The Secret To Being More Productive: The Window of Tolerance

We all want to feel productive, right? The trouble is focusing on feeling productive is a red herring that directs us away from the feelings that we need to engage with in order to feel productive, and that's what we're talking about today. It involves a little something called "The Window of Tolerance".

Watch the video at the link below, or read on for the full transcript.

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Task initiation is one of the primary things I coach my precious Muses around. So let's get started. Why feeling productive is a red herring. The concept of feeling productive is a red herring for a number of reasons.

First of all, productive isn't a feeling. It doesn't have a home on the feeling's wheel. Instead, feeling productive usually means feeling one or more of the following emotions, satisfied, fulfilled, content, peaceful, balanced, calm, relaxed, secure, worthy, grateful, focused, upbeat, energized, optimistic, motivated, accomplished. The list goes on.

Second of all, feeling productive along with most of the emotions I just listed comes from having done something or all the things. So when we're focusing on feeling productive, we're focusing on a feeling that we can't access directly because feeling productive is an effect and distracting ourselves from feelings that can lead to feeling productive. AKA, the feelings that function as the cause.

In order to feel the effect, we need to engage with the cause, and that's where most of us get stuck because the emotions that we can engage with in order to lead to feeling productive are often uncomfortable. This brings us to the concept of the window of tolerance.

The window of tolerance is the range of experiences your nervous system can tolerate before shifting out of rest, digest, and healthy activation, which is ventral vagal on the polyvagal ladder to fight flight fawn or freeze, which is dorsal vagal on the polyvagal ladder. Think of the window of tolerance as your nervous system's comfort zone.

In fact, you can view your comfort zone as how you have learned to keep yourself inside your window of tolerance. Those who are able-bodied, mentally healthy and neurotypical tend to have larger, more stable windows of tolerance. Whereas if you're not one of those privileged few, your window of tolerance is likely smaller.

Things that can contribute to a narrower window of tolerance include neurodivergence and chronic illness, disability, and neurodivergence includes neurodivergent neurotypes such as autism and ADHD, mental illness, PTSD or C-PTSD, personality disorders, cognitive deficits, and learning disabilities.

Furthermore, whether you're abled or disabled times of stress can further narrow your window of tolerance. Yay.

Now let's bring this conversation back to Productivity. For those who struggle with Productivity to any degree, I can pretty much guarantee that the tasks they struggle to initiate are outside their window of tolerance.

Write the word "window" in the comments below if that just blew your mind.

How to use the window of tolerance to help yourself feel productive. You're telling me that in order to feel good, I have to feel bad first? Well, that is an oversimplification. Yes, the answer is yes.

I remember during my decade-long groundhog day how I longed to feel productive. It was like the mirage of an oasis in the desert. I gulped down what I thought was water only to discover it was sand. I was constantly aware of how desperately uncomfortable I felt all the time because I wasn't being productive. I was desperately aware of how everything I could do felt uncomfortable.

I felt deeply ashamed, depressed, and stuck. Frozen. I was outside my window of tolerance, and it felt like I couldn't see the specific discomforts standing in my way. This is because the generalized shame of wanting to feel productive can blind us.

It was only when I chose to face those specific discomforts and tackle them one by one that I was able and I'm still able to move forward. So if the solution to feeling productive is facing and experiencing the discomfort standing in our way that's outside of our window of tolerance, how do we do that? There are three steps.

One, do you need to ask for help because you're also dealing with barriers due to your disability or neurodivergence? Two, what accommodations can you offer yourself to reduce your discomfort in the first place?

For example, accommodations don't have to reduce the specific discomfort involved with the task. They can also increase comfort or pleasure for your other senses. For example, wearing noise-canceling headphones while putting dishes away can help with the discomfort of the loud clinking dishes. That is an accommodation that directly reduces that specific discomfort and can make putting the dishes away easier.

In contrast, cozying up in your favorite PJ's and a blanket and sipping a delicious hot chocolate while writing the essay that's due this week doesn't directly accommodate the discomfort of writing the essay, but it does take the edge off by not also taxing your other senses or gas tanks.

And three, what amount of discomfort are you willing to tolerate? Honor that. Think of this as a baby step. Practicing taking small steps outside of our window of tolerance accomplishes two things.

In the moment, we're putting less stress on our nervous system by taking a baby step. And two, over time, these baby steps compound to increase our window of tolerance, thereby making that discomfort more tolerable over time.

You can put boundaries around how much discomfort you're willing to tolerate in one of two ways. Input based: amount of time, such as how long you're willing to spend putting away the dishes or two output based: number of accomplished tasks, such as the number of dishes put away.

The trick is to pick either an input or output-based goal that is an amount of discomfort you're willing to tolerate, and then stop when you've met that goal. If you don't stop and instead keep going because now that you're doing the uncomfortable thing, it doesn't feel that bad and you wanna keep going, you run the risk of not trusting yourself in the future when you do need to set and maintain a boundary.

For example, if you say you're going to do just five minutes and then do 15, you're less likely to trust yourself the next time you say you're just going to do five minutes because you're really going to believe five minutes equals 15 minutes, and getting started will be that much harder for it, which can be absolutely crushing on a tough day.

If you want to learn how to kindly do more after you've accomplished your initial goal, watch my Pomodoro Method video next.

There you have it. Why trying to feel productive is a red herring and what to do about it so you can actually become productive. If you enjoyed this video, you'd probably also enjoy my signature course, The Action Navigator.

It's packed to the brim with even more tools and techniques from mastering your time, getting organized and offering yourself radical compassion as a neurodivergent spoonie. If that sounds like exactly what you've been looking for, use this link to learn more.

P.S. I now have my own version of a Patreon. Learn more about that at this link.

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