Battling Overwhelm as an Author with Brandi Olson

A book is a big project and you can feel overwhelmed and unsure how to start, let alone finish. If that's how you're feeling, then I'm really excited because this Author Spotlight video with Brandy Olson is for you. Hey there, I'm Julie the Book Broad, founder of Book Launchers. Today I want to introduce you to one of our incredible authors and she's an organizational agility expert and and she's going to share some really game changing advice to help you get your book done and handle any feelings of overwhelm you may experience in the process. Her book Real Flow will also help you if you're a leader in an organization trying to get more done, battling Team Overwhelm and trying to figure out how to get high performance from your team. And I don't want to steal her thunder anymore. So please Brandi, introduce yourself and your book.

Hi, I'm Brandi Olson, author of the book Real Flow. Break the Burnout Cycle and Unlock High Performance in the New World of Work. This is a book for leaders and their teams who are flooded with competing priorities and organizational multitasking and want to find the high performance they know is possible without sacrificing their humanity.

Since Brandi is an expert on managing complex projects and getting things done, I thought she was the perfect person to give you tips on getting your book done. I first asked Brandi what advice she might have for authors who are trying to write their book but just start struggling to get it finished. I think you'll find you relate to what she has to share.

So when we have an abundance of important work to do, it seems like the only way to get it all done is to start it all right away. And we often spend a lot more time planning to get started instead of planning to get done. And that comes into play when we're trying to tackle a big project like a book. So here's how that played out for me when I started When I first started writing, I tried to carve out writing time every day. A little bit of progress each day and each week was my goal. And while that sounded nice on paper and would have worked if my goal was to just build a writing habit, it didn't work at all in reality because I had an abundance of other work to accomplish as well. So even though I was making a little progress each day, I was actually moving really slowly as I was not on pace to get done with my book. It took me a long time to get into flow with my writing, so I wound up spending the majority of my Daily writing time, just getting my head in the game and the context switching of moving from my client work to my writing work was killing my creativity.

Can you relate to that? I mean, a little bit each day doesn't always work for getting those big projects done. Sometimes you need big chunks of time. I experienced something similar when I was working on the book marketing book that's coming out soon. I found that if I was in office, there were too many priorities that seemed to take over my book project time. So I declared myself out of office for full days in order to do that. What did you do, Brandi?

Once a month I took a four day weekend to write. I found that I got a lot more done by writing in sprints than trying to make daily progress. And while that worked for me, that exact same thing might not work for every single leader. But the point is to figure out what, where, and how you can carve out the time right in the space to be focused. So I took my big goal, write a book. And I broke it down into smaller objectives. An outline for each chapter, a manuscript for each chapter, my interviews, my sketches. I put all of those smaller outcomes into a visual flow board along with the rest of the work that I was trying to make progress on for my business. And my board had three columns to do in progress and done. This helped me manage my work in progress because I kept my book tasks in the to do column until I actually had the capacity to both start and finish one of the micro objectives for my book, which usually for me meant waiting for my writing sprints.

What I liked about this is Brandi reduced the mental clutter. Well, Brandi calls it cognitive load. But for me, it feels like my brain is just cluttering, cluttered. And that comes with having this big project on your plate that you're not making progress on. That weighs you down mentally. But by having the tasks on the board and knowing she has time carved out for them, she doesn't have to carry them around mentally with her. She can just get to her writing days and dive in. Okay, so the question I was really excited to ask Brandi was about her best tip for authors handling the overwhelm of a big project like a book. I think you're really going to like her answer, so. So please take it away, Brandi.

I love that question. And my answer is, if there's one thing that you focus on as a leader that's going to help resolve that overwhelm and free up creative energy for innovative thinking and problem solving, it's to prioritize and not just to know what your priorities are. Because having a dozen number one priorities is not the same thing as actually prioritizing. When there's an abundance of important work to do, it can feel impossibly hard to prioritize because everything is important. And that may be true. Everything that you have and your team is working on may be critically important. But that's exactly the reason why doing the hard work of prioritization is so essential. And here's my favorite, most helpful question. When it comes to unlocking the gridlock of competing priorities, the question is, what's going to add the most value by getting done next? And next is key. Because while it's really hard to answer the question what's most important or what's most valuable? It's a lot easier to say, what, what do we need to get done next? What by getting done next will add value and help us move forward? Because one of the things that competing priorities do on our teams and for ourselves as leaders is they create this huge cognitive load. And we spend so much more time managing the competing priorities and trying to divide our focus, which really leads to fractured focus that we're not able to devote as much of our capacity and energy towards creative thinking or problem solving or good decision making. Prioritization is your superpower as a leader, and it's gonna make everything else that you have to do easier.

Isn't that question she shared powerful, what's going to add the most value by getting it done next? Hopefully you wrote that down because I think that's worth having on a post it note nearby. Now for the question that folks ask me to ask our authors. What is a tip you have for someone thinking of working with book launchers? Here's Brandi's advice.

My tip is to really know what you want your book to to do for you. When I was thinking about writing a book, I imagined that my finished book was a member of my team. And I thought, if this book were part of my team or one of my employees, what would I want it to be doing on my team? And that helped me get really crystal clear that I wanted my book to be the person on my team or the part of my team that really connected with people and opened doors and was that friendly, approachable, incredibly pragmatic person that helped people feel like, ah, change is possible. And I wanted that super friendly book to connect people to me so that we could have deeper conversations and do deeper work together. With that goal in mind, I was able to come to the Book Launchers team. Really clear on the outcome that I wanted for the book. And then together we were able to put a strategy in place to help me achieve that. So really think about like, if the book were a member of your team, what job would I have on your team and go from there.

I've never heard it phrased like that. If my book were an employee, what would I want it to be doing on my team? That's kind of a cool perspective because for many authors, the team member would be a marketer or they would be a promoter trying to get them speaking engagements, or maybe they would be an educational tool training their clients or their team members. So what is the job description of your book? I like that angle. Now my personal favorite question is Brandy, what has been something that has surprised you since you became an author?

I had someone reach out to me earlier this week to tell me that they created a team Flow board and introduced the practice of work in progress limits to their team. Both are two really practical things that I teach about in the book. And they did that. And even in just a week of paying attention in that way, this leader told me that it was the first time in years that he actually felt in control without micromanaging his team, and that the few feeling of that was so incredibly empowering to him that he felt more energy for his role as a leader than he had in a really long time. So what's been surprising to me about that is, you know, that was my greatest hope that people would have that kind of reaction. But what's been surprising is how readily and quickly readers have reached out to me to share what Real Flow is doing for them and how it's helping them be better leaders right away and finding really practical ways to apply what they're doing.

Brandi's book is having an impact and people are telling her about it. That is so fulfilling as an author. And her book is full of powerful concepts. She talks about invisible overhead. I've read a lot of business books, but I've never heard that phrase before. And yet it's something I've experienced in business, when you have a proven process, but then you don't follow it or you make exceptions and suddenly you've got all this mental load that you or each person that's a part of the process is trying to manage because they're trying to handle this exception or the exceptions. The book is gold, and so is the advice Brandi has. So now you might be wondering where you can connect with her. So Brandi please do share with us how we can find you and connect.

So you can find me@realworkdone.com book or over on LinkedIn where I write for leaders who want to cultivate high performing teams in reality, which happens to be the only place that good work happens and I would love to hear from you.

Okay friend, did you like what you heard today? Please give Brandi a thumbs up for taking time to share with you and then head to the comments below and let us know what your favorite takeaway was after you've done that. This is a really great video to help get your book done. It's five tips to finish your book and if you're good with that and just want the latest and greatest from the channel, well that's over here for you. So go ahead, comment and then click on over. I'm waiting.