Join me as I speak with Amanda Crowell Ph.D. She is a cognitive psychologist, speaker, author, and coach, and she is focused on changing our perspective on the world of work. Her new book Great Work: Do What Matters Most Without Sacrificing Everything Else comes out on June 7th, 2022.

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• Great Work: Do What Matters Most Without Sacrificing Everything Else by Amanda Crowell coming June 7, 2022

Mentioned in this episode:

Take down Nov.25

Take down Nov.25

Hey welcome to sheet coaches coaches, I'm your

host Kandi motsek. And I'm going to help you find the clarity,

confidence and courage to become the coach that you were meant to

be. If you're a new coach, or if you've always wanted to be a

life coach, then this is the place for you. We're going to

talk all about mindset and strategies and how to because

step by step only works when you have the clarity, courage and

confidence to take action. Let's get started. Hey, everyone, and

welcome to this episode of she coaches coaches. I have an

amazing guest for you today. Now, this was a woman that I met

at PATA palooza. And if you've been following me for a while,

you've probably heard some of these interviews. Let me

introduce you to Dr. Amanda Crowl. She is a cognitive

psychologist, speaker, author and coach. And she is focused on

changing our perspective on the world of work. It is possible to

do great work. Now those are capitalized, great work, launch

a successful business, make a scientific discovery, raise a

tight knit family and manage a globally remote team without

sacrificing your health, happiness and relationships.

Amanda is the author of the forthcoming book, great work do

what matters most without sacrificing everything else. And

the creator of the great work journals. Her TEDx talk has

received more than a million views and has been featured on

Ted's ideas blog and Ted shorts. Her ideas have also been

featured on NPR, Al Jazeera, the Wall Street Journal courts and

thrive, thrive global. That was a mouthful, Amanda? Hey. Oh, so

glad to see you here. Welcome to she coaches, coaches.

Thank you. I'm so happy to be here.

You tell me a little bit more about your book.

This is fascinating.

Yeah. So great work is a book about

figuring out what you were here to do. And then taking steps to

get closer to that vision without ever feeling

overwhelmed. So the book has sort of three, three parts to

it. The first is what is my great work. And, you know, often

people don't quite know, you ask them, you know, who are you? Who

do you want to be in? The answer that comes back very often is

either that's an irrelevant question. I am who I said I was

going to be, I'm stuck. I've made all of my choices. And now

this is who I am. Or, I'm not sure I always felt there was

something bigger for me, but I don't know what that is. And

then every now and then you get people who are very clear about

what they want, but they have no clue at all, how to get closer

to it. So the first little bit of the book is about, you know,

looking at your life, evaluating what's happened in it, thinking

through what you've enjoyed, and figuring out the first one I

would call inkling of what your great work might be. The second

half of the book tells you how to get a little bit closer to it

following the great work method, which is what's also in the

great work journals, which is a very time management

productivity, step by step process that I've discovered

over the last decade is a way to actually do remarkable things

without feeling overwhelmed. That's why I felt like I needed

it because I was constantly striving on 17 fronts at the

same time and getting on what I like to call the roller coaster,

the productivity roller coaster of doom, which is like where

you're utterly overworking and then you like nosedive into

burnout and recover just just enough so that you can overwork

again and then burnout and overwork and burnout. And as

like I can't live like this. I mean, once you have kids, it

feels, you know just really adds another layer of things that you

feel like you're obligated to do well at. And then I had a couple

of full body rebellions at one point I had an autoimmune flare

up that really, really kind of brought it to the forefront like

either get this under control or, or your body is just not

going to allow you to go any further. So the great work

method is something that I learned how to do out of sheer

necessity, so that I could continue to do great work

without like sacrificing literally everything else. my

health, my happiness, my marriage, my children, all of

it. So the second half of the book is or the second little bit

of the book is about that. And then the last part is kind of

related to the TED talk that I did, which is about mindsets.

What are the things that keep us locked in what I call patterns

of defensive failure, which is where we fail by not doing

anything to avoid having to live through the the excruciating

experience of failing for real, and so mindsets, self expertise,

understanding who you are as a very specific person, what works

for you in terms of your productivity and time

management. So it's really, it's really a sort of step by step

pathway to doing what you were put here to do without having to

give everything else like speed everything else to it.

Yeah, and I mean, ultimately, you can't do great

work if there's none nothing of you left to do it with, right?

Yeah. And if you have no resources or resilience, because

you've been on that hamster wheel of productivity for so

long, there's just nothing, you got nothing to give. And it's a

very joyless existence. Like, you know, when I've seen people

in that place, you say, you know, what do you want to do?

Who do you want to be? Who are you? They're like, zombies.

Right, like, and I think that without some intention, and some

personal reflection. There, that is an easy path for people to

fall into, because they think they're doing all the right

stuff, right. Like, you know, they graduate, they get into the

right school, they take the right degree, they make the

right connections, they make the, you know, the first post

degree career move all those things that we're supposed to

do. But if if it's not done with any, any of the underlying

import that you're describing, you're just you're building your

house, it's like a bunch of sticks that you're building on,

on nothing, right? Yeah. Hmm. So interesting. Do those does you

the way you described it? It sounds like the book and the

journals actually go together that they mesh together very

well? Yes. And what were you know, somebody was to read your

book. I know, it's not quite out yet. But if someone was to read

out, where would they start? Like, what's the one thing for

them to start with to begin with?

Yeah, so it kind of depends on where that

person starts their own sort of life journey, some people really

do know where they're headed. And they're just overwhelmed all

the time, they get stuck in analysis, by paralysis by

analysis, where, you know, they're doing too many things,

and everything's just eking forward, nothing's getting any

traction for, for somebody in that position, where you kind of

know where you're going. The second little bit of the book is

a great place to start, which is to say, the question, at the

heart of the great work method is how can I get a little bit

closer, I find that people overwhelm themselves, they think

I need to do 1/100, of becoming the world's best movie star this

week, if I want to be the world's best movie star in 100

weeks, but it really doesn't work like that, actually, it's a

you have to chip away at it and do what feels really kind of

what I would call aspirational in the sense that you have to

stretch forward a little but also attainable, and attainable

aspiration. And that grows over time, what feels like an utterly

overwhelming step today will feel very doable in a few weeks,

because you'll be further down the path. So I would start in

the great work journals, I would just start doing the weekly

pages, which asks you what three things can I do to get a little

closer this week? And then the daily pages? What can I do to

get a little closer to what I said I would do this week,

today. And I find that even just doing that even if you don't go

through the goal setting or read the book and learn all about

yourself expertise, and all of that can just transform your

experience of great work, because it feels like Oh, I see

how it's a part of my daily life. I don't have to wait. I

don't need to be given permission. I don't have to know

how to do it. I can just begin. And that, right, there is such a

massive shift that really sort of describes the difference

between the people who do great work, and the people who are

hoping to do great work.

So there's a little thread here that I'm

curious about. So it's this just began. So it's the having the

vision, like your example of I want to be a movie star, just

having the vision. I mean, that's probably not necessarily

most people's vision. I

was saying I want to get a I want to build a

career in corporate social responsibility. Sure.

Okay. So that's the vision. So being knowing

that that's where you want to go, at least the qualities of

it. And then just starting Is that what you're saying? I just

sort of want to be really clear there.

So I don't eat for a while at the very

beginning. I like to say that you have to get in the river.

First you have to get in your boat and get in the river so you

can be carried that you have a chance of being carried

downstream, right in the great stream of great work. And for a

while. It really kind of feels like when you're doing something

completely new. Like you're just paddling your boat around in

circles, you're not really getting anywhere. That's okay.

That's what it's meant to be, you have to figure out, you

know, in the example of corporate or social

responsibility, you might just be having conversations with

people looking at job descriptions, reading books,

talking to anybody who will talk to you, and it doesn't

necessarily feel like you're getting anywhere, but what

you're doing is you're sort of establishing the space that

you're meant to be in. And then eventually, it gets to the point

where you understand the space a little bit, and you can be a bit

more directional, a bit more intentional. And then it's a

question of, if you look, you know, at the long term goal of

getting a new job, then it's a question of like, where's your

old job? And what's the space in between? And how can you just

start this week, maybe you decide, you're going to get an

interview with somebody you met at a networking event three

months ago. So this week, all you're really going to do is

find that person's email address and send them an email asking

them to have like a zoom coffee with you. And that can be enough

for a whole week to get a little closer to great work. So

eventually, you start to become more intentional. And then when

the moment arrives, that what the next thing you have to do is

actually start applying for jobs. And that has a whole set

of things that can be done over the course of a week or the

course of the day. The key always being that as long as

you're taking, as long as you're taking it seriously, and taking

at least a step, every day, every week, you won't get

nowhere, you'll get somewhere, you'll probably get where you

want to go

over the course of time, even if you find out that

that particular role isn't exactly the match for you.

Right, but just knowing that helps you as well. Now, the

other thing that you haven't mentioned, but I'm curious about

is when you do these three things, you know, you plan on

doing three things, and then you do three things, for example,

reminding yourself of your progress, you know, and like

just sort of reinforcing that, hey, I'm doing a good job here.

I'm making progress, like, you know, that celebrating even

this, the tiniest steps and creating that, you know,

creating that environment, it's not just that you're looking at

the list, and yes, I did them, but that you feel good about

doing them tooth, I chose this, and I did it yet, right?

Yeah, exactly. Right. And in the

journal, the great work journals, at the beginning of

every day, and the end of every day, there's a place to

celebrate exactly that. There's a little gratitude section at

the top that can help you remember, I don't really know

anybody these days, who's not dealing with a little bit of

depression, a little bit of anxiety, we all need a reminder

that everything is not terrible when we're having that moment.

And I feel like the gratitudes are really just very grounding

in that sense. And then at the end of every day, you say what

was my favorite memory today. And it could be a joke that your

son told you, it can be a moment when your husband brought you a

coffee, it could be the moment where you find out you get the

job, but it doesn't have to be. And then at the end of every

week, you collect your feet, three favorite memories of the

week, and that goes in the weekly page. And then you get

this log of your life. And I think my favorite part of the

journal though, is actually you've done the three things,

right? You get to be done. Because that's the other feeling

we never, ever have. I'm done. I did it, and I'm done. And if you

can build more done into your life, where now you have no

guilt, no regret, no resistance to the things you need to do to

build resilience in yourself to take that nap to watch TV to

make yourself an actual dinner. That is a habit of great work.

That is the kind of stuff that makes it possible to get out of

the grind. When you were describing the the feeling of

the zombies who like are just so exhausted and overworked. Yeah,

they, you know, they, they're sacrificing exactly their great

work to the grind. Like they've chosen this grind over the

remarkable transformation of doing what your was sent here to

do. And I think that's just really sad. I think our world

is, is struggling in part, because so many people have

sacrificed their joy, their resilience, their contribution

to the to do list. And I don't think that that's doing us any

favors.

And I would I would even argue that they're

sacrificing themselves. Yeah, right. I mean, the great work

that you're you know, that you've been describing sounds

amazing and completely doable. For people like this is not

something that it's not something that's unattainable.

Anybody could accomplish this. But they have to be on their own

to do list. You know, they can't be sacrificing themselves on the

altar of somebody else's dream. It has been so great speaking

with you. For the listeners, anybody who wants to find out

more about you, where should they go? Can you share with them

a little bit?

Yes, you can go to Amantha crawl.com. And

we'll put that in the show notes, I'm sure. And there, you

can find out about the great work journals, which are

available on Amazon, and Barnes and Noble and all over all the

places, that can be a great place to start and then get on

the list. So you can hear about the book when it comes out on

June 7, which is very exciting. There'll be a lot of launch,

launch parties launch events that week to and all of those

would be great ways to find me. And I also have a podcast called

unleashing your great work, where we talk about all these

ideas. And yeah, that would be how to do it. Awesome.

Thank you. Thank you for joining me. Okay,

everyone. That's it for this week, and I will talk to you

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