Transcription
Welcome to today's episode of the Mindset Mentor podcast. I am your host, Rob Dial. Today, I'm going to be talking about how to overcome procrastination. I'm going to give you a step-by-step guide to taking action, and there's six different steps that we're going to go through today.
But when you look at procrastination, I always think about procrastination. I'm like, why does procrastination exist? Because procrastination is basically the thief of your time. One of the main things that holds people back is that they decide. Yes, decide is a correct word. They decide to procrastinate. It might be an unconscious decision that happens really quick in the moment, but they have decided to do it.
A lot of people are like, they talk about when people talk about procrastination, someone's like, "Oh my God, procrastination, I'm such a victim of it." No, dude, you're deciding to. And if you're going to get the life that you want, you've got to decide not to, and you've got to figure out how to get past it. You know, if you want to build the business that you want, instead of spending too much time on Instagram and procrastinating, you're going to have to put time into building it. If you want to lose weight, and instead of watching Netflix and farting around on the couch, you're gonna have to actually put in some work in the kitchen. You're gonna have to put some work in the gym.
And just so you know, I want you to, I don't want you to feel special. Everyone procrastinates to some degree. And so if you're sitting there and you're like guilting and shaming yourself for procrastinating and thinking that, you know, "Oh, it's so bad that I do it. I don't think other people have to deal with it." They do. Everybody procrastinates to some degree. Delaying tasks is, is easy to do. It is easier to not do something than to do something. And humans will naturally take the easy route. Humans are like water, we will always find the path of least resistance. Naturally, that's what we're going to do if we're unconscious, not paying attention. We have to actually become more conscious, become more intentional to actually take the hard route. And so we'll delay tasks because it's easier not to do something than do something, or it's easier to do something easy like scroll on Instagram rather than pick up that exact same phone and make 100 cold calls to build your company, right? It's a lot easier to do nothing or to do something easy.
What if though, we could flip the script? What if, instead of being a constant victim or acting like a constant victim of procrastination, you could actually master the art of overcoming it and actually take action? Does that intrigue you? If it does, listen up. I'm going to take you on a journey toward understanding procrastination, and then actually, if you can understand it, you can beat it. And I'm going to give you really practical strategies to help you boost your productivity and then actually reclaim control of your time.
So when you look at, like, the, let's say, the anatomy of procrastination, right? One of the things that I came to realize probably about six months ago is procrastination is, and this might blow up a lot of people's minds, procrastination is never actually the problem. Procrastination is not your problem. Procrastination is the downstream effect or result of something that is upstream. And so, like, we might procrastinate on, um, creating a presentation for work, right? And we think like the procrastination is a problem. No, no, the problem isn't the procrastination. The prob, that's the, the symptom, right? But it's not the cause of it. The cause is that maybe you're afraid of screwing it all up in front of your boss, and you're really afraid of public speaking. That's the problem. That's the cause. But the symptom itself is the procrastination. And so that's the really important thing is, if you're procrastinating, ask yourself, what is the root of this procrastination? Why am I procrastinating? I'm procrastinating on the presentation. That's not the problem. The problem is that you're afraid of public speaking. That's what the problem is. And so you've got to kind of go upstream and try to figure out what that is.
So when you look at procrastination, let's understand at the roots, right? Procrastination is really often unconscious. We don't really notice it until later. It might be 20 minutes later, it might be 20 seconds later. But really, what it looks like is, you know, an unwelcome task appears. It could be writing a report, it could be doing laundry, it could be making an important phone call. But the mind will want to avoid the discomfort that comes from that, even the discomfort of just getting up and doing the laundry, right? And that makes us delay. So the mind wants to chill. It doesn't want to do anything. The body also wants to chill. It doesn't want to do anything. So what does it do? It decides, "Oh, it kind of whispers in your ear, 'Hey, not now. No, no, no. You could do that later. You can do it later. No big deal.'" Because you don't want to do anything. You're all, people are inherently lazy. And what happens? Procrastination sets in.
Procrastination is not just 100% laziness or poor time management. It's really a complex interaction of different psychological factors. It involves the struggle between our present self, which prefers immediate gratification, and our future self, which values long-term rewards. You know, you could want to build the business of your dreams and become a multi-millionaire, and your future self would would know that putting in the work and having, you know, not getting immediate gratification would be better. But your present self is like, "I want to play a video game. Hmm. I want to take a nap. I want to scroll on Instagram. I want to do something else instead." So there's there's really a, a teeter-totter effect. Whether it's your present self that wants immediate gratification, and there's your future self which values long-term rewards. Is it possible to hack your present self and given immediate gratification to actually taking action? Maybe you're just gonna have to continue to listen this episode and see if it comes up. But I have a little bit of a tip that's gonna be coming up that'll help you hack your present self.
If you're not intentional though, you'll almost always go the easy route. And you'll talk yourself out of why you don't need to do it now. Even if you need to do it now, you can also talk yourself out of why you don't need to do it now. And researchers have actually found in, in turn, this term that they've created around that is what they call temporal discounting, which is where the present self tends to undermine the future self's goals. So it's like, you know, you want to build a business, become a multi-millionaire, but then somehow you will talk yourself out of it, and you are undermine what it is that you need to do in order to get there. And so it's called temporal discounting. So that's really what procrastination is. That's where it comes from. All of that.
Let's go into the six steps to actually overcome procrastination and take action.
The first thing is to recognize and acknowledge. A first step to overcoming any problem is acknowledging its existence. Recognizing that procrastination is something that you do. And it's really tricky because procrastination often masks itself as taking a break, or waiting for the right mood, or waiting to be motivated, or "I'm hungry." And so it could be, it can mask itself in many different ways. But when you start to actually pay attention to yourself, you can actually start to uncover different places where your procrastination comes up. If you're consistently finding yourself delaying tasks, especially those that are really important but don't have immediate rewards, pretty damn good chance you're procrastinating. Say it with me now: "My name is Rob, and I'm a procrastinator." "Hi, Rob." So it's like, you, whatever your name is, "My name is blank, I'm a procrastinator." You are. We all are. We all do it. It's about recognizing it. It's about acknowledging it. And then it's about going through the rest of these steps and actually getting past him. So that's step number one: Recognize it.
Step two is understand your triggers. Once you've acknowledged your procrastination, the next step is to understand what triggers your procrastination. For some, it might be the fear of failure. Once again, it's it's the upstream. We're trying to go upstream and actually see what the actual cause of the, uh, procrastination is itself. For some, it might be the fear of failure. You want to start the business, you want to do that thing, and then you realize that you're, you don't do it, and you procrastinate. You know, "I'm procrastinating a little bit." But it's not procrastination's problem. It's the problem is that you're afraid of failing, or you're afraid of being judged. And so the, the task might be too daunting, you know? And so for others, it might be, it might be that for some, for other people, it might be the lack of immediate gratification. Like, you just want immediate gratification. You have trained your brain too much to immediately get what you want. "Oh, I'm hungry, I get food. Oh, I'm thirsty, I get water. Oh, I've got to poop, you go poop. Oh, I've gotta, I, I want to get on Instagram, you immediately go on Instagram." And it might be just a, you, you're just trained yourself. Same way you train a dog, you've trained yourself to immediate gratification. Whatever it might be, you have to identify these triggers because it can help you prepare and strategize against procrastination.
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And so when you identify what normally triggers you, you can start to make a plan for what you're going to do the next time you're triggered. "Oh, I'm noticing I'm procrastinating. Why am I procrastinating? Am I afraid of something? I am afraid of something. What am I afraid of? I'm afraid of failure. Oh, I remember I thought about this last week. This happened to me. Okay, what was the plan that I said I was going to do? As soon as I get afraid, I was going to make myself do 100 push-ups, and I was going to immediately take the action I'm supposed to take." Whatever it is, figure it out. It's not really that hard.
A trigger could be thinking about all that you have to do today to move your business forward. And too much to think about all at once can cause paralysis by analysis. So you instead decide to play a video game because it's just immediate gratification. You get some dopamine, you feel good. Then your present self wins. Your present self wins because it wants immediate gratification. Your future self loses, which is delayed gratification. Your future self, the one that could have the business, that could have the life, that could be able to travel the world, all of those things loses because what happened? Yep, you decided to go ahead and play video games instead of building your business. So it really comes down to figuring out what your triggers are and, you know, how to actually create a plan around it. So that's the second thing.
The third thing is break down your tasks. A really crucial strategy to overcoming a procrastination is to take your tasks and break them into small, manageable parts. Oftentimes, your procrastination comes because you're thinking about everything. Procrastinate, procrastination, a lot of times is your brain thinking about everything everywhere all at once, right? So you're like, "I gotta build a business," and you think about the next 10 years of every single thing that you need to do over the next 10 years, when literally all you have in front of you is the next hour. But you're thinking about the next 10 years, and you're like, "Oh my God, too much. I'm gonna play video games instead," and you don't do it, right? So break your tasks down. And and so it's not paralysis by analysis. And this helps you make your task less daunting, allows you to have a sense of achievement when you accomplish these little teeny tiny tasks, these subtasks to the big task.
So let's say that, you know, let's, let's give you an example. Let's say that you have to prepare for a business proposal, right? And you're excited about the big business proposal, but it's, it's a lot, right? So instead of saying on your to-do list, "I need to accomplish the business proposal," which can cause paralysis by analysis because there's a lot of stuff that's in there, you can divide into smaller parts. So you could say, "Research the business proposal." "Research what other people's business purposes look like." That could be it. So research could be one. Drafting could be another task. Editing could be another task, and so on and so forth, right? So it's still creating the business proposal. What you're doing is you're actually taking subtasks and putting those on your to-do list because what happens is when you accomplish a subtask, you get a little bit excited about yourself. You're like, "Damn it, I did it! This is awesome! Good job!" And you're more likely to continue to keep going because at that point in time, when you get excited, your brain releases dopamine. You're a dopamine addict. We all are. And you just want more dopamine. So you're more likely to go and take the next task and keep going. And make sure tasks that aren't quite big, sometimes less intimidating, and you can also track your progress of making sure that you get everything that you need to. So that's step number three.
Step number four. I've coached thousands of people, and this is one thing that I've realized, like 95% of people are absolute absolutely terrible at time management. Step number four is get better at time management. A lot of people like, "Oh my God, I don't have enough time." And I'm like, "If I followed you around every minute of your day for the next week, I would be able to find hours in your day, most likely, right?" So use different time management techniques. And, you know, I've, I've created entire podcast episodes on these, so I'm not going to cover these in depth. But one of them is the Pomodoro Technique: 25 minutes on, five minutes off. Another one is time blocking: from this time to this time, I'm only doing this thing. So like for me, for like creating this podcast episode, it took about two hours to create this podcast episode, playing it all out, do my research, everything. So I actually time block from 11 AM to 1 PM. I'm planning this podcast episode around procrastination. So that's considered time blocking. And number three is a really good one, which is batching tasks. So like another thing that there's batching is, this is the second podcast that we've recorded today. I'm going to record three today. And so we batch all of them and we do one right after another after another. So I just got one done. I'm in the middle of one right now. I've got one more to do today, right? Instead of doing like one on Monday and one on Wednesday and one on Friday, just batch them. And so a few time management techniques that'll help you, you know, besides planning out your schedule is use the Pomodoro Technique, use time blocking, use batching. Just try to get better at time management. A lot of times these methods that you can use, they encourage you to be more focused, they prevent you from burning out, and they actually promote effective use of your time as well. And so number four: Get better at time management.
Number five: Set specific and achievable goals. And so when you set vague, unrealistic goals, it 100% almost every time breeds procrastination. So the key to motivating yourself is to set very specific, achievable goals and to know the outcome that you want of those goals. So instead of saying something like, "Work on report," right? If your to-do list, if you look at it, says "Work on report," try something like, "Write the introduction to the report by 10 AM." That's much easier to do, right? You have a shorter part of the report, which makes it easier to accomplish. And you've also got a specific time it needs to be done by. So instead of "Work on report," it's something like "Write introduction to the report by 10 AM." That would be a really good example of setting a specific but also achievable goal. That's step number five.
Step number six is to reward yourself. Rewards provide immediate gratification to the present self. Remember I said I'm gonna give you a little hack? If your present self wants immediate gratification, how can you try to give it immediate gratification as soon as you get something done? And so if you go back and you do write that introduction and you get it done by 10 AM, how can you reward yourself for it? It could be, once again, a cup of coffee. It could be a piece of chocolate. It could be just being excited about doing it and actually just celebrating yourself. Could be putting on your favorite song and dancing around like an idiot inside of your house when you get it done. And that way, you get immediate gratification. Your brain releases dopamine. And that crackhead that's in all of our, our heads that just wants dopamine, doping, doping, and wants immediate gratification right now, right now, right now, gets what it wants. And so you actually reward yourself when you accomplish these smaller subtasks. And so you reward yourself. It could be a short break, a cup of coffee, anything that feels like a treat, whatever it might be. And so you break it down into smaller tasks, and then you reward yourself as well.
So those are six different steps to accomplishing and overcoming your procrastination. Procrastination, it's it happens with every single person. It's not insurmountable. You're not the first person to deal with it. But when you understand the roots of it, you understand there's something upstream, and you start to figure out what that thing is, you figure out what the triggers are, and you actually use strategic steps to to counter it, it makes it not really that hard to do. Not really that daunting. It's not really the hardest thing to overcome procrastination. It just takes time. It takes attention. It takes intention. You know, Mark Twain said it wisely, "So the secrets to getting ahead in life is just getting started." So get started, one step at a time.
With that, I'm gonna leave the same way I leave you every single episode. Make it your mission to make somebody else's day better. I appreciate you, and I hope that you have an amazing day.