Procrastination Sucks... Overcome it!

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Hello and welcome to Shedding the Bitch Radio, where you can discuss, debate, and get advice on how to discover and shed the bitches of fear, insecurity, self-doubt, and negative mindsets so you can realize your dreams and life purpose and create and accelerate the riches you want in life. Join us here live every Tuesday at noon Eastern and dialogue with us at 818-572-2910. You can also chat with us at BlogTalkRadio.com/SheddingtheBitch. The bitch, or share your stories on our website at sheddingthebitch.com. Whatever the bitch is that's holding you back from living your life to the fullest, it's not worth giving up the riches in life that you deserve. So call in now and let Bernadette Boas know what's holding you back. 818-572-2910. Good day, good day, good day everyone. How are you on this beautiful beautiful Tuesday. It is absolutely gorgeous here in Atlanta, and I was just sharing with Deborah before we got on that I have, I have one of Coco's friends over, Jasper, a big-ass Rhodesian Ridgeback. They're beautiful, and he is too. Basically, he's like sitting and spread across the entire couch here in my studio. So let's just hope they, they keep their quiet, they keep their quiet. But all is good here. I hope it is, um, I hope it is for you. Uh, there's really not much going on, which is really, really nice. Uh, it is Masters Week, so I am a I am a PGA, I'll say. Don't watch a lot of ladies' golf, but I love watching the PGA men's golf and the Masters. You know, everybody knows the Masters is just that all-inspiring tournament throughout the year, and the course down here, right here in Augusta, Georgia, is absolutely stunning. I had the pleasure and the honor to be able to go gosh, back like a decade or more ago. Uh, let's see what else. Um, the sun is shining, the air is clean of all that pollen that whipped through here over the last several weeks, and as you can tell, my voice is back, my chest is clear. I am feeling great! And then all of a sudden someone reminded me that taxes are due next week. So that's what kind of provoked me to, uh, have this discussion today regarding procrastination. Now fortunately, I have an accountant and a friend— she's a friend as well and a colleague of 10+ years— that keeps me in line and on time when it comes to all my taxes. And things. But I started getting kind of— not bombarded, but I started getting all this chatter around the fact that, oh my God, I didn't realize it was almost like the 8th or the 9th of the month and taxes are due next week. And, and I'm like, I understand. I can understand. It's one of those things that everyone, you know, kind of dreads and, and, um, procrastinates on. And that's what brought us to today's program regarding procrastination. But I will just kind of just start with a public announcement regarding your taxes and whatnot. You can always— and I happened to be watching some news shows this morning, and so they wanted to take the fear and the panic away from people in regards to the tax deadline. And yes, indeed, taxes are due on the 15th. Now, do know that you can request and submit request for delay for a postponement of like 6 months. However, they also made sure it was reminded that though you delay submitting your actual tax forms, you still are liable to get your taxes in on time, and that's around, you know, that's what the 15th of the month. And now from what I saw this morning, it's— and I'm not a tax accountant, and I don't want to pretend that I am. I just will share with you what I made made note of this morning, and they say that it's 90% of what you believe your liability is, is what you have to pay, and you have to pay it on time. You don't get that 6-month delay to pay your taxes, you just get it to submit your, your paperwork. So on that note, that's what made me kind of think over the last 4 or 5 days that a discussion regarding procrastinate— procrastination might be good. Since the beginning of the year, we have been talking about things such as getting stuck, getting over making excuses on a regular basis, you know, really trying to get out of your head and make sure you have goals. But— and some of that did touch on the elements of procrastination and what causes it and the symptoms of it. But I thought today we'd specifically would focus on it and get you some tips and advice that you can use should you be one of those, and it might be, and, you know, toward taxes and toward that deadline and toward wanting to pay the feds, the man, and just kind of not, you know, wanting to confront what that liability might be and/or it's just such a pain in the ass sometimes to do taxes. So you just avoid it, you hide from it, you ignore it, and you just simply, you know, have no desire to have to sit down and spend, you know, hours if not days working on it, whatever the case might be. So that's what we're going to talk about today. But be sure, before we jump into that conversation, be sure to go out to, you can go to shedinthebitch.com, Scroll down, you'll see a radio channel link there, and we have all of our past episodes up on our website. You can always go to iTunes and download and stream the podcast there through iTunes. So be sure to do that. And of course, you can come directly to, directly to blogtalkradio.com/sheddingthebitchradio, and you can find, you know, a specific episode there. And today's show, if you go there, you can even scroll down and go into the chat room, and should you want to ask a question, share your story, or, you know, ask for advice on a challenge you might be having, specifically around procrastination, but if not, if it's something else, I'm here with an open ear and wanting to make sure that you're getting the tips and advice that you need. In order to move forward. All right? So there's a lot of ways to interact with the Shedding the Bitch community. And of course, you can call directly, 1-818-572-2910, or you can go to our Facebook and Twitter Shedding the Bitch pages and make comments, share information, share your own tips, and/or pose your question, story, or challenge that you might be dealing with. Alright, so let's see, what else? I don't want to procrastinate and delay the conversation, but I do want to make sure that we cover all of our bases. We'll take a quick break. I'll tell you what, we'll take a quick break. It's not a delay, it's not a postponement, and then we'll come back. I'm actually going to start off with what is procrastination. And where does it really come from, and then we'll dive into specific tips and strategies and techniques that you can use in order to, if not totally eliminate it from your world, at least minimize, minimize the procrastination and/or even the impact that it has on you because it can be detrimental. It could be dangerous. It could be life-threatening. And we'll talk about all of that when we get back. We'll be right back.

You are listening to Shedding the Bitch Radio with Bernadette Boas. We are inspiring individuals around the globe to discover, confront, and shed their bitches of fear, insecurity, and negativity so they can create the riches in their career, business, and life they deserve. Be sure to check out Bernadette's book, Shedding the Corporate Bitch: Shifting from Bitch to Rich in Life and Business. Available on Amazon and sheddingthebitch.com. We also want to thank our sponsors: North Georgia Tax Solutions, who offers a broad range of tax services for small to corporate size clients. Go to ngtaxsolutions.com to learn more. And Parker House Virtual Services, who provides virtual assistance and social media support for small to medium size businesses. Email deborahparker@parkerhouseservices.com deborahparker.va@gmail.com for more information. To become a sponsor or advertiser on our program, email us at mediarelations@sheddingthebitch.com. Shedding the Bitch Radio airs every Tuesday at noon Eastern time. Be sure to go to blogtalkradio.com/sheddingthebitchradio and follow the program for all of the updates and announcements of our guests and show topics. Now let's return to Bernadette and Shedding the Bitch Radio.

Welcome back everyone. Today we are talking procrastination. So start thinking about it. What areas of your life do you procrastinate? Is it at home with the chores, with the kids, with the bills, with the grocery shopping? Is it at work, maybe with needing to turn in your expenses or finish a project or write up reports? Could it be in your own business when it comes to focus on your taxes, which we talked about, focusing on your financials? Maybe you're hesitant in picking up that phone and making cold calls or even warm calls or just lead generation or sales of any kind. There's many, many, many, many forms or places in our world that we tend to procrastinate on. But let's first peel it back a bit and simply define, well, what is procrastination? And the Wikipedia definition or the dictionary.com definition is really simple. It's the action of delaying or postponing something. And yet, you know, that's so simplistic, and if you really think about it in reality, it's avoiding, it's hiding, it's lack of willpower, it's lack of self-control. It comes in a lot more emotional states of being than just delaying or postponing. Obviously, that is the outcome of it, is that you're, you know, delaying something or postponing doing something, but it's really coming from a much deeper place, and it's a lot more complex and a lot more involved than just that you delayed something or postponed something. And more importantly, and this is what most people don't address or think about, You know, there are people that are just kind of always running late, and running late in the sense of procrastinating or delaying. But even those people that run late and they show up late to a meeting or to a date or to a social, whatever the case might be, they're actually dealing with forms of procrastination. They're delaying or postponing, you know, getting dressed, getting out the door, dealing with the kids, whatever the case might be. But what I have found when it comes to working with majority, if not all of my clients, and myself when it comes to digging into what really is going on between their ears, it's a lot more emotional. You could be the type of person who is rarely, you know, late or rarely delayed or rarely postponing things or avoiding things or hiding from things. Excuse me, or afraid of things. But yet, all of a sudden, you know, the next morning you wake up and you're just, you know, you're tired, you're drained, you're stressed, you're sad, you know, a number of emotions will then start to impact your norm and therefore could create procrastination. And so it's just a matter of if it is an ongoing type of habit, I'll call it, if you want to call procrastination a habit. Some people could look at it that way because they are consistently, constantly postponing or delaying things. But it could also just be kind of a one-off, temporary, provoked by uncontrollable circumstances. And yet, especially for the people that are always wanting to be in control and always are, you know, on time and always are dealing with things right away, that can be very unsettling. It could be very, very unsettling. And for the person who's constantly doing it, they're, they're most likely always living in a state of havoc. And when they all of a sudden start addressing it and start finding, you know, ways and strategies and tips and techniques for— and tools for dealing with it, they are profoundly transformed. I mean, profoundly transformed. And most of the time what I'll hear is, oh my gosh, if I had known, you know, that this is what my life could look like by just simply kind of dealing with these things and, and not delaying and not postponing and not avoiding and not hiding and not, you know, being afraid of confrontation and, and whatnot. So you definitely want to be thinking about what the emotional state is and how you handle various emotional, um, events in your life, because then you can either immediately see that you're going down that path and that's going to cause a lot of the, you know, angst of procrastination or even being stuck. And, uh, you know, being stuck and procrastinating are, you know, uh, elements of the same thing but they're different. Um, and/or you could sit there and you can, um, kind of be blind or, or ignore it and continue to avoid and therefore procrastination kind of sucks you into this vacuum of just havoc on a day-in, day-out basis. You might— I often have clients that will say to me, "Well, I love living under stress. I love living under chaos and living in it and whatnot." And I'll be honest with you, I'm one of those people. I love and I work really at a high level when I am under stress and when I'm under pressure, when I have a deadline. But that doesn't necessarily— it doesn't come from the fact that I'm procrastinating or avoiding something. It just even comes from just the fact that someone piles on a bunch of stuff to me, and I am very sharp and very on top of everything when that happens. But at times I just want to be sure that, as you should, that where your state of being is coming from, and that's what, you know, basically we want to talk about today. And we want to really consider the fact that it's coming from just a temporary, out of control— out of your control, that is— ad hoc, improvised type of situation, as opposed to just day in, day out, this is the way your life works, and we definitely want you to kind of identify and acknowledge that and confront that self-awareness. Remember, everything's self-awareness. So then you can find things to get your life more in order. But we talked about some of those things that people delay on. Right now there are a lot of people, according to my accountant, delaying on their taxes, um, you know, big projects, their studies, whether that's, you know, high school, college, even masters and MBAs and whatnot. Simple things— laundry, chores, cleaning, mail, bills, phone calls, even their diet, going to the doctors, taking care of themselves health-wise, you know, people tend to procrastinate with, let alone when it comes to conflict or confrontation or just making hard decisions. You know, we all want to put those things kind of on the back burner and not have to think about it until we absolutely have to think about it. But what I would say to all of those things, as simple as doing the laundry to the difficult things of dealing with conflict or making, you know, really big decisions, is the more you avoid it and hide from it and delay it and postpone addressing it,, the more just havoc you're creating for yourself, as opposed to when you take control and when you actually kind of look at it, deal with it, or complete it, and then you're free of it, and how liberating that is. So what I want you to really focus on is what are the results, what is the impact of you procrastinating and really understanding that. So that's our rich question, your rich question for today is, of course, you know, I would love you to think about and be honest about what areas of your life you do procrastinate, but the bigger question is and what you need to become really, really aware and honest about is what is the impact of delaying, of avoiding, of hiding from things that it is having on your life. Because if you find that that impact is big enough and important enough and hurtful enough and painful enough and sad enough and depressing enough for you to be like, why would I put myself into a situation that's gonna— I know is gonna create that emotional or, or literal response, then you might say to yourself, I'm not going to do that. I'm going to take control and I'm going to deal with it right now. And we'll share and talk about tips and techniques and tools you could be using in order to do that. But your rich question: What is the impact your procrastination has had on your life? So pick 1 to 3 things that you tend to put off, delay, avoid, Pick those things and then really think about, okay, you know, something as simple as the laundry may not seem like a big deal if you put it off, but if the impact is, well, then you have nothing to wear, your kids have nothing to wear, and that's not really the emotional, er, that we're looking for. What is, is, well, all of a sudden, and I've done this too often, quite honestly. All of a sudden it's, okay, wait, wait, wait, wait, not only do I have nothing to wear, now I have to look like crap when I go somewhere, or I can't wear that specific thing that I wanted to wear, and therefore, you know, what I'm feeling is just that I'm going underdressed or I'm not as, you know, pretty or cute as I wanted to be, or that I'm not going to be, you know, I'm not going to feel like I fit in because maybe I had an underdress or overdress. Because of what's left after not getting to something as simple as the laundry. Your kids, you know, if it's not about you, maybe it's about somebody else. Your kids will all of a sudden have to wear something dirty or something that they don't want to wear to school, and maybe they get, you know, they're all upset about it because they don't look cute, but maybe at the same time, you know, the bigger issue is they, you know, get bullied at school. So what we want to do, what you want to do, is really get down to the emotional impact of what it means if you don't get your bills paid, if you don't get your taxes, you know, done in a calm, patient, you know, a place where you can breathe. If you don't deal with that conflict, if you don't, you know, get your health issues, you know, your health issues, you don't get those addressed, you put it off, you put it off, you put it off, what is the impact? Well, the impact, you know, might be as easy as, well, I just have to get— have a heart, or for instance, dentist. I've been putting off dentist. And that's a different story for another day, but I had been putting off dentist. And, you know, now it's going to be, you know, I'm going to have a harder cleaning and I hate, hate, hate the dentist, but I've always up until this past like 9 months, 12 months, I've always religiously gone to the dentist. Because I hate it so much, I do it. Because I hate it so much, I make sure I do it because I don't want a harder visit than I already have, you know, going to the dentist. And this past 9 or 12 months, I've kind of postponed and delayed, and now I'm, you know, going, but I know it's going to be a harder cleaning. It's going to be a harder appointment than it is. So you want to get done, and what does that really mean? Well, it's going to be harder, so I'm going to be sitting there with my— the emotional, I'm trying to get to the emotional. I'm going to be sitting there with my hands tightly wrapped around that chair because I can't stand the sound of scraping, and I can't stand the sounds of the drill, and I'm scared that they're all of a sudden going to hit a nerve or whatever the case might be. So you want to get down to that emotional core. It's not just about, "Well, I'm late on my taxes. I have to pay a fee." Paying a fee may, you know, be simple for some, and for others it's, "Oh my God, I don't even have that fee," you know, and, "Where am I going to find that money?" And it just creates more and more, you know, havoc. So identify, you know, those 1 to 3 things, but really look at what is the impact of delaying or procrastinating on those things so you get down to that emotional response because that's what we're going to try to avoid is by getting under control and getting, you know, ahead of yourself and getting proactive versus reactive, will then minimize the stress and the strain and allow you to take control in, you know, in your situations and in your life. And that's really what it comes down to is procrastination is really about a lack of control, a lack of self-control, and what we want to do is no, we want to own it and we want to take control of it. Okay. So one other thing I just want to mention too is there are certainly all those emotional cores, but bottom line too is a lot of people procrastinate simply because they aren't invested. They don't have a passion toward whatever that is. So that might sound silly because when we talk about things such as laundry or chores or paying the bills, who could be passionate about those things? Well, I'm going to tell you that you can be, as silly as that sounds. And you're avoiding it and you're hiding from it and you're delaying doing things because you're not feeling good toward it. You're not seeing the value and the benefit and, and the investment in you that the, the most simplest task brings to you. So let me kind of break that down a little bit. First off, I don't mind doing laundry at all. I wouldn't say I love doing laundry, but I love vacuuming. So I'm going to make these things really simple. I love vacuuming. It's just very therapeutic for me. Laundry I don't mind at all, even the fact that many of you may know Even the fact that I have to go to a laundromat to clean or do my laundry. I don't have a washer/dryer in my guest house where I live, and that's by choice when I moved into my guest house from my main house. So I kind of act as if I live in New York or a big city where, you know, a lot of old apartments don't have laundromats.— or laundry facilities, so I go to the laundromat. And I actually look forward to doing my laundry and going to the laundromat. And you know why? Because it allows me to get out of my space, out of my, you know, out of my environment that I can tend to get very comfortable and very lazy at times while at the same time I can get very energized but it kind of allows me to get into a new space. It's also an hour or sometimes longer where I can just be with myself. I can turn off my phone. I can just kind of like use it as a great excuse to turn off the world, and I can just kind of sit in my car as it's going on. I can go down and get a cup of coffee. I can go and get some food shopping done. And I don't mind it at all. So you want to also find passion in things. I actually love now, this first year in a very long time, I love doing my bills. I love, like, having to sit down, go through my bills, do my budget every day. I go through my daily budget. We'll talk about that being a tip and a tool you could be using, but I love it because I've, you know, spent a lot of time over the last 8 years struggling there, and now I feel really good about it, so I actually look forward to, you know, kind of being able to write that check, paying that bill, putting some in savings, putting some in, you know, investments, because it's been such a long time where I haven't been able to. So I feel really good about it. So we want to find the passion as well in these tasks that you may be avoiding and delaying and postponing and addressing. And that's the whole key with getting over procrastination is finding that little golden nugget of passion, nugget of interest, nugget of investment in that most mundane or hard or difficult or painful thing so you can then immediately take the control and get it addressed. Alright, so now that we've gotten there, we're going to take a quick break. When we get back, I'm going to dive into a whole slew of tips and strategies and tools you could be using in order for you to get over delaying and avoiding and to shed the procrastination bitch. We'll be right back.

You are listening to Shedding the Bitch Radio with Bernadette Boas. We are inspiring individuals around the globe to discover, confront, and shed their bitches fear, insecurity, and negativity so they can create the riches in their career, business, and life they deserve. Be sure to check out Bernadette Boas' book, Shedding the Corporate Bitch: Shifting from Bitch to Rich in Life and Business, available on Amazon and sheddingthebitch.com. We also want to thank our sponsors, North Georgia Tax Solutions, who offers a broad range of tax services for small to corporate-sized clients. Go to NGTaxSolutions.com to learn more. And Parker House Virtual Services, who provides virtual assistance and social media support for small to medium-sized businesses. Email Deborah Parker at deborahparker.va@gmail.com for more information. To become a sponsor or advertiser on our program, email us at MediaRelations@Virginia.gov. At sheddingthebitch.com. Shedding the Bitch Radio airs every Tuesday at noon Eastern time. Be sure to go to blogtalkradio.com/sheddingthebitchradio and follow the program for all of the updates and announcements of our guests and show topics. Now let's return to Bernadette and Shedding the Bitch Radio.

Welcome back, everyone. We are talking about overcoming procrastination. How can you get even more productive, more effective, more happy in your life because of the fact that you're no longer procrastinating? Now, I want to preface that by saying this is, again, when you, you know, when you wake up one morning and you had your plan already laid out the night before, because you know I talk about that a lot and I'm going to talk about it again today, But all of a sudden you had your plan laid out, you had your idea in mind, you went to bed, you affirmed, you know, over and over again as you were drifting off to sleep how great of a day you were going to have and how successful you were going to be, and then you get up in the morning and all shit hits the fan and your plan goes right out the window, your mood goes right out the window, your emotional state goes right out the window. And the next thing you know, you're finding yourself in this state of potential delay and avoidance and, and postponement and whatnot. I want you to first be okay with that, and I want you to first kind of let yourself go through that, if that's what it is that is going to kind of help you ground yourself. Yes, you know, gurus and likes of me or anybody else can, you know, and, you know, maybe your own coach if you have one and you get on the phone with them that same day, they can certainly try, you know, tell you to, you know, kind of buck up and just, you know, put your head down and focus and get on with it. And sometimes you just have to kind of flip them the finger and just be like, Nope, I can't do it. I'm just— my head's not there, and I just need to give myself this time. All of that is okay. The challenge and the issue and the impact comes when all of a sudden that drags out for a significant— I'll call it a significant period of time, and/or that all of a sudden you develop a new mindset towards things. So you go from one way of being, you know, productive and proactive and timely to when you start kind of falling off. Those— that's where we want to pay attention to, and we want to take control of it, and we want to find the things, the people, the resources needed in order to flip it on its head, because that can only drag you down into a, you know, into a bottomless pit if you don't fight to kind of lift your head up and bring yourself back. Because procrastination can be very detrimental, like we talked about. It can impact your finances, it can impact your health, it can impact your livelihood, it can impact your family and friends and community. It can impact your career by simply putting things off, avoiding things. So let me give you an idea before we get into all the tips, and I'll be just straight out honest and direct with you. So several years back, 10 years, 10 years back, 11 years back, um, with the help of some experts, so-called, uh, I made some financial decisions that I thought were smart, that I thought were going to work for me, that I thought were going to be beneficial to my new venture of leaving, you know, having been fired from corporate and going out on my own. And all of a sudden, I start getting— and when you see thick letters, thick envelopes from the IRS, you know, you know, you, you start realizing that something's something's gone astray, and that's putting it lightly. Um, and I just kind of took them, and I knew I was filing my taxes on a regular basis, and I was doing the things that I needed to be doing and, and whatnot. So I would just kind of let these envelopes pile up and not really open them up because I'm like, what could it be that they're not calling me? And I've never dealt with the IRS before. Well, I actually— I take that back, and that's where the, the fear comes from.— but very quickly, I dealt with the IRS when I was like 20, 21. I was in college. I made too much money while I was in college, and my accountant, my father's accountant, actually screwed up my tax— my taxes that were submitted. I was making too much money for being— claiming being a student or whatnot, and then the next thing I know, I owe all this money. So I had a fear I no longer do, but I had a fear for decades from the IRS. So when these envelopes started coming, one, I did think that nothing was happening, you know, nothing could be going on because, you know, my accountant's handling everything and, you know, I did everything on the up and up and logical and good business decisions. And so, but then my fear started creeping in and I started saying, hmm, these things are showing up more frequently, what the heck could it be? And I started then totally avoiding and totally hiding from the fact that these envelopes were getting— were thin, then they were getting bigger, and then they were thin again. And, um, and I avoided it for a long period of time. By the time I opened it up— and I'm going to tell you, it was like 9 or 10 months that I— when I finally opened it up a bunch of years ago, I owed the IRS— according to the IRS, I owe the IRS like $89,000. And I just stood in my— and I was living in my main house at the time— and I just was standing in my main house living room, and I have a glass— a glass— a big glass cocktail table. And I was scared to death that I was about to pass out and fall on top of that coffee table and just smash it to smithereens, and I'd be all cut up and maybe even kill myself because I fell through this glass. That— I mean, I— everything went through my, my head about the fear of the IRS coming, throwing all my stuff out on the street, you know, putting me in jail, whatever the case might be. And I even then avoided and kind of delayed getting to my accountant to go, what the hell, like, what, what's this all about? And so the next thing you know, when I— by the time that I did, this was what happened. So I finally decided to get control, everything we're talking about today, and I picked up the phone and called her. And I'll never forget, I was sitting at my dining room table, and as I'm like bawling my eyes out and I'm telling her like, oh my God, they're gonna come and throw me out of my house and, you know, lock the doors and whatnot, she starts laughing hysterically. And I'm just like, what the hell? And she's like, Bernadette, obviously there's a mistake, you know, because if you owed $80,000 in taxes, I mean, you know, years ago maybe, but at this point in time in my life, she's like, if you made $8,000 in taxes, you would be making a boatload of money, you know, in your business, and you're not. So obviously there's a mistake. I just need to get on the phone and figure out what's going on. And so I You know, she did, and it wasn't anywhere close to that. Now, I did have a tax issue that my previous accountant obviously just screwed up. However, it was nothing, nothing compared to that. So my reason why I tell you that story and take up this time— but the reason why I tell you this story is, you know, we tend to procrastinate, bottom line, because of fear, fear of something. It doesn't matter what it is. It could be just fear of just not, you know, wanting— you know, how can you be fearful of laundry? Well, you know, you really can't be fearful of laundry, but there's just some sort of emotional response that's causing you to delay, and I want you to just say, you know what, it's never as bad as you think that it is. Just get it done. So some tips for you to do that is first going back to what we talked about before the last break. Find the passion in whatever it is that you have to do. And I don't care if it's laundry or it's cleaning the house or it's paying your bills or it's doing that project at work or doing a spreadsheet or confronting a friend that you're having a conflict or an issue with or calling the IRS because of your taxes. Whatever it is, find the passion in it. And what I mean by that is, you know, it's never as bad as it is. Once you address it. So, and once you do it, and once you get it out of the way and you don't have it, you know, burdening yourself anymore, even if it's— that's the passion, is that you're now free to do something else, becomes the passion for getting, you know, the most mundane task done. Then find that passion, call it whatever you want to call it. Find the benefit, call it— find the value, find the fun. Whatever it is. If that doesn't work for you, then you could do the thing that any coach, any expert, any guru, even your best friend would tell you, and that's just if you don't want to get it done, if it's hard to get done, if you don't like doing it, then do it first. Make it the first thing that you do so you then kind of get it done and get it, get moved on. Apart from whatever that task is, whether it's a hard task or just a boring task or just something you don't want to do, then plan to get it done first before anything else. If you need to, then make your list, you know, of the things that you need to get done. Do the easy things first before, you know, you do that task if that kind of gives you the momentum and the energy to move forward and get that checklist, you know, taken care of. However, whatever form, whatever order, whatever priority you want to put it in, sometimes priority is not the most important. Sometimes it is the hardest or the easiest. Sometimes it is the things that will cause you to delay or the things that won't. Whatever that order of priority is, just do that and then just, just start ticking off those lists. Now a lot of times what I work with my clients on is not only give it, you know, kind of setting rewards for any task or every anything that they need to be doing, but also establishing a consequence for it. So rewards and consequences, and I talk a lot about this in some other work that I do because most people just put out an award, reward for themselves of, you know, what is it that they're going to reward themselves for should they, you know, accomplish something or do something. But I also find it very valuable for those certain personality types to also put a consequence. So if you, you know, put out there that you have a goal of dieting, your reward might be a dress, but your consequence might be the fact that if you didn't meet your weekly Weight Watchers goal, you know, you can't have any desserts or you can't do your splurge day or you can't, you know, buy anything, buy anything new when it comes to like garments, for instance, you know, your wardrobe. If it's money, you know, money was your, was a goal that you had. I have a budgeting goal. I want to do my budget every day and I do it paper and pen, not on a tool, just because that's just the way I operate. And so what I do is for every day that I do my budget, I reward myself $5. And I, you know, and I get myself— and I give myself at the end of the week whatever that total is of how many days that I did my budget and I made sure I recognized all my expenses, the good ones and the bad ones, and so forth and so on. And my consequence is that I can't reward myself any additional monies or savings or anything if I didn't do my— my budget for that particular day, and that bugs the living daylights out of me. Bugs the living daylights out of me. I used to hate doing my budget, especially on a daily basis, and now I so look forward to it because I want to get that reward, and I'm mad at myself when I can't give myself that reward and I have to consequent myself. So find both rewards and consequences for things. Now So a number one thing to do to help you kind of improve your procrastination mode of operation is we often tend to have our goals and therefore our rewards, if not our consequences as well, too far out. And we need them to be more immediate. We're immediate gratifiers. We want to be gratified immediately. We don't want to be consequented immediately, but we want to be gratified immediately. So what you need to pay attention to is that if it is, you know, if you don't want to wait until the end of the month, if you don't want to wait for 3 months, if you don't want to wait for 6 months to reward yourself for doing that thing that you needed to be doing, if you didn't want to wait until, you know, the end of the week even to, you know, be able to wear that shirt that's been sitting in the laundry, well then, you know, tell yourself that you that you need to bring that forward and, you know, if your larger day was Saturday, you know, you do it Monday. So if you have these, if you also have these tasks or activities that are like a week out, move them forward to where they're, you know, today or tomorrow. If they're, you know, 3 months out, if that goal is 3 months out, move it more forward. Move the reward and consequence more forward. If it gets you moving toward what you need to do. If you're writing a book and you're, you know, people— I deal with this a lot— people, you know, sit there and they say they want to write a book and they set the goal for 6 months from now. And yes, I'll be there oftentimes from an accountability perspective, but for those I'm not, the next thing you know, 3 months late, you know, 3 months into the 6 months, they still haven't started working on it and/or they're still playing around with their outline because the emotional trigger is the fact that they're scared that they don't have anything to say and they shouldn't be writing a book, so they're delaying and avoiding and doing all those things. And then the next thing you know, 6 months comes around and they don't have their book. They're not finished. Well, if that's the case, then move everything forward. Set your deadline to be 3 months from now you want the book written, therefore the outline has to be written by the end of this week. Even though you know that if you don't hit that 3 months, you'll take it 6 months, but then move everything forward and make it more immediate so you're gratified more immediately. So any of your tasks and activities that you have, whether it's you have to get it done by the end of every day or whether you have to get it done by the end of the week, all can be moved forward. Even that end of day, do it first thing in the morning. Versus telling yourself end of day, because most likely if it's end of day, you're waiting until the end of day to get it done. I've been loving the work I've been doing on my script, and I brought on a coach to work with me. He's actually a screenwriter, and I brought him on to be there with me. So we meet 3 times a week, and so every Monday after we get done between 1 and 3, we have our session, I then have kind of work to do until we meet again on Wednesday at 1:00. Well, I don't wait anymore. I used to when it came to my writing and I was writing by myself. I would, you know, I now have that assignment, so to speak, those numbers of pages or whatever the case might be, and I just stay right there following, hanging up the phone, and I just work on it. Right then and there because I really don't want to be doing it Wednesday morning anymore. I want to be giving myself the opportunity, you know, to have Wednesday morning off because I'm working so much. So I go and play pickleball or just, you know, kind of hang out with, with my dog or I work on other things and I work on other projects. So find ways that you can make things more immediate and that would be a great way to, to prevent you procrastinating on things. Excuse me. Let's see, another tip and another thing that you could do is apart from finding the passion in something, so that could be finding, you know, the fun in whatever, you know, task or activity it is. When you're about to go do something or you need to do something, Even put the fun in it, and what I mean by that is every, you know, they call it bundling sometimes. Put two things together that will then make that activity or task that you really don't want to be doing more fun. So it's easy to kind of say, okay, so when you exercise, find some really fun music that you could be listening to. When you, you know, have to want to go on a walk but you don't, you've been procrastinating going on that 5-mile walk, versus that half a mile walk, well, find a, you know, find a whole playlist that would, you know, cover that 5 miles that you'll really enjoy and you won't even pay attention to the fact that you're going 5 miles. When it comes to your diet, get some fun exercise in there. Don't just do the normal stuff. Add some fun to it. I bought this, um, I don't even know what it's called, but I bought this program. It's a downloadable program.— and it's a— oh, it's called Figure 8. So it's more so dancing. I mean, I'm kind of a hardcore exerciser. I like to do weights. I like to do CrossFit. I like to do those hardcore type of things, but sometimes I just am exhausted by that and I avoid it. So I said to myself, no, I need something fun and I don't want to do Zumba. It kind of busted up my knee., but I want to do some other things fun, so I came across this Figure 8 exercise program, and that is, it's a lot of fun. When it comes to your chores, you could, you know, put a headphone on, you could watch a movie if you're doing things inside the house, you can, you know, you can go off and pay your bills while you're having lunch, you know, for yourself, and you're treating yourself to lunch or a pedicure or sitting on the beach or sitting at the park. You bring your bills, you bring whatever it is that you have to work on. So kind of add things to your task that would bring more fun to it so then you won't avoid it or delay it or postpone it. All right, does that make sense? And of course, you know, some basic things would be, you know, get that workout buddy, get that writing buddy, get that Lead Generation Buddy. I did this one time and it worked really well. For those of you who work in a business for yourself, and of course you know that you have to sell, market, do all the things that you have to do, and most people do not like to sell. And what I did for those years that I didn't like to sell— and trust me, it was a lot longer than people think because, you know, they think, "Oh, you must be a great salesperson, you're so outgoing and so extroverted." and trust me when I say, talk about avoiding. I hate rejection, and that, you know, the word no was just terrifying to me and heartbreaking to me. So I would put it off every chance I got, and then I came across a friend mentor of mine, and he was just the opposite. He loved it. He loved getting nos because then, you know, it kind of gave him more information and different information for him to then go and try to get that yes. And it was a challenge for him, a good challenge for him, to work through those nos toward that yes. And so the two of us then partnered together. I then said to him, well, you know, and this was a number of years ago, could you, you know, could the two of us kind of mentor support each other and be accountability partners with each other? And even, you know, if especially when we're making phone calls and/or using business cards to write you know, some notes out to people, emails. Can we do that together, like literally in the same room? And we would, and that kind of allowed me and gave me, you know, kind of that comfort level to then say, I can't continue putting this off. Mondays is my day of, you know, lead generation, and it worked beautifully. So find that person, find, you know, that fun and/or even that companion that could be, supporting you in doing those things that you would typically put off and avoid. When it comes to those, you know, bills and those situations where you have to get on the phone, for instance, with the IRS or get on the phone with a bill collector or whatever the case might be, your landlord, your mortgage, you know, house, I am just proof in the pudding to tell you because now I don't have any procrastination in this area at all. I am just here to tell you that as fearful and ugly and, and, you know, and, um, uh, stressful as that appears, that it appears that, you know, those landlords, those tax collectors, those bill collectors, whatever, are going to be, um, you know, horrific to deal with. I'm here to tell you that, you know, I have only found great support and great what's the word, I'll call it coaching. But, you know, they have been more, you know, supportive in advice and ideas and strategies for dealing with situations than I would have ever imagined. And so I would just, you know, kind of suggest to you that those difficult phone calls are not as difficult as you're making them out to be, you know, between your two ears. So just, you know, as opposed to avoiding and not confronting them, just open up those envelopes, get on the phone and make those phone calls. Know that everyone deals with it at some point in their life unless we're very, very blessed with, you know, stability, financial stability. But, you know, know that people are actually there to help you. They're not there to, you know, come and throw everything of your belongings out on the street and shut the door on you. So just face them, and trust me when I say that fear— F-E-A-R, false evidence appearing real— will prove itself out. Let's see, where are we from a time perspective? Because we're just going to keep going and finish up these tips and pieces of advice for you. One other thing, now this is kind of more of a strategy and a tool to use. When people tend to avoid or postpone things, it's also because of the fact that they allow distractions and interruptions to plague them. You know, it's not necessarily that they see something that has to be done and they push it aside. Of course, that's what we are talking about in that certainly one of those things. But it's also— they use excuses like social media, eating, you know, food, just any number of— their dog— as a way of procrastinating, avoiding, or delaying working on something. So just know that there are definitely things that you could be doing in order to prevent that. We talked last week about, you know, clearing off your desk, for instance, whether you're at work or in your home office. You know, making sure that your workspace, if it's a work thing that you're delaying on, is clear of distract— you know, is clear of things that— of clutter, things that are going to clutter your mind and your workspace. But at the same time, it also goes to shutting down email, shutting down Facebook, shutting down Twitter, shutting off your phone, not— closing the door if you happen to be, you know, either at home or in the office and there's people that could be knocking on your door and wanting your attention. Just take away all of those things that could be causing you to get distracted and therefore allowing you— it's your excuse for delaying or postponing or avoiding something. Just take all the excuses away, and you know, you'll, you'll then have the clarity of mind and being and space to then take on what it is that you need to do. And then simply, you know, just do it. But just do it is, it's just too easy of a term to say when our, you know, when our bitches within, you know, our two, between our two ears are just kind of screaming havoc of wanting to delay you, postpone you, cause you stress, create havoc, and, and just, you know, kind of send you down a rabbit hole, as opposed to, you know, then clearing all that out so all you're getting into your, you know, in between your ears is, you know, affirmations and motivations and inspiration and momentum. To kind of tackle whatever it is that comes your way and take it on head-on. But some other things that you could be doing is if you are meant to work on something and you need to address something, or you need to have a hard conversation, and you feel yourself, you know, going down that abyss of delay, kind of step back, take a deep breath, just sit with it for about 2 minutes. Literally 2 minutes. Like, sit with it. Think about it. Consider it. What's the worst thing that, you know, that, you know, will happen to me if I were to go ahead and tackle the laundry, if I were to go ahead and tackle the bills, if I was to go ahead and tackle that project or that blank piece of paper or blank screen on my laptop and you have to start filling it up with words, or, you know, whatever the case might be. Just sit with it. And just tell yourself, okay, so what's going to be the real benefit that I gain as a result of going ahead and working on that, or addressing that, or paying that, whatever the case might be? And the last thing that you want to be, you know, putting in your head is a benefit, a value, an investment, a passion, a joy, you know, kind of what it— positive response will, will I experience as a result of it? And that positivity versus— will overcome— that positivity will overcome that negative that you might have put in your head. So I want you to be, I want you to be thinking about that as well. So there's a lot of reasons and a lot of feeling and a lot of emotion that goes into procrastination, and your job is to just get a hold of it, become aware of it, be honest about it, be transparent with it, and then just find the passion and the fun in it regardless of how mundane it might be, and just get it done. Because trust me when I say, and you know it, once you get it done, you just go, well, that wasn't as bad as I thought it was going today, and then you're done, and we're done. So we'll talk to you next Tuesday at noon Eastern time right here on Shedding the Bitch Radio. Take care, everybody. Thank you for listening to Shedding the Bitch Radio with Bernadette Boas. Join Bernadette every Tuesday at noon Eastern as she helps you shift your bitches to riches. And the dialogue is always going on at Sheddingthebits.com. See you next week.