Minette Riordan: Some of the challenges, though, would be awesome.
Brad Dobson: I don’t have any challenges.
Minette Riordan: I would say the biggest one is probably perfectionism, and what we’ve seen with our clients in particular is that perfectionism is the biggest killer of productivity out there.
Have you ever said to yourself, “I don’t have enough time?”
Brad Dobson: I am so overwhelmed.
Minette Riordan: I need more clarity.
Brad Dobson: I don’t know how to do this.
Minette Riordan: My to-do list is miles long.
Brad Dobson: I’m exhausted.
Minette Riordan: There’s got to be a better way.
Brad Dobson: Hi there. I’m Brad.
Minette Riordan: And I’m Minette. Not only have we said all these things ourselves, but we’ve heard our community of creative entrepreneurs say them over and over again.
Brad Dobson: That’s why we created the Structure and Flow podcast. I’m Structure.
Minette Riordan: And I’m Flow, and this is the productivity podcast for creative entrepreneurs.
Brad Dobson: We believe that doing more and working harder are not the solution to your productivity challenges.
Minette Riordan: We believe in more play, more fun, and more profit. Join us as we explore the interplay between structure and flow, so that we can bring more grace and ease to your creative business.
Brad Dobson: Hi, and welcome to episode 96 of Structure and Flow. Today we are talking about the contemplator as part of discovering your unique productivity style.
Minette Riordan: Woo hoo! I’m loving this conversation and where we’re diving in. In yesterday’s, yesterday’s, in the last episode, in episode number 95, we talked about the commander which is very much who I am as totally the bulldozer. The contemplator is almost the opposite.
Brad Dobson: Speaking of who you are and who I am, I’m Brad Dobson and this is my wife, Dr. Minette Riordan. Welcome again, folks.
Minette Riordan: We’re the co-founders of the Path to Profit Academy, and we’re on a personal quest in 2018 to improve our own productivity, and bring more grace and ease, not more hard work.
Brad Dobson: That’s right.
Minette Riordan: Into our life and our business
Brad Dobson: It’s not about forcing more tasks through your pipeline of work. It’s about doing better, more effective, doing the right things, and like Minette said, doing them with grace and ease. We don’t want things to be forced and stressed.
Minette Riordan: Absolutely, and there’s no better person to start off our contemplator episode than Martha Stewart. Martha Stewart said, “Life is too complicated not to be orderly.”
Brad Dobson: Absolutely. Couldn’t agree more.
Minette Riordan: And I like order in some parts of my life-
Brad Dobson: Except her desk.
Minette Riordan: Maybe not so much in others. If you could see my desk and my craft room, it’s like piled high.
Brad Dobson: I can barely walk in there some days.
Minette Riordan: So some of the things we’ve noticed about understanding our own productivity styles is how we approach not just productivity differently, but space and time and tasks and stress as well, are are all part of understanding our unique productivity style. The contemplator actually can get really stressed out-
Brad Dobson: You bet.
Minette Riordan: About other people’s chaos, right? But before we talk about, you know, all the challenges of the contemplator, you want to share what some of your amazing gifts are, honey [inaudible 00:03:20]?
Brad Dobson: My amazing gifts. Let me talk about my amazing gifts. I think there’s probably some other contemplators out there that share these same gifts. Contemplators have the gift of understanding and loving systems and processes, which yeah, that’s me. Just totally. Not her, me. We love quality work done well the first time, and it’s difficult for us to put out shoddy work or put out work where we’re forced to do something quickly and it feels incomplete. It doesn’t feel like we’ve been able to really do a great job on it.
Minette Riordan: I know that frustrates him to no end when I want things done at the last minute, and he can’t have the time to do it well.
Brad Dobson: That’s right, that’s right.
Minette Riordan: It’s really frustrating.
Brad Dobson: And I think finally it’s the ability to see a problem and solution as one thing, that serve me wonderfully. It was also very tough in my software career because I was always able to, when presented with a problem, see the solution or multiple solutions out in front of me as a whole problem space, whereas other people might take quite a bit to process the whole thing and be able to understand what was going on in the first place.
Minette Riordan: Some of the challenges though of the awesome contemplator-
Brad Dobson: I don’t have any challenges.
Minette Riordan: I would say the biggest one is probably perfectionism, and what we’ve seen with our clients in particular is that perfectionism is the biggest killer of productivity out there, because when you try to get it perfect, you never actually get it going. It can stall you and stop progress really, really quickly.
Brad Dobson: It’s the enemy of good.
Minette Riordan: It is the enemy of good. I love that quote. Getting lost in details stops you from making progress also. So Brad has the gift to be able to see the problem and the solution, but a lot of times contemplators get so stuck in the tiny little steps and the many, many details of a creative process, that they stop making progress or the progress moves very slowly. We saw this recently with one of our clients who’s doing some woodworking, and it’s taking her a long time to get it going. The rest of us are chomping at the bit because she’s creating this really cool product.
We’ll say, I’m sure, more about it once it’s live on the marketplace, but her prototypes have taken a really long time because she’s stuck in details and perfectionism.
Brad Dobson: Yep.
Minette Riordan: And yet at the same time she’s also thinking ahead how from the beginning can I plan this so that it will be most effective and take the least amount of time. So there’s this constant juggling act that’s happening in the contemplator’s mind between forward thinking and planning and putting the system in place from the beginning, and just getting things going and getting the process.
Contemplators also have a tendency to be on the judgmental side. They don’t do really well with people who aren’t willing to put in the time to get it done right. They can be easily frustrated by others who do shoddy work.
Brad Dobson: Okay, this is starting to hurt.
Minette Riordan: Well, you noticed I didn’t say Brad is really judgmental. I said contemplators can be really judgmental.
Brad Dobson: It feels like you’re talking about me, though. I know there’s some other people listening that feel like we’re talking about you too.
Minette Riordan: Yeah, well if it’s resonating with you, it means that there’s some truth in there. And I think one of the other things that we see about contemplators, and one of my own biggest frustrations of working with contemplators, I’m pointing to him if you’re listening, is their inability to make quick decisions. And when it comes to stepping into leadership in your business and really growing a profitable business, you learn that you have to make effective decisions fast.
Contemplators need time to weigh and measure the pros and the cons and the details. So for you, finding the balance between having enough time to make a confident decision, and being completely stuck in the decisiveness, is a journey and part of your own productivity battle.
Brad Dobson: We should talk about how we can help contemplators be more productive.
Minette Riordan: Yeah, absolutely.
Brad Dobson: Sound like a good idea?
Minette Riordan: That sounds like you’re done hearing the challenges.
Brad Dobson: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Minette Riordan: Is that what you’re saying?
Brad Dobson: We can downplay those, I think. Oh boy. Okay, well number one, let go of perfectionism and redefine good enough.
Minette Riordan: Yeah, you know for me, good enough is a mindset, right? And you get to set the parameters of that from a perspective of understanding that your work is good enough, and it’s almost always better than everybody else’s because that’s so important to you. But let go of perfectionism, and maybe do a little mindset work on what is the real resistance? Oftentimes what’s underneath perfectionism is fear.
Brad Dobson: It is for me, fear of being judged.
Minette Riordan: Fear of being judged, fear of not being good enough, fear that no one’s going to love your art, so fear can keep us really, really stuck.
Brad Dobson: Step back and see the big picture to make sure you are on the right track.
Minette Riordan: You going to say more about that one? Do you want me to say more about that one?
Brad Dobson: You say more.
Minette Riordan: I say more. So what I mean by-
Brad Dobson: My brain’s is talking.
Minette Riordan: Well, this is totally where it’s so helpful to have a commander on your team that can see the big vision, and can help you understand the arc of how to get from where you are to the big picture. So, just like the commander needs a team as described in the last episode, the contemplator needs a team as well. Sometimes what you need is that visionary partner which could be a commander or even a creator to help you step back and actually acknowledge how much you’ve already done.
You can get so stuck in the little details that you fail to see how much progress you’re actually making, and take a moment to celebrate then and really notice, “Wow! I am so much further along than I actually thought I was.”
Brad Dobson: Good stuff. Stop obsessing over minor details, and this is a big one. It has to do with perfectionism. It also has to do with being able to see the whole problem space at once. That’s the downside of being able to see everything is that you can see everything, and you want to take into account everything. A lot of those details are really not that important, but you’re spending a lot of time on them, and that’s a productivity drain.
Minette Riordan: I think what would help with that is just having clear milestones, and that you may sure that at each milestone you’re stopping to check in and look at your progress. Then the other thing for the contemplator, and I know this is really true for you sweetheart-
Brad Dobson: Oh, it had to come back to me, didn’t it?
Minette Riordan: Is to make more time for creative play. Sometimes you just need to get out of your amazing analytical head and make something just for fun. I want to share a quick story about an amazing photographer from Dallas, Texas that I worked with who got so caught up in post-production, so caught up in looking for agents, that she had this “aha” moment where she’s like, “Wow! I haven’t actually gone out and taken photos just for fun in a really long time” and yet new fresh photography is the thing that’s going to drive her business forward.
So, when we looked at her calendar and how to just approach this whole concept of productivity differently, we wrote in time blocks for playtime, for going out and capturing photos that might never get used but were just joyful and fun for her to take so that she wasn’t spending so many hours in her office behind her computer.
So where could you use a little more creative playtime?
Brad Dobson: Yeah, definitely. Maybe some more music, maybe some programming. All sorts of fun stuff. Maybe some woodworking.
Minette Riordan: Maybe, maybe, maybe. So, can we talk a little bit about, this is a contemplator things, about the maybes?
Brad Dobson: Oh.
Minette Riordan: Right?
Brad Dobson: She’s going to nail me down here.
Minette Riordan: I am going to nail you down, right? So as the commander, he can nail me down like he did yesterday or Sunday, whenever that was, and say, “Are you really going to work all day?” And so instead of working all day, we sat on the couch and watched, what did we watch? Murder on the Orient Express.
Brad Dobson: Exactly.
Minette Riordan: Speaking of contemplators, Poirot is definitely a contemplator.
Brad Dobson: Yes.
Minette Riordan: Masterful at paying attention to the details.
Brad Dobson: I don’t think you’d keep me if I had that mustache, though.
Minette Riordan: I don’t know. Yeah, it might be kind of ticklish.
Just noticing that maybe doesn’t work, that you have to actually commit to time off or commit to creative play and schedule time in your calendar that’s just for you. We cannot say enough on this podcast about the path to productivity is actually one of grace and ease when you make time to play, when you make time for creative thinking, when you make time for rest and recovery, right?
Productivity is not about pushing harder. I tried that. When I had my publishing company, I tried that push, push, push, and it hurt our relationship, it hurt my kids and it impacted my weight in a really not very fun way.
Brad Dobson: Sure, yeah, definitely. So finally for the contemplator, look for team members that bring a different talent. You might need a commander or a creator on your team to bring perspective. You’re not necessarily going to want to work with another contemplator.
Minette Riordan: That would be tough.
Brad Dobson: You wouldn’t want to work with another contemplator?
Minette Riordan: Well, I love my contemplator, but if you had, if I was a contemplator, we would be stuck.
Brad Dobson: Yeah. Yeah, I think so.
Minette Riordan: You need some people of like activator motivational energy on your team, and people that can be your cheerleaders and really pull you forward. Absolutely.
So we’re starting to really see some themes here that will continue to explore on the Structure and Flow Podcast. This is about less work, more play. It’s about balancing vision and details because we truly believe that doing less, not more, is the secret to getting on the path to profit and staying there.
If you want to know for sure what your unique productivity style is, you can go take the quiz at pathtoprofitacademy.com/upsquiz, upsquiz or you can find it in the show notes.
Brad Dobson: Yeah, definitely, and another thing you can do for us-
Minette Riordan: Please.
Brad Dobson: Please, is to, especially if you’re listening to this in April of 2018. We’ve got a contest running for people that jump on over and give us some honest review on iTunes. If you go to pathtoprofitacademy.com/contest, you’ll see all the details. It’ll show you how to do a review. Super simple stuff. We are giving away some neat prizes. Got printed versions of our artful profit planner which our son designed. Got printed version of a wonderful Mandala coloring book. How many mandalas are in that one?
Minette Riordan: I don’t know, like maybe 30 mandalas.
Brad Dobson: It’s really cool.
Minette Riordan: It’s really beautiful, and it’s actually a whole process for improving your money mindset as well.
Brad Dobson: We had one of our good friends give all of her clients a copy of that for Christmas.
Minette Riordan: Yeah, that made me so happy.
Brad Dobson: Yeah.
Minette Riordan: So I love giving stuff away, so I’m really excited about the contest. That was pathtoprofitacademy.com/contest in order to win a copy of the artful profit planner and a copy of our awesome money meditation Mandala coloring book.
Brad Dobson: Good stuff, and you can see all this stuff in the show notes along with the transcription. We love you guys, love to hear from you. Love to get feedback about the show, all that good stuff.
Minette Riordan: In the next episode, we’re going to be talking about the conductor, so make sure you binge listen. Keep binge listening. We’re trying to make these episodes short and sweet so you can listen to them all at once and discover your unique productivity style.
So next up, the conductor.
Brad Dobson: Thanks for listening to Structure and Flow, the productivity podcast for creative entrepreneurs. To find out more about this episode and others, go to pathtoprofitacademy.com and click on a podcast link.
