Book Review: How to Get Sh*t Done by Erin Falconer

Having an endless to-do list started in high school. Between being in AP classes to writing for the city’s student page, the list started growing. Somewhere along the way, it started becoming endless, just like the guilt of not completing it all.

Psst. Disclosure: Some of the links below are affiliate links, meaning, at no extra cost to you, I will earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase.

Finding Erin Falconer’s book, How To Get Sh*t Done, in the monthly reading section of The Beauty Boost’s member email, I thought it would be a perfect way for me to complete everything on my list and finally feel accomplished at the end of the day. But it was completely the opposite.

Erin brings up some of the same points as Brendon Burchard’s book, High Performance Habits, but in slightly different ways. She wants you to focus on the main thing and what will drive it forward instead of trying to do it all. 

By interjecting her life experiences and conversations with other women Erin, brings her readers advice that they innately know, but need someone else to validate.

And that’s definitely me.

Ultimately, this book is for women who are constantly feeling guilty about not doing enough even when we feel so tired from doing too much at the end of the day.

In How To Get Sh*t Done, Erin brings up the “Not Enough” state of mind. I’ve listened to enough podcasts and have attended enough women’s events to understand the exact thing she’s talking about. It’s the:

• I didn’t do enough today.

• I’m not good enough to go after that contract.

• I’m not smart enough to run a business.

• I’m not young enough to put my face out there on social media.

• I’m not old enough to be taken seriously.

Then, to make sure you’re buried under enough self-doubt, we start adding goals on goals on goals. Let’s: climb the corporate ladder while having a thriving business, while making home-cooked meals, grabbing drinks with my friends, being on social media all the time, having my hair and nails on point, 2 hours of exercise per day, dabbling in stocks, understanding my retirement accounts perfectly and, oh, yeah, awesome sex.

What the fuck?

To top that off, add the cultural expectations placed on Latinas. You should know how to cook, clean, manage the children, be a good mother, listen to your husband, be nice to your mother-in-law, and LOVE huge family gatherings where you cook everything from Tamales to Ceviche and Mole (as in olé but with an M).

Double WTF?

Actually, now I really do want some mole, but I digress.

If you’re looking for a book that pushes tons of tricks like the Pomodoro method, find another one. Although Erin Falconer does touch on a few systems, apps, and, yes, the Pomodoro method, her focus is always on you doing LESS.

Her take? Focus on the 3 areas of life where you want to kick some major ass.

Mine are:

• Career

• Business

• Fitness

All of these fall under my “income earning” focus. Notice that I didn’t put my family or kids in there. Not sure if Erin would approve but, at least for 2021, that’s not what will drive my ultimate 5 year goal forward.

You’ll also notice the asterisk near Career.

Currently in a state of annoying flux (yes, I hate when things aren’t set in stone) is my corporate career. No, I currently don’t work in corporate but there’s a few opportunities that have been presented and one in particular that lets me earn what I need plus operate my business. Don’t get me wrong, I love my business but if I’m going to focus on income generation in 2021, nothing is off the table.

So, if that falls through, my list will look more like this:

• Business

• Fitness

• PR

Back to Erin’s book.

After you know what you want from your life, or at least the next 4 weeks, How To Get Sh*t Done brings up delegation.

As a control-freak, when Erin started bringing up that women need to delegate more, I was a bit nervous. As my VA will likely attest, I’m the type of person that wants it all done my way and that I typically take the task back or wait too long to hand it over to her, very capable, hands.

Here are Erin Falconer’s tips for delegating appropriately:

1. Don’t apologize for asking for help.

Asking is the hardest thing for me but when I finally get around to it, the request usually has an apology somewhere.

2. Don’t expect them to do them exactly as you would.

Although this one isn’t as much of a problem as before, it still gets in the way sometimes. I keep reminding myself that it’s about the result, not the method. Was the website updated according to specs? Yes. Was it updated the same way I do it? No, but that’s ok.

3. Give clear instructions.

I’ve gotten a bit better at this since starting to use Loom. It’s a video program that makes it easy to record and share videos of things like website walkthroughs or project explanations. 

4. Get out of the way.

I’m better at this one more than the other ones but only because I’m typically busy. As soon as one item is handed away, another one takes its place.

5. Don’t take a job back right away.

This one depends on what we’re talking about. A logo? I ask the designer to redo. Front-end website coding or styling? I take over it.  

6. Say Thank You.

I try to always remember to say thank you. It’s annoying to do things for someone and not even get a “thanks for taking care of that!”

What Erin Falconer suggest you not outsource:

1. Things you love or are best at.

To this, I’d say maybe. I actually really like selecting and cropping images to be used on my social media feed. Is it a good use of my time? No. 

The way I now decide what gets my attention is:

“What will get me to my income generation goal?”

This way, I tackle the more important tasks first and leave the others for whenever I have a second.

2. Things that must be done as you do them.

Copy is the only place where I’ve come across this. I have a particular way of writing and it’s hard for my VA or other copywriters to mimic it. I’ll admit, I don’t have a copy guideline to share but I’m not sure that would necessarily solve it.

The 7 Day Challenge

Basically, write down what you’re doing hour-by-hour for one week. Note what items bring you joy, which ones you hate, and which ones you can outsource. That’s it. For me, Toggle works great. 

I started using Toggle a few weeks ago in order to track a few project when I realized I was spending more time than I’d like on planning things than actually doing them. It keeps me accountable to whether I’m actually doing the important tasks that help me gain traction on my business goals.

Tracking our time during the week will help you understand the answer to the question, “Where did my week go?”

Utilize high achiever patterns, specifically: Get Up And Get Going 

1. Make mornings intentional

Set your mood by creating rituals, whether it’s mediation or working out. When I first heard this  in the audio book, I laughed. More like gasp chuckled as since I was on my spin bike but you get the idea. 

I’ve been trying to create the elusive morning ritual for at least a year. You read about these amazing rituals that include meditation, yoga, amazing coffee from some damn organic jungle and rubbing smoothed out rocks on your face – and then you come to the realization that your kid decided it would be awesome to wake you up at 3 am by staring at you as you slept as her hair covered her face. #truestory

Although I make fun of this, I have managed to gather something like a morning routine.

It’s as follows:

• Struggle to get out of bed really early in the morning.

• Stare at husband as he sleeps like a baby, never needing 2 hours of workouts or 15,000 steps per day.

• Depending on the day, either climb into bed again or grab the workout clothes that I set out the night before.

• Either workout until 6:30 am or sleep until then. If the latter, must curse at yourself for letting your “5 more minutes” turn into 2 hours.

• Get ready while wondering if the hubby will take charge of waking up the kids. No? Ok, yell “I’m going to eat all the frozen waffles if you don’t wake up!” while secretly wishing you could.

• Grab your coffee, breakfast, and lunch made with love by the hubby before happily running away from your kids, er, I mean sadly walking away from your kids.

• Get in the car and head to the office.

I can see where Erin might want me to work on this…

2. First thing’s first.

I like to call this one the “Eat The Shit Sandwich” rule. Sometimes, this is hard and sometimes you’re able to muster enough courage to just take that damn bit but it’s always amazing to know that you did the hardest most annoying thing first.

3. You’ve got mail.

Don’t check emails first thing in the morning. LOL, Erin’s messing with her readers, right? 

Uh, this one is incredibly hard. What I’ve recently been doing is checking email and immediately deleting all promotions. I do this via my phone because, like a proper old person, I hate using my phone for things like email. Instead, I only delete emails and check who the other emails are from. If not important, I continue on with procrastinating on Pinterest. Oh, wait. I should change that habit too.

4. Avoid people.

Find a quiet spot for the critical first hours. This one has been extremely hard during COVID but Erin is completely right. The times I’ve managed to avoid my kids during the morning makes me 10x more productive. 

5. 5 pm meetings.

Pretty much, use the afternoon for meetings. This is when you’re already brain dead from working so hard in the morning and you can meet with people to give your mind a break. I think this would be great to implement. I could even use my hangry hour to schedule snacking meetings.

6. Make a list.

This is what I have been doing for a long time. Although, even though Erin says you forget about them, I beg to differ. It’s still on my mind.

The great thing about creating a list before ending your day is that you know exactly what to do when you come back into the office.

7. Get to bed.

Erin: “Science is not having it with your ‘I don’t need more than 5 hours nonsense.’” For the past 2 months, I’ve actually been pretty good about this. True, I wake up at 3:45 am to work out but I get to bed at 9:30 pm at the latest. This allows me to get some family time after I get home but still cross off the workout first thing.

Keys to productivity from Erin Falconer:

1. Decide what you’re working on.

Your list needs to be small or, what has worked for me, highlighting the top 3 items that must be done by the end of day. Another trick I have started using? A planner that only leaves me enough room for a few things in the day section.

2. Do one thing. And ONE thing only.

Multitasking is a myth. Yes, just like being “right-brained” or a “visual learner”, multi-tasking is false and leaves you feeling helpless when you’ve only half-assed the projects.

3. Set a timer.

I’ve used the pomodoro method but keep in mind that if you’re in the zone, ignore the timer and keep going. Just because the timer went off, doesn’t mean that blog post you were really getting into should be put away.

4. Get up and move. 

Here’s where I falter. I workout only in the morning and refuse to get a walk in during the day and yet, when I do, I feel so much better. Another habit I get to slowly shift.

5. Keep track.

I love crossing things off! That’s how I gauge how productive I was. Tip from me: don’t forget the micro-goals. When I can only check off one thing on my to do list, I feel like a failure in business. In reality, I’ve crossed off a ton of small goals to get to the end of the day. Like Erin says, create those micro-goals and then add those to your list.

Start gaining control of your schedule:

1. Decide when your work day should end.

I’ve implemented this for about 3 weeks now. Although Erin might not necessarily approve (it’s 7 pm), it’s a step in the right direction. My next step is 6:30 pm.

2. What do you want each week to include? Choose activities that feed your big 3 or fill you up.

This has been hard for me. What fills me up? I’ve checked my notes from the High Performers book, listened to Erin Falconer, and still have nothing. Working out is so that I can look good (or at least eat tacos). The business is for making money. Then I realized something.

What excites me is new projects. Like this blog. Or the podcasts. Even creating my awkward Youtube videos for the agency. Yay! These aren’t making me rich, yet, but I love moulding these ideas into greatness. It fills me up.

3. Know how often you can make time for these essentials.

These essentials, the blog, the podcast, and the Youtube channel get squeezed into the end of the day. When I’ve burned out my brain on websites and emails. 

4. Decide to make these priorities actual priorities by scheduling them.

Yes, Erin. I’m getting it now. Have added the above tasks to my Google calendar AND paper planner.

5. Decide to make these goals clear to those around you.

I’m getting better at this. Being part of masterminds and peer groups, it’s expected for you to share your goals and progress. And guess what. People remember. They’ll ask how it’s going with the goal and often give honest feedback so you’re not just presenting excuse after excuse.

When it comes to those outside peer groups or masterminds, it’s a bit tougher. Your mom will tell you you’re amazing no matter what while your spouse will only nod and smile while you speak business jargon. Choose wisely who you share with and why. My husband is perfect for reassuring me that I’m doing fine while my mastermind friends will tell me to get up and get going.

Takeaways from “How To Get Sh*t Done” by Erin Falconer:

• First thing’s first, this book makes sure you know that an “overnight success” is anything but.

• Even if you can do it all, you shouldn’t.

• Break challenges or large projects into micro-goals.

• Know the reason why you’re doing what you’re doing. That’s what will motivate you.

• You can’t grind all day.

• Surround yourself with who you want to be.