What to do when you’re being unproductive and you don’t like

1. What to do when you’re being unproductive and you don’t like it… By: Rachel Rofe

2. The reason I made this episode is because I was recently interviewed and the person asked me about spending too much time on Pinterest at night. She asked what she should do about it.

3. This is something I deal with a lot - I have high expectations for myself, sometimes maybe too high. WANT WHAT YOU WANT

4. Sometimes you need to do these things…

5. Sometimes you need to sit and watch TV, or read trashy magazines, or surf Pinterest for hours. For me, it’s playing backgammon on my phone.The personal development world talks a lot about how TV is bad, and this is bad, and that is bad… but that’s not always true.We don’t need to be hyper-productive 24/7. We don’t need to always be doing something to be worthy individuals. It’s perfectly fine to do absolutely nothing and to LOVE IT.

6. I have a friend who watches Gossip Girl. She makes an event out of it. She cozies up in bed, makes a mug of tea, and pulls up her computer. She loves it.

7. Sometimes those things are far more productive than doing work. You get replenished, you get time to just decompress, and it helps shut your mind down.Also, sometimes you naturally feel called to do things that actually help you. For example: I’ve studied the Myers Briggs personality system out a lot. And with each Myers Briggs personality type, there’s a place that people go in stress. There are positive and negative ways to handle that stress. For example, I’m an INFJ, which means that in stress, I go to physical sensations - which can mean either overeating in the negative way, or going for a walk in the positive.

8. I have a friend who’s an ENFJ, and she said that when she gets stressed, she’ll obsessively start to play Sudoku. She never knew why, but it turns out, the place she goes to in stress is “accuracy” - meaning she can either point out every way people are wrong, or she can do something to be accurate herself.

9. Should you be working on goals? Absolutely, if that’s what you want. But if you work on goals the right way - set a big goal, work backwards from it, and do 3-5 things per day towards the goal, you’ll have plenty of extra time. It’s just that you need to set goals the right way and work on them. If you havent read my book yet - rachelrofe.com/goalsettingWhen you do goals right, you’ll have plenty of time to goof off, be human, and not have to be a super-productive machine.

10. Sure, you can overdo it and be just filling time with pinterest because you’re demotivated. In that case, go back to your “why”. If you haven’t listened to my 10 steps to inspiration podcast, go through that.But I invite you to consider setting time aside every single day to do whatever you want - even if it feels totally brainless.Practical way to do this - ask yourself, right now, “what’s something I can do to bring me joy?”

11. See what the first thing that comes to your mind is, and don’t shut it down because it’s not the right thing to do. either do it now, or do it when you can.From my perspective, there’s really no point in living if you’re going to make yourself be a constant machine. as always, I go back to the death bed litmus test. Will I have been OK with myself, on my death bed, for choosing to work when I really wanted to play a little backgammon?

12. If you'd like to hear the whole interview (and more just like this) head to: http://rachelrofe.com/subscribe