Why Your Emotions Are Sabotaging Your Productivity

Do you often struggle to get everything completed on your to-do list? Unfortunately, there is always too much to do, and many nonprofit leaders, perhaps you included, feel overwhelmed, overworked and overextended.

NOT HELPFUL: Just learn to manage your time better
Most of us blame this on our workloads, jam-packed calendars and the crazy amounts of external stimuli around us. There's always another meeting to attend. Something is always being added to our to-do list, and the notifications keep reminding us that we have another message, email, or request.

How on Earth is anyone supposed to get anything done with all of that going on?

The solution to this always comes back to being better at prioritizing and time management. And while these are essential strategies and tools to learn, there's an underlying reason why they are often less than effective. In truth, prioritizing and time management can help, but they may not be enough!


HELPFUL: Learn to manage your emotions that are sabotaging your productivity.
In truth, it's our thoughts that slow us down. Our mental chatter 🤯 often encourages us to procrastinate and distracts us from what matters most. Our thoughts keep us distracted!!!

The word "distracted" has its origins in the Latin word "distractus," which means "drawn apart" or "divided."

For most of us, this means being unable to pay attention to the task at hand, focus on what we should be doing or concentrate on the job in front of us. As a result, we feel divided and wish we could clone ourselves to get more done!

Perhaps we need to become inDISTRACTable, as Nir Eyal advocates in his book "InDISTRACTable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life."

Eyal explains that being "distracted" is not just a product of external factors but also internal factors such as our thoughts, feelings, and beliefs.


Becoming inDISTRACTable

Eyal defines distraction as "the action of derailing attention from what we intend to do" and argues that becoming "indistractable" requires understanding why we become distracted in the first place. 

Eyal identifies four primary triggers of distraction: 

1. Internal triggers - such as boredom, anxiety, or stress
2. External triggers - such as notifications or alerts
3. Traction - the opposite of distraction, when we are fully engaged in an activity. If you are deep into a conversation with someone, you've got traction there, and it may be keeping you from another task.
4. Distraction by deception - when we deceive ourselves into thinking we are being productive when we are actually engaging in unimportant or irrelevant tasks. Think about how often we do this when we repeatedly clean our inboxes! This is similar to the busy work we need to stop doing, according to Eisenhower's time management matrix

It's time to gain some TRACTION
I want to focus on the words traction and distraction to help you become more aware of how your thoughts are getting in the way of your productivity. Consider how Eyal describes the difference here:

The Opposite of Distraction is Traction.

• A distraction is something we do that moves us away from what we really want.
• Traction is an action that moves us towards what we really want.

The difference seems obvious, but distraction has a sneaky way of tricking us.


Gaining traction with your leadership tasks
We can apply this concept to daily tasks like supervision meetings, strategic thinking, and building relationships with our board of directors.


Supervision meetings
Consider your responsibility for regular 1-1 supervision meetings with your staff. If you had traction, you would do this regularly and be up to date on them all. 

But when you are distracted, they linger on your to-do list or, as one of my clients said, they become a sticky note that gets moved from week to week in her agenda. 


Strategic thinking
I'm not talking about the annual strategic meeting where you put things into some formal document. Instead, I mean thinking strategically about how you're going to approach current challenges where you create a plan to deal with that difficult employee, the budget cuts that are looming or what to do with staff turnover in one particular program. These challenges get lodged in the back of your head and keep you up at night. 

If you have traction on this, you will have regular time in your calendar to think. But being distracted means it never happens intentionally. Instead, you just pray something good will come to you in the shower!


Board relationships
Effective leaders work closely with their board of directors, including attending meetings, providing regular reports, and seeking input on key decisions. But I know a lot of leaders who mean to develop stronger relationships with their boards but run out of time, are distracted, and continually push it down on the to-do list.

They need more traction on the relationship-building piece but only realize this when sometimes, it's almost too late, and the board is ready to implode!

You must identify what thoughts, beliefs and emotions are distracting you
If you:

• need to catch up on one-to-one supervision meetings
• need more time to think strategically
• could benefit from prioritizing building relationships with your board

You may need to look at what is distracting you from those tasks.

I know you're short on time, and the list of to-dos is long.
⭐️ But the reason you aren't getting these things done is deeper than that.

Here's what might be going on for you
Since, as Eyal says, you can't call it distraction unless you know what you're being distracted from, let's look at what distracts you from the above list. 
I believe it's the emotional connection to that task.

At that one-to-one supervision, you know you need to address how they regularly come to work late, and you don't want to do that.

• You may value peace and harmony and dislike confrontation.
  
  

Thinking strategically might create more work for you, and Lord knows you do not need more work.

• You may believe that if you work harder, it will all work out.
  
  

Having time with the board will require you to meet with that person, and you know that person, the one who irritates you, triggers you and makes you react in ways you're not always proud of.

• You may feel anxious because you know you will feel disrespected in a conversation like that.

Get clear on what the emotional connection is
If you struggle to get things done, it's time to look at what is distracting you. The emotional connection to a task may be what's holding you back.

• It's the thoughts that get in your way of getting those things done, not the lack of time or other responsibilities you have.
• It's what you believe.
• It's what you value.
• The emotions you have attached to that thing that you should be doing distract you from it.

Work through the Inner Guidance Cycle to identify what is going on 

How do you deal with emotional distractions?
You work through The Inner Guidance Cycle!

You PAUSE and do self-reflective exercises. 

You take time to PONDER, exploring those thoughts and beliefs and the connection they have to what's on your to-do list.

When you ask yourself what am I being distracted from, go deeper than the task you see at the surface level. Ask yourself:

• What emotions does this task bring up for me? 
• What values come into play here. 
• Am I aligned with my values?
• What's the story assumption or expectation that I have that might be getting in the way?

When you explore these thoughts, feelings, emotions and triggers, you'll figure out why you've been avoiding them. That's PIVOTing your perspective.

That shift in thinking helps you to take the action that moves and allows you to gain traction and do what you know you should do, aka PROCEEDing.


Unpacking thoughts, emotions, and beliefs in action

Listen to this podcast if you want to hear a beautiful example of this in real life. Brene Brown is being walked through the Immunity to Change Model by Lisa Leahy.

In the episode, Brene discovers her blind spots and hidden biases that she wasn't aware of until she went deeper.

Immunity to Change Podcast, Part 1 of 2
Immunity to Change, Podcast Part 2 of 2


Do the inner work to become more productive
It is absolutely true that we all have too much to do and will never get it all done. We must learn time management strategies and be excellent at prioritizing. ⭐️ But to go along with that, we also need to learn to manage what's happening in our heads. 

PAUSE to do the inner work.

PONDER and explore what's going on inside your head

When you do, you'll find shifts in your perspective, allowing you to PIVOT

Then you can PROCEED with courage doing what you know you need to do most.

Learn more about The Inner Guidance Cycle here.