Painless Productivity

Are you tired of feeling behind?

You may sit down to do some work and suddenly find yourself scrolling social media, cleaning your room, or doing anything other than working. It can take hours to work up the nerve to tackle a really important task, or you might skip it on your to do list day after day as you focus on easier, but less important things.

Then when it’s time to unplug from work, you might have trouble letting it go. The guilt and worry can hang over your head while you talk to your partner, play with your kids, or try to relax.

I know you care.

People tell you that you just need more motivation, more willpower, more discipline. That if you’re not striving, you just don’t want it bad enough.

What they don’t realize is that caring about your work and wanting to do a good job is part of what makes it so hard to face! Pushing yourself may work for a day or a week, but then it leaves you even more resistant to facing your intimidating tasks.

Techniques aren’t enough.

So you turn to the productivity gurus, and they all seem to have One Weird Trick that should fix everything.

You buy that beautiful planner that’s sure to change your life.

You set timers, you block out time on your schedule, you make a coworking plan with a friend.

It works! You’re a new person! For about two weeks. And then it starts to get hard to use your favorite new techique. You blame yourself for not having the fortitude to stick with it, but the truth is, you’re subconsciously resisting your intimidating tasks, and these techniques can’t trick your subconscious forever.

Here’s what you need to know about procrastination:

It’s not caused by a lack of motivation, but by a conflict between your motivation to do and your motivation to avoid.
Your motivation to avoid is largely driven by subconscious beliefs, and you can’t change those by just telling yourself that you’re being irrational.

…but you can change them.

Working with Presley has enabled change in ways I did not realize were possible before I embarked on this work.
Jess S.

It takes:

Self-compassion. This isn’t just because it feels nice; self-compassion quiets the part of you that says “do the thing already!” long enough for us to listen to the part of you that wants to avoid doing the thing.
Finding the root cause. We need to listen to the part of you that wants to procrastinate in order to find the subconscious belief that drives it.
Experiential learning. Telling yourself that you’re being irrational doesn’t change subconscious beliefs, but experiential learning does.

That’s what we do in my 1-1 coaching engagement, Painless Productivity.

Why it works

Painless Productivity addresses all these requirements for lasting change in your productivity:

It guides you into uncovering new insights about why you procrastinate so that compassion for yourself comes naturally.
That self-compassion makes it possible to explore your subconscious beliefs.
That compassionate exploration gives you the opportunity to realize on a deep level that your limiting beliefs are unfounded and adopt a broader, more balanced perspective.

The level of composure and consciousness I have gained from this process feels like a superpower that I never knew I had. New opportunities are more inviting and unknown obstacles are less intimidating.
Michael

Easy to stick to

Of course, you’ll only be successful at something you can stick to. That’s why:

The coaching is completely customized to you. If you can’t visualize, we’ll use non-visual techniques. If your ADHD makes it hard to sit still, we’ll work with your movement.
We keep a collaborative online journal about our work together so you have one place to look for reminders and one place to keep notes to me and to yourself.
Any exercises I suggest are designed to take five minutes or less, and I help you establish a habit of making time for it.
When you tell me you didn’t do your exercises, I don’t say “You’re not going to get results if you don’t put in the work!” I say “That’s great information. What made them hard for you? What can we learn from that?”
When you tell me you’re feeling resistant to coaching, I don’t say “I only work with coachable people!” I say “That means a part of you is concerned, and we’re going to respect that. What is the concern?”

Previous “life” coaching experiences sometimes left me feeling unseen or unheard. Like being handed advice that you feel doesn’t really fit. With Presley’s coaching, this never happened.
Chris F.

Book a free consultation

What’s included

Individual Coaching Sessions

These one-on-one sessions are 50 minutes each, held over video call, and include the following:

Goal-setting: I help you flesh out a flexible, meaningful goal to help you focus your efforts.
Transformational work: in our one-on-one sessions, I help you uncover insights, process feelings, release limiting beliefs, and discover your true capabilities.
Reflection: we periodically review your work to help you integrate what you’ve learned. Never wonder “is this even working?”

Between-Session Support

To keep up your momentum between sessions, Painless Productivity includes these resources:

Collaborative Journal: we work together to track your progress, obstacles, and between-session exercises.
Doable Exercises: I’ll help you establish a short, easy habit of tuning into yourself once a day. Once established, we’ll customize the habit to support whatever you’re working on at the time.
Email Support: if you have questions between sessions, feel free to email me.
Journaling Templates: When you’re stuck on something between sessions, you don’t have to wait until our next appointment. You’ll have access to all of my journaling templates (including unreleased ones), organized by the situation they’re useful for. Just click on the one you need and start typing right in the template, and it’ll guide you back into action. Then let me know about it in our next session so we can get to the root of the issue.

The Coaching Container

Painless Productivity is often compared to strategic coaching or to therapy, but it’s different from both of them.

The work we do within sessions is more open-ended and transformational than the logistical work you might expect from productivity coaching. This allows us to find new possibilities for you that linear thinking wouldn’t uncover.

Meanwhile, our in-session work is supported by more structure than you typically find in a therapy engagement. This structure helps us channel your newfound possibilities into progress towards your goal.

Common results

Insight

Clients get new insights into why they do what they do and feel what they feel:

Presley just gently guides and you discover what is true for you.
Anne K.

Self-compassion

These insights naturally lead to less shame and more self-compassion:

Accepting those feelings helped me bring more self-love to other struggles and interactions.
Kate C.

This is helping me to bring a lot more compassion and empathy into my inner life, which is freeing more energy for the work I need to do.
Chris F.

Mindfulness and Skill

Then the work we do in sessions starts to become available to them in everyday life. Clients start to become more mindful, noticing when they’re having an unhelpful thought or urge and working with it skillfully:

I’m ending the series not only with pervasive experiences, but very granular, hands-on ways of coping with and bouncing back from my work (and interrelational) triggers.
Chris F.

Working with Presley over time, I’ve been able to experience more of the “self” being in the driver’s seat. Rather than specific parts automatically taking over the system, I’m able to pause and engage the self with that part in a consultative way.
Jess S.

I am truly amazed at how quickly this method can be used in day to day tasks and situations. It becomes a natural way to relate to the self.
Kristi

Reduced Stress

When an “aha” moment lands, the stress you’re currently feeling from constantly fighting yourself melts away:

Over the course of doing the Painless Productivity package, everything got 15-20% easier and less stressful.
Melissa Post

The outcome of this engagement both reduces stress and overwhelm, and increases productivity.
Jess S.

Unlocked Productivity

The “aha” moment brings a deep change in a specific area of your productivity. Since the coaching engagement is completely customized to you, it addresses whichever issue is your top priority. For instance, Anne F. needed to get better at saying no to make more time for her own work:

I don’t feel the dreadful internal feeling of “obligation” to satisfy another person’s wishes, needs, requests etc. I just felt a kind of quiet calm, that I have my boundaries and I’m going to honour them. And it’s okay if that person doesn’t like it or has negative feelings towards me about it.
Anne F.

Taylor needed to heal from empathic burnout before she could start getting more done:

Aspects of my work that were leading towards burnout feel less overwhelming and more manageable. Areas of my personal life where I knew “something” was missing now feel like areas where I know what I want to change.
Taylor

Melissa needed to get out of the cycle of using adrenaline to power her productivity and then crashing:

I don’t have to use that fear-based drive all the time anymore. Now I am learning that I can feel safe and calm, and be active at the same time.
Melissa Post

As you can see, the results of Painless Productivity vary widely because people vary widely. You don’t have to fit yourself into someone else’s productivity framework; you can fit Painless Productivity to your needs.

Book a free consultation

The Details

Join Painless Productivity in one of two gears:

Low Gear: 2 individual coaching sessions/month for $300/month
High Gear: 4 individual coaching sessions/month for $500/month

Both gears include all between-session support.

Duration

In order to set yourself up for success, I ask that you enter Painless Productivity with the intention to stay for at least 6 months in Low Gear or at least 3 months in High Gear. This gives you enough sessions for the benefits of coaching to really take root in your life.

From there, it’s up to you. Painless Productivity can last however long you need to reach your goal. If you have a specific milestone in mind and you want to end coaching once you reach it, that’s great! Or, if you want to go beyond removing blockers to your productivity and into building your sense of purpose and power to act, Painless Productivity can grow with you.

Low Risk

The minimum time commitment is a guideline for those who are positively engaged in the work. If you try Painless Productivity and realize it’s just not a fit for you, you can quit early for a prorated refund.

Sliding Scale

If you have financial need, let me know. I can offer discounts for a limited number of people.

Is it a good fit for you?

Because Painless Productivity is about inner transformation, it’s not a good fit for people who:

don’t want to talk about their feelings
want a coach to optimize their to-do list or planner
want a coach to help them set up automations to increase their throughput
want a coach to develop an ADHD accommodation plan with them

Because Painless Productivity uses powerful techniques for working with your thoughts and feelings, it is not a good fit for people who:

are currently in a mental health crisis
feel unsafe tuning into their physical sensations
experience traumatic flashbacks, dissociative amnesia, or psychosis
have coping mechanisms that put themselves or others at risk of lasting harm

Painless Productivity works well for people who:

struggle specifically with tasks that are daunting, intimidating, or overdue.
may have ADHD, but if so, have already explored the basic accommodations and lifestyle changes they need and are ready to explore their emotional blockers.
feel comfortable opening up to me about their thoughts and feelings. (You can find out in a free consultation!)

And although these aren’t a requirement for a good fit, if you identify as any of the following, you’re really in the right place:

perfectionist
people pleaser
overachiever
Imposter Syndrome sufferer
former gifted kid

Is it right for you?

We can find out together in a free, no-pressure consultation:

Or sign up here.

Still have questions? Feel free to reach out.

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Full Testimonials

The level of composure and consciousness I have gained from this process feels like a superpower that I never knew I had. New opportunities are more inviting and unknown obstacles are less intimidating. The amount of awareness I have now I would have never guessed was possible when I first began this work. I am excited to be continuing this journey of self-improvement, and about where the future will take me whilst being profoundly present!
Michael

When I started coaching with Presley, I was having a lot of trouble getting started on projects. The only way I could get myself to do hard things was to use adrenaline-fueled hyperfixation. I had to feel like I was under threat in order to be motivated. And even then, I was struggling to do things.

Over the course of doing the Painless Productivity package, everything got 15-20% easier and less stressful. I signed up for a course that I previously would have been too intimidated to try, and I’m off to a good start on it! I still can’t believe I chose this course, but I found my genuine interest in it and that helps me be less afraid to be wrong.

In the past, I would have motivated myself to work on this topic by looking at other people’s GitHub projects and then making myself feel so bad about it that I needed to do it. But now, I’m not going to do that. I’m going to find what I actually care about and what I actually want to do that has nothing to do with feeling like I need to compare myself to someone else.

Even though I’m moving past my need to use adrenaline and threats to motivate myself, our work together made me admire this driven part of me that used adrenaline to push me all my life. Now I look at all the obstacles I’ve faced and think, “I really had to overcome all that to do things, and still kept up that drive most of my life? That’s amazing!”

And yet, I don’t have to use that fear-based drive all the time anymore. Now I am learning that I can feel safe and calm, and be active at the same time.

It’s a brand new world, and I’m taking baby steps into it. Of course I haven’t become perfectly productive, but after these few months of coaching, I feel ready to explore this new world on my own.
Melissa Post

Working with Presley as a parts work coach has been extremely worthwhile and has enabled change in ways I did not realize were possible before I embarked on this work.

Presley is extremely well versed in Internal Family Systems, and asks thoughtful questions to help her clients engage with their parts from a place of compassion and open-mindedness. As a result, she has been able to help me work through challenges and implement effective and sustainable solutions.

Working with Presley over time, I’ve been able to experience more of the “self” being in the driver’s seat. Rather than specific parts automatically taking over the system, I’m able to pause and engage the self with that part in a consultative way. The outcome of this engagement both reduces stress and overwhelm, and increases productivity.

I can’t recommend enough working with Presley as a parts work coach, and I would be happy to chat with anyone who would like to know more about my experience!
Jess S.

This work helped me think about myself differently. Aspects of my work that were leading towards burnout feel less overwhelming and more manageable. Areas of my personal life where I knew “something” was missing now feel like areas where I know what I want to change.
Taylor

I’m definitely feeling more empowered to catch up on large and small tasks. I think I’m also recognizing more easily that there are times I can’t be at my most perfectly productive and I feel more accepting of myself in those moments and less critical and judgmental.

In retrospect this guided Parts work, even though it was often truly exhausting, reached deeper into my issues than anything else I’ve ever tried. I’m ending the series not only with pervasive experiences, but very granular, hands-on ways of coping with and bouncing back from my work (and interrelational) triggers.
Chris F.

Even though I had the willpower and grit to take on learning coding for the first time, making progress was a nightmare. Struggling with difficult to learn concepts and new ways of tackling them went way beyond impostor syndrome; studying Python regularly left me in tears and dreading the next session. Reassurances from other programmers that struggling and frustration was “normal” didn’t help because I could tell even though it might not be more difficult for me to learn to code, it was more difficult for me to control my emotions and the feelings of self-recrimination that grew out of them.

Parts work drew me as an interesting modality but its emphasis on parsing yourself out into different sub-personalities was pretty far from my experience of my inner life. Still, I could tell I had a lot of inner conflict over my decision to learn to code and other parts of IFS, like the Self, drew my interest and curiosity.

Presley did a fantastic job as a parts coach, letting me take my own time and cater my way of expressing myself to work with the modality. Working through my feelings and my parts, her work with me helped me realize that I tried to tell myself a story that coding was “more important” than the creative work I had been so happy to rediscover in my thirties after half a decade of pushing it aside to carve out my ability to survive post-divorce. I realized I needed to make space for the intellectual pursuits that were important to me emotionally and existentially in order to make space for career development.

She also helped me realize I needed to stop trying to push aside my feelings of frustration and defeat when I was coding, and I had to learn to accept that I was someone who maybe felt their frustration more intensely even if it was inconvenient or “weird.” Giving myself space to feel upset when something didn’t click–instead of trying to argue myself out of feeling bad learning a really challenging skill–ultimately helped me take another stab at learning a concept sooner. It also helped me give myself permission to take a break when I needed to instead of when I thought I should need to.

Ultimately, I realized it was toxic to try and force myself to feel positive all the time when I’m learning coding or other challenging STEM subjects. Recriminating myself for feeling defeated when I was struggling only added more fuel to the fire of self-hatred. Learning that I had to accept my bad feelings helped me realize that feeling things intensely gives me other gifts like empathy, creativity, and joy. Accepting those feelings helped me bring more self-love to other struggles and interactions and helped me realize even feeling bad about yourself over shit that doesn’t matter in the cosmic scheme of the universe is normal and human. Not unlike grief, you have to move through those feelings instead of forcing yourself into an even deeper cycle of shame and self-recrimination.
Kate C.