly contribute to the goals you’re currently working on. Remember, not your future goals, right? We have a vision for the business and we want that all to align, but don’t be trying to solve for a problem that requires you to solve for something right in today, okay? That’s going to be the most effective and efficient way to approach your productivity.
When you uncommit, you’re also just going to free up so much time from all the dabbling without finishing. And then you free up that mental space of all the thinking and worrying about what you should be doing and how you’re not doing it and planning to do it and then needing to replan because you didn’t do it in the first place because you weren’t actually committed.
Uncommitting constrains your focus. And this is something that I talk about in episode five, The Power of Constraint. When you limit commitments, you give yourself the opportunity to get good at the thing you’re focusing on. So the process of doing something becomes quicker and easier and the quality improves. Remember, that’s what I talked about a couple of weeks ago in episode 81 about quantity creates quality.
It allows you to also finish things faster because of the focus and constraint. If you’re not dabbling, you’re doing. And focused doing is going to give you a better outcome.
This week, I really encourage you to put this into practice. Even if you don’t do the full list and full audit, look at what you’re you should be doing this week or that you’re pseudo committed to, and then get clear on just one thing you’re going to uncommit to. I would love to hear what that is for you. You can send me an email, desi@desiid.com, or send me a note on Instagram @DesiCreswell.
Before we wrap up, I’ll also put a quick note in here about private coaching. If you are interested in working together one-on-one in the fall or winter, now is the time to put your name on the waitlist for private coaching, that’ll be linked in the show notes.
And then in the next episode, I’m going to be sharing details of my special summer series for you. Go ahead and subscribe to the podcast now, if you aren’t already, so that you do not miss this announcement and also have the context for the work we’ll be doing together this summer. And that’s right, together. This is going to be interactive and I can’t wait to tell you about it. Until then I’m wishing you a beautiful week. I’m going to go check on that mama duck, see how she’s doing. And I’ll talk to you in the next episode.
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