4/11/24 What are the best productivity hacks for your personality? Part 3 the Supportive Personality
What is the purpose of this podcast? To encourage people by sharing.
Live intro with hook - Hello my lovelies. Today is part 3 in the series about Productivity Hacks and Personality in which we give you great tips to help you to be more efficient, have more fun, get more done without hassle and create a home and work environment that works for you, no matter what your personality . We’re working through principles I teach in the Productivity by Personality course and Whole Home Reset Program and, if anything in this podcast resonates be sure to share and subscribe on your favorite podcast player.
For those who are new to the podcast, when I talk about personalities, communication and relationships, I use the DISC personality model of behavior and refer to people as D or Driven, I or Inspired, S or Supportive, and C or Cautious. You can find links to take your own Personality Assessment in the Show Notes.
So if you’re just joining this series, we started working with this concept a couple of weeks ago, and as I said, it got more in-depth than I had originally planned, so I decided to make this into a series. We’ve already discussed the D and I personalities, so, we’ll be starting with the S personality this week using the same 10 Productivity Hacks and how they apply to the Supportive personality.
As a quick refresher, the 10 productivity hacks we’ve been talking about are:
Productivity Hack #1- find the Sweet spot - for more insight on that, listen to one of the episodes listed in the show notes either from last week or the episode talking specifically about the sweet spot
Productivity Hack # 2 is the 2 minute tidy which can apply to personal or business.
Productivity Hack #3 is to use a Timer a secret weapon of productivity, especially on your worst days.
Productivity Hack #4 is to complete One load of laundry per day -This one may help the Supportive personality the most.
Productivity Hack #5 is to use a Paper Calendar if you have a family - I cannot tell you how many S personalities have embraced this for themselves and their families with fantastic results.
Productivity Hack #6 is to have Weekly Meetings - You may not love meetings, but these work in business and personal situations for all personality types, and we’ll discuss why.
Productivity Hack #7 Meal plan - Make space in your brain, business and life for better with this one, plus you’ll help your family too.
Productivity Hack #8 Use your highest energy time well - I love the results when Supportive people do this one.
Productivity Hack #9 Use your highest focus time well - Not the same as the one before it, and we talk about that with each personality type.
Productivity Hack #10 Balance is an illusion - The Supportive personality can struggle with this but working with this knowledge takes so much guilt and shame off your plate, and that is definitely a good thing
That’s the quick run through of the productivity hacks and now we’re going to talk about how they apply to the Supportive personality type.
The S personality. might be the person who benefits most from these productivity hacks because you’ll take them to heart and give them a try more than any other personality type. Why? Because you know that doing them can help you help others better, and you’re all for that
Like with the I personality, the Sweet spot is important for the Supportive person to give you a starting point in your home and your business. To find it for you, ask yourself what you wish for in your home and business. If you say you wish the dining room table was clear so you could work there or your family could have dinner there, that’s your sweet spot.
If you wish your children wouldn't leave everything they bring in the house right in front of the door, the entryway might be your sweet spot.
In business, if you wish you could talk to your VA rather than text or message, that may be your sweet spot.
If you’re still not sure about what might be your sweet spot, let me suggest this to you. Ask someone else. In the case of your home, ask your significant other or children if you have them what they think is the messiest place or the place that would make your home look or feel its best.
In business, ask those that work with you what they think the bottleneck is in your business, and in both cases, see how you feel about the answer. Do you agree with them or do you feel yourself getting defensive?
In either case, you now have a starting point, and that’s great. You may change the sweet spot as you learn more, but by asking, you’ve already made your life and business shift toward better.
The 2 minute tidy for the S personality can be a game changer since you aren’t one to dive into projects for long periods of time unless you’re working with someone else.
The 2 minute tidy gives you enough time to make some progress without taxing you, and you might surprise yourself with what you accomplish over a day or two, especially if you have more than one 2 minute tidy sessions per day.
Like the I personality, if you take 2 minutes at the end of the day to look at the plan for the next day, whether for home, work or both, the next day will flow more smoothly because you won’t start the day feeling like you’re behind.
And while the D and C personalities don’t need this reminder to do the task of looking at the next day, for the S person, this can become a secret weapon to noticeably increase your productivity efficiency and effectiveness.
The Timer truly is the Supportive person’s friend in so many ways because you can struggle to start and struggle to set boundaries, and the timer can help you do both.
Sometimes there are things I really want to do, but I cannot for the life of me seem to be able to do them, like starting to work on the newest podcast, so I set the timer for 15 minutes and set an intention, usually to at least find my subject and/or key word for the next episode. Usually within that 15 minutes, I can do that and maybe think of an outline of things I want to talk about in the episode, and when I can get that going, I have direction and purpose for the episode, and that feels amazing.
It’s not that I didn’t want to do that work, but because of my ADHD, I get frozen and find it difficult to start. The timer gives me a little push without being overwhelming and actually relieves some of the overwhelm of starting something new. Try it and tell me how it works out.
With the One load per day I get more pushback from Supportive types than any other personality type. The most easy going personality type occasionally gets big mad at me when I talk about this because they are convinced that I’m wrong, and that they cannot possibly finish a load of laundry per day, but I know that’s not true, for the most part anyway.
The thing is that the Supportive personality moves more methodically than the D and I personalities and less methodically than the C personality, which is why this hack is so powerful for them. By doing the load per day, they prove that they can do things that they think are hard, so if you are an S personality, I double dog dare you to try this one thing and report back to me.
Because you are such a people person, the Paper Calendar can change everything for the better for the Supportive person, especially if you try one of the 16 or 17 month ones, like the one I linked to in the show notes.
The best part is that most of the longer calendars start in August, so you’re not burdened with dealing with that when the New Year comes, and you’ve got so much else going on you don’t get your calendar up until February and realize all you might have missed because you were distracted by the holidays
One of the worst things for a Supportive personality is to let the ones you love down. Forgetting a game or practice, for you, feels horrible, so being able to access a color coded calendar is a blessing to you in so many ways.
The challenge, though, is making sure that the calendar is up to date, so that’s where the Weekly Meetings ( Productivity Hack #6) become so important. In your personal life it helps you to keep up with those you love. It’s also a great way to start teaching your children how to be responsible for themselves because you can have them look at the calendar and figure out if they have activities that day and what they might need to gather up so help get ready for those activities. That’s also where the one load per day hack can help with uniforms and special clothing for activities.
In your business life, a quick weekly meeting with your co-workers makes conducting business so much easier, even if it’s only 5 minutes to get a rundown of what’s happening and possibly make suggestions to improve the flow.
If you work from home, productivity hack #7, Having a Meal plan, is a huge blessing for you because often for the S personality, when something is vague and undetermined, it bothers you to no end and takes up valuable real estate in your already busy mind.
For you, Pre-packed or pre-planned lunches, is a huge time and energy saver, and the same goes for dinner. When my children were still all at home, we even did this for breakfast, and it made mornings so much more pleasant. Try it and see.
The Supportive personality is the most likely to tell me productivity hack #8, Use your highest energy time well, won’t work for them because they don’t have a high energy time.
It’s true that the S personality moves at a slower and more methodical pace than the I and D personalities, which is why I tell them it is even more important for them to learn to understand and manage their energy well.
In the autoimmune community, there is a story about spoons that says that everyone has a different number of spoons for the day, and the average person has more than they need to get through the day. Those with autoimmune issues have fewer spoons to start with, so things like getting up, showering, brushing teeth and getting dressed cost the average person one spoon out of a hundred, whereas those same activities cost someone with an autoimmune condition 4 out of 10.
I think this story translates beautifully to the Supportive personality because they are rarely high energy with tasks, so it’s important to figure it out when their energy is higher, so that they can maximize their output with the precious amount of energy that they do have. It’s ok that they are slow and steady because in many scenarios, that’s a better plan for success, and they can be the voice of reason for the faster paced D and I personalities.
Productivity hack #9, Using their highest focus time well is important too, especially if their energy and focus times coincide. Then they can figure out the highest priority tasks for those times and do things that require less energy and focus at other times.
It can also help them set boundaries around that time because that can be a difficult thing for the S personality to do, so if they can set a small boundary around their most productive time, everything will flow more smoothly for the rest of the day.
For me, my highest energy and focus is in the morning, so I rarely go out of my home in the morning because my ability to focus when I return is going to be deeply impaired, and I’ve had days where I got nothing done in my business or my home because I’ve left in the morning and made a couple of stops.
And I know that there are plenty of task oriented people who would be quick to tell me that I need to get over it and do better, but it would be like me telling them to just sit back and relax when they have a deadline the next day, and they aren’t ready.
I wish it could be different sometimes, but it isn’t, so we do what we can to maximize what we do know. Mornings are sacred work time for me, and when I get the work done, I feel amazing. I promise, you will too whether you’re a morning energy person like me or an afternoon or evening energy person.
By the way, this is one of my favorite things to talk about in DISCovery calls and Personalized Strategy Sessions because when you get this down, it’s like the heavens open up, and you see yourself and the world in a much better light.
The Balance is an illusion productivity hack is incredibly important for the Supportive personality because if they don’t understand it, they will struggle with it their entire lives or beat themselves up because they can’t find that fictional place.
They are so good at beating themselves up if they feel like they’ve let their people down in any way whether in business or personally, but by understanding the illusion of balance, the S personality can embrace the idea of good enough and live a much happier life, and isn’t that what we’re all after in the end?
Truthfully, so many S personalities I know struggle with thinking they’re good enough, but guess what? I know differently. How? Book a DISCovery call, and I’ll show you.
So there you have it for the Supportive personality and productivity hacks that can help them do life and business better. If you are an S personality or know one that is struggling, book that free, 15 minute DISCovery call and we can get you on track to better immediately. We might resolve your issue in that 15 minute conversation. We might schedule a more in depth strategy session, but I assure you that whatever we chat about, you’ll feel better about yourself and your life when we’re finished, and you’ll have some next steps to help you live better based on your personality rather than someone else’s plan that isn’t working for you. So, go to the Moving Toward Better homepage and sign up for your DISCovery call to start living better asap.
As always, if you like what you’ve heard, please share and subscribe.
Until next time, keep moving toward better, whatever that looks like for you.
Show Notes
Time to talk about the sweet Supportive personality and productivity. This may be the personality that struggles the most with the idea of productivity, but the productivity hacks in this episode can make you more efficient so you can spend more time helping the people you care about in your personal life and your business.
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Thanks for listening, and if you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, leave a review and share so others can benefit from it too.
Finding the Sweet Spot Episode - https://www.movingtowardbetter.com/podcasts/moving-toward-better/episodes/2148562147
16 month Calendar link - https://amzn.to/4cxdjkY
My favorite erasable calendar pens - https://amzn.to/49kJgdG
Schedule your free DISCovery call here https://calendly.com/pkbemmes/discovery_call
Purchase your Assessment here https://www.movingtowardbetter.com/choose-the-assessment-that-s-right-for-you
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