Compassionate productivity sums up the Make Time Count ethos. We believe in honouring your whole self – heart, mind, body, and spirit – while achieving your true potential.

In this post we meet Grace, Church of England vicar and busy parent, who uses the Grid framework to support her whole life.

Grace kindly gave Make Time Count a few minutes of her time to tell us how the Grid has helped her overcome busy and become holistically productive, in a way that no aspect of her life gets neglected. Thank you, Grace!

Read what Grace says about compassionate productivity

If you’d prefer to read the transcript of Grace’s words, here’s what she had to say about how the Grid enables compassionate productivity.

My name is Grace

I live in England, Luton, and I’m a wife and mother of two young children, college-age children. I also work full time as a vicar of the Church of England.

I came about the Grid from a negative experience.

I’d gone to a work event where there was someone talking about accountability as a way to improve productivity and outcomes.

I shared that I felt that the system that was being recommended, for some people could be great, but for a lot of people, especially in my profession, it could actually be quite oppressive. In fact it could be unhelpful and quite condemning.

That viewpoint was not received well and I left coming away thinking there has to be another way!

Compassionate productivity with the Grid

This led me to read Get Productive, by Magdalena. I think I read it in two sittings and I was just like, Hallelujah, at last! A book about productivity that has compassion and also understands the complexity of life.

Often you go to these kind of work practices, it’s just about work. But they don’t realise that you have a life. They don’t realise that there’s professional development. They don’t realise there’s self-care. And somehow you’re meant to do these all separately.

Before the Grid I felt I was being presented one way of managing your work and achieving things. And I found that this was just not healthy.

I did use different methods before the Grid, but I never found one that actually incorporated your life!

Positive mindset shift

I think I liked the simplicity of the Grid. I like the fact that, on one piece of paper, I could visualize every aspect of my life rather than having to have a separate list here and a separate list there.

I liked that it was acknowledging all aspects of my humanity. And I hadn’t seen that before in a productivity solution.

I think it’s been a mindset shift.

Now, I’m at the point now I can internalize what I’ve learnt from the Grid. I’m attending to self care, life, work and professional development. I’m more aware that I have to tend to all these aspects to thrive and have a good and have healthier life.

I think the real change is that it’s given me the permission for all aspects of my life to be attended to. I know that all these parts of my life can flourish, and need to flourish, and will flourish.

I think the compassionate productivity of the Grid has made a positive impact. It has changed how I approach things and how I internalize things.

How the Grid works for me

I use the Grid at the beginning of each week.

My working week starts on Tuesday and I use Google task list where I do a brain dump. I’ll look at that and look at my calendar, check what’s coming up, and I look at the previous week’s Grid. I can see what didn’t get done and wanted to get done.

This helps me form my Grid for the week.

Then I look at it every morning to see where I am. Check what needs doing and use it as a guide.

Sometimes there are things that I think “that needs doing”. But I don’t feel like it, or I don’t have the energy. So I can look at my Grid and attend to something else that might actually generate energy and that will help me get to the other bits.

Make it your own

I love the visualization of the Grid It’s good when I look back at the end of a week and I think ”Oh, I attended to this one area of my life, but I really didn’t work on these other areas”. That’s a really helpful flag that something bad is going on. What was going on there?

So yes, I use it weekly and then I refer to it every morning for that week. Magdalena gives you the permission to make the Grid your own.

I’d recommend the Grid to everyone, and especially to women who are fed up of time management solutions that are propagated by men who probably have partner at home who’s doing all the other stuff.

Anyone who’s frustrated with time management products that they feel they are not honouring themselves. If this is you, I would really recommend this because I the Grid.

I would really recommend it to anyone, regardless gender, who wants a management system that attends to your life. The Grid honours all aspects of your life, knows that you need to work on all aspects of life.

I would recommend it to anyone who wants a more holistic approach as to how to work at what they need to be doing.

My number one thing is that it’s really liberating for women. A lot of time management stuff comes from a certain perspective, which is not universal.

Magdalena is amazing. The science, empathy, and the compassion she brings is really unique. Often it’s one or the other, but she brings both.

And her desire for integration of all ourselves is really powerful. Really healing and helpful.

Find out how the Grid can grant you compassionate productivity

The Grid is a truly flexible tool that can help you attend to your whole life, not just find productivity in work. Learn more about the Grid book, and productivity pack in our online store or use the links below.