Kathy Bourque is the author of Conquering Busyness: A definitive guide to stop the overwhelm, get intentional and accomplish great things. In this episode, Kathy discusses the inspiration behind the book, the difference between being productive and being effective, the roles your mindset and values play in being an effective leader, why we shouldn’t be people-pleasing perfectionists, her tips for owning your processes and priorities while still maintaining the responsibilities required of you and your position, what an “excuse clause” is, the a-ha moment about the story she was telling herself that changed her life, the importance of getting your fears out in the open, how decision fatigue impacts our daily lives, and more!

Mentioned in this episode:

• Kathy Bourque’s Website
• Kathy Bourque’s Book | Conquering Busyness: A definitive guide to stop the overwhelm, get intentional and accomplish great things
• Byron Katie and Stephen Mitchell’s Book | Loving What Is: Four Questions That Can Change Your Life
• Byron Katie’s Website
• Brene Brown’s Website

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Transcript

Hey, hey!  It’s Andrea, and welcome to the Voice of Influence podcast.  Today, I have with me my friend Kathy Bourque who just wrote a book called Conquering Busyness.  And so, I’m really excited to talk with Kathy today about her book and learn more about what she does.  

Andrea:  So Kathy, it’s great to have you on the Voice of Influence podcast!

Kathy Bourque:  Well, thanks for having me.  I’m so excited to be here and to talk with your audience.  I love this!  Thank you!

Andrea:  Oh, you’re so welcome.  So let’s start with Conquering Busyness.  What got you interested in writing this book?  Why did you write this book?

Kathy Bourque:  Well, a few reasons.  The long story is I was in business for myself for 18 years, owned and operated a franchise.  And about five years in, my husband and I realized that it wasn’t breaking even as quickly as the franchise people told us it would.  So fast forward, several years, and I find myself in a bigger organization working with a lot of leaders and managers, and it just made me realize that everybody struggles a lot with what I was, which is the stories we tell ourselves and how we think we’re so busy all the time.  And so that’s why I titled the book Conquering Busyness.  It really is so much more than productivity.

Andrea:  Yeah, you mentioned a difference between productivity and being productive and being effective, can you talk about that?

Kathy Bourque:  Right, right.  I’m in healthcare right now and so we constantly measure productivity.  But when you find yourself running around in circles, whether you’re an entrepreneur, whether you work for someone else, many times, you can be super productive and still be running around in those circles.  It’s because you have these things bombarding you on a daily basis that you need to really work with your mind and figure out, “OK, what’s important?”  And when you’re dealing with people, especially so as a leader or manager, how to have those conversations that are crucial and serve you and really digging deep to figure out what it is that you want to stand for and accepting only those things that serve you and move you ahead.  Does that make sense?

Andrea:  Yeah.  I mean, I even wrote down this little sentence that you said, “To be effective, your actions need to be in line with your thoughts and values,” which sounds like kind of what you’re just saying.

Kathy Bourque:  Oh, absolutely.  I tell a story in the book, which is just hilarious when I actually give it in speaking, but it’s like if I’m sitting here thinking, “OK, I’m gonna be a runner,” you know, because I’ve always believed in that Van Gogh quote that “If you hear this voice inside your head saying you’re not a painter, then, by all means, paint in that voice will be silenced,” which is true to a point and I’ve lived my life by that. But if I’m sitting here telling myself, “OK, I am going to go run tomorrow a 5k.”  And if I can walk, most people, if you can walk, you can run.  It’s just moving your legs faster, right?  But if your mind sitting there telling you “What are you doing, you can’t run, you’re gonna kill us,” you know, stuff like that, you’re never going to be successful.  So, you really have to work on your mindset, which athletes know.  So, I’m just trying to bring that same kind of thing to leaders with mindfulness and working on their mindset.

Andrea:  So, what is it about these thoughts and values and mindset having all that in place that help somebody be more effective rather than just being productive?

Kathy Bourque:  Values will really help you create the foundation to be more confident in what you’re saying and what you’re doing and therefore, you’re not being a people pleaser, which is another thing.  I call myself a self-recovering people-pleasing perfectionist so that you can say yes to the things that are going to help you be more effective instead of just saying yes to everything and taking too much stuff on.  And then that’s where, again, you might be able to kick it all out.  But if it’s not in line with what you want and where you want to go, even as a department in a company or as an entrepreneur, then you’re not being effective.  You know, it’s kind of like, are you spending your time on the right things?

Andrea:  And I think this is a really important point because when you are a people-pleasing perfectionist, that P3 that you called it in the book, I thought that was funny.  You talked about this, but it’s almost like you have this force acting on you to do the things that you feel like you should do or to just sort of respond to people instead of doing what you intend to do.  Is that kind of how you put it?

Kathy Bourque:  Absolutely.  Being intentional is the key to the effectiveness piece when we are in that constant state of reaction, your intentions fly out the window, right?  It happens like almost every Monday.

Andrea:  Yeah.

Kathy Bourque:  On my drive to work, you know, I commute and on my drive to work, I’m sitting there thinking of all the things I’m going to get done.  And my husband and I talk about this all the time and he works from home, but he still has the same thing.  You know, you get a phone call, you get an email, all the dings and dongs that we face every day and then your intentions go right out of the window.  So it’s being very, very firm but flexible, I guess with yourself that you realize, “OK, this is a big deal to me and I need to kind of shut out everything else so that I focus on this.”

Andrea:  Well, how do you decide what is the most important thing to focus on?  How do you choose your priorities rather than having them placed on you?

Kathy Bourque:  Well, for personal purposes, and that’s why this goes back to your values.  Definitely defining your values and making sure that they’re your values, because I talk about how a lot of people when I work with them on values will start saying things that they’ve either been told they should value their whole lives.  And we don’t even know this.  We don’t realize this because, you know, you started at young age just kind of learning from your family, from your culture, from maybe your religion, any of those things, what you should value. And so many people don’t even stop to ask themselves, “Hey, do I really value this?”  And I think once you do that deep work of being OK with, you know, this is what I value.  So one of the things I struggled with when I first had my son, I was a late in life mom and I really was struggling with the whole work-life balance.  And one of my friends said to me, she’s like, “You know, you have to take care of you first so that you can be a better mom.”  And it’s that whole airplane analogy, right?  Put your face mask on first before you put that on others because if you’re not alive, you’re not going to be able to help others.

Andrea:  Right?  So, in other words, part of the, part of the process of prioritizing has to be, who do I have to be in order to do what I want to do to help other people.

Kathy Bourque:  Right.  Absolutely!  And one of my favorite quotes in the book is, “you think your problem is from out there, you’ll try to solve it from out there, but take the shortcut and solve it from within.”  Because when you are on that hamster wheel of pleasing everybody else and then also wanting to do such an amazing, you know, that’s the perfectionist piece when you want to do a perfect job all the time, which I am a huge believer in doing things the right way.  But if you’re taking on too much and then you add that on top, what you do is you keep grinding and you keep hustling and there’s just so much more to it that you need to do to be truly effective.

Andrea:  I think it’s really hard though to decide what you can sort of put to the side or how you can prioritize even though you have…maybe you’re in a job and you have people that are in charge of you, or you know, that are looking to you for help all the time and you feel this constant need to be there for people to provide what they want.  Do you have any tricks that you use with clients or thoughts that you have about how one could still sort of own their own process and their own priorities in the midst of still really needing to still do the things that other people are expecting them to do?

Kathy Bourque:  Oh, well, yeah for sure, and you know, it is hard.  I’m not going to sit there and say, “Oh, I’ve got it all figured out.”  Well, I think I do at times then I struggle with this.  You know, they say you teach what you need to learn the most and that’s definitely me because I struggle with this every day.  But the way I handle it, is for one really, and this was a bad one for me, Andrea, I’m not going to lie.  I always think I can do things much much quicker in a very short amount of time.  And in my position right now, we put on a lot of events, and I think I drive my administrative assistant crazy sometimes because I’m like, “Oh, that’ll only take a day or so,” and it takes us five, you know. So, I think being very realistic on timeframes, how long it takes you to do something so that if your boss comes to you and says, “Hey, I need this and I need it today by noon or whatever,” you can realistically give an answer “I’m, you know, more than willing to help and I understand how important that is to you, but realistically I can’t get that done by noon.  Can we look at by 8:00 a.m. tomorrow morning?”  Or “What else are you wanting me to take off my plate in order to get this done?” And so many times, so this is again where knowing what you value, the crucial conversations that we need to have, people are afraid to have them because they don’t want to be perceived as mean.  But you can have these conversations in a very kindhearted, loving way that still sets really good boundaries for yourself.  So just being very honest about what you can handle, how much you can take on that sort of thing.

Andrea:  You know, it reminds me of another point that you brought up in the book about imposter syndrome and that sort of we’re trying to portray this sort of persona of whoever it is that we’re wanting to be.  And that when we do that, we have that sort of, “Oh, they’re gonna find me out, they’re gonna find me out.  Try to hide it, try to keep that from anybody from being able to see it.”  And then I want you to tell us what you said in the book about how to deal with that and how that totally relates to what you just said.

Kathy Bourque:  Well, I’m not sure what part you’re pointing to, but imposter syndrome is huge for high achieving people because we always have big goals, right?  And so, my whole mantra has always been, “step outside your box” and I’m great at saying yes to something and then I just internally scramble going, “Oh my gosh, I don’t know how I’m gonna figure this out.”  So one of the things I do talk about is using the excuse clause. And in the book, I talked about this signup for a golf tournament and it was with a bunch of hospital executive leadership when I sat on the board of directors, and I really wanted to play this course and really wanted to see what it was like because it’s up in the Sandhills.  And after I said yes, the entire time up until like a week beforehand, I had been trying to talk myself out of it, “You can’t go.”  “People say you can’t golf,” you know, all these things. I finally just said, I’m doing it the day I go up to one of our chief nursing officers and she’s, “We’re talking about it.”  And I said, “Oh my gosh, you know, when I golf, I only golf with my girlfriends.  We don’t keep score.  We only golf like nine holes at the most.  I don’t know if I can even make 18.  I’ve got only twice this year.”  And she’s like, “Wow, you just got all your excuses out of the way.”  And I’m like, “Uhh.”  And then once I did, I just enjoyed it for what it was and had such a blast that day. So, I think just getting all of your excuses out there, if you verbally have to say them like I did, it works because once you’ve said it all, you know, “OK.”  And that’s why procrastination is such a big thing for high achievers too, right?  We wait until the last minute so that if it flops, we’re not to blame, right?  So the same for the excuse clause, it kind of gets you off the hook if you don’t do as well as you are wanting, but you’ll find that.  Then once you do it, whatever it is, that’s how you grow in confidence, that’s how we do achieve those big goals.

Andrea:  Yeah.  It’s like there’s a barrier in the way and it has to do, it’s dark.  It’s something that you don’t want to tell anybody, but then once you finally do, it sounds like what you’re saying is that once you finally do kind of just call it out, then you’re able to move through it.  You’re more free to be able to move through it.  And I guess what I was thinking was when you were talking about actually admitting to the person or your boss or whatever, who might be giving you something more to do when you actually say, I need more time because this, this, and that, or when you actually are honest about it.  It’s sort of a similar concept of calling it out and being able to say, even though it’s saying, look, I’m not able to completely get it done, but let’s figure out how to, you know, how we can do what you’re wanting me to do without having all, I don’t know…what am I trying to say?  Yeah, I mean, it’s being honest and through that honesty, you’re able to actually have that conversation that’s going to get you to where you need to go.  So, anyway, that was the connection that I was making in my head anyway.

Kathy Bourque:  So, as you were talking, I remembered than probably more of what you were talking about with the imposter syndrome.  There is some sort of freedom that comes from letting it out, getting your fears out in the open.  They just lose their power.  It’s amazing.  And for the imposter syndrome, specifically, when I owned and operated my franchise, I did that.  So I’m a late in life college student.  I had went for two years back in the 80’s when I graduated from high school, but then I dropped out because I was in a restaurant position and they promoted me to management right away. And I tell you, once you start making money you’d think, “Well, what do I need to go to school for?”  So, fast forward, you know, 20 years later and I want to, again going back to step outside your box, I had ran for the board of directors for our hospital because I was very involved in our community here.  And, you know, it’s one of these things if you know a hospital, everyone is pretty well educated.  And here I was a college dropout and it was a huge story for me that was holding me back. And then working through that leadership development class, I was complaining about something and not speaking up.  And my mentor said, “Hold on, wait a minute, you know, you’re the one holding yourself back.  There’s a reason they asked you to be on there.  You need to get over that story.”  And it was the biggest a-ha moment I have ever had.  So, now when I speak with leaders and do workshops, I’m always like, how do you want to show up because it doesn’t matter anything else.  How do you want to show up?  How do you want to be seen and how do you want to be heard in the world?  So, yeah, that was one of my biggest ones. And quite honestly, at the time, the CEO knew I was going back to school and he said something in front of all the board and was like, “Well, how’s it going with your college classes?  And I was like, “Oh,” at the time I was mortified.  I just wanted to crawl under the table and curl up in a little bowl.  And about a week later, the administrative assistant came to me and she’s like, “You’re going back to school?”  And I said, “Yeah, I am, you know, I dropped out the first time.”  And she’s like, “Oh, I’ve thought about that.” And it’s amazing now when I did go back and got my degree, how inspiring I’ve been to other people.  There’s like three or four people just in my direct vicinity that have gone back to school and finish their degrees.  And so, it’s just a lovely, lovely thing when you can get those fears out in the open.  And it’s hard.  It’s hard for me too to ask for help, which was what you were alluding to.  It’s hard for me to say, “You know what, I don’t think I can do this right now.”  You know, I’ve always been a go-get-them type of girl and goes back to my whole.  I need to be more realistic with what I can do.

Andrea:  Yeah.  It also makes me think about this idea that if we were to own our humanity, the fact that we can’t do everything, the fact that we can’t be everything to everyone then it seems like the P3’s, the People Pleasing Perfectionist of the world that it’s really easy for them, for us to want to look like we’ve got it all together, that we want to look like we can handle it whatever you give me.  But when we own our humanity, there’s something different that happens.  It opens up a whole new way of living that can be more free.

Kathy Bourque:  Oh yes, and it helps you, you know, I’m always looking at through the lens of how it helps you deal with other people because I am very passionate about helping leaders.  But when you can own your own humanity, it’s that power of vulnerability that Brene Brown talks about.  It is an instant connector.  It helps you instantly connect with your people and with anyone that you work with on a team to be more collaborative because the minute they know that you’re human, it’s just like it opens a door.  It’s so funny. So, you know, before the show we were talking about, I went to a conference last weekend and there was a speaker and she was kind of like, she even called herself like the cruise director of the event.  And so she came up and spoke several times and then she also had a couple of bigger like learning sessions and I just was kind of turned off by her and I don’t really know what it was.  But then she stumbled in a speech and she kind of made fun of herself and started joking and it was like that moment just flipped it for me.  I was just like, “I love her.”  There is something that we love about knowing that everybody puts their pants on the same way we do.  So owning your humanity is big.

Andrea:  Yeah, totally.  I think that has to connect back to this idea of conquering busyness, this idea of we’ll shoot if we want to.  To be able to conquer busyness, if we don’t want to just run around doing what everybody else’s expecting us all the time and that sort of thing, we have to really own who we are, own our humanity, yeah.

Kathy Bourque:  Oh yeah, for sure because that whole grinding and hustling, it’s what’s creates the overwhelm with people is “You know what, I will take that on and I will get it done, and I will stay late, and I will come in early and I’ll work through lunch.”  That is just burning people out in my generation for sure.  So, you know, your listeners know I’m 50 and there used to be a commercial back in the 70’s or early 80’s that was Enjoli, which is a perfume.  And it was that, I can bring home the bacon, fry it up in a pan and take care of my man type of thing. Yeah, so we grew up with this very much wonder woman stigma or idea that I can have my kids and I can still work and I can, I can, I can, I can.  And that’s when I first came across the values work is when I felt like I was doing the whole circus with so many plates, you know, on my sticks and they all had to be at the utmost level, you know.  So they all had to stay at a 10 and that’s just not realistic and you’re just setting yourself up for failure.

Andrea:  Hmm.  Alright, so you mentioned also…I want to get to this idea of white space and decision fatigue.

Kathy Bourque: Oh yeah.

Andrea:  So this is something that I definitely relate to just the idea that decisions themselves, that there can be a limited amount of decisions our brains can handle on a certain day.  Tell me about decision fatigue.

Kathy Bourque:  There’s some true science behind it and I’ve read about it quite a bit before, but there are times where I think, “OK, I am going to go into my closet tonight and I’m gonna lay out my outfit for tomorrow,” because I tell you the time I waste trying to get ready in the morning because I try on so many clothes and it’s ridiculous.  But if I’ve had a long trying day, I can go in my closet and have you ever just stood there and you’re like, “I just can’t do this right now, you know.” So it’s really with not only like how much are you taxing your brain right now and there’s a lot of science in marketing behind this too that you make the path very easy for your customers.  You make it easy for them to say yes because our brains can’t handle all that is being thrown at them right now.  We are on overload constantly.  And so if you do have big decisions to make, making sure that, you know, what time of day works best for you or doing them earlier in the day that sort of thing.

Andrea:  Yeah, that’s good.  And I liked this quote; the brain is what you’re referring to, “When it is too tired to think a new thought, it will always choose a familiar habits,” what does that mean?

Kathy Bourque:  Yeah, there’s a friend of mine that likes to say that’s one thought then, and so many times when we are too tired to think that new thought, we automatically just go to, however, we think all the time.  So our brains are on autopilot so much at the time and thank goodness they are, because it’s what runs our whole body in our systems.  And it’s the fact that you don’t have to think how to tie your shoes every single day, because talk about decision fatigue if you had to do that, you would be spent by the time you got to work. But definitely that…I lost my train of thought there, what did we say?  What was the question?

Andrea:  We were talking about decision fatigue when it’s too tired to think a new thought, it will always choose a familiar habit.  So you’re saying that you know because you don’t have to…

Kathy Bourque:  Right.  Yeah, so think about, and I don’t know if you’ve done this, but I am a habitual dieter and I’ve tried to get more to where I just eat healthy.  But for me, one of my big things is if I just come out of public speaking, public speaking takes a lot out of me.  I love to do it, love, love, love to do it but it takes so much energy that when I would come back to my office, because I have to speak a lot at work, when I’d come back to my office, the first thing I do is grab a piece of chocolate.  So it does not matter how well I’ve done on my diet or eating healthy or the no-sugar thing, it was like this habit because my brain had just expended all this energy and I was just done. So that’s where you just need to create the surroundings and the habits that really serve you, which again comes then from, you know, back in the beginning, finding out your values, finding out how you want to show up, how intentionally you want to be, and then setting yourself up for success.

Andrea:  I love it!  OK, so Kathy, this has been a very quick conversation but it’s been fun.  Well, first of all, I want to give you a chance to share any kind of parting thoughts that you would have with our listeners and then we’ll give them some information about how they can get in touch with you.

Kathy Bourque:  So the new direction I’ve been working on for a few years that I think made it to the book very briefly, but it is the fact that thoughts become things and you can think about it in any way you want, whether it’s you’re driving home at night and you’re thinking about what you’re going to make for dinner, or it’s the bigger decision things, “Should I move across the country for that new job?”  Your thoughts literally become things.  So in order to conquer busyness, in order to become super effective in everything you do, whether you’re running your own business, whether you’re working with others, you have to be super intentional and you just have to put some of the time into it to figure out how you want that to look. So I have a really good worksheet that I can give people if they want to go to my website, it’s kathybourque.com/voi for Voice of Influence we will give to your listeners.  But it really helps you in a quick, probably 20 minutes session where you just start to write out some of those guiding values and principles that you want to live your life by.

Andrea:  That’s great!  We love core values here at Voice of Influence.  So that sounds like a great resource and we will make sure that link in the show notes in case anybody has a hard time figuring out where those are.  So, Kathy, thank you so much for being here and sharing your wisdom with us at Voice of Influence.

Kathy Bourque:  Well, absolutely, I love the podcast.  I love what you’re doing.  I love what you’re putting out in the world.  That’s what it’s all about, right?  What we’re putting out into the world.  So keep up the great work.

Andrea:  Thank you!