If you tend to help others, rather than doing what you planned...

you've planned to do something for your own business, for your own work, and then let's say the time comes and you said, you know, I'm gonna help someone else instead because someone else asked me to help them with a specific project. Now, if that person was like a boss, you know, or a coworker where there was a clear expectation you're supposed to help them with that project, that's different. What I'm talking about is a completely optional request where you could have said no, Or you could have spent 5 minutes on it instead of an hour on it. That request where the reality is, this is important. For many of us, especially those of us who are watching who know we are above average caring for others, we tend to care more for others than maybe, I don't know what the average is, but you know who you are. You tend to respond a lot to others' requests. You like to help people. For those of us who are like that, it is so much easier to help someone with a specific request than it is to work on something we've planned to do, especially if the thing we're planning to do, to work on, isn't necessarily fun, or it has risk attached to it. Risk of failure, risk of disappointment, risk of embarrassment, risk of confusion, risk of technical challenges. Any kind of risk, and especially if the thing we plan to do is deeply important to us in some way, like it's aligned with our purposeful work. Like, it's like, oh, I know I need to do this for my business, for example, to help my business move forward, to make progress in my business. And yet this colleague wants me to give them feedback on the draft that they've sent me. They're not my boss. They're not— there wasn't a clear, for example, paid expectation for me to do that. But it's just— and sometimes for some of us, you know, we have issue with our clients too. Like, we bend over backwards for our clients, the ones who are paying us, you know. So for those with clients, they are kind of our boss or our paid, you know, situation. But we do— we overdeliver. We do more than is expected to the detriment of working on our business. For example. And again, I think the most, the first important thing is just to be aware of what's going on. The dynamic is it's easier for me to respond to others because there's instant feedback, right? We enjoy the instant feedback of thank you or yep, I can check that off that I just helped someone for sure. I've helped them. It was a very clear task. I helped them for sure. Whereas helping myself, it's not a clear task, number one. Oftentimes there's confusion. I wanna, Okay, marketing planning. What, what, what does that mean? It's too confusing for me. Too, yeah, it's too ambiguous. So I'm gonna work on something very specific, especially if it's helped someone else out. So first we have to understand that that is a very obvious or very, very strong tendency for us. Okay? And number 2, now that we know that what the tendency is, we have to ask, well, what is Notice that within ourselves. I don't want to do this right now. I want to help someone else. I want to do their thing. Or it sometimes shows up in, I said I would give an hour to helping them, you know, edit this draft, but it's turning into 2 or 3 hours. Why? What's going on? Well, the reason is because, again, it's easier for us to work on a specific task for somebody else than it is to do it for ourselves. And in fact, there's a subconscious thing going on. If I keep helping this person and go overtime, I don't have to do my own thing. Or I could say, well, I guess I have to go to sleep now, or I guess I have to go to dinner now. Oh well, I can't do my marketing thing. You know, I was such a helpful person, I'm such a good person, you know, but now I have to go get a job because my business isn't working, right? That's what happens. So this is really important dynamic to understand. We're slotting the time for our business, but we're not working on it because we're busy doing other things, other— for other people especially. Okay, you notice that this is going to be life-changing just for you to be aware of that and practice observing it. Number 2, you have to practice observing what is the block that's keeping you from doing the thing you plan. Is it ambiguity? Like, I don't really know what I'm doing here when I said marketing planning. What does that mean? So when it's ambiguous, so there's That should be another lesson that I teach. But essentially, you need to start writing a workflow document to say, well, when I do my marketing planning, step 1, I need to plan the next time I'm announcing my services. Step 2, I gotta plan my content, whatever it is that you gotta start writing down. I call it a hat manual because in your business you wear multiple hats. Now I'm doing my marketer hat, now I'm doing my client services hat. So for each hat, do you have a manual? Do you have a checklist or a workflow? Anyway, so if it's ambiguity, it's that. But a lot of times it's not ambiguity, it's a fear of failure or fear of disappointing yourself or disappointing others or not being perfect enough or not being, you know, having the product or the post or the published item not being good enough. So there, I'm gonna guess a lot of you who are watching this are coaches or counselors or you've read lots of books on personal growth. You probably have some tool, right, to help yourself overcome perfectionism and fear of failure, et cetera. So I would just invite you to use whatever tool is most helpful for you to overcome that so you can keep moving. So, so, so that's the second tip is, uh, be, become aware. And I'm sure there are other blocks that we can talk about, but I'll just become aware of the block and use whatever tool you, you know, to, to work through it. If you don't know what, what tool you should use, you can comment below and I'll see if I can comment quickly, if I can suggest anything or another video to watch. Um, but the third thing, really importantly, is you have to practice boundaries with others. And I probably should have been the second thing. And the third thing was boundaries with yourself, really. But the first thing was, you know, understanding the inner, the dynamic. The second thing is boundaries with others. Third is boundaries with yourself, we just talked about. But boundaries with others, 'cause you have to respond to others quickly. And the practice there, for example, instead of spending 3 hours, you know, editing someone else's draft when you had scheduled an hour. And really, scheduling an hour to edit someone else's, unless they're paying you as a— they're a client— scheduling an hour to, to, to help someone is, in my opinion, too much time. Okay, so like when someone non-paid and— but it's a colleague, so it's like I want to have— I want to be in that person's good graces. Okay, so that, that's, that's, you know, I want to be in this person's good graces. They're asking me, and it's not like they ask me all the time, it becomes annoying, but they're asking me, maybe it's every now and then, they ask me for some support. I'm gonna— what if someone gives me a draft to edit? I spend 5 minutes on it. I literally, even it's an important colleague, okay, important colleague, maybe I'll spend 15 minutes, but not more than that because I got stuff to do, right? So less important colleague, sorry, I don't You all don't know who you are, but who's less important colleague, I'll spend 3 to 5 minutes on it. Important colleague, I'll spend up to 15 minutes. I mean, the other day, literally an important colleague said, hey George, you've got some time to talk right now because I'm feeling stressed about something. This person has done so much for me over the years. Of course, I was working on something myself, but I dropped it and I talked to this person because I know this person's super busy and just even getting to talk to him is you know, rare. So I'm like, yes. And I gave him 10 minutes and it was helpful to him and I'm glad. And I went back to my thing. So I will sacrifice some time and I think it's okay. In other words, okay, if it's that kind of situation where it's something urgent, something important for really— so you almost have to like have only a few VIPs in your mind that I would be willing to sacrifice 15 minutes instantly for. And even if it's not instantly, even I can plan my own time. 15 minutes is plenty of time for this person. Okay, so, um, so I'll spend, let's say, 5 minutes for a less important colleague. And what I'll do is I'll just quickly look at the draft and I'll say, what's one thing I could— what's one thing I could say about it? What's, what's one praise I could give? And what's one constructive feedback I could offer? That's all I— that's all you're going to get from me. And honestly, number one is that most people they're asking probably aren't even organized enough to get to write back to them, right? Number 1. Number 2, the fact that you write back, which means you're gonna be one of the few people who write back and to write back in a nice way. So 5 minutes to look at their thing. Okay, so maybe the whole thing takes 10 minutes, 5 minutes to look at, find a praise and find one constructive feedback. And then the, the next 5 minutes is to, is to write back this, Write back what you just discovered and say, I hope this is helpful. It's all I was able to give time for, but I really hope it was helpful. And let me know if there's things else, other things I can support you with in the future. That's it. And you're not saying you're gonna say yes to every request, but some requests you will say yes to for 5 minutes, right? Or 10 minutes or 15. So I hope this is helpful and helps you to be more joyfully productive going forward. Because again, if you— not again, I didn't mention this already— but if you always bend over backwards to help others, guess what's going to happen? You know what my answer— well, you start to become— not only is it detrimental to your, to your own work, your own business, but you can start to become resentful of others, especially the ones that you want to be in good graces with, the ones you do want to help. You don't want to be in a less than positive relationship with them, even in your own mind, right? And sometimes we are so stressed out that we maybe even blow up. And I've done this, I'm sure, in the past. Like, I've blown up at somebody. Like, if they're just asking, we could have said no. And saying no, by the way, is another thing that we have to practice. Say, oh, you know what? I really wish I could help you, but I'm really strapped right now for time given— and it's okay to tell people, given my my launch that's happening right now, or given the family responsibility, I'm really strapped for time. But please do reach out again if I could help you with something else. But just in these 2 weeks, I'm really, really busy. So, um, but please, I hope I can help you again after, after this time crunch is over. You know, practice saying no. It's always okay because they, they can then practice finding other people to say, uh, to request for. So I hope this is helpful. And I know some of you are saying, 5 minutes? It takes me just 5 minutes to open up the email again and open up the document and to start to read it. Okay, what I meant was 5 minutes once you've opened those items, right? But, and you might say, well, 5 minutes to read and find something? First of all, you know, because I'm so practiced at it, it takes me 5 minutes. It might take you 10. But what I'm basically saying is, It less time, well, certainly probably less time than an hour. I'm almost certain that, and probably less time than half an hour even, because half an hour is a lot of time. It is, it's a lot of time that you could have invested in your own, in your own work. So I would say half hour is even too much time for someone that you, that I would give 5 minutes to, right? You might give 15 minutes. My 5 minutes might be your 15 minutes. Maybe you could translate it that way. But even so, I wanna say this, When I have been, when I've taught, I teach classes all the time, and in my classes sometimes I give my students a 5-minute exercise, a 5-minute writing exercise. And those of you who are watching this who are my students say, no, George, you usually give us 3-minute writing exercise or 2-minute writing exercise. And every time I do that, I set a timer, right? And I put the timer on the screen. All right, folks, you have 3 minutes to answer this question, right? I am always surprised by how much people are able to write in 3 minutes in, in, in, in, you know, live in the live chat. And number 2, some of them in 5 minutes are not only able to write something thoughtful, but they're able to respond to several other people. I'm like, how? I like, honestly, I'm, I'm myself, I'm like, I, I couldn't put that kind of quality in the chat in, in 3 or 5 minutes. So I, I feel like I often feel like my students are smarter than me. I mean, all of you who are watching, And I really do believe that I'm a slow writer. I know that for myself. I'm not blaming myself or judging myself. I just know that's just who I am. I'm not a slow talker, as you can see, but I'm a slow writer. So the trick is a timer. I mean, when I take my classes, why are you able to produce something meaningful in 3 minutes? Well, it's because there was a timer there. So that's my tip for you all when you're helping someone else. Set a timer for 5 minutes and you will surprise yourself how much you're able to do in those 5 minutes, right? So hope this helps.