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Diana Rene: 0:00

You're listening to The Decluttered Mom podcast, a podcast built specifically for busy moms by a busy mom. I'm your host, Diana Rene, and in 2017, I had my second daughter and it felt like I was literally drowning in my home Okay, not literally, but I felt like I couldn't breathe with all of the stuff surrounding me. Over the next 10 months, I got rid of approximately 70% of our household belongings and I have never looked back. I kind of feel like I hacked the mom system and I'm here to share all the tips, tricks and encouragement. Let's listen to today's show.

Welcome to another episode of the decluttered mom podcast. I am Diana Rene, and I am really happy that you are here. The last two episodes that we have released were nerve-wracking for me because they were semi-controversial. I don't think they should be controversial, but they are. But I just wanted to say thank you for all of the nice DMs that you sent me after listening to them. It was comforting and it was nice to hear the positive feedback. It's always great to get a kind DM, but especially when I had two vulnerable episodes in a row, to then get those DMs, it's just extra nice. So thank you. That meant a lot. Today, I want to talk about something called body doubling, which I briefly mentioned on Instagram a couple of weeks ago, and the number of DMs I got being like WTF are you talking about? I can't even count. So I wanted to kind of go into what body doubling is, how it can be helpful and effective and how I am using it in my own life and how the members of my program are also using it to increase their productivity when it comes to decluttering their homes. So I first want to just read you a definition. I don't know if this is like the official definition. This is just something I found on Google. I forgot to write down the source. I think it was Healthline, but there were about 75 different definitions of body doubling and this was one that kind of made the most sense to me. So it says body doubling is a tool some adults use to help them start and complete projects. Sometimes referred to as an accountability partner, it is a technique for better productivity. A body double is a friend or partner who works simultaneously, either in the same room or virtually through video chat platforms. So I really like that the caveat. There's two caveats I would add to that Number one, it's not just for adults. And number two, I don't really love the accountability partner. I don't know. Okay, we'll get into it, but I don't think it's necessarily always like a one on one type scenario. So, as you know or if you don't know, I have ADHD and I was late diagnosed. I was just diagnosed last year and I turned 40 next year. So I have spent most of my life feeling a lot of like. I just felt like I was like a dumb person. Basically that's what it boils down to. It felt like I was lazy, like something was wrong with me, and I have two whole episodes that go into my entire story and like why I suspected ADHD to begin with and why, like how the whole diagnosis process went and all of that. We will link those in the show notes if you have any interest in hearing that. But prior to being diagnosed with ADHD, I honestly like it's 2023, I was diagnosed last year in 2022. But before, like 2020 is the first time I had ever even considered that as a potential diagnosis for me. I had one therapist in college tell me that they thought I should be evaluated for it, but I thought that was silly and I never did and it was never spoken about again. But besides that, I just I had no idea, but now I know, looking back, that I have done a lot of different things to try and like hack my executive dysfunction and lack of productivity ability, and body doubling is one of those things that I discovered in about 2018. So I started this business in 2018. And it started as well in home. I started doing in home decluttering in at the end of 2017, but the online business started in 2018. And I was like I had two little ones at home. I didn't have any childcare, neither girl was in school, and I was really struggling to be productive in the times that I had available to me to be productive, because it wasn't like I had a full work day ahead of me and I just had to figure out how to be productive. Right, it was more like I had 10 minutes here and like seven minutes there and maybe a one hour block after they went to bed. That I had to. Then I had to figure out how to be productive during those times, otherwise I wasn't going to get anything done, and so those were my choices, and I don't even remember how I stumbled upon this concept or this idea, but I want to say it was on Instagram. I found some random account that had like a subscription to a body doubling thing where you like paid X dollars a month I don't remember how much it was and then there was all of these times, like all, all different days are all different times of the day, so, like all over the world, people were using the subscription. So, basically, anytime you needed to be productive, there was a body doubling session available to you. So what it was is it just you log on to this little, this like membership portal and you would connect to zoom and there would be other people there working and there wouldn't be anyone talking. There wouldn't be anyone. Like you know, there's no like chatting back and forth, there's no small talk, there's no like strategy. It was just people on mute with their video on working at their desk, which I get it sounds weird. It sounded weird to me the first time I saw it, like in action also, but what I found is that it just kind of like triggered something in my brain to like be productive and like to sit down and work also, which, if you don't have ADHD, it may be hard for you to understand, like why you can't just sit down and work when you need to get something done, because of the whole executive functioning concept. But for me and for anyone else who's listening, who has ADHD, who has executive dysfunction, it's it's so weird. You just can't, you just can't, you can't make yourself sit down and do something until the very last minute, and so this was a game changer for me and it was like the strangest thing and I still didn't really understand how or why it was working. But it worked and so I used that subscription for quite a long time, really, until I found other business owners that I really connected with and then I was in masterminds and things like that that I found different ways to basically motivate myself. But it was a really, really great tool and it just was kind of like a first introduction to the world of body doubling, and I think body doubling has been gaining in popularity post pandemic because so many more people are working from home and so many people are looking for a solution to like just getting themselves to be more productive or to get started. So when I posted about this on Instagram, someone DM'd me and I cannot find the DM for the life of me. I wish I could, because she said that she is a teacher and this is actually a concept that they use in classroom management, and I'm blinking on what she called it. She said they don't call it body doubling, they call it something else. But she said there is a lot of research out there that shows when a child I don't know if it's with adults also, but she said that there's a lot of research out there that shows that when you implement this and kids are working together well, not together, but working side by side on individual things, then that increases productivity. And so I found that really interesting and that's why I wanted to add that caveat to the definition. That I found is I don't think it's just for adults, I think it maybe is just for the human brain. But this is something, then, that we were starting to see in my program that a lot of the women in my program were, when they were getting to parts of their home that were a little bit harder, that had more sentimental items, that they were like just really dreading going through. We started to see comments in the group like I just wish someone was here with me, to like make me do it, or like I just wish, like I knew someone else was going through the same space at the same time, and so one of my coaches actually brought up the idea of body doubling and like she's like why don't we have like a decluttering party type thing on Zoom? And I was like that is an excellent idea, and so it's something that we are testing inside the program and so far it's going really well. I think we've only had two so far, but basically one of my coaches gets on a video portal that's inside our portal that we use for the program and any of the members can then get on and they don't chat, they don't ask questions. It's not like there's nothing. There's none of that. They just have their videos on and they work in the room or in the space that they are currently working on in the decluttering program, and we've gotten really great feedback so far that it's helped to encourage them. It's helped to like just get them going. It's helped them to like be able to set that appointment, knowing that they have to get on then and they have to do it. Like they don't have to, like nothing's gonna happen if they don't, but you know what I mean. Like they set that date with themselves, they get on. There's other people on, there's a coach on, and so they find extra motivation by doing that and I think it works. Because number one I think it just helps you to start right, like, just like we talked about before, you set an appointment with yourself and you know that there's gonna be other people there, especially if you like say you're going to be there. Just by signing on and then seeing your face, like you're held to a level of accountability that you weren't if you had never joined in in the first place, right? So there's that. I think it just kind of tricks your brain into just getting started. But then seeing other people doing the same process as you as well, I think again, it just kickstart your brain and then it has that accountability factor having everybody in the same quote unquote room, even if it's virtual, getting the same things done, working towards the same goals, and just having that element of like a community that's there working towards similar shared goals. So body doubling does not have to be virtual, it can be in person too. So maybe, like you're someone who just gets things done more if your sister is over and you just work better when your mom is over, helping you with your closet or like whatever that may be. It could be in person, in person, that you just feel like if you are going to get things done, or if you're wanting to get things done, that you'll be more motivated with someone else there. Like sometimes for me, if I just go to a coffee shop, like I can be at home and I can be like really struggling to get started on a project, and if I just get my car and I drive to a coffee shop and I go in, I sit down and there's just other people there. I don't have to say a word to them, but I see five other people around me working on their laptop and it just kind of triggers that like jumpstart. It just gets me to like get started and get going and there's like an unspoken level of accountability. Like those people don't know I'm using them for body doubling, but it just it helps you get into the right mindset. And so I wanted to share this because clearly, like based on my Instagram DMs, it's not a very super known, well-known concept in my world, in my little tiny corner of the internet. But if this is helpful for you, if this is like ooh, I should do something like that. Then there are so many different subscription services out there. I can't vouch for any of them because I haven't used one in years inside my program. If it's like something within your home, we do that, or it may be just in person, or I even had people DM me and they were like sometimes my sister or my best friend and I, we will just FaceTime while we are doing the dishes or while we're doing our PM pickup, because it's just the act of having each other there is just super helpful. And so what are the ways that you can start to implement this in your own home or in your own life or in your own work? That will be helpful for you to just make yourself feel a little bit more productive. That is all I have for you today. All about body doubling. But I do have a question for you. Can you send me a DM on Instagram? I am at the decluttered mom. It's thedeclutteredmom and we'll also link it below. Can you send me a DM and let me know what topics are you really hoping I will cover this fall or winter? We are planning out the next basically two quarters so half of the year of podcast topics. I'm bringing on a bunch of guests. I'm really excited because the only guests we've had so far, except for Carly from Debt Free Mom besides her, the only other guests we've had have been alumni of my program and those actually are some of our most popular episodes. You guys really like hearing from them because they share their stories and things they learned and how they got through the process and all of that. So we do have more of those planned. But we also have quite a few experts coming in in different areas that are they're not like totally random experts or totally random subjects. They are all circled around decluttering and simplifying and home management and all of that and just motherhood in general. So I'm really excited about those. I think we have, like I think, nine or 10 different ones over the next quarter or over the next two quarters. Sorry, you guys, my brain thinks in quarters now for the past. Ever since I started this business, I think in quarters, and I know that most people don't think like that. So over for the next half year, we have at least nine or 10 really exciting experts that are coming on. So we have that. But I really like this podcast is something that has been really, really fun for me. I have really enjoyed creating it and talking to you and just being able like Instagram is wonderful. Instagram is my number one way I connect with you guys. But Instagram also is not a place that I can just sit down and talk to you right and just like have these what I feel like are heart to heart, this longer form audio content I can't do on Instagram. I technically could on like a live, but like it's harder. So I love having this podcast. It's turned into more than anything I could have imagined. It's been really exciting. But I really want to make sure that I am creating content for you here that you really want, that you would be really excited about, that you would want to send to your friends and tell them to listen to. So can you do me a favor, just take a minute and send me a DM on Instagram and let me know what would you love to hear, like, what are the top five topics or five subjects that you would really like to hear from me on here? Because, as I'm creating this next half year of outlines, I would just really like love to sit here and talk about the things that you want to hear me talk about. So please, please, do that. I would love to hear from you anyway. If you just want to say hi, that would be great, but I hope you are having a great start to your week and I will talk to you next week.

Thanks for hanging out and listening to the Decluttered Mom podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, it would mean the world if you could write a review or share this episode with a friend or your Instagram stories. And if you're on Instagram, be sure to follow me at thedeclutteredmom and send me a DM to say hi. I'd love to hear what you thought about today's episode. I hope you'll come back next week and hang out with us again.