Two Reasons You Shouldn’t Be Upset if You’re Struggling with Being Productive

Does this ever happen to you? As you’re caught up in the day-to-day of all the things you’re juggling, as you’re feeling overwhelmed by all the stuff you have to get done, do you ever stop and wonder exactly why it’s so hard?

I mean, you’re obviously smart, determined, and hard-working, so why can it be so difficult sometimes to keep everything up? It’s totally frustrating, and you may even beat yourself up a bit over it. It’s so easy to think – “Shouldn’t I be able to do all of this?” “Shouldn’t I just be good at time management?” “Shouldn’t I be able to stay productive and focused enough to get all this done without being so overwhelmed?” or maybe “If I could just get caught up, I should be able to maintain things from there, so why isn’t that working”

Please, please don’t be so hard on yourself. Promise me you’ll give yourself a break on this for two reasons:

First, this stuff is HARD. Let’s just get that out of the way. What you handle every day is a big deal, so let’s just recognize that. (Go back and remind yourself how amazing you really are if you need to.)
Second, you’ve probably been a really high achiever and rocked things your whole life, so you may wonder why your typical intelligence, hard work, and determination doesn’t always seem to be enough. I get that, totally frustrating, but here’s the thing – no one ever teaches us this stuff! It’s really asking too much of ourselves to expect that we’ll naturally be amazing at time management, productivity, or figuring out the best system and the way of running our day that’s the right fit for us. It’s a different skill set, and it’s not easy.

So, the next time you’re being a bit hard on yourself about this stuff (maybe that’s now, maybe that’s at the end of the day when you’re revisiting your to-do list), please remind yourself how much you rock, how hard this is, that you’re doing it anyway, and that you shouldn’t magically know the best way for you to juggle everything.

Here’s to going easy on yourself, and to celebrating how much you do!

~Kate

PS – You may wonder why it’s so hard to juggle everything and why you’re not better at time management and productivity, but the truth is it’s really hard and no one teaches us this stuff, so make it your goal to be kind to yourself today instead of giving yourself a hard time.