Wasting Time Works

I was talking to my Mind-Body Magic Community Members about social media this week, and something important came up: wasting time. Specifically, wasting time creating and writing social media content. 

Many of the coaches in the community weren’t a fan of wasting time writing social media content (defined as writing content that “didn’t work”).

I’ve also seen this idea that we’re “wasting time” in several of the bazillion ads I get in my feed about running a coaching business.

This is a typical scarcity tactic: It’s designed to make you feel a little yucky about everything you just did for your business so that you’ll buy the thing so-and-so is selling to make your business better. 

In the coaching and entrepreneur world, we call this a bro marketing tactic. In other words, it makes you feel not-so-great so that you’ll want to buy something to fix the issue. 

It makes me feel a little barfy just thinking about it. 

Is it Really a Waste of Time?

In my mind-body world here with all my mind-body coaches, I don’t like to do things that way. Since I invented my mind-body coach community, I think we get to do things however we want. 

Especially marketing with kind, feminine, energy, and “wasting time.” 

Here’s the reality, though: You are not actually wasting any time when you write content of any kind, even if you never, ever use it. Even if you crumple it up and burn it out of sheer horror. (Hey, no one ever said writing was easy!)

The idea that we are wasting time comes from this masculine push and pressure stuff we learn as kids. It’s not healthy masculine energy, which I define as that fun feeling of accomplishment. Healthy masculine energy within us helps us get stuff done. 

Healthy feminine energy helps us to marinate in ideas, use our intuition, nurture ourselves and others, and accomplish through a slower, very powerful creative process. 

When you write, you’re in the feminine creative energy flow. Even if you don’t end up using it or you don’t get sixty-five likes and comments, you still get value out of it. 

Why?

Because you’re:

1. Practicing the creative process, which improves your work process every time you do it
2. Learning a ton, every time

Learning is a Crucial Step

Let’s say you writing social media content for an hour and post five posts. If you get crickets, the first thing your mind wants to do is blame yourself. It forgets about the learning process, which is vital. (And, it also forgets about the mysterious algorithms that are completely out of our control.)

How the heck can you know what your audience will like unless you try things? How in the world can you know what to write until you’ve experimented? (Even if you’re using a pre-made social media strategy, you still have to tweak it to work for you and your people.)

Feminine energy allows everything to be an experiment. It doesn’t force us to accomplish genius-level work every time we sit down to a task. (UGH, exhausting.)

So, go out there and waste some time. We don’t have to bow down to the highly toxic idea that we should be productive every minute. In fact, if you don’t waste some time, daydream, spend time doing nothing, and rest, your body will suffer and your creativity will go down. 

We Don't Need to Be Productive 100% of the Time

I’ve coached thousands of people over the last 12 years around stress-induced illnesses and pain, such as TMS, Mind-Body Syndrome, headaches, migraines, digestive issues, random pain, pelvic pain, vulvodynia, interstitial cystitis, and more. 

What’s the one thing we ALWAYS do in sessions? Get rid of that idea that a human being has to be a productive machine. It’s literally causing us harm. 

Wasting time is actually a powerful mind-body healing tool. 

(If you need a reminder this week to not push yourself, write that sentence down and post it somewhere you’ll see it every day!)

Masculine and feminine energies, when they’re not over-used or dominating one another, are actually quite complimentary! 

Here’s my secret two-step dance for remaining productive enough to feel aligned with my work without tipping into pressure and pushing:

1. Lead with intuitive, feminine energy. Start all your projects and task lists with intuitive guidance leading the way. Daydream first. Waste time first. 
2. When you have enough creative momentum, move into the masculine “doing” mode. Check off the tasks, do the project. 
3. If your body protests, stop. Go back to the feminine energy and rest and play. You’ll know when you’re ready to return to step two and complete your task. 

Want some help shifting your work mode and wasting more time? :) Grab my free 7 Days of Slacker Magic Mini-Course for tons of support around ditching pressure mode and enjoying feminine creative mode.