EP 292 Podcast Takeover The Peaceful Productivity Mentor: Anne Rajoo on Sustainable Entrepreneurship
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Sara Mayer: [00:00:00] Hello, bold gold crushers. Today we're doing something really special. I'm handing over the mic for an exciting host takeover. And today I'm thrilled to introduce our host, Anna Raju, a peaceful productivity mentor, who is literally about to blow your mind with a whole new approach to getting things done.
Sara Mayer: Without burnout in this episode, Anna shares how managing your energy, not just your time can help you achieve peak performance while actually feeling good. She's diving into her concept of energy bank account, challenging the hustle culture and sharing practical strategies like automation, delegation, and batch working to help you create a more efficient.
Sara Mayer: and peaceful workflow. This episode is packed with value and I know you're just going to love it. So let's get into it. Anna, take it away.
Anne Rajoo: Hello, I'm Anna Rajoo, Peaceful [00:01:00] Productivity Mentor, and I'm excited to be here because I will be talking to you about crushing your goals without crushing yourself. Because I believe when we are in entrepreneurship, we're here for the long run and we need to be able to sustain our performance, our productivity, and our output.
Anne Rajoo: Over a few years, not just a few weeks or months, and that can sometimes be challenging. And I'm here to talk about some daily practices and simple yet really impactful things we can do as female entrepreneurs to make sure we are efficient. However, we also maintain inner peace. And we operate at the sweet spot where our peak performance meets happiness.
Anne Rajoo: And we feel good. We are joyful and we feel calm in the process. And I think this is important because as a listener of the bold gold crusher podcast, you're here [00:02:00] to achieve incredible things. But I'm sure we all have experienced burnout or something close to burnout in some way and form. And we know that is not sustainable.
Anne Rajoo: And we know that this can have quite negative impact on our business. So we don't want that. However, we very often end up there. And so I'm Coming here today, hopefully sharing some insights that you can use to thrive for the long term for your business and really sustain this peak performance where you create impact in your business and in your life and with the people around you.
Anne Rajoo: And so many productivity gurus tell us that we've just got to be more efficient, that we have to manage our time wisely. And we have all the same 24 hours in the day and there are things that I see everywhere that talk about incredible morning routines. Wake up at 5am, [00:03:00] get your 10, 000 steps in, meditate, journal, read a book, don't check your emails, don't go on social media, have a cold plunge.
Anne Rajoo: What else? Drink your green juice. Everything is supposed to happen in that very short window of time in the morning 5 a. m. or whenever it is. I have little kids. It doesn't work for me. But it's supposed to happen in that very compressed period of time. And then we go on and we go into work and we create, we perform, we make things happen to then at the end of the day crush on the sofa and not be able to do anything.
Anne Rajoo: For me that really is not sustainable and I'll be honest with you. I have tried it. At some point, I woke up at 4. 30 because my little children wake up at 5, even 4 o'clock to try and do this. And I was a zombie. So it just, it doesn't work for everybody. And I respect those people who can do it. And I'm like, wow, good for [00:04:00] you.
Anne Rajoo: However, I believe that real life situation. Often means that life is happening. Kids get sick. Family members have a need. We have needs. We get sick. Our energy as women fluctuates. We have a cycle. We don't feel the same every single day. And so we need to have some. Flexibility there. And that's what peaceful productivity teaches people is this way of tuning in with yourself, understanding your energy, knowing your priorities, and then finding this way of working that is peaceful and productive.
Anne Rajoo: And so I'm not here to teach you how to optimize your day because I know that a lot of women are really capable of doing that. And they're actually really good. At squeezing every minute of their day. And be efficient there. That's me too. I have been there, but that's not what I'm here to teach you.
Anne Rajoo: [00:05:00] I'm really here to talk about a holistic view. And this comes from my personal experience. So I'm German. You might have guessed from the accent, but I live in Mauritius, tiny little island in the Indian ocean, really beautiful place. We've been here for almost 10 years now. I can't believe it. My husband as well.
Anne Rajoo: Originally from here and we're raising our little family here. And so island life is very different from life in Germany. And I must say that the whole efficiency and working hard culture was deeply ingrained in me and still is, it still has its place. But at the same time I realized that it was leading me to burn out more often than I wanted.
Anne Rajoo: So I experienced burnout a few times. And I had to learn a few hard lessons and that's when I discovered peaceful productivity when I decided that enough is enough. I'm not going to keep going in this cycle of burning myself out because it [00:06:00] would affect my family. I wouldn't be the mom that I wanted to be.
Anne Rajoo: I wasn't able to operate my business in the way I wanted to operate it. And it just really made me miserable. And that's not the life that I wanted to create. And so I decided to change things. And I started reading productivity books and follow productivity gurus and realized this is exactly why I ended up where I am because of these really structured and very time focused ways of.
Anne Rajoo: Teaching us productivity. And then I realized that maybe there is a more mindful approach and a more human approach. And that's what I've tried to do for myself. And that's what I work with clients now. And this conversation here, I really want to focus on the energy management compared to the time management.
Anne Rajoo: Because I used to be an athlete as a little kid, and I really wanted to be an Olympian athlete. It didn't happen. My parents moved to a place where there was no club, but [00:07:00] this this way of training and this way of pushing my body to maximum performance stayed with me until many years down the line.
Anne Rajoo: And. I had forgotten along the way that a real athlete trains their body, their mind as well, but mainly their body to have a certain competition with a certain outcome and takes rest in between. So athletes have Rest schedule into their training plan. And right now I'm starting a training plan to run a half marathon.
Anne Rajoo: And the last week before the marathon date, I'm not supposed to go on big runs. So why do we do this in business? Why do we keep going every single day with the same speed and the same intention of creating output to have the big launch? And after the launch, we have no rest. We keep going for the next thing and the next thing.
Anne Rajoo: And we are drained. And so [00:08:00] the important part is to understand that there is an energy cycle, and I love using this analogy of an energy bank account, because as a business owner, we often we want to make money and we want to be profitable. So I think this. relates to a lot of people very well, that we have an energy bank account and we have an energy profit, but we also have an energy debt that we can get into.
Anne Rajoo: And there is something that we can do for recovery. We can be strategic about our energy and how we build that profit. And if we're not careful, we can just spend it on little things here and there. We end up in debt. So when you do your work, I would love for you to remember this. point of you have an energy account and check in with yourself, where are you in your account today?
Anne Rajoo: Are you operating from a full account or are you operating from a depleted account? Is there some depth that you need to recover? And so [00:09:00] every single day we can pause for a minute and we can think, what can I do today to shift my energy in a positive profit creating way? And when we do that, we Start tuning in and understanding when are we actually in a place where we can deliver high performance and when are we in the place that maybe we need rest or maybe we need to switch gear and we need to try to do different things.
Anne Rajoo: And that's something that I've learned as well, that not every hour of the day. Is the same hour. So for me, I'm, I've become a morning person since I have children and I know that between 9am and 11am, two hours, I can focus really well. And so I block these times and I make sure that I do things that require high intensive energy.
Anne Rajoo: And also I've noticed that for example, the week before my period, and I just spoke to someone about this on my own podcast, the peaceful [00:10:00] productivity pod. The week before my period, I want to hibernate. I want to hide. I don't want to, I'm not creative. And I now schedule my admin work the week before the period, my life admin or my business admin, because that is work that I can do.
Anne Rajoo: And we need to make sure that we are talking about it. Easily because the energy is right for it. So I think it's important to understand what is our energy level on a daily, weekly, monthly basis. Look at it from the bigger picture of okay, I'm planning a launch here. There is vacations coming up here.
Anne Rajoo: There is some personal event there. And how will I feel about it? Are you an introvert or an extrovert? When I have an important event or something. The next day I try not to go out. I try to stay at home because I'm an introvert and I want to recover my energy because social interactions drain my energy a little bit.
Anne Rajoo: And so we cannot expect our bodies and minds to function the same way every day. [00:11:00] So I would love for you to just check in with your energy level and see. The work that you do. Is it aligning with the energy that you're feeling right now? And then we can also buy back energy. It really is a return on investment.
Anne Rajoo: So again, back to the bank account analogy. When we work and we use the right time of the day, the month, the right energy moment, and we do this work, we Do it faster. It comes easier. The output probably is better because our mind is maybe in the creative space or in the very focused detail oriented space or in the strategy space.
Anne Rajoo: So our mindset and the way we, the brain is working in that moment has an impact on the output. So when we invest our energy and time on the thing that we do in that moment, We have a bigger return on investment because we're doing it at the right time and the right moment in our [00:12:00] energy. So not all our tasks demand our energy and time.
Anne Rajoo: Not all our tasks should have our energy and time. And when you work, have really this mindset of what's the return on investment here. Can I automate this? Because maybe it's not something that my energy is. Best used for, can I delegate it because maybe the time that the, my support, my virtual assistant or my team member spends on this is doesn't cost me as much as my own time.
Anne Rajoo: So again, your return on investment is higher or can I eliminate it altogether? We do so many things that we think we should be doing. And that's probably a conversation for another day that we actually don't need to do. So automate. Delegate and eliminate so that you have the biggest return on investment on your energy and your time and then time management is important.
Anne Rajoo: I do teach productivity and if your time is all over the place and you're not using [00:13:00] your time in a, in a. In a productive or efficient way, you cannot be as productive as you could. So time management is important with this intention of bringing in energy as well. So when we understand our energy blocks and our energy feelings, we can block these times in our schedule.
Anne Rajoo: Like I said, I have these two hours, nine to 11. I don't schedule things there. This is my time of getting things done. And I know when I've done these two hours, I've achieved the most important things for the day. And I can probably even stop working and can attend to other things that might need my attention there.
Anne Rajoo: But it's time blocking, which is super powerful. It is really approaching. Your monthly schedule with a little bit of your period in mind, and there is an episode on the peaceful productivity part, but to just understand your energy. And even if you don't have a period, are you in summer? Are you in winter?
Anne Rajoo: What season are you in? Are you [00:14:00] even in your business? Are you in a season that is season? growth and expansion and you need to put energy and effort in it because right now it's happening or are you in a season where you're reaping the fruits of your labor, where you're in harvesting season, where you don't have to put physically and mentally so much work into it because things are just happening right now.
Anne Rajoo: So when you plan your day, have these things in mind and Prioritize the most important, most return on investment items in your day. And again, be critical about automate, delegate, eliminate. And batching is another tool that I love talking about because again, the energy. So If we do five million things in a day and we switch gear from content creation to writing a proposal to sending out an invoice to strategizing for five years down the line, all of this requires very different way of thinking.
Anne Rajoo: It requires [00:15:00] very different energy. So we want to try and do similar work. At the same time, like on the same day, content creation, batch your content on one day, two days a month. If you have client calls, try to have client calls in certain days, not just one year, one day and every five days. Try to have them together with some buffer time in between.
Anne Rajoo: That's an important one. Don't schedule back to back. Allow yourself some time to breathe, to shake things off, to switch the energy, but try to have client calls on in a batch. instead of just spreading them out. Theme days are one of my favorite things. So I've got a CEO day, which is usually my Wednesday because my kids finish early in school and I have finance Friday.
Anne Rajoo: So CEO days means I strategize, I check my figures, I Check in where I am overall with my targets. And I just really strategize for what's coming next [00:16:00] week, next month and so on. And my finance Friday is I have a look where, what invoices do I have to issue, what invoices. have not been paid, who one of my, one of my team members, I have a virtual assistance agency, who in the team needs to be paid.
Anne Rajoo: All of these things I do on a Friday. I don't take calls on a Friday, but I really focused on making sure my business and my return on investment is going well and scheduling buffer. I said that already. So between your calls, between your activities, even When you switch gear from entrepreneur to woman, mother, wife, whatever it is, schedule a buffer time in between when you finish your work.
Anne Rajoo: And when you switch over to being you as the person in your leisure time, have a little bit of buffer time so that you're allowed to move your energy to shift. I love changing my clothes, for example, or I love putting on certain music that makes me feel like, okay, my workday is finished. And now I'm [00:17:00] switching over and I'm Anne or I'm mom and I can take care of that side of my life.
Anne Rajoo: And then yeah, I'm just taking my notes here when, yeah, I think this is the most important parts about energy management and time management. And then I just want to speak to say like clients that have experienced the peaceful productivity with me and it always surprises me that when we work on these this more holistic view of productivity we discover certain behaviors and certain ways of working that we Habits that are just sort of survival mechanisms that have developed over years and that actually have a profound impact on our business.
Anne Rajoo: So my client Josephine recently, she messaged me that she really feels that after working with me on a productivity audit, that she feels so much more. Aligned, calm, and focused. And this is exactly what I'm trying to do. [00:18:00] And she said, with that, she can be such a more, such a better practitioner. She's an occupational therapist.
Anne Rajoo: Such a better, such a more impactful practitioner who can really deliver amazing service to her clients. And she didn't expect that because she just wanted to have a little bit more time and feel maybe there's some more spaciousness in her schedule. But it really impacted. Her business in a much deeper way, and she read is reconnected with her.
Anne Rajoo: Why and why she loves her clients. And so I'm just saying that to say that this is not just productivity. It's not just about optimizing your schedule. It's really about loving your business and the way you work, because I know the women I work with, they are incredibly. Passionate about their work, and they don't necessarily love all the business aspect, all the management and all the strategy and content creation and working with people.
Anne Rajoo: It's not [00:19:00] what they're here for. They're here to have an impact on their clients. And when we implement peaceful productivity, we're actually able to do that. Yeah, I want to invite you to listen to my podcast because you listening to podcasts. This might be the best way to get. I started with peaceful productivity and I also have the peaceful productivity wheel on my website.
Anne Rajoo: My website is Anna Rajoo. com and the wheel is really this overview holistic aspect of your productivity to see where is maybe the low hanging fruit. That you can start shifting right now because it requires small shifts and to create a more balanced, while balance is not always the best word, a more harmonized way of working in your business.
Anne Rajoo: So I hope this episode really helped you to find some new ideas and new approaches to the way you work and to really think of productivity. In this peaceful and [00:20:00] holistic way. I'm Anna Rajoo peaceful productivity mentor. Follow me on Instagram. That's where I often hang out and have a look at my website and Anna Rajoo.
Anne Rajoo: com. Thank you so much. It was a pleasure to be here.
