Transcription
My name is Ali Al Cargulli. I'm an NASA post-doctoral fellow. I'm also the founder of Next Level Systems, a behavior engineering company that's currently doing about $350,000 per month.
In this video, I'm going to explain to you a difference between procrastination, avoidance, which one is actually holding you back. I'm going to explain to you what each of them are and how to solve each of them. And those are pretty much the only two things that are holding you back from achieving your life's wildest dreams.
Because if you think about it, the results that you're trying to achieve in life require some action. And that action needs to be done ideally sooner rather than later. And if you're procrastinating on it or you're avoiding the things that you need to do, these are two things that are not helping you achieve the goal. If anything, they're helping you go completely in the opposite direction and you start feeling like crap and you start losing trust in yourself. And we don't want any of that.
So, what I want to first go ahead and do is explain to you the difference between these two guys. What's actually going on inside your brain when you're doing each of them? And how do you actually go ahead and solve both of them?
And actually, this is something I've struggled with a lot my whole life. I'm someone who has ADHD. I'm very high up on the ADHD spectrum. So when I was in school, I was actually doing really well because I had deadlines and I had assignments and I had people helping me prioritize and I had people helping me say, "Hey, this needs to be done by this time or not." But then when I went and I started my business, I struggled with both of these things very very hard because suddenly I did not have deadlines. I did not have structure. I did not have someone who I trusted to like actually help me prioritize or lay out a schedule or a curriculum or a semester for me or things of that nature. And that's where all this really started falling apart. And it was until I went ahead and I figured out the difference between these two guys and solved it and built a system around each that I was able to actually go ahead and scale my business, do all these kind of cool things uh that I that I talked about in my other videos.
But real quick, let me just first explain to you the difference between procrastination and avoidance. And let's just imagine this is you, right? This is you as a person. And you're trying to achieve like some goal here, right? Like let's say this is your goal and it's like somewhere within your field of view and you're trying to go there and in order to achieve the goal, let's say there's some type of action, right? there's some type of like task over here that you need to take, but there's like a bunch of other actions that you could take, right? Like let's say that this is like sit down and write an email of some sort or sit down and do something or it could be even be grabb mail, what whatever task that it is like let's say it's required to help you achieve that goal. But then there's other stuff here. There's like Instagram. Then there's like I don't know do another task. There's like I don't know check your email. there's like do another task that makes you feel good but that's not actually like non-nealle mover task uh here I don't know call friend take a nap or whatever it could be again like jump on a meeting be stuck in meetings all day and very often what do most people do most people do not take the action especially consistently that helps them achieve their goal a one they're usually not even clear on what their goal is they think they know what the goal is but they're actually not very clear on what the goal is and or they may forget it if you're if you have ADHD for example you have tendency to forget things and that's not good because one of the things they may forget unfortunately is your goal. So until you have unless you have a system that helps you not only get clear on your goal and remember it you're going to really struggle. Uh most people do not do this. They do not take the action that help them achieve the goal. Why is that? Well, there's two reasons why someone doesn't do that. This little blob over here can actually be broken into two categories. There's procrastination. So someone can procrastinate. And then there is avoid.
And the best way for me to distinguish these two things before I explain what they are is procrastination is more of like a mental or a cognitive thing or like think of it almost like a neurotransmitter like neurochemical thing. Um where avoidance is more of a strong emotional thing. It's like more of a more of like a heart thing like a like a avoidance thing like an amydala thing. And what I mean by that is very often we avoid things out of feelings out of like feelings such as like discomfort or fear or like thinking that by achieving the thing something negative may take place but we very often procrastinate on something that we know we need to do but we just ah man I just don't feel like doing it or like there's not a clear deadline or there's not a clear consequence. So there are two different categories right? One is like kind of emotional. One is more of like just very simple cognitive like ah I I just got to get it done. Why am I not doing it? Why am I like why not? So in order for you to stop avoiding something you need to be you it's going to require more work, right? It's going to require more like subconscious beliefs, more like emotional regulation. We're going to talk about that in a little bit. But let's talk about the easier one to fix procrastination, right?
So procrastination is essentially let's actually zoom out. If you were to take any action, why are you taking these two actions or or these actions that don't help you achieve the goal versus the one that actually helps you achieve the goal? Why why are those much easier to take compar compared to this one? Assuming the cause in here is procrastination, right? Well, there's actually two molecules that help you take action. There is dopamine and then there is neuropepinephrine. And this is oversimplification, but let's say these are the two guys that are mostly responsible for any type of behavior action you take. Dopamine is the thing that makes you curious about things and makes you want to explore things, makes you kind of like want to opt into things. While neuropinephrine is the thing that gives you like uh like like like urgency and like I need to do this now. Usually neuropepinephrine has to do with consequences and hence deadlines trigger neuropinephrine. You can think of neur let's call neuropinephrine adrenaline even though they're slightly different things but adrenaline is the one most people are familiar with. Adrenaline is something less like a jolt that you get. It's like an oh moment that you get. Adrenaline is usually associated with deadlines. Consequences. Why? Because when the deadline hits that implies that there's some type of consequence. You get a zero on the assignment. You lose the deal. You I don't know your money is lost. Blah blah blah. Curiosity on the other hand is driven by dopamine. Dopamine is the thing that makes you like click on things and be like, "Oh, what's in there? What's in there?" It's like the reward seeking behavior. It's it's the party that's like, "Oh, I wonder what's behind that thing over there. Let me go ahead and check out what's behind that thing over there."
So these are the two guys that drive most of your behavior, right? The problem is that assuming the case is procrastination, not avoidance. If there's no deadline or if there's no hardcore like actual reason to get it done like let's say today and and coupled with the fact that let's say it's like a tedious task, you're going to you're going to score very low on both. And if you score very very low on both, then you're going to score low on action. So let's just like reframe action. Let's say action equals D * N. This is like dopamine. This is norepinephrine. If you have higher dopamine levels, you're going to be a lot more likely to take action on something. If you have high neuropinephrine levels, you're going to be very likely to take action on something. If you have both of them, oh my god, amazing. The ideal case in in this case is let's say like I don't know, you want to put out um like you want to create something or you want to build something and you have a deadline to get it out and get it done. Let's say I don't know like you're you're trying to make a music album or you're trying to like come up with a YouTube video. Let's say like you love making YouTube videos, something you just can't stop thinking about, and you give yourself like a schedule to say, "I'm gonna get this done by Sunday." Well, that combination is magical. Now, you're gonna actually go and take action. But now, let's take something that's very tedious that you don't want to do. Like, let's say mail. Mail is the least interesting thing in the world, unless there's like a piece of mail you're actually looking out for. So, your dopamine is going to be very low, and there's really no deadline. Like, you basically just like have it pile up and you're like, "Yeah, maybe there's something in there that I care about. Maybe there's something I don't care about." there's like no visible threat deadline to your face. So, you're going to be low in here. So, you're not going to take action.
So, if the problem that you have is procrastination, then the answer is pretty simple. Like have systems that either make the thing that you're trying to do more interesting or give it a deadline or schedule a time to do it. Have the implementation intention to sit down and do it. And if you're able to do both, then you're going to dramatically increase the odds of taking that action. Okay? And that's pretty simple. And there's obviously more nuances about that. Uh I do go into it in more detail. some of my videos I talk about procrastination for like 15 20 minutes. So you can check check that out uh in the rest of my channel.
But I want to now talk about avoidance. Right? So again we mentioned that procrastination has more to do with um lack of clarity on goal or task, lack of interest and lack of urgency/ deadline. But suppose I know exactly what I what I need to do and I know it's important and I'm actually even curious about how to do the task itself and I got to get it done today and I know there's urgency but I'm still not doing it and I'm still doing like this plethora of all sorts of things that um I should not be doing. Well my friend, you might be in this case struggling with avoidance. And avoidance is you're literally like avoiding the task. Usually avoidance comes from fear. And there's two types of fear that are predominant. Well, there's actually only really one type of fear. Uh there is fear of success and then there is fear of failure. Now, if you think about it, those are actually the same fear because fear of success is fear of not being able to handle success or fear of things changing when you do succeed, which is not being able to handle it or or something breaking. So, fear of success is actually a fear of failure. Fear of success is fear of failing at handling success. So, there's only one that's called fear of failure. And it's not even fear of failure. It's actually something that's a lot more primally wired into us as humans, which is fear of change and fear of the unknown. Right now, this unknown over here, unknown territory that you're entering, the more unknown it is and the more ignorant you are about the potential scenarios, consequences, things that may go wrong, things that may go right, blah blah, all that, especially things that may go wrong. The more unknowns there are, the stronger the unknowns, the more avoidance you're going to experience.
I'll give you an example. Um when I was starting out with my business um I did very well. I think I did like I don't know 10k per month. Very first three weeks I closed people without app sales scripts. I was just like doing everything using engineering frameworks that I had learned inside of SpaceX and I was just like I don't know cruising through and then suddenly I got this jolt where like suddenly I could not sit down and make ads. Suddenly I did not want to jump on sales school. Suddenly I did not want to do I hated my business. I didn't want to do anything related to my business. I was now avoiding my tasks and I had no idea why. Turns out why I had a fear inside and that fear had to do with fear of success and that fear of success had to do with me not being able to handle blah blah blah. Long story short, I was afraid that if my business were to scale to some like astronomical numbers, I suddenly would not be able to maintain some of the things that I have in my life. Relationships went blah blah blah things of that nature. I just had like a limiting belief. So then all I had to do is basically go in and change the belief. There's a belief in here and you can think of a belief as like a piece of software you just like go and change kind of like you would do like a software upgrade and the moment you the the moment you change the belief and there's methods around changing beliefs um the moment you do that then you can actually go ahead and change that fear right cuz fear is usually driven by a belief.
Now another way you can you can change that fear is you can actually give yourself accurate information right? So if there's a lot of unknowns well don't make it unknown make it a known do an exercise be like okay what actually happens if this thing is achieved what are the potential consequences here what what could go wrong, what could go right, what are all the things that XYZ, why not? So, you can actually go ahead and and and go into that exercise and try to fill the gaps with information that can actually help you calm down because if you have information, you have knowledge on what is likely to happen and you're prepared for the worst case scenario, then you're no longer going to be afraid of this success or this failure and you're no longer going to be avoiding the task. Okay? And this is again, this is just a very simple brief explanation. I could go on about this for hours. I actually do go on about this uh for hours inside my next level peak performance program. If you're someone who's interested in scaling your business and you think you are the bottleneck in your business, I'll put a link for that in description. You can check it out.
But the core idea is that whenever you feel like there's an action that you need to take and you're not taking it, well then and and especially if you're like providing it with like other alternatives over here such as things you should not be doing. Well, question number one is try to develop the awareness of asking yourself what am I actually doing here? Am I procrastinating or am I avoiding the task? And the way to know is, are you crystal clear on what you need to do? Have you laid out the steps? Like, do you actually know exactly what you need to do? And is it interesting? Is it something that has a benefit? Can you sell yourself on it? That's a dopamine check. Now, what about a neuropenhine check? When do you need to get it done by? Can you do it right now? Can you do it tonight? What happens if you don't get it tonight? Is it can you can you think of a consequence that may happen if you don't get it done? Such as delaying on your goals, not getting the dream life you want, or simply, I don't know, losing out on a few uh I don't know, $100 to your friend who you make a bet with. I'm usually not a big fan of these kind of neurophreniking activities. Some people do them. Okay. Once once you figure out that it's not that then you can ask okay why am I avoiding this? Is it like some type of like like like am I like is it some type of fear? Is it some type of limiting belief I have? What information am I missing? And what assuming I am avoiding it because I'm being fearful. What is the information that would be needed from me to actually go ahead and fill the gaps such that the unknown no longer becomes the unknown. becomes very known and then I'm a lot less likely to fear that fear of change and then I'm a lot less likely to think I'm not going to handle my different change of state whether it being success or failure and then I'm going to actually be a lot less likely to avoid the task. I'm going to be a lot more likely to take action and then if I do that repeatedly then yay I actually achieve my goals and I get a lot of things done and then people look at me and be like wow how does he do it? Well, how he's do it because understanding how the brain works and then building the right systems and tools to actually navigate that.
So anyway, if this is something that you found very useful, please um I don't know, you can check out I have other videos on this topic, if you're new to this channel, you can subscribe. Uh you can let me know in the comments what kind of things you'd like me to explore a little bit more about me. I am like obsessed with behavior engineering, helping humans achieve their goals through through altering their behavior um and through designing their behaviors, designing their identities. Like the problem I am seeing is that like as a human, you come with a mind, but you're not taught how to actually use the brain. and the human brains does not come with a user manual. So, I'm actually actively building on building a a user manual here at my company, Next Level Systems. And this is something that I'm like obsessing with all day every day. So, if you have any questions regarding procrastination, avoidance, productivity, um scaling a business, having systems for things of that nature, you can feel free to use the comments to ask me uh whatever questions you have, or you can just watch the rest of my videos. That being said, I will see you guys next time. Peace, love.