146. Doable and Delicious

What’ve you been saying you’re going to do that you’re dragging your feet on?

Whether it’s:

Starting a business

Landing a new job

Getting a promotion

Calling your parents 

Or setting boundaries…

If you find yourself resisting it, the task is either too big, too complex, too unappealing, or a combination.

In order to take an action on a goal, you need to be clear about the action and make it small enough that it’s doable.

In order to make the action appealing enough to be something you do (rather than something you avoid), you need to find a way to make it enticing and as pain-free as possible.

When you design your action steps in this way - making them both doable and delicious - it’s much easier to actually do them (and keep doing them until you achieve your goal).

As ever, it’s not about lying to yourself and saying a task is yummy and easy when it’s not.

It’s about strategically breaking goals down into small steps and then finding ways to make each small step as delightful and painless as it can be.

This could be as simple as making a list of action steps and then pairing each one with something fun, like five minutes of TikTok or listening to music you love while you work.

Designing tasks to be doable and delicious will not only help you take action, it will make your life feel so much more fun, enjoyable, and pleasurable.

Who doesn’t want that?

Join me this week to learn more about how to make your most avoided tasks into doable, delicious action steps!

Want to create a wildly delicious life and career? Let’s work together.

The Satisfaction Audit bonus coaching call is happening on Thursday, August 17th 2023 at 2pm Pacific. I would love to have you join us, so sign up for the call by clicking here! 

I have one-on-one coaching slots opening up soon. Click here to schedule a consult call with me so we can talk about how one-on-one coaching could support you in creating a magical life and career.

My small group coaching program, Satisfied AF, is officially open for enrollment! Click here to schedule a consult call for Satisfied AF and we can figure out what’s not working in your life and career as well as how to transform it into something that delights you.

Want something a little more extra?

I have just the thing.

My year-long coaching and mentorship program, Unhinged AF, is the most extra, extravagant offering I currently have. One-on-one coaching, in-person or virtual deep dive days, and special surprises. If this sounds like just the thing for you, book a consult call and let’s discuss a customized program that’s all about helping you break free from your current life and career to build something that truly blows your mind.


WHAT YOU’LL LEARN FROM THIS EPISODE:

  • The 2 key components of creating action steps you’ll actually take.

  • What making something both doable and delicious means.

  • How to make something you’re currently avoiding both doable and delicious.

LISTEN TO THE FULL EPISODE:

FEATURED ON THE SHOW:

FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:

This week we’re talking about two key components for creating action steps you’ll actually take.

You are listening to Love Your Job Before You Leave It, the podcast for ambitious, high-achieving women who are ready to stop feeling stressed about work and kiss burnout goodbye forever. Whether you’re starting a business or staying in your day job, this show will give you the coaching and guidance you need to start loving your work today. Here’s your host, Career Coach, Kori Linn.

Hello, hello, hello, happy Wednesday. I am having an interesting week. I am doing so much more traveling right now than, I think, maybe I’ve ever done in my life and definitely than I’ve done the last several years. And it is something I said I wanted to do. I’m kind of embracing adventure and travel and new things in 2023.

I am a person who often knows what she wants, and that can be really great but sometimes I can get kind of stuck in my ways of knowing what I want. And so something that I wanted to do on purpose was question a lot of my assumptions in 2023. And it’s interesting because that’s something that coaching does a lot of, right? We question a lot of assumptions.

And it’s just interesting to see that that work is, so far, never really done. And like we’ll question some assumptions, we’ll learn something about ourselves, we’ll learn something about how we want to do life and we’ll do it that way for a few years. And then a few years later, we’re like, oh, I guess I’m going to question all those assumptions again because we’re dynamic, we’re not static. And so things change.

And as a tourist, I sometimes find that a little unsettling, but I think it’s a little bit exciting as well. One thing in particular, I don’t really like air travel. I think airplanes are a miracle and it’s amazing that they exist and I’m so grateful that I can be in my house in Sacramento and then be in Ohio visiting my brother and my nieces in one day, that’s wild. But it’s not my favorite way to go places. But I’m doing a lot of it this summer.

As per that example, I did just go to Ohio in June and I’m going to Savannah on Thursday morning to go spend a few days with my coach and a group of lovely humans in my coach’s small group. And I’m not super jacked about air travel, but I’m pretty excited to see Savannah because I’ve never been there, and I’ve heard it’s amazing.

So that’s what I’m doing this week, and I hope you’re having a super fun week too, maybe doing something interesting. Maybe you’re going to question some of your assumptions and learn something new about yourself. Or maybe learn the same thing you already knew and then you’re like, cool, I tested that. I don’t have to test it again.

I’ve tested the air travel one a lot, but keeping doing it I have found ways to make it more enjoyable. I’m really into downloading shows right now. When I was younger I was always like, I’ll work on the airplane. But I don’t really like being on airplanes, so not really liking being on airplanes and then also trying to get myself to do work that’s going to feel effortful even if it’s aligned, I’m like, you know what? Maybe I’m not going to do that.

Maybe I just have my thing where I watched six episodes of a fun TV show and then just arrive, and I can do my work in a more luxurious setting. And that kind of ties into what I want to talk about today, which is when you want to get yourself to do something, make it doable and make it delicious.

Now, obviously, not everything is going to be amazingly delicious, like the most delicious thing you’ve ever done. And not everything’s going to feel doable. But if you can make it somewhat doable and somewhat delicious, it’s just like any task you want to get yourself to do, any action step you want to get yourself to take, write it down and then be like, how can I make this more doable? How can I make this more delicious?

And there’s a few reasons for that. One, we get overwhelmed when a step is too big. So if you have an action step you want to do and you just keep thinking about it or looking at it on a to-do list or not doing it, it’s probably too big. So make it doable often means make it smaller. Break it in half, break it in half, break it in half, break it in half over and over and over again until it’s small enough that it’s doable.

I have a whole teaching I call too small to fail and the idea with too small to fail is you make something so small that it’s easier to do it than it is to put it off. So that makes it doable. But something I’ve been adding to this idea lately, and I have a whole podcast called Make It Appetizing which is about this side of it that came out maybe like a month ago, it’s like make it as delicious as possible. Make it appetizing. Make it yummy. Right?

So what can you do to make it more doable? You break it down, you break it down, you break it down, you get smaller, smaller, smaller steps. What can you do to make it more delicious? And that one is a little bit more open-ended, right? It’s like do we need to change the structure of what we’re doing? Are we going to add something fun? Are we going to take away something that would be stifling or irritating, right?

So if you take my example of air travel, it’s not my favorite. I was willing to do it, but even though I was willing to do it, I can still make it more delicious, right? Then while I’m in the moment experiencing it, it’s also more fun for me and that’s great. Making something more fun will help you get it done, but you’re also allowed to make things more fun just because this is your life and it’s nice to have it be fun and enjoyable as much as it can be, right?

So making it delicious doesn’t have to be a bribe to get yourself to do it. It can just be like, how do I have a more pleasurable experience of this, right? So with the airplane ride, make it doable, I can’t really break it down anymore. What I can do is fly versus like, I’m not going to drive there, I’m not going to drive to Savannah. That would take many days, so I’m definitely not going to do it that way.

And then I picked flights that felt doable to me, right? There’s no direct flights from where I live to Savannah, but I have some that are good. And the layover, I don’t like a super short layover, I like a little bit of a longer one in case my flight is late so I can eat in the airport if I get hungry. So that’s part of what made it doable. That also makes it more delicious.

And then the TV shows and then it’s also like what I wear, or Alex Luchini sent me this TikTok that was like travel hacks. And one of them is this little contraption that you put around the tray table and it makes a little hammock for your feet so you can kind of put your feet up a little. I bought it for like 20 bucks. Is it going to make my life way better? I don’t know yet. I’m going to test and learn from that. So I’m trying some things out to make it more doable, more delicious. And then I’m going to see what happens, take my learnings, and move forward from there.

So what I want you to think about is what have you been saying you’re going to do in your life that you’re not doing? Do you want to start a business? Do you want to get a new job? Do you want to get promoted? Do you want to set boundaries with your kids? Do you want to have a date night with your spouse? Do you want to call your parents once a week?

Whatever it is you’re trying to do, if you’re doing it, great, give yourself a million points. Celebrate the shit out of that because as we all know, human brains tend to forget what’s going well. But if there’s stuff you don’t want to do, how can you make it more doable? How can you make it more delicious?

Like if you want to call your parents once a week, could you tell them like, hey, I want to get in the habit of calling you more. So at first I’m just going to call you for a really short chat. And I’m personally a really big fan of being explicit. So when I give examples I will often explicitly lay it out, like telling the other person what’s going on if I’m trying to set up a habit.

I realize not everyone is as highly explicit as me. So use your own comfort, right? And use your own sort of personality and way of being to do this. Customize everything I teach in a way that’s going to work for you. So you could also just call them, or you could make it doable by texting instead of calling, right, something like that.

If you want to set a boundary with your kid, what’s a really easy way to make that doable? A lot of people don’t set boundaries with their kids, because it’s very not delicious and it feels very overwhelming. And they know that at first they’re probably going to get a lot of pushback from the kid. So I think how you can make it doable and delicious could be really useful for doing activities in that area, too.

I’m also not an expert at dealing with children. And if you want an expert, I would look up Dr. Becky, she has a podcast called Good Inside, I love it. I don’t have kids, but I just like to listen to it for how to deal with kind of my inner child, right?

But anything you’re working on, you want to start a business. A lot of people when they want to start a business, they talk about the business, but they don’t do anything, right? So there’s a lot of experts out there who are like, don’t build a website, don’t have a blah, blah, blah, go get some clients, which I’m a big fan of because I think it is useful to verify that you can get clients and do the work and that you enjoy doing the work before you create all these extra materials.

But also, if what feels most doable and delicious to you is creating the website and that’s going to help you feel set up, you’re in charge. You get to decide what you’re doing and what makes the most sense to you as an approach. But again, anything you’re not taking action on, how can you make it more doable and how can you make it more delicious? And then the more you do not do it, the more we need to make it even tinier, even more doable, and maybe even more delicious, right?

And for delicious, it’s like how do you make the activity more delicious? And if you can’t make the activity itself more delicious, how do we kind of pack deliciousness around it? Because you might be able to create a pleasure gloss or an associative connection between the deliciousness and the activity.

One of the ways I do that is by celebrating, right? So I take action. I notice that even when I take actions, like when I take actions in my business or on other things in my life my brain, like many of your brains, always wants to come in and criticize me. Yes, even after all the years of coaching, my brain is still like, oh, you didn’t do the thing, right? And so I have to purposely slow down and notice that.

And part of how I make it more delicious is I say no thank you to the criticism. And I say to myself, like, all right, but you did these things today, you did a good job. You don’t have to be perfect to be good. You don’t have to be perfect to be amazing. You’re moving all this shit forward.

And sometimes I have too many ideas of what I can get done in a day, and I don’t get them all done. It doesn’t mean I didn’t do anything, and it doesn’t mean the things I did won’t create impact, because they probably will. So how can that be true for you? And how can you create that doability and that mm-mm-mm deliciousness around whatever it is you’re working on?

Now, thing one, I do think you’re going to work on a lot more shit. I think a lot of us spend a lot of our time avoiding tasks because they feel undoable, right? They feel hard. They feel scary. They feel overwhelming. They feel confusing. And they feel fucking undelicious, right? A lot of tasks we’re like, that’s going to be uncomfortable. I’m not willing to feel how I think I’ll feel, right?

It’s like asking for business. Everyone wants business, if they have a business, but asking for the sale or asking for business can be really uncomfortable. So how do you make that more doable? How do you make that more delicious?

Oh yeah, but I was saying I think thing one is, you’ll do a lot more stuff, right? If you want to write a book and you haven’t been writing it, continuing to say, how do I make it more doable? How do I make it more delicious? And keep moving in that direction until you find something you can take action on that works, I think you’re going to do a lot more action. But I also think you’re going to have a much more fun time by making it more doable and more delicious.

And those are the two things I want for you. I want you to do more of what you want to do. And I want you to have a more fun time while you’re doing that. And I think that this very simple tool is going to help you with both of those things.

So pick just one thing you’ve been putting off and ask yourself how to make it more doable and how to make it more delicious. And keep going until you find something you’re willing to take action on, then take that action. Then celebrate the shit out of yourself. Then come find me on Instagram and DM me or comment on one of my posts about it because I want to celebrate you too.

Okay, remember when I told you about the satisfaction audit and that we were going to have a special call about it? Well, I have those dates now. The satisfaction audit bonus coaching call, which is open to the public, is going to be on Thursday, August 17 at 2 p.m. Pacific and I would love to have you join us. You can sign up for the call at the link in the show notes and there’s also a link on Instagram in my bio.

During this call, what we’re going to do is go over what the satisfaction audit is and how to use it in your own life, career, and other areas of your life so that you can be having a more satisfying, delicious, wonderful time so that you can get more of what you want. It’s going to help you figure out what’s working and what’s not working. It’s going to help you figure out where you want to go. It’s going to help you remove obstacles. And we’re also just going to have a super fun time.

So be sure to sign up for that call and join us. All right, that’s what I have for y’all this week. If you enjoyed this podcast or if you enjoy the podcast in general, I would love it so much if you would share the podcast with others. That’s like the best way to support the podcast and to help it grow. And if you really love it, I would love it if you would leave us a review.

And if you want more of this in your life to help you take action on things and create more of what you want in your life and your career, let’s have a conversation about it. I want to hear everything that’s going on and I want to hear what you’re satisfying as fuck life would look like and be and see if I can help you get there. And you can have that conversation with me by signing up for a consult call at my website.

All right, have a lovely week and I will talk to you next time. Bye.

Thank you for listening to Love Your Job Before You Leave It. We’ll have another episode for you next week. And in the meantime, if you’re feeling super fired up, head on over to korilinn.com for more guidance and resources.

 

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147. In Favor of Explicit Conversations 

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145. Conflict = Pooping