EP 78: I Found an Unexpected Energy Boost

Show links:

• Self-Care Quickstart
• Deferred Maintenance

Transcript:

I found an unexpected energy boost. It's called closing the loop. All right, friends, I've stumbled upon an energy boosting practice, and I wanted to share it with you today. In case you could also use this boost.

So first a backstory. My word of the year for 2021 is process.
And I'm trying to apply this word in multiple ways throughout all the aspects of my life. So I want to process my grief and loss. I need to slow down and look at the systems and processes in my business so I can figure out how to do things better. I want to slow down and look at my habits and see if I can do some tweaking there, slow down and look at the way my house runs and the systems we have in place so that we can more fairly distribute the work.

Through all the people who live in the household and then also slowing down and breaking whatever projects I take on down task by task so I can follow through. And that's right. You guessed it closed the loops. It's this last part, the closing the loops. Okay. That is kind of new to me because I'm not a finisher.

I don't know if we've talked about that, but I definitely am known as somebody who's like, I quit early. I like to stop 77% into a project and like drop it and walk away. But this last part, the closing, the loops, I knew I'd heard it before, but it wasn't until I had. The word process in my mind. And I started reading some like business books, which are, let's be real.

I've never, no, I had a corporate job once it lasted for 10 months and I was 25. So it's not like I am a big business, like a traditional business book reader, but I've heard great things about getting things done. I totally forgot to write the author down. So I don't remember who it is, but. Google it you'll find out.

And what I've heard is it's pretty dry. And I thought, okay, well, what should I do? So I go around, got some good ideas of what it was going to be about. And then I did what I told you. I do in episode 76, where I told you all about how I read a lot and some of the tips for that. And one of my tips is to get.

Books meant for teenagers or kids when you just want the gist of something. So I was able to get getting things done for teens. That's right. Getting things done for teens from the library on audio and I listened to it and. The long story short, I'll just save you from reading that book. It's not very exciting.

However, they talked about this idea of how unfinished projects, wherever they come from, sucks your energy. And I was like, Oh, I think they're onto something. And I think that I just found this UN. This untapped reservoir of potential energy in my life. So I spent some time looking around my house for things I'd started over the years and came up with a pretty good list, because like I said, I'm an opener.

I love a new project and it turns out I have. So many unfinished projects in my house, my life, my business, that I added, some of those unfinished things to my 21 for 21 list, which if you go back a few episodes, you can find out all about by 21 for 20 million list. And. I've decided that these are like one and done kind of things like set up the robot vacuum check.

So I've been able to cross off some things off my list. So what I've learned from this idea, Oh, closing the loops, finishing the project is okay. I don't know if I need to learn this again, but I really love the beginning of projects. I really love buying the materials, like aspirational shopping a little bit.

Like I want to buy the materials to make a necklace. I want to buy some art supplies. I want to buy equipment for us sport. I'm looking at you swim goggles, swim cap, and fins. But then after I get the stuff I stop and I have to say. Probably because I haven't figured out a, how to get past that, like 76% Mark on projects.

And then let's be real. There is some hit of adrenaline from just getting the stuff and you're like, Oh my God, I'm a person who does this now. Cause I have the accoutrements to go with it. So I've got a lot of things in my life that I went so far as to buy the thing, but then I never used it. Here's an example in.

July of 2014, that would be seven years ago. If you're counting, I bought an ice cream maker. I got at home. I took out the instructions and I got to the part where I needed to freeze the container. That's going to like, you're going to pour the ingredients in and it's going to be going around. There's this like bucket that needs to be in the freezer.

And. Then I put the instructions for the ice cream machine in our utility drawer. And then I put the box with all of the parts of this ice cream machine somewhere. It was totally out of sight. It was organized. Right. But it was totally out of sight except here's the thing. It was out of sight, but it wasn't out of mind.

There was still that unfinished loop in my head, running in the background, kind of like when you have too many tabs open on your computer, it was slow and shoot down. And I kept having these. Like roadblocks, these little bumps speed bumps in my energy where I was like, Oh, I've got all these things. So I have a ton of examples about these kinds of unfinished projects and products for my 24 21 episode.

If you want to hear more about my status as a champion opener, but the point of today is I wanted to tell you about the discovery that I got, this huge energy boost, just from closing the loop on these projects. So I was telling my friend that I wanted to make some ice cream, but I got, I told her the story, I just told you, which is I got stuck with like, I don't know what to do because my freezer is full of food.

And she told me what she does, which is that she just puts like the bag of stuff. That's already in the freezer, inside the thing from ice cream machine that needs to go in there. And then she puts it back on the shelf, closes the door. It's so simple, so smart. And it would have never occurred to me to do that.

So this tiny detail derailed me for seven years, seven years. So now that the obstacle was removed, I could go to the next step, which was actually reading the instruction, booklet, finding a simple recipe, making sure we had the ingredients. And Oh my God. Now we have homemade vegan ice cream in our freezer, and I feel like I won the damn lottery.

So my question for you right now is what obstacles are getting in the way of you closing the loops on projects, on anything in your life. And I would love to connect with you on social media. I'm on Instagram at Tami. Hackbarth be sure to head over to my [email protected] slash podcast for all the show notes for this episode reminder early pricing for deferred maintenance, my group coaching experience and, or my mini course self-care Quickstart and Saturday, March 20th.

So head on over to my website. At www.tamihackbarth.com to enroll today until next time friends. Remember that you matter too.