Maintaining Productivity During Divorce

Divorce or a major life transition is one of the most stressful things that you can go through, and it doesn’t necessarily have to be even though it’s going to be.

The reality is that the average productivity that is lost for people is 50% while they’re going through divorce 50% productivity loss.

Now, if you’re in a C suite position or owner of a company, entrepreneur yourself, you understand a 50% loss of production is crippling. It will absolutely cripple you, your business, your income and your profitability.

Luckily for you, we’re going to give you the tools today that we use here at Modig Leadership so you can be more productive and have a more efficient experience as you go through your divorce or even major life transition.

Make a list
As high achievers, we want to get a lot accomplished, right?

When you have things rattling around in your head, it can get really overwhelming and you just get bogged down by the thoughts racing in your head and you are wasting all this energy instead of actually getting things done. I call this a brain dump. What I do is I roll out a piece of paper on my 10 foot long dining room table, take all my Sharpies and I literally break down every single thing I need to do.

Getting the ideas out of your head and onto paper works the best when the ideas are hand written because your memory and your emotions are tied much more deeply when you write it out by hand on paper.

Write everything that you are thinking down and make a list and then prioritize it. We think we can get 20 things done in a day. But the reality is, we’re probably only going to get three to eight things done on any given day. Take your top three items for the day and make sure that these non-negotiables get done. Bonus points if you have extra time or are feeling super productive and want to take on more that day!

Finally, when those three things are done, celebrate your success in getting those items done. It’s okay to celebrate you. We’ve we live in a culture where people have a hard time celebrating our own selves. We’re more than happy to cheer and encourage everyone else, but we never do it for ourselves. So, when you celebrate yourself, you are feeding your mindset, your confidence, your ability to produce and take action.

2. Set a timer

As you go through your tasks, set a timer.

If there’s some dreaded task- maybe it’s cleaning your car out, or filing all those papers that are sitting on your office desk, whatever it may be, set a timer just do it. It is on your list and it is a priority. You’ve made it a priority because if it’s in your environment causing you anxiety, then you’re wasting energy on that anxiety. It’s negative energy about what you’ve got going on in your environment, when if that were taken care of, could be poured into and focused on something that’s productive for you.

By setting a timer, 10 or 15 minutes, or whatever time you have, it psychologically gives yourself permission to be done. It’s no longer this monumental task that you don’t want to take on. You are going to give that task 10 minutes when the timer goes up and then you can move on.

Budgeting your time like this is also how you can fill gaps within your schedule as well, which increases productivity. If a meeting is over 25 minutes early, you’ve got this list of things that you can go to where you can give just 10 minutes and it is one less thing on the list. You could even make a separate list of small tasks like this that you can refer to so that when you have a free 10 minutes, you can knock off another item.

3. Focus on what you can control

How can you respond differently? How can you shift gears to get into a positive mind space? How can you choose to be productive today?

If there’s things that you can’t change, stop focusing on it because, again, you’re giving your energy to something that you can’t change. You want to focus on something you can change.

Here’s a little secret that we all think we know but we don’t really let it resonate with us. You cannot control anyone else but you, so you should focus on you and you alone. You can entice them, you can motivate them, you can encourage them, but you can’t control them at the end of the day. They’re autonomous.

As soon as you accept that and just back off and relax and let go of that- holding on to and controlling everything and everyone in your surrounding, you can start focusing on you. Putting that energy back into yourself in and of itself gives you more productivity.

4. Focus on your strengths and weaknesses

Oftentimes, people are so afraid to tap into their weaknesses, but the reality is, every single human on the planet has strengths and weaknesses.

However, you need to get objective. When you can get objective and remove your emotional ego from exercise, sit down and make a list. Of your strengths and weaknesses.

Ask people around you “What are my top three strengths? What are my top three weaknesses?”

This can be extremely vulnerable and it can make you feel exposed. But, the quicker you can embrace that, the quicker you know what they are, and the sooner you can be more productive in mitigating damage by continuing to do things that you’re not good at.

It’s okay that you’re not good at certain things. Once you finally learn and accept that, your life will radically change. So, your productivity goes up when you’re in your wheelhouse, but you can’t know what your wheelhouse is unless you identify it. So sit down, and identify it.

Be okay with yourself, get your ego out of the way and accept the weaknesses that you have. Then you want to hire and strategically place people around you that can take care of those for you and who love to do that, who accelerate at it, who are great at it like. Then that frees you up to do what you are good at, giving you more productivity in that space instead of draining my energy of areas that are not that I don’t accelerate it.

5. Ask for help

Ask people to help you who can fill the gap on your weaknesses. This frees you up so that you can operate in your wheelhouse and you’re going to be much more productive when you’re operating in a space that you love, that you’re good at, that you’re gifted at, and you know how to do.

When you’re trying to do these other things that you’re not good at, the disdain just drags you down. You’re pulling down your energy and wasting energy on negative things in your mind. They’re negative to you because you don’t like them and you’re not operating at your peak potential.

So, go get help, get resourceful and find people who can help you with these things that you may not necessarily be great at and it’s okay. As we said before, accepting the fact that these are your weaknesses is the first step toward releasing that negative energy on it and increasing your productivity, so your profitability can maintain itself as you go through this divorce.

If you want to hear more, need additional guidance, or need someone to help see things that you cannot, go ahead and visit our site to book a call and see how we here at Modig Leadership can help you!