Welcome to the Get Your Goal podcast, the place where ambitious, deep-thinking women chart their own course, exploring the mindset, emotions, and daily practices that help you get your goal your way by being unapologetically you. I'm your host, Pahla B, master certified life and goal coach and creator of the Daily 3 journaling framework.
On this podcast, you'll learn to navigate your unique path to success by using the most powerful tool in your kit, your own internal compass. Ready for the adventure? Let's go. Hello, friend. Today we are talking about how I stopped wasting time and started getting shit done. And I think that maybe you can relate to the story that I'm gonna tell you today.
If you are currently feeling like you have an endless to-do list, and you feel that low-grade or high-grade constant frustration of, like, never getting enough done on your way to your [00:01:00] goals, and you've got a lot of chatter in your head about how you'd be further along by now if you could just stop wasting time and start moving forward.
And I want you to know that this is something that I'm gonna present to you today, you know, in this story as though it is completely past tense. I have figured it all out. I personally have stopped wasting time all the time, and I am always getting my shit done. And I want you to know right here at the top of the podcast that I'm gonna tell you a very specific story about a very specific way in my life that I have figured out how to stop wasting time and start getting things done.
And I am also currently a work in progress. I love for you to be able to see me in full transparency as somebody who has gotten a little bit forward and understands some things and has some concepts to teach you and share [00:02:00] with you. And also, I want you to know that I am a full human being that is still working on this stuff, too.
Today, I'm gonna tell you very specifically about how I used to procrastinate and be indecisive and let a lot of my perfectionist tendencies really slow me down and waste time here on the podcast. I have a very specific story to tell you about how hard the podcast used to be for me. I have been working on this podcast, gosh, I started it in October of 2017, and have honestly until pretty recently have had kind of a love-hate relationship with it.
It has shown me all of the places in my own brain and in my life where things could feel very difficult for me and also where I [00:03:00] can have a ton of success with honestly just getting over myself. And that is the story that I'm gonna be telling you today. About how I used to spend hours on my phone playing games instead of working.
I used to feel very indecisive about what I wanted to do with the podcast, and what I wanted to talk about with the podcast, and what it should look like, and how I wanted it to sound, and how I wanted it to be. And also how even though I didn't know what I wanted it to sound like, I simultaneously absolutely did, and spent hours of my time with perfectionism and trying to make things just right.
I used to waste a ton of time on the podcast, and now I get this shit done. My friend, it used to take me a minimum, like a minimum of four days, and honestly even that isn't all-inclusive. But it would take me a minimum of [00:04:00] four days just to even produce the podcast and get it scheduled and/or posted. And then there was also just a lot of chatter in my head afterwards about how I didn't really like it, it wasn't very good enough, that it wasn't really what I wanted, and that I didn't know what I was doing and, and all of that nonsense afterwards also.
But now it takes me about half a day. Now I have really figured out how to stop wasting the time that I used to waste. And I will tell you that over the years, I have tried several solutions that absolutely, positively did not work. And this is where I think the part of the story might actually feel very familiar to you, that you right now are probably trying to stop wasting time by finding some kind of like productivity hack, or a time hack, or habit stacking, [00:05:00] or to-do list, or planners, or calendars, or all of the things that I have done over the years.
And really, when I tell you that I've tried it all, I have done it- All. I have done Trello boards, I've done Asana boards, I've done ClickUp boards, and Basecamp. Any kind of, like, digital planner or calendar or productivity, uh, app, I have used them. I have used all of them. I have done digital calendars. I've done desk calendars.
I've done Gantt charts, habit tracker journaling, bullet journaling, time blocking. I've done the Pomodoro method, like, once. I tried it one time. I've done other versions of the Pomodoro method. I don't even remember what the specifics are. It was a long time ago. But I've done things where I would set some kind of a timer, and then give myself a bit of a, a break and a reset, and then get back to it with another timer.
I have done [00:06:00] co-working sessions where you, like, log on to a website where other people are also doing productive kind of work. I have hired not one, not two, in fact, I don't even know the n- exact number, but I have hired several productivity coaches, and none of them were really doing, like, mindset work.
They really, truly just wanted to teach me their strategy, and none of these strategies have worked. For the reason that I talk about here on this podcast, the truth of it is that there's no such thing as a strategy that will work for you unless the strategy you happen to choose has your exact mindset blocks and your exact mindset superhighways.
And for me personally, when I was working, when it came to the podcast very specifically, I don't [00:07:00] think I had any mindset superhighways. That's not true. I heard one as soon as that sentence was coming out of my mouth. I am very good at talking. I have never doubted that. That has not always been a mindset superhighway for me.
When I was young, I used to get in trouble for talking a lot, and I mean, if you met me back when I used to do, um, YouTube workout videos, I, I have had a lot of feedback over the years that I talk, quote, unquote, "too much." But honestly, even with all that feedback, I've always known that I was a talker. I've always known that a podcast is an excellent vehicle for somebody like me.
I remember having a conversation with my accountant, oh my gosh, years and years ago. He's an accountant. I mean, right there in the sentence. He's, he's not really quiet. He's actually really, um, personable, fun to talk to, but he, he likes to do accounting. Like, he [00:08:00] chose that profession because he is well-suited for it.
And I remember talking to him about my business and, like, where I make money and what I do, and I was telling him I have a podcast, and he just looked at me and he's like, "You just talk for, like, 30 minutes?" And I was like, "Yeah." You know me and my enthusiasm. Like, "It's really easy to talk for 30 minutes. No big deal."
And he goes, "That is literally my worst nightmare." So thank goodness he does not have a podcast, but I do. But other than the I'm great at talking, honestly, every other part of it used to feel so Hard, like so hard. And there was absolutely no strategy for planning my content or producing the content or publishing the content.
There was nothing about the productivity part of it that a strategy [00:09:00] was ever going to overcome because I was judging myself constantly. This, my friend, is the underlying reason why none of the to-do lists and the apps and the calendars and the charts and the coaching and the methods and the everything, it's why none of those have worked for you in the past, is simply, and I say this with love, that you are judging yourself.
I was judging myself constantly. And you might even think to yourself, "Okay, but also I kind of have to," because you've been socialized to believe that being hard on yourself is the best way to get results, that doubling down with self-discipline and willpower and making yourself get to work, that that really is the answer.
But I'm telling you that very [00:10:00] subtly it is the problem and not the solution. Here, here on the podcast, what I have found, uh, not during the podcast but while, while understanding and unraveling and untangling and working through all of the issues that I had with the podcast, I've come to understand that judgment has a lot of faces, that sometimes it shows up, like, as actual criticism of yourself, and sometimes it shows up in different ways.
For me personally, it showed up before the podcast as indecisiveness. I would tell myself that I didn't know what to say, I didn't know how to say it, that nobody really wanted to listen to what I had to say anyway. Even though I was perfectly happy to talk, I was very unsure of my audience. In fact, uh, that nobody wants to hear this is, is something that I [00:11:00] still butt up against once in a while.
That one, that one very specifically is still a little bit of a work in progress for me. I used to tell myself that I was all over the place when I would ramble on and on, and it would take me days to come up with any kind of content ideas. Like, the ideation process used to take me so very long. I would spend time scrolling through other people's podcasts to see, like, what they were talking about and how they were talking about it.
I would listen to other podcasts that would talk about, like, productivity and how to do things. I would listen to a lot of marketing pro- uh, podcasts, and watched a lot of marketing YouTube, and read marketing books talking about messaging and how to get clear and how to create ideas, how to talk [00:12:00] about things, and all of it just felt hard.
In order to ideate one podcast, I would think of and reject I don't wanna exaggerate here. I'm gonna say dozens, and sometimes that was true, and sometimes it would only take me a couple of ideas before I would really hone in on the idea that I actually wanted. But it would take me a long time. It was a waste of time because I was judging myself.
Then during the podcast, and not always like really during, sometimes during/after, and sometimes completely away from the podcast, I would judge myself a lot about the audio equipment. I would tell myself that the audio, that the actual equipment I owned wasn't good enough, that my studio wasn't very professional, that what I was saying didn't make any sense.
That [00:13:00] was actually something that used to stop me constantly while I was recording. I would get lost in what I was saying and have to, like, stop and either gather my wits about me or just fully stop and start all the way over. I would tell myself that I wasn't prepared enough because, to be fair, I didn't used to prepare I used to distract myself by either not having notes or having notes that were, like, difficult to read.
It would take me hours to record a 30-minute podcast because I would stop and start and stop and start and then start over, and sometimes, in fact, more than once... Gosh, oh my gosh, a- as I'm thinking about it and remembering it, dozens of times over the years, I just fully stopped [00:14:00] and then had to start from absolute scratch with a new idea and new notes and new everything.
There are numerous, there exist in the world numerous podcasts that never made it to the light of day because I was judging myself while I was recording them. And then after the podcast. I feel like I've told this story before, and I can't even begin to remember which podcast it was in, but every single time I would turn off the microphone, I would tell myself, "Well, that wasn't my best."
I used to say that, actually, to myself after every single workout video, after every single social media post, after every single everything. The "that wasn't my best" sentence was a constant companion in my life. It was what I told myself about everything, truly everything. During the editing process, [00:15:00] I could barely listen to myself talk, and not for the reason most people think.
Like, most people are like, "Oh, I have a hard time hearing my own voice." I got over that one a very long time ago, and I also still struggled, not necessarily with the sound of my voice, but the way I was talking. I was telling myself that I sounded stupid, that I was rambling. And then while I was editing, I would...
Well, editing or avoiding the transcript, I would tell myself that my speaking was practically unintelligible to read. I had a hard time editing the transcript because of the way that I talked, and I judged myself for it constantly. And I realize that I just said that in past tense. I judged myself for the way that I talked.
I actually still talk that way. I still go around in circles and start a sentence and then distract myself in the middle of it and come back to it later. It is still, technically [00:16:00] speaking, I'm gonna use air quotes, "hard" to edit the transcript. It's like, is that a dash or an ellipses? Is that a semicolon?
Shall I just stop the sentence kind of randomly in the middle even though it's not really a sentence and then start a new one? Because that's kind of how I said it. Technically speaking, I do not speak in perfect grammar, and also I don't judge myself for it anymore. I used to agonize over the show notes.
In fact, I know I've talked about that on the podcast before, too. It would take me, it would take me hours to edit the actual podcast, the audio part, and then n- several more hours to edit the transcript, and then it would take me more hours after that to write the show notes. It would take me, like, a minimum of another hour just to squeak out a handful of [00:17:00] sentences.
The amount of time, like literal, physical time that it used to take me to do the podcast kind of feels astounding to me now because of all the work that I've done. But I, I was able to move through some of it, and it got a little bit faster, and a little bit faster, and a little bit faster over time, to the point where now I literally woke up this morning, thought to myself, "Hey, I'd like to record a podcast today," created the idea for it, created the, the title, wrote out all of the notes.
I am not done with it yet, but I strongly suspect that I will finish this in one sitting because I can't remember the last time ... That's not true. Oh my gosh, I just did that thing where I started a podcast and then stopped it... oh, when was that? That was [00:18:00] within the last six months, and I'll tell you why. It was because I had a lot of, I had a lot of these old, like, mindset blocks come up.
I had not prepared notes beforehand. I was trying to rush through it, trying to, trying to stop wasting time and just get shit done, and I did not go through my process, which I'm gonna describe to you here in just a couple minutes. I did not go through my process that I happen to know for sure creates a seamless podcast experience for me, where it feels easy from start to finish, where I don't dither, I don't procrastinate, and for the most part, I don't judge myself for what I'm doing, and it feels amazing to create this.
Now, here's the thing. I tried to solve all of these problems in a variety of ways, most of which was looking outside of myself for some kind [00:19:00] of practical solution. Like, this is what most of us do, honestly. We... I... Let me just tell you my story. I hired several, not just one, several different coaches and asked them for content calendars to help me ideate the concepts.
I hired a podcast producer who would edit the audio for me instead of me having, having to do it for myself, because I didn't wanna listen to it. I hired an assistant, more than one assistant, to edit the transcript. I have used AI over the years to help me with content creation and show notes. Again, when I tell you that I have done it all, I have tried it all, I have looked outside of myself for all of the solutions, I promise you, over the course of the last very nearly nine years, it's late June, and I've been podcasting since October of 2017 off and on.
There was, there was a very long hiatus there [00:20:00] in, what was that, 2024? When I was not podcasting, I think it was like late '24, early '25, when I just kind of couldn't do it anymore. And that really is honestly a whole topic in and of itself about how this constant judgment, this procrastination and perfectionism and dithering with indecision, it is so out of alignment with yourself that it almost inevitably leads to burnout, to being incapable, even though of course you are capable, but being unable to create the thing that you want to create.
And you know you're wasting time, and you know you wanna get shit done, and the things that we all do basically just exacerbate the problem. We go looking for strategies. We go looking for more self-discipline. We go looking outside of ourselves. [00:21:00] And I will tell you that the thing that actually fully changed my podcast process, my ability to stop wasting time and start getting things done, was threefold.
I started asking myself what I actually wanted. I started letting go of the self-judgment, the constant self-judgment, and I started asking myself to see my success. My loves, the thing that worked for me is the thing that I offer you, The Daily 3 journaling framework. It's completely free. There's a masterclass that actually explains all about it, what it does, how it works, how it rewires your brain for success.
And I tell you, like, how to do it, I'm making air quotes even though you can't see me, in a very, like, prescriptive, okay, you spend one minute on this, you spend three minutes on this, and then [00:22:00] you spend one minute on this. And it's not the how, it's not the strategy, as we're discussing here, that actually changes you.
It is simply doing that work that changes you. When I started finally asking myself what I really wanted from the podcast, for the podcast, from myself to give to the podcast, I had never asked myself that question. Just so we're very clear, I'd been podcasting for a minimum of whatever it would be, seven of these nine years, without ever really asking myself what I wanted to give and to get.
I knew I, quote-unquote, "needed" a podcast. Everybody has a podcast. You should have a podcast. Podcasting. That word is starting to lose meaning . But having a podcast is marketing. You market your business with a podcast. Like, I [00:23:00] knew, I knew what I, quote-unquote, "should be doing." But I had never really asked myself what that meant to me.
When I asked myself that, and it was very recently, just so we're clear, when I asked myself what I wanted, all of a sudden I became so clear on why I was doing this at all. And what I want, by the way, is to connect. I want to connect with you and have a conversation with you, even though it is terribly one-sided, me talking at you in this way.
But I do get feedback, and I do enjoy that interaction. I want to connect with you and let you know, hey, I've been there. I know what you are currently struggling with. I know exactly what it feels like to live in this space where you have this to-do list, you have these big [00:24:00] ambitions, you have this goal or goals that you want, and you know that you're in your own way.
Like, you, you can sense that you are in your own way, but you also still simultaneously don't quite know how to get out of your own way, and that is where we can really connect, my friend. I am a work in progress, and I have figured some of this out. I have created a framework that works for me that you can make work for you.
It's why I have the master class, so that you can really understand, like, how the pieces work together so that you can make it work for you. For me, over the years, I have taken it kind of piece by piece, and now, now I'm capable of sitting down every single day, doing the daily three, journaling, understanding what I want, untangling what in the world I'm telling myself that's stopping me, all that judgment, [00:25:00] and acknowledging my success.
Here's how that showed up for me. I asked myself what I wanted, and I, I learned immediately inside my own brain that what I wanted was not what other marketers are talking about. Other marketers, people who wanna tell you, like, how to run your business, how to market, they talk a lot about how to get people, how to get clients, how to get and make money.
It's very... It feels very grabby to me. But when I think about what I want, how I want to feel while I'm podcasting, it's very generous. It's very giving. It's very hands open connection, reaching out towards you in a way that doesn't feel grabby. It feels beautiful. That, [00:26:00] that right there, understanding what I wanted changed, uh, almost everything.
It changed my ideation process. It changed how I think about creating the topics. When I want to connect with you over our shared struggle of, okay, I am a person with an ambition, w- I'm an ambitious woman with a busy brain, and I'm not sure how to get out of my own way, having something to say to you feels incredibly simple.
When I started untangling my judgment about myself, about my audio equipment, about how I was saying things and what I was saying, when I started actually doing the metacognitive journaling, if you've actually already listened to the, the masterclass about the daily three, there's three different kinds of journaling.
One of them is, uh, future self-journaling. That's asking yourself what you want. One of them is metacognitive journaling. That's asking yourself what you are telling yourself currently that feels terrible, that's blocking [00:27:00] you from moving forward. That's all the self-judgment. When I started untangling all of that, I actually found solutions to my, quote-unquote, audio problems.
I had... Gosh, I had been working on a lot of what I was telling myself about my audio and how I talk and how I say things. Over the years, I've purchased, literally, I have a graveyard of microphones. I have, I have over the years, uh, created my podcast in the living room surrounded by soft things, or in my minivan surrounded by not very soft things.
I finally bought the, um, the podcast walls that kind of dampen the sound or actually just help it bounce back a little bit, uh, a little bit softer than it used to. I have, I have tried a lot of practical solutions, and I will tell you that when I was ready to hear it, I heard exactly what I needed to. I was speaking with [00:28:00] a woman who is a member in my membership, and she and I were talking about audio.
She's a musician, and she said something that literally changed my life, that there's no such thing as good audio. There's only the audio that you feel good about And e- even now I have chills. Like, she said that at the exact right time in my mindset work where I could really hear that. I do not sit down and judge myself about the way the audio sounds anymore, and it became very clear to me exactly what I wanted it to sound like.
Like, this is where future self and metacognitive actually come working together, where all of a sudden it was very easy for me to know what I wanted the podcast to sound like because I had broken through all of the judgment that I had about what it [00:29:00] sounded like. And then the final piece, the success journaling.
That sentence that I used to tell myself at the end of every everything that I ever created ever that wasn't my best, that, my friends, was my automatic brain trying to shield me from feeling the feelings of my success. I will tell you that there has never been anything I've ever produced ever that didn't actually feel really powerful. And I used to really be afraid of that feeling.
That buzz that I get while I'm talking or while I was exercising and talking or while I was creating some kind of social media piece while talking. Again, I've always had the mindset superhighway of I am good at talking, and I have also had an automatic brain that always [00:30:00] wants to tell me that it's not good enough.
That wasn't my best. And the thing that really, really changed everything for me was not saying that to myself anymore. And I will tell you that it wasn't as simple as just white-knuckling it, not telling myself that anymore, but sitting with myself when I turn off the microphone and feeling the feeling of power and connection.
When I am done with this podcast, I will sit in my lovely podcast studio with my professional microphone, and I will feel connected. I will feel powerful. I will feel the now more comfortable than they used to be, but still that edge of, oh my goodness, am I really doing this? Am I really creating what I want?
This is actually me [00:31:00] taking agency over my goal. All of that energy is something that I can feel in my body. I used to try and dispel it by telling myself that wasn't my best so that I didn't have to feel the feeling of my success. My love, The Daily 3 journaling framework helps you do this work so you can stop wasting time on dithering, not knowing what you want, procrastinating, and judging yourself constantly and avoiding the feeling of success when you do what you do.
It used to take me a minimum of four days to stop and start and wallow and dither and play on my phone and then judge myself and tell myself it wasn't my best. And now, when [00:32:00] did I wake up? I woke up a couple of hours ago. I've already ideated and prepped for this podcast, and now I'm wrapping it up. I'm just about to be done with my speaking.
I'm gonna edit, I'm gonna create the episode art, I'm gonna put it up in the world, and I'm gonna connect with you. This, this is how you can stop wasting time and start getting shit done, is by doing the Daily 3. I wanna really lovingly inform you, I mean, I've given you the timeline of nine years on this podcast.
I was not doing the work on most of this until, I'm gonna say the last, the last couple of years. The last couple of years when the podcast got really hard, when it felt heavy, when I, when I saw myself constantly struggling and searching [00:33:00] for solutions. When I really started doing this work, really started asking myself what I wanted, really started untangling what I'd been telling myself, really sitting with myself in the success, it has really only taken a couple of months to go from the podcast being an all day, all many days affair, to now being something that feels easy, smooth, like something I actively want to do for you, for me, for my business.
This is something that is available to you, my friend. Thank you so much for listening, for coming along with me on this ride. I'll talk to you again soon. No matter where you are on your goal-getting journey, [00:34:00] I'm here to help. Get started by watching the free Daily Three Masterclass to learn the simple journaling framework that rewires your brain for success.
Move forward with confidence at your pace with one of my goal-specific guided journaling experiences. And when you're ready for immersive exploration with fellow travelers just like you, you belong in the Get Your Goal membership. Find it all and join the adventure at getyourgoal.com.
