Mastering The Fine Art Of Procrastination

Good morning everybody and welcome to Marketing in Your Car. Welcome to the Marketing in Your Car podcast where you can increase your traffic, conversions, and sales in just 10 minutes a day. And now here's your host, Russell Brunson. Alright, so the title of this podcast is one that I think is going to get met with some opposition. So it's Mastering the Fine Art of Procrastination. We've always been told throughout our lives that we shouldn't be procrastinating, right? Don't procrastinate. Don't procrastinate. We should be planning ahead and preparing and all these things. I agree to that to a point, but I also think that procrastination, if done correctly, will increase your productivity and help you to focus on just those things that are actually important. That is the title of this podcast. One of the reasons why is in about 6 hours from now, I am boarding a plane to fly on a week-long trip to New Zealand, Australia, and then Phoenix. And it was funny because I had people on Friday at the office like, "Hey, so you started packing yet?" I'm like, "No." And they're like, "Oh, you're probably gonna wait till Sunday to pack, huh?" And I'm like, "No, I'm gonna wait till Monday to pack. I'm not leaving till Monday." And some of you guys are probably thinking, "Well, you probably packed this morning before you headed to the office, right, Russell?" I'm like, "No, my flight doesn't leave for 6 hours. Why would I start packing right now?" Okay, there's some law, and I don't know what, well, who's the law? Pareto or some dude. I don't think it's Pareto though, some dude. And he's got a law. That basically says however much time you have to complete something, somehow magically you will fill all that time up. And this is what— this is the problem with planners, is they will say, hey, I'm leaving on a trip in a month, and so for an entire month they will start packing. And they waste so much time and energy and effort on the packing process that somehow they fill up the entire time with packing, and then they've wasted all that time. Like, I want to do the opposite. I know that to pack, like if I focus really, really hard, I'm looking at maybe 30 minutes. Okay? And so, but if I start packing on Friday, I'm looking at probably 30 or 40 minutes on Friday and 30, 40 minutes on Saturday and 30, 40 minutes on Sunday and then today when I'm actually flying out, I'm gonna sit down and spend another 30 minutes making sure I have everything right. Where I could've just done that once. But because I was planning, I felt this desire to fill up space and time with all this crap that doesn't even matter, right? And this is probably why I struggled at school because it was always my philosophy in school where In school, I think there's, you know, I think it is good to study ahead of time. I probably would have remembered things better if I did, but I did graduate from college, so my mom is proud of that. And this is what I did. This is how I graduated college. All the entire semester long, I would focus on wrestling and on dating girls, and then we'd have final week. And my first year was at BYU, and they have this really cool thing called the testing center, and you can schedule your finals any day you want. So I'd like, Monday is my math final, Tuesday science, Wednesday is whatever, right? And I would take the final at the very end of the day. So what I would do is on those days I'd wake up at 6 o'clock in the morning, I would go down in the basement of my dorms and there was this little tiny room, I'd lock myself in the room and I'd read the entire book in a day. And then I would go in and take the test while all this cool stuff was on the top of my head. I would take the test and then 3 minutes later it was gone. Like I just deleted it, didn't need it anymore, boom, gone. And I graduated that way, okay? Now again, I say that with a caveat knowing that had I been trying to learn something that I needed to know, that's not the right way to do it. But to pass a test, that is the right way to do it, right? I could have studied for the entire semester and wasted who knows how many hours where instead I was wrestling and focusing on girls where I think college, most people's minds should be. I don't know, that's maybe my opinion, maybe it's misguided but I think it's true. I also think that's one of my friends the other day came over to wrestle at the wrestling room and he was talking about cutting weight and he cuts weight over like a 2 to 3 week period of time which I think is insane because now for 2 or 3 weeks your body is going through the stress and this pain and this anxiety and all the mental things that come with not eating, right? When I cut weight, I was losing 20 to 25 pounds every single week, week in and week out, for entire college and high school career, right? And at first, I would, I would like spend a week trying to cut weight, and what I found out is that I was miserable and angry and hungry and thirsty for a week. I figured out that if I would 24 hours before my match start my cut, my weight cutting, I would kill myself for 24 hours, and it sucked. It was so much pain. I was thirsty, I was hungry, I was tired, I was angry, but I only felt those feelings for 24 hours as opposed to an entire week. And then when I got on the mat, I'd eat and I was back to normal and I could compete because for an entire week I felt good. I felt strong, I felt energy, I felt amazing. And so for me, I think that there's a place and a time for procrastination. I think a lot of you guys plan so much that nothing ever gets done. And so I would say stop planning, figure out the least possible time it's gonna take to do something, set a launch date and go. 'Cause when you do that, it's interesting like when we launched ClickFunnels or any of the things that we've rolled out, anything in the last, man, 12 years, of doing this, we always pick a date like this is our launch date and then for us we like send out packages to our venture partners. We're like letting the world know so that way that date is like hard-coded like you can't change it even if you wanted to, right? That's like step 1. So now that date's hard-coded and I don't push it out like 6 months, I push it out like 3 weeks so that I have this pressure, this timeline that makes me get things done. And then even with that, it's funny, we've had launches where we push things out 3 months and then like 3 weeks and then 3 days and somehow magically everything gets it's done no matter what. Okay, and I'm like, how come this one took 3 days and this one took 3 months? It's 'cause I allowed 3 months for it. Somehow you are able to fill up time with all this crap because the time is there. Again, that's that one dude's law. Some old dude, I think he's dead now. But that was his law, that however much time you have, you're gonna fill it up with crap. So if you understand how to master procrastination and use it as a tool, you can reverse engineer how much time you think it actually is gonna take, set the hard deadline, and then just do those things you have to get done. And it's funny, in every one of our launches, We get down to crunch time, it's an hour before launch, we start cutting things like, hey, well, can't get that done, can't get that done, can't get that done. Boom, and then we end up with the minimum viable product that we need to actually make money. And wow, holy cow, we actually make money. Okay, where otherwise, if I had to push that out 6 months, we'd keep adding things and changing things and tweaking things and modifying things and waiting for it to be perfect and we'd never make any money. Okay, so what I'm doing for you guys is twofold. One is I'm giving you guys the A-okay that it's okay to procrastinate. 'Cause I know that for your entire life you've been told it's a bad, evil, horrible thing. Okay, and so that's gift number one. But number 2 is you only are allowed to have that gift if you use it correctly. 'Cause if you do use it correctly, you will be able to leverage it to get so much more stuff done. In fact, one of my major projects for my personal self is to start mastering procrastination on a daily basis. Right now I go into the office and I work 8 hours a day 'cause that's how people do it, right? And you go in there and you work all day. And I just do that because, you know, and it's funny 'cause I always have stuff to do. I never run out. I'm not like the typical, Anyway, I won't make fun of employees, but typical employees who like come in, they work, they hang out, they talk. Like not for me, I'm like the second I walk in the door to the second I like am out, like it's hardcore 100% the entire time, right? I'm filling up my time. But what's interesting is that like, I fill up that time because the time's there. For example, today my flight leaves in 6 hours. I'm heading to the office, 10 o'clock, 11, 12, 1. I've got 2 hours and I've got a 30-minute call with our coaching clients right after. So I got 2 and a half hours. In the next 2 and a half hours, I will get done as much if not more than I would in a typical 8-hour day, right? And so for me, I'm thinking like, how do I start mastering this procrastination better? Like, what if instead of working 8-hour days, instead of coming in at 9 in the morning, what if I came in at 3 o'clock in the afternoon? I still leave the exact same time, but well, magically I've got less time, so therefore I get the exact same amount of stuff done. It's really weird how that works. So I hope that helps. I hope that helps you see my mindset and how things work. And for those of you guys who are planners, those of you guys who were probably A students in school who would study for tests for months on end, this is probably gonna like make you feel really anxious and nervous and you're gonna hate it. But for those of you guys who are entrepreneurs, who are the B and C and maybe D students, or some of you guys probably didn't even go, this will probably be a gift in thinking like, wow, like this is actually, it's actually okay to procrastinate, especially when I use it as a superpower. There is a right way and a wrong way to do it. Now procrastinating just to like push things off till mañana and then keep pushing it forever is not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about setting a hard date, and then procrastinating things so that you can just get the most out of every single hour. So that's the game plan. So I am getting in the office, 2 hours to rock and roll. When that's done, I got 30 minutes to do my call, head home, and then I will start my pack. 30 minutes after my pack is done, my kids will be home and I will play with my kids one last time before I jump on the plane. And that, my friends, is the right way to procrastinate. Alright, hope you guys have an amazing day. I'm gonna be broadcasting you guys from around the world over the next week. I'll say hi from New Zealand, from Australia, and Phoenix. I know that's not very exotic, but that's the last place my trip takes me this week. Then it'll be fun. I should be on Periscope. I should be on podcasts. I'm gonna be having some fun with you guys, showing you guys the world. Tune in, and I will talk to you guys all again soon. Thanks, everybody.