Blog - Parts with Presley

Do you need information or transformation?

“I know what I need to do, but I can’t get myself to do it.”

Does that sound familiar? Recognizing that you’re in this situation is frustrating, but also incredibly important. It can save you years of wasting time and feeling like a failure. That’s because this sentence tells you that you don’t need more information; you need to undergo a transformation.

Our default setting in this culture is “Fix it with information.” Made a bad meal? You need a new recipe. Make bad meals every night? You need a cooking class. Eat badly all the time? You need a diet plan. Name a problem, and someone will sell you information to fix it.

And so, when you know what you need to do, but can’t get yourself to do it, you might be tempted to look for information. You might keep searching for tips on how to do it, even though you already know what’s needed. You might start searching for tips on how to make yourself do stuff you don’t wanna do. But there’s actually an option besides a “how-to.”

Productivity Insights

Types of Imposter Syndrome

When I graduated with my PhD, I dedicated my dissertation to “the imposters.” Not “the people with Imposter Syndrome,” but “the imposters.” Why? Because I knew from personal experience that people with Imposter Syndrome doubt themselves so much that they even doubt whether they have Imposter Syndrome.

“Maybe they have Imposter Syndrome, but I’m actually an imposter,” a friend confided in me. I’d been thinking the same thing about myself.

Nowadays, I feel more comfortable in my skin, but I still notice that people with Imposter Syndrome often start by asking if they actually have it. In addition to self-doubt, there’s another reason people do that: Imposter Syndrome isn’t very clearly defined! After all, it isn’t an official diagnosis, so different people use the term in different ways.

So let’s get a little more clear about what Imposter Syndrome really is and what types of Imposter Syndrome exist.

Coaching

How to Spot Gaslighting Therapists and Coaches

Life in the 21st century is rough. We all need some help calming our nervous systems, figuring out what we need, and finding a way forward. Unfortunately, though, many of us have had bad experiences with the very people who are supposed to help us through. How can you avoid working with a gaslighting therapist, coach, healer, or spiritual teacher?

It can be tempting to avoid inner work entirely as the only way to stay truly safe after this kind of experience. But your inner world isn’t to blame, and turning away from it will only prolong your sense of feeling lost and hurt.

You can go it alone, relying on self-help books and practices you can manage yourself. That works for some people! But many people find that they make more progress with a guide of some sort.

So I want to help you understand why common forms of gaslighting happen and what the alternatives are. I’ll explore the three ways I most often hear of coaches and therapists gaslighting people, give some insight into why it happens, and share the alternative approaches that I use. I hope this helps you notice when someone is treating you unfairly and advocate for yourself, as well as giving you ideas for questions to ask when interviewing coaches and therapists to choose one you can trust.

Productivity Insights

The 7 Myths of Perfectionism and How They’re Holding…

Do you feel overwhelmed when thinking about starting a big project? Do you finish a project, feel proud for .2 seconds, and then feel horribly embarrassed and hide it from everyone? Or maybe you have trouble sticking with things that you’re not good at right away?

These are all signs of perfectionism! And they’re holding you back from your best life.

What is perfectionism?

People use the word “perfectionism” in a variety of ways, but to me, perfectionism doesn’t mean you do things perfectly, or are detail-oriented, or keep a tidy house.

It means you hold yourself to unreasonably high standards.

Productivity Insights

You Can Let Go of Shame With or Without…

If you procrastinate, you’ve probably wondered: is this ADHD, or just the way I am?

Finding out whether you have ADHD is really helpful if you can get a diagnosis. But even if you can’t, or you’re told you don’t have ADHD, that doesn’t mean you “have no excuse” for procrastinating. And neither answer means you’re stuck with this procrastination habit forever.

Productivity Insights

You Don’t Have to Be Miserable to Be Motivated

“I need someone to light a fire under my butt.”

“I have an accountability buddy, but I wish she was harder on me.”

“I want to feel better about myself, but not too much. If I were really happy with myself, I might not get ANYTHING done!”

Do these beliefs sound familiar? I often hear them from people who are looking to improve their productivity. They believe that in order to break through procrastination, they need to feel:

anxious about losing their job
afraid that someone will be mad at them
embarrassed that they look irresponsible
guilty for waiting so long
or panicked about a deadline

It makes sense. All around us, there are messages reinforcing this view. We assume kids won’t do their homework unless they’re threatened with a bad grade, and that adults won’t do their jobs unless they’re threatened with getting fired.

Why would anyone do anything if they weren’t afraid of the consequences of sitting around eating bonbons instead?

Mindfulness

Distinctions for Inner and Outer Conflict Resolution

I’ve been thinking a lot about conflict resolution lately, so I interrupt your usual productivity content for some short and sweet reminders for when your head is spinning or your relationship is fraying.

Distinctions Stop the Domino Effect

There are concepts that sometimes feel very connected but are actually distinct. When they’re not distinguished from each other, they act like dominoes. When one domino falls, all the other dominoes fall, too. It can look like “I’m hurt, therefore you must have wronged me, therefore you’re a bad person, therefore you must be punished.”

The result is escalation of conflict.¹ In inner conflict, a worried thought can escalate into panic and overwhelm. In outer conflict, a hurt feeling can escalate into a broken relationship and a fractured community.

Distinctions put space in between our dominoes so that our conflicts don’t get escalated for no reason.

Case Studies

An Engineer Finds True Confidence

Sometimes I talk about “true confidence” and how it can help people face intimidating tasks and get more done, without having to “fake it till you make it.” But it might be hard to imagine how people find this confidence and what it feels like. So I’ll share a story of a session I had with a client that I’ll call Andy, where he uncovered his true confidence, not by faking it or convincing himself, but as a natural consequence of looking inside himself.

Andy is an engineer who loves to make art projects in his free time. He’s been working with me because his job includes a task that feels impossible, and when he tries to do it, he bounces off of it and automatically reaches for something different to do.

By this session, Andy said that The Impossible Task was already feeling “more approachable.” He’d broken it down into subtasks, and some of them felt achievable, but some of them still felt impossible. So we picked one of the impossible subtasks – a report he needed to write up and present in a meeting – and started exploring his feelings around it.

Productivity Tips

How Am I Supposed to Focus on Work Right…

In the US, the federal government, which funds a ton of things we rely on, not to mention aid to other countries, is being dismantled. An unelected guy has access to every American’s confidential data. Food is about to get even more expensive.

You can be forgiven for having a hard time focusing on your paperwork!

But you have bills to pay, and it won’t do anyone any good for you to lose your job. There’s enough of that going around already. So what can you do?

Productivity Tips

Set Up Your Home Office for Focus and Productivity

I love working from home. The leisurely mornings with no commute, control over the thermostat, the ability to move my clothes to the dryer while my code is compiling…it’s beautiful.

But probably the biggest reason I love it is that I can actually focus better when I’m in a space I find comfortable. Like many perfectionists and procrastinators, emotional regulation is key to my ability to get things done. When I feel like someone is looking over my shoulder, or when I can’t quite find a way to sit in my office chair without my back aching, it’s like my brain stops working. Whereas, cocooned in my favorite chair at home with a cup of tea from my personal collection, I can fall right into a flow state.

So working from home is a great option for those of us who need to dial down the anxiety in order to focus. And yet, it’s a double-edged sword. With all your favorite snacks and hobbies around – not to mention your bed! – it can be hard to consistently choose work over rest and play.

For some managers, this is exactly what they have in mind when they insist you come into the office – they want to make sure you’re staying on task!

So let’s show those managers that you can have the best of both worlds – the cozy comfort of working from home, and the focused productivity of a structured, motivating environment. Recently, Redfin asked me how people could organize their home environment to support their goals for their blog post on how to keep your New Year’s Resolutions this year, and that inspired me to go further and put together these tips for creating a productive home office space.

“I know what I need to do, but I can’t get myself to do it.”

What is perfectionism?

Distinctions Stop the Domino Effect

What's Your Procrastination Type?