Feeling Unproductive? Listen to This

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Your app has been forwarded to an automatic voice message system.

Hi, Fuffi.

You've reached Mal from Ballet, the podcast that feels like a voice note from your best

friend.

Welcome to this week's episode of the podcast.

My name is Ballet.

And if you are a new listener, welcome to the inner group chat.

I'm so excited that you're here.

And if you're a returning listener, I'm so glad you've come back because we have so much

to catch up on.

Guys, I'm currently starting its 18 degrees.

18 degrees outside.

And this is dedication because I am recording the podcast, but it's just beautiful weather.

And it's making me want to be outside all of the time.

And it's just making me want to...

This is making me realise we've got through winter.

We've finally got through winter.

We've got through the long nights.

We've got through it just being miserable weather all the time.

The really dark days.

And it's like this morning, I woke up at 6.

Did go back to sleep for an hour because the 6.000 wake was just not happening.

But I woke up at 6.

Right?

And it was sunshine.

Okay.

It was sunshine, but it was like daylight or not all for weather.

And I just thought, oh, I can do this when it's nice weather.

I can do this.

This is...

This is very, very good.

And so that's been a great other start to the week.

Other than that this week, I went out for drinks on Tuesday, which was very nice.

My plan of meeting more people and making more plans is going successfully.

I've been proactive in messaging people.

You'll be glad to know.

And I've started like when I get in from the gym, or if I do something on an evening,

before I like to scroll on my phone or watch TV, or I'll just go through my WhatsApp

and actually reply to people's messages, life-changing, absolutely life-changing,

rather than thinking about replying to them all day, thinking I'm not going to think

about this until I actually do it at the end of the day, makes it so much less stressful,

because I don't know why I find replying to people's messages a stressful thing.

But for some reason, I do.

For some reason, I just cannot be bothered because it's like,

I just feel like I have too much on on my plate.

When realistically, those things on my plates, like this never-ending task list.

I include such random things, like clean the flat, tidy the flat,

you should probably look at council tax, pay rent, money, ISO.

How am I going to buy a house?

Where am I going to go and holiday this year?

When am I going to edit the podcast?

What content am I going to record this week?

Work, like everything on that list.

It's an all-encompassing list of tasks that I have to complete in my life.

Like, should I donate blood?

The randomist things, the randomist things that I constantly think I need to consider.

And leaving people's messages to a time slot where I'm like,

this is actually where I'm going to do it.

I've never applied to so many people.

I've never been so good at sending voice notes to people.

Also, sending voice notes to people is way nicer, way more fun.

And so, all in all, I'm very impressed with myself.

I'm just checking me on.

All in all, I'm very impressed with myself.

And I'm very grateful there seems to be a new growth thing.

And I'm very glad the sun is out.

Did my first long run on Sunday for the half marathon.

It was really hard and I had stopped twice.

And I've realized I need to stop stopping my watch when I stop

because it's not giving me an accurate running time.

It's a fake running time.

And it doesn't, like, it's my moving time.

So it is accurate in a sense.

But it's not for what I need to be doing it for.

And this morning, I did a 5K and I can't lie, it was just really hard.

My legs were really tired.

And I think I might have pushed myself a little bit too far.

Because apparently, when you're training for half marathon, not, oh, hello.

Because apparently, when you're training for half marathon,

not every single run is meant to be really hard.

I thought you were just meant to run as fast as you could,

try as hard as you can, every single run and you'll get fitter.

No, no, no, no, no, incorrect.

The slow and the easy runs build up your aerobic muscles and your aerobic

ability to exercise.

And that is what you need to sustain a half marathon

because it's such a long period of time to exercise for.

And so I'm thinking of this.

I'm considering this.

Tomorrow, I have to do a 7K run.

Let's just sit with that for a moment.

And I can't be bothered.

I can't be bothered.

But it is getting me out of the house.

And I do think it is good for my headspace, to be honest.

And this is proof of my point of I would not be doing any of this running

if I didn't have a half marathon to do.

And so I feel glad that I've pushed myself and signed myself up for it

because I do need a bit of pressure to exercise.

And not that you should exercise or feel forced to do it,

but I know running for me is a great thing for my headspace.

I'm not going to do it unless I have something to do it for.

I just don't.

And I know that about myself.

And so having this half marathon has given me that direction again.

And I've been really enjoying it.

I've been actually enjoying working out and running

and having a bit of a purpose to what I do.

It's made me like making it metric focus.

Like I want to get this specific time.

I was really focused the exercise for me,

not on like making my body look a certain way on me.

It's been like, how can I feel the strongest that I've ever felt

and run the fastest I've ever run?

And how can I really fuel myself?

And it's made it feel a lot more.

And it's like a healthy way to exercise,

like a positive way to exercise.

And I think that has been a really good thing for me

because you know, it's a dangerous world out there,

the cultural world.

And we don't want to be a part of it.

We do not want to be a part of it.

And a key thing for not being part of it.

But then it's like, it sometimes doesn't feel like

you can work out, just the conversation around it.

It's so complicated and it's so tricky to work out.

I'm like, why am I working out?

It's because I want to look a certain way or feel a certain way.

I'm like, well, how can we make this positive?

And so having an actual time goal,

like an actual fitness goal specifically,

like I want to lift this amount

or I want to run this fast or run this far

or I can't really think of any other ones.

But you get the gist.

That's been a positive way for me

to want to incorporate more fitness into my life

in a non-toxic way.

And I know that people like you get addicted

to overexcising and blah, blah, blah, blah.

But that's not me.

I definitely am not addicted to overexcising

because every single run I'm like,

I cannot be bothered.

I cannot be bothered.

I cannot be bothered.

But every single time I come back and I do it

and I think that was a good use of time.

I feel better now than when I left

and I'm glad that I did it.

God, what is going on with my fringe today?

And I'm glad, let's just ignore it.

And I'm glad that I did it.

And so this has been me really.

I've been working out.

I went to Haunt for a drink on Tuesday.

I'm going out to Rudy's tomorrow for dinner,

which is nice with them old work colleagues.

And next week, I have no plans this weekend to be honest.

None whatsoever.

I might go for a hike.

It feels like it's going to be nice weather.

And then next week's the run up to Easter.

And I can't believe we're at Easter already.

I have a big chunk of annual leave coming

and I have no plans for it, which is kind of make me feel

a bit like, no, it's in two weeks time.

Yeah, I'm meant to be going away.

I haven't booked it yet.

That's making me feel a slightly a little bit stressed,

but not stressed because it's a nice thing.

But also, I just want to make sure I do something in that week.

So, otherwise, why have I taken a week of annual leave

if I don't do anything?

That is very silly.

And so, if you have any fun, I'm thinking maybe Prague.

I'm thinking Prague.

I'm thinking that could be a lovely,

a lovely little four-night getaway.

But enough of me updating you on my week.

Let's go on to the topic of this week's podcast episode,

which is, I think you're too hard on yourself,

and I think I'm too hard on myself,

and I think we're too hard on ourselves.

And I think it's not that fun.

I think, right.

When I was editing last week's podcast yesterday,

I was at one part of it, I said,

you know, I'm training for the half marathon.

I want to be a successful podcaster,

and I'm creating all of the content

and I'm building online community,

and I'm also working.

I want to have a social life,

and I want to be able to see my boyfriend,

and I want to stay in touch with my family.

And I also want to build this app,

and I want to, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And there's all of these things that I was doing.

And if I was listening to myself say,

like, these were all the things that I'm doing,

and I just thought, why do I not think I'm doing enough?

That's a crazy list of things to be trying to complete.

Why do I not think I'm doing enough?

What is it that makes me not feel like I'm doing enough?

And it made me realize how hard we are all on ourselves

to almost have this unbelievable level of productivity,

this level of productivity that isn't sustainable,

that isn't something that's healthy,

that isn't something, you know,

I often get hit with this feeding of whenever,

if I relax, then that is bad.

I shouldn't have time to relax.

I should be constantly filling my time.

And recently, I'll be honest, guys,

I have been constantly filling my time.

It's not been, but in a way that's like positive,

but also feeling not good enough

when I'm feeling my time under things that I'm doing

is making me, it's just like this vicious cycle,

like I do too much and I don't feel like I'm good

at the things that I'm doing.

And then I overthink it.

And then I'm not very happy doing the things that I'm doing

because I don't think I'm very good at them.

But then I feel tired because I'm doing things all of the time

and then I don't feel like I'm doing enough

because I have moments to rest.

And it just made me think I am my own harshest critic.

And it sometimes feels like I'm running this race,

trying to get to where I want to get to.

And I keep realizing I'm never gonna hit that finishing line

because I've hit goals and I've hit milestones

that don't feel like anything anymore.

Like the things I'm proud of,

but they're not like I'm going for bigger things now,

better things, things I think are more impressive,

things that I want to try harder for.

The bar is always lifting.

And I'm just so hard on myself

and I think you're hard on yourself too.

I think we both are.

We want to push ourselves and we have these big goals

and these big achievements that we want to have in our life.

And we think we have to put every single thing

on our line to do them.

And then we berate ourselves.

We remember not able to do absolutely

every single thing perfectly.

And I think this is where social media has come in

because it's allowing us to compare our lives against everyone else's

and compare our levels of productivity with everyone else's.

But we don't only compare it with like one person.

When you scroll through reels,

you're comparing your life to, you know,

I don't know, the 20 different people you saw

in the content you just scrolled.

It's not one life.

It's not a window into people's lives.

It's, you know, a mirror.

We're not using it to think,

oh, that's what they spend their time.

We're using it.

Well, I'm using it to look at their life

and think, God, I should be doing so much more.

I should be doing so much more.

If I see anyone studying in language, I think that should be me.

I need to be doing that.

And if I see people seeing their family,

I'm like, I haven't seen my family in so long.

I need to be prioritising seeing them.

And I see someone who's just an entrepreneur

and built this business.

And I'm like, that is what I should be doing too.

I need to be having a business.

And rather than it just being this like exciting avenues

and like windows into people's lives,

I feel like I'm throwing, I'm spinning plates, okay?

I'm spinning plates and I keep adding a new plate in.

And I'm like, oh yeah, well, it's a building up.

That'll be a fun, extra thing.

And I'm building more and I'm building more

and I'm building more.

But it's not this like fun creative want to build.

Sometimes it feels like this pressure of belly,

you have this free time and you have this life

that you want to live and you've got to make the most of it

and make the most of it means doing things

every single minute of every single day and being busy.

And like hustle culture, you've got a really grind,

you're on your grind area, you've just got to go for things,

you've got to keep working, keep working, keep working,

keep working.

And I think a lot of this is a mindset shift.

Mindset shift.

Two podcasts to go, we talked about the importance

of language and perspective and how this can shift

the environment and the situation that you're in.

And how it can shift the understanding

of the environment that you're in.

And I think a lot of this hustle culture grind culture.

For me personally, I don't think that's that good.

Because I know I'm a hard worker.

I actually know I'm too hard of a worker sometimes.

I'll put everything on the line for something.

If I want something, I'm going to do it

no matter what, like I will work myself to the bone.

And that's not always a good thing.

Like that's not always a good thing.

I don't know when to stop.

I've heard a lot that don't let perfect be the enemy

of good enough.

Because often good enough will get you over the line.

It's that final 20% that ends up taking the most amount

of time and that it's a time sink.

And I think that's where I work myself too much

because everything has to be perfect.

And the standard has to be really high.

That's not actually sustainable

or something that's that good.

Because if you're focusing so much

on everything being perfect, then you're not allowing yourself

and you're not allowing your brain to think

that this is just like a fun thing.

It's a stressful thing.

And this is where the language around hustle culture

and being on your grind era and working hard.

I think matters.

Because the thing is all of these things

that we are doing right now are fun things.

They are fun things.

All these things I get to do in my life are fun things.

And for some reason, I'm making my needs

to be like super high productive and negative thing.

Turning it into a thing that feels high pressure

and high stakes and I'm turning it into a thing

where I don't feel like I'm doing good enough

and a thing where I can judge myself for it.

Instead of something that's exciting,

instead of something that is really great

and like an opportunity and something I should be allowing

myself and feeling grateful for the opportunity to do.

And I kind of hadn't realized this.

Because I do just think we're all way too hard on ourselves.

We have such high expectations of ourselves.

And although that is a positive thing,

you want to achieve good things,

you want to achieve big things.

Sometimes I think we forget to see ourselves as human.

We look at ourselves like with these robots able

to constantly achieve different things

and able to produce the same output every single day,

able to constantly go, go, go, go, go like a factory.

But we forget that we are humans with emotions

and we react to the environment that we're in

and we react to the situation that we're in,

which means we react when things go wrong,

when things go right, which means we are not constantly

able to produce the same output,

which means our productivity is different on different days.

So we're not able to produce the same output

every single time and I think a big part of my thoughts

on this come from, you know, if you look at your life

and you look at the little parts of your life,

the little things that you do every single day,

they are things that younger you would think are so great.

They would love the big things,

but I think younger me would really love the little things.

You know, the fact that I live,

I mean, living in my flat by boyfriend

doesn't feel that little, but like the fact I have,

I cook my own dinner every single night

and I get to decide what I have

and like the ownership and responsibility

I have over my life and the way I created my life,

all of these are things to celebrate

and feel proud of too.

And I think this need to be constantly productive

and achieve these massive things,

this grind culture and this hustle culture,

is making us overlook the achievements

that we currently have,

it's making us not recognize how far we've come

and it's making us not.

You know, sing our own praises

and be really proud of ourselves.

And it's impacting the mindset

that we go into this hyper productivity arena with

because that arena of hyper productivity

and constantly achieving and going and going and going.

Yeah, I don't know how good it is.

I don't know how good it is

because that need to constantly be on,

that need to constantly push yourself,

that need to constantly quit like, it's a lot.

It is a lot to push yourself through that

and it's a lot of pressure to put on yourself

because you're not a factory, you are human,

you are not a robot.

There's a lot of elements of your life

that you don't think are worth celebrating

but like, they're the tiny things

that actually are pretty great.

Like, you're actually really cool

and I just wanted to remind you of that.

I want to remind you that I just think you're too hard

and yourself.

I want you to celebrate the little things

we proud of how far you've come

and realize that you are doing enough,

that you're trying all that you can try

and it's all right that your productivity's different

on different days because you are not a robot,

you are a human being.

And for some reason, even though it's the most obvious thing

in the world, we all forget that.

But thank you for listening to this week's

episode of The Podcast.

Make sure you follow me on Instagram and on TikTok,

TikTok at Mel from Bella.

And if you didn't realize already,

I have now started an advice column

where I would be sharing responses

to your questions that you've written in

to darebellaradvice.gmail.com.

If you want to incorporate your,

if you want to send me your story to be featured

on the blog, please send your email there

or click the link in my Instagram bio

and it'll take you to where you can send an email from.

I love you, thank you for listening

and I can't wait to catch up with you next week.

Bye.

Mwah.

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