Sharing a productivity tip from the Happier podcast to help us all keep our new year motivations!
As we’re all thinking about New Year’s resolutions, whether that’s making self-care a priority or reading more books, it seems like this is the week we all promise ourselves to be more productive. I’m certainly in the productivity camp.
The trouble with New Year’s resolutions is we go too big out of the gate to be able to maintain that level. The good news is we can maintain our desired level of productivity if we take it one step at a time. Years ago, I learned an incredible productivity tip from the Happier podcast. It has helped me countless times to cross more off of my to-do list than I thought I could. I’m so excited to share it with you!
A Productivity Tip from the Happier Podcast
I added Happier to my list of podcast subscriptions way back in 2017 and quickly became hooked. Happier is hosted by Gretchen Rubin, who wrote The Happiness Project (one of the 4 books I highlighted to start off your new year), and her TV writer sister Elizabeth. They chat all about bringing happiness into your life and discovering ways to create (and sometimes break) a habit. I am completely fascinated by psychology and if it wasn’t for the pesky science aspect, I would have probably studied it in college. But alas, science goes way over my head and thankfully, Happier keeps it easy for us non-science majors to understand.
In each episode, Gretchen and Elizabeth share a hack for productivity or how to be happier. Episode 74 introduced me to the “Strategy of Pairing.” It’s refreshingly simple: Pair two things together that might not necessarily belong together. But in order to do one thing, you have to do the other. For example, if you want to watch a TV show, you have to watch it while walking or running on the treadmill. But you can only watch that show while you’re on the treadmill.
How it works for me:
Through my own test runs, I’ve found the “Strategy of Pairing” to be a great way to reinforce a habit. I love listening to podcasts but it’s tough to focus on a show when I’m walking Riley around our neighborhood and I can’t get anything done at work if I’m listening to a podcast. So I paired my podcast listening time with my cleaning and meal prep/cooking time.
Whenever the apartment needs a cleaning or tidying up or it’s time to batch-prep meals for the week ahead, I press play on a podcast from my “Listen now” list and get to work.
And if there’s a new podcast episode that I really want to listen to, I know that means I have to get cleaning or meal prepping!
In the past, I’ve been guilty of the “Make a cleaning list and then flop on the couch after completing one task” trap. I’ve noticed a serious improvement since I started pairing cleaning and cooking with podcasts. I’ll pick a podcast, see how long the episode is and then create my to-do list. If the podcast is 30 minutes, I’ll make a list that I know I can finish within 30 minutes. If I want to listen to another podcast, I gotta get going. It’s worked like a charm for me!
The pairing strategy can easily be applied to most, if not all, New Year’s resolutions.
