CONNECT with Sheila Botelho Podcast

056: Find Your Highest Productivity & Wellbeing

February 22, 2021 Sheila Botelho
CONNECT with Sheila Botelho Podcast
056: Find Your Highest Productivity & Wellbeing
Show Notes Transcript

Episode Notes:

I’ve been experimenting with how I use my time and I believe it’s paying off. I’ve gotten curious about this enough to know that this is my next growth edge for my personal practices. And I’m loving the pay-off.

If you struggle with organizing your time and feeling accomplished in your daily projects and commitments, this episode will give you some ideas. While your life may have a different flow than mine, you’ll see that it all begins with a choice, so it’s totally doable.

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“I love Sheila’s insights on The Connect Podcast.”

Hey, Welcome to the Podcast!

I’ve been doing an experiment … I seem to always be doing those with my health and my daily practices. And I’m so glad that I do. 

It’s the way that I’ve been able to adopt some really life affirming, feel-good habits!

I’ll give you a few examples:

I’ll start with Journaling...this felt frivolous and non-important, but this one thing has helped me through over 30 years of decisions, life changes, the loss of way too many loved ones, dreams, mothering highs and lows, and spiritual awakenings.

Then there’s morning exercise...this one was difficult at first, but after a month - a habit that’s lasted for more than 20 years!

Morning lemon water… It was a challenge to not dive right away into my old-school morning bagel of the past, but it’s elevated my nourishment and metabolism for 9 years.

So, what am I currently working on? Well - I’ve been trying different things with my tech and social media time with moderate success, and now….

Boundaries around my creative work time that allow for my highest productivity AND wellbeing.

75% of the time I don’t do much writing or planning in the evening, so I can slowly ease into rest at the end of the day but the other 25% of the time, I can find myself inching minute by minute past the boundary that I’ve set. Sometimes over this winter, HOURS past my bedtime!

And I’m not ok with it.

So I’ve been experimenting with my time boundaries earlier during the day to ensure that my evenings are sacred. And unless there’s a special online (or hopefully soon) in-person event, evenings are set aside for time with my loves, a good book, or an early night.

It took me having a stern conversation with myself about this recently.

I said: “If you stay up too late, you’ll have way less energy tomorrow and you won’t show up as your best. Go To Bed!”

Have you ever done that? Gave yourself a talking-to? 

I’m so glad I did, because on most days, whatever I dive into in the evening, I tend to waver off-course and it leads to lack of focus and lost time in the end.

On the other hand, when I instead go to bed early and rise earlier, get my fitness and nourishment in first thing, I complete the task that would have taken me 2 hours the night before in 30 minutes the next day.

I’ve experimented enough with this to know that this is my next growth edge for my personal practices.

And I’m loving the pay-off.

I’m more rested and chill. I’ve gotten more balanced melatonin levels because I’m getting earlier sleep (more on that in my sleep program - see the link to it in the show notes). My mornings are more purposeful and I start the day a win. And mostly, my family life works better because I’m simply more organized!

Happy Me - Happy Family! Can you relate?

Sure - there will be times when I’ll shake up my routine, but as I’ve done with all my other foundational habits, I’ll always return to the pattern I’ve that set and feel so much better for it. Usually what that does is remind me of how wonderful my set routine is. 

It’s anything but boring, because my routines typically are morning and night for the most part, I get to flex and flow with all the time in between and see what magic emerges in my connections, ideas and idle moments.

All of what I’m talking about is practiced around my feminine cycle and seasons as well, so each week of the month and season of the year will have a different flavor to it.

Honing this practice of early to bed, and revisit my projects in the morning are how this episode got written. The idea came to me last night, as I felt sleep beckoning and I answered it with, “be right there” as I turned off the modem for the night. 

This morning was a great start in every way and now I have the rest of the morning to tend to my other responsibilities.

And the sun is shining too! So that’s a double-win.

I’d love to hear from you:

What does your daily productive time look like? What works for you? Are you a night owl who gets the most done late in the evening, or have you found mornings to be magical?

Please tag me @sheilaabotelho on Instagram and let me know.

Hearing how this lands with you shapes future episodes and I’m always open to great ideas for living well.

Have an amazing day!

Big Blessings.