Stop Procrastinating and Improve Your Mood

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Hey, my friends, it's Brendon Burchard and welcome to the Brendan Show. This is a podcast about helping you reach high performance in your life, in every area of your life. It's about staying more motivated, more confident, more disciplined and on purpose. You know, the high performance experience is really about feeling more vibrant, more connected, more excellent, more fulfilled in your life. But it's also challenging you because you and I both know it's difficult to reach those levels of high performance without support, without ongoing commitment and dedication to your own personal development. So welcome to our HPX community. Thank you for joining us here on the Brendon Show. I'm super pumped for today's episode. Before we begin, I want to let you know that we have specials right now on our HPX nutrition line. If you didn't know it, I rolled out three specific products to help you with your performance. These are three specific supplements that will really give you the edge. Now don't worry, I'm not starting an MLM or a downline. I'm not asking you to promote any of my products. And frankly, just like you, there's a lot of different companies and a lot of different products that I love and I enjoy and I'm not trying to compete with. It was specifically, I could not find three world class supplements that specifically helped me in these areas. So we've got HPX Optimize, which is a mental focus and energy product for your brain health. Then we've got Essentials, which is a functional multivitamin which we've basically enhanced for longevity, for joint health and for vitality and digestion.

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Procrastination. How big is this one? Right now you're back at work, you're back running your business. You got to get the kids to school and Suddenly you might be struggling and struggling not just like in terms of getting things done. We'll talk about procrastination. You might be struggling with your mood or you're back into the obligations of life. And that might be really strenuous on you. My very first thing I want to teach you about in overcoming procrastination is what I call pre event procrastination busting. I wish I had a Snap youp name. And as I describe it, if you guys can help me come up with a snap, your name for this, that would be awesome. But pre event Procrastination busting, here's what it means. It means that if you're ever going to overcome procrastination, you actually have to schedule it. But that's a problem, right? Because part of procrastination is you're not doing it because maybe you're fearful, you don't really want to do it. You sense it'll bring difficulty, hardship, failure, embarrassment into your life. There's something about. Something about the thing that you're not doing because you don't feel like the payoff will be immediate enough or high enough. And that's why you're not doing what you should be doing. It's lack of a connection with the payoff, right? Because if you believe there was a payoff, you would do it. If you believe there's a payoff, right away you would do it. But you're not doing it because you don't believe that the payoff is there. So let's just intellectually, philosophically talk about this before we get into practice. The philosophy is if there is something that you're procrastinating on, it's time to examine that emotionally. Why is it you keep avoiding doing that? Is it bringing some sense of hardship, struggle, fear, concern in? If so, why? What is that? Also, have you identified the payoff? A lot of people procrastinate because they don't know why they should be doing something. They're not really attached to it. They haven't got excited about, they haven't emotionally integrated the awesomeness of doing that thing. So they're putting it off because they can. There's no consequence to putting it off. So you'll see in procrastination work there's a lot of things about saying, well, set up an earlier payoff. That's a great idea. Set up a consequence if you don't do it. We'll talk about negative motivation today. That's a great idea. And yet people keep procrastinating so those are not enough. Those are great pieces of advice. I recommend that you do. But they're not enough to go to another level. The way to overcome procrastination is to schedule time to overcome procrastination. But people say but Brandon, that's part of the problem. And I said I know, but it's the way that you're thinking about scheduling time. The way I want you to think about procrastination from now on is to know that you have a safety period of time each day. That that is when you are going to deal with procrastination. I call it the pre event procrastination practice. Here's what I do. I do a 30 minute sort of thunder time, if you will. These are really bad names and labels today. This is what happens when you don't think of. What do you call that thing that you do? I mean, what is it? That thing that I do? Here's what I do before every meal. Before every meal. For me, I like to choose dinner especially. I take a 30 minute segment of time and that 30 minutes is where I purposely go in and do the things I procrastinated against. So for example, let's take tonight. Let's say if I'm going to eat dinner at 6 o' clock, at 5:30, either as the dinner is heating up in the oven or before we go out to dinner 30 minutes in advance of a meal or the preparation of a meal, I go, oh, that's my pre event time. So the event is dinner and I just block. There's 30 minutes of my time. So before I cook dinner, I better get this done. See, scheduling, it's difficult to do unless you bounce it up against something that already exists. It's called the piggyback time management program. Right? So you figure out something you're already going to do and right before you do it, before you're able to do it, that's the time to overcome procrastination. So here's my technique. Pick something that you do every day anyway. This can be before you eat a meal, before you, before you watch television, before you go to bed, before you brush your teeth and take 30 minutes. And that 30 minutes is dedicated towards doing something that you've been procrastinating on. You're gonna write that article, but you didn't get it today. Okay, before you brush your teeth, 30 minutes, go. Here's the thing though. It has to be the same event every day. So for me, every, every day before dinner, I have 30 minutes no matter what's going to go on. Oh, we're going to eat in 30 minutes. Hold on. Boom. And I do my 30 minutes procrastination. I just think, what did I procrastinate onto? You know what? I was going to read that article. Didn't do it. Read the article. Ah, you know what? I was going to outline that new course. Didn't do it. Outline the new course. You got to schedule that 30 minutes before something. So what's it going to be for you? Is it 30 minutes before you brush your teeth? Before your dinner? Before. Before you go out, before you watch television?

Before what?

Some people will say, well, Brendan, could I do it after something? Can I do it after I drop off the kids? Can I do it after this? Yes, but we've found in behavioral studies that an after piggyback event is not implemented as much as the before piggyback event. And I think you probably experienced this in your own life. If you know that you have to get something done before an event, you're more likely to do it than if you say, well, after the event. Because what happens? You say, yeah, after I watch tv, then I'll do that thing I'm procrastinating on. No, you're gonna watch five more seasons of television. Oh, but you know, after I drop the kids off. That's right. I'm supposed to do these things. No, sometimes you don't tag it on before an event. This is the pre event procrastination routine. What is it you're going to do every day to overcome procrastination? You're going to block a schedule of time. You only need 15 or 30 minutes. The big myth that we all have in our heads is that we need hours and hours to do something. The reality is we need little bits of time that we consistently do things to move our lives forward. And if you can say that from now on, I'm going to take 15 minutes, 30 minutes before X habit that I usually do during the day. Then you will start to find an unbelievable explosion in your progress in your life. See, I knew I would never deal with procrastination in my life unless I had a block time. I was supposed to do it. So I set up random block times throughout the day. I didn't do it, but once I bumped it up to dinner. Before dinner, I have 30 minutes to get stuff done. I became a SWAT team in my life. Number two book I'm reading right now and how I take notes. Book I'm reading right now is the Essential writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson, I hope you've read it or that you've read a lot of Emerson in your life. If you haven't, this will be a life changing day. He's one of the great influences of my life, One of the great influences in terms of tone, pacing and style that I learned from in studying a lot of rhetoric before I could write the motivation manifesto. Here is how I read this book and all books. I think a lot of people struggle to tactically implement or benefit from the books that they read. They read a nonfiction book and they get a lot of ideas, but they never go back to the book and do anything with it. Or as they're reading, they're not integrating the lessons. So I've set up my own sort of approach to how I read a book. And since many of you guys know I've been reading a book a week, at least, minimum for 20 years this year, this is my 20th anniversary this year of reading a book every single week. Here's what I do. I have a little code system when I'm reading and I just have these letters that I write in the margins of the book that cues me on what I should do after the reading session. And so here's what I want you to think about this first. When I go to sit down with the book, I consider a reading session. When I'm doing a reading session, I do not have my phone with me. It's very important. I have just the book and just a journal. There's no other distractions as much as possible. Not that I can always limit it with where I'm at or what's going on in my life or family. But I tried to make sure that I approach reading as enjoyment time, that I approach reading like you did. If you went to school, you went to high school or college, or you had that big paper that you'd have to go and kind of like you knew you had to get serious, so you went to the library and you boxed off the world. That's how I approach reading still to this day, even leisure reading, I approach as this is a reading session and I set a time for how much I'm going to read. So am I going to read for 15 minutes now? For 20 minutes? For an hour? And I set that timer on my phone and put the phone over in another room or somewhere away off wifi, so it's not going to buzz at me or do anything else. But I like to set a timer so I know that I have this time to read so I can really Enjoy it and know that I get to live in this time of reading. Then what I do is, as I'm reading the book, I've just got a pen and I've got my journal and I have all these codes. People have been asking my codes. I'll share them with you. If I write Q next to anything, I underline that means quote it. That means. And all these things are actionable, all these codes I have to read a book. They're all actionable. So what I do is, as I'm reading a book, I write these codes. At the end of the session, I flip back to the pages I've read and I implement any of these codes that I'm supposed to. So I never read a bunch of a book, underline it, put the book down and go off and do something else and think, oh, well, when I finish the book, then I'm going to do this.

Because how many books have you ever.

Started that you didn't finish? You got something good from it, but you put it down, you never came back to it. That's why it's very important. Always implement anything that you think about after reading, after the reading session. That's why I time my reading sessions. I say, okay, I'm going to read for 20 minutes right now. Timer goes off. Whatever I've written in the margins of my codes, I implement those right away. So here's the codes. Q is for quote. That means I'm going to open up that book again. I see, I wrote quote. Okay? I typed that quote into an Excel spreadsheet that I'll use later. And that's what you see in my Twitter feed or across the web when I'm posting other people's quotes. I get them from my reading sessions. So Q is for quote, A is for article. What this means is if I underline something and I write A next to it, it means I want to write an article based on that or I want to shoot a video on that or do a blog post on it. I just write A for article. That means that's something. That's a big concept. It means it's something that could inspire my content in the future. A lot of you ask Brendan, where do you come up with all your content? Most of my content comes from reading. So I'm reading something, I go, oh, that's a great topic. I want to write an article or do a blog post or a video on that. So that's a B is for buy. And that means maybe they recommend a book on it or they're suggesting a product, or it makes me think of something to buy. So B is for buy, S is for share. And share doesn't mean just direct quote. Share means I'm going to whatever I underline that means I thought of somebody I could share that with. One of the reasons I think my learning is accelerated over some other people's is because when I learn something profound, I. I share it. So I literally copy and paste it, or I'll type it out and I'll send that paragraph to 15 or 20 friends or 15 or 20 people in my industry say, hey, guys, I'm reading this book. Ralph Waddle Emerson's the Essential Writings. Ralph Waddle Emerson. I love this section. Check it out and I'll send it to people and inevitably they'll write back. I love this part about it. And it starts my own little discussion group around things that I find powerful. It might also be. I'm going to share that online. Okay, so. And then the last one is M. M stands for make or invent. If I'm reading something and they're discussing a problem, and I'll be like, I could solve that, or I know somebody could, and I'll write M or I. And that means make or invent a solution. Or if I come up with some amazing idea that I want to invent something that will be written there too. So those are my main codes that I use in my margins when I'm writing. Reading a book. So here's what I want you to recap. When you read a book, decide how long you're going to be reading. Have some kind of code that you can underline things and write yourself just one letter so it doesn't slow you down from the stream of thought of the book itself. And then after you finish your writing session, after your time runs out, immediately go back and implement your codes. If you want to quote it, quote it. If you want to share it, share it. If you're going to write an article on it, remind yourself and set it up in your calendar to write an article on it. But don't leave a book without the action followed up immediately. Doesn't mean you need to write the whole article on it, but put it in your calendar tomorrow morning, 30 minutes. Write this article based on this section. If you don't implement it, then what's happening is all this learning is kind of going in, all these great ideas are happening, but it keeps getting left behind, book after book after book after book.

Hey, it's Brendan. I'm bopping in here real fast for you. To urge you to go to hpxwellness.com and check out our products to help you get more of that mental focus and energy. You need to stay at your best, to deliver with excellence, to feel like vibrant again. Because I know we all struggle with mental fatigue and mental focus. We all sometimes get tired and sometimes we're worried about our overall health. And so I've created three specific products to help you with that. Go to HPX wellness.com, check out our nutrition line, and let's get you to High performance baby. HPX wellness.com.

Number three, Negative motivation. How and when to use it. First, let's talk about what negative motivation is. Think about it in this way. Consequence planning. It's what's the negative consequence that would happen if I didn't do certain activity or follow a certain habit or reach a certain goal? Right. And those are usually what it is, negative consequence that you set up. If you don't do something you're supposed to do, implement a habit or reach a goal. Those are the kind of three ways to think about those consequences. Okay?

Okay.

And there's three main negative consequences that you can set up for yourself. Three kinds of negative emotion. Number one, social embarrassment. Let's say you decide, I'm going to lose ten pounds this month. Well, how do you know if you should set up a negative motivation consequence? I always tell people, don't set any negative motivation until you've tried something with.

This positive reinforcement for yourself.

So a lot of people advise, set up a positive thing and a negative thing. I don't want a lot of negativity or a lot of pain surrounding me in my life. I want to condition myself to do things for the reason of the payoff, for the reason of the contribution, for the reason of the pleasure, for the reason of making the difference. I've conditioned myself to do it for the positive benefits. So first I'm going to say, okay, I have this goal I want to hit. I'm going to set up all these positive things that I could do. If I hit the goal, I get to go to this restaurant. If I hit the goal, I get to have this extra time. If I hit the goal, these positive things will happen for other people. And I get very clear on what's going to happen if I hit the goal. And if you've studied my work in High Performance Academy or the Achievement Accelerator, I spend a lot of time in positive visualization, not just imagining hitting the goal, but imagining myself overcoming the struggles on the way to the goal. And then after achieving it, I literally think about and sit and feel and sense the magic of having done it. The pride, the joy, the, the anticipation of it all. From there I try and give myself a timeline. I say, okay, I'm going to give myself three weeks to complete this. And I just set up in the calendar that that's my deadline. Three weeks to complete this. And I always try first on positive motivation. So the positive consequences, I just go for that. The only time I set up or in my clients I set up negative motivation is, is when they fail. So if you try for three weeks and it didn't work with just positive motivation, now set up a negative consequence and do it again. So if I have end of three weeks, I've tried something, it didn't work, I go, okay, clearly I am a base childish individual who needs some kind of reprimand. If I have the carrot and it didn't work, I'm gonna put the stick on, I'm gonna put the stick on hard and, and here we go. Let me set up something I'm not going to like. But I found in the last decade of my life I haven't really struggled with that a lot. Now I know some people do. So if you do and you're going to set up a negative consequence, here's the three kinds of negative consequence. The first one is social embarrassment. This says if I try something and I have positive consequences set up and I fail, okay, now I failed. Now I need to set up a new timeline with a new consequence. Does that make sense? Negative motivation, you set up with a new timeline and a new consequence. So I say in, you know, four weeks, I'm going to lose 10 pounds. At the end of the four weeks after Rah rah myself up, understanding the positive consequences, I fail. Then I say, okay, I'm going to set up a new timeline to give myself four more weeks. Now I'm going to set up a negative consequence. And here's what it is. I'll start with the first type, social embarrassment. If at the end of four weeks I do not lose that ten pounds, then on that 30th day I have to streak my neighborhood. That means run naked around my neighborhood. And what I will do is I will go onto each my neighbors houses, I will knock on all the doors, I'll say, hey Bob, I'm trying to lose some weight this month. I've been trying, honestly I just tried.

For 30 days, nothing happened.

So on the 30th of this month, at 6:00pm on the 30th of this Month, at 6pm If I didn't lose the 10 pounds, I'm going to run around the block naked. It's going to be awful. It's cold outside. You have a phone. This could be recorded. This might be really awful, but that's what I'm going to do. Okay? So I'll tell Bob and I'll go. It'll be so painful. I will go to every house in the neighborhood and I will tell them all on the 30th at 6pm and you know what this starts? It starts a community effect that wants to see me fail. I have just set up my enemies. Now I've got the entire neighborhood all talking about in the grocery store, Burchard's gonna run naked if he don't lose some weight. Now, I know they're all thinking that. I know that they all want it to happen. And you know what? One of the main drivers that we all have is we want to know that we have the social prowess to hit our goals so we don't look foolish in front of other people. It's a very deep, heavy human drive is not to look foolish in front of other people. In other words, I set myself up completely that I know psychologically I must do this. And notice the specificity here. I tell people, I tell them a date, I tell them a time, and I tell them the stupid thing that I'm going to do. And I don't tell one person. I tell multiple people. Now, guess what? I'm going to be focused on that month. Not having to run naked on the 30th at 6pm in front of my neighbors, who are all going to stand out there with the American flag and a bunch of Kool Aid bottles watching to see if this kid actually has to do this. This is what I want you to think about. I know I'm teasing and having fun with you today, but I really want you to think about how could you make negative motivation fun and silly? But you got to do it. Because you know what? In this situation, all of my neighborhood, they're going to be watching me. They're going to come up probably two or three times in the month and go, hey, hey, dude, are you really going to do this? And they're never going to ask. They're not going to look at me and say, did you lose the weight? They're just going to go, are you really going to do it? You get 10 people saying to you all month, are you really going to do that. And guess what? You just built in your social pressure to achieve your goal. So what negative social embarrassing thing can you set up now? Again, I say that only do that if you've tried to previously manage it on yourself with positive payoffs. Number two, a negative emotion that consequences you can set up is what we call task obligation. Task obligation. This means you need to do a negative task you don't want to do if you fail to achieve your goal in a given timeline. For example, well, if I don't write that article by the 5th of this month, then I'm going to go out and clean the shed. Cleaning the shed might not sound serious to you, but I'm from Montana where there are farm animals and other animals that would live in the shed that I didn't want to deal with. So I thought about, I don't want to do that. But that's what's going on in the calendar. It says in the calendar on the 5th is article complete. If article is not complete, you clean the shed. Now, some people say, but you're not going to stick to that? No, I bring in that social reinforcement. I tell people, my family, my wife, I tell people, if I'm on the 5th, I don't clean the shed. If I don't get the article done, I got to clean the shed. And I tell enough people that that you might think that's so silly. Clean the shed, whatever your consequences. It's always silly. The consequences you set up for yourself, they're always silly, aren't they? You don't have to do them, but knowing that you set them up, putting them in a calendar, being specific about it and sharing it with people, it makes it real. And why is that important? Because you finally thought about it. Your life right now is a real indication of the consequences you've thought about in your life. If you've never sat and and done the work of thinking about the consequences of your actions before, then you're probably unhappy with your life right now. I say that respectfully because I've been there at a point in my life where I wasn't thinking about the consequences and the momentum I was creating in my life, building my character as a business person. I wasn't thinking about it. And many people have never been trained on a consistent basis to think of the consequences of their actions, of how they're treating people, of what they're doing day in and day out. So setting them up for your goals starts to condition you. Even if you think, oh, cleaning the shed, that's stupid. He doesn't have to clean the shed. Doesn't even matter. It's thinking about the consequence. It's having it in the calendar. These start to make you a more productive and effective person. Thinking about consequences, Having a calendar, being specific. If you just develop those skills. Consequence, calendar, something specific to do this year would be amazing for you, but most people aren't doing that. Task obligation. If you don't hit your goal, what horrible thing will you make yourself do as a task that you do not want to do? That's number two. The third area of negative motivation is called personal deprivation. This sounds really serious, doesn't it? Deprivation. It means, you know, let's say if you don't hit your goal, no more wine for two months. Try that one on for size. How painful would that be? No wine for two months. Hey, what about this one? No chocolate for two months. No dessert for two months. Oh. No shopping for six weeks. Whatever it is for you, it's something that you love to do that now you are going to deprave yourself from because you didn't hit the goal on a specific timeline. Remember, specific goal, specific timeline, specific consequence. And here's what I have to share with you. If you are one of those people who goes, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I get it. Consequences, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And you conceptually understand it, that's good. But common sense isn't always common practice. So here's my real question for you high performers, and I really want you to tune in and listen, please. If I came to your house today and we opened up your laptop and we looked at your schedule, your actual calendar, and we opened up a week from now, we opened up two weeks from now, three weeks from now, and four weeks from now. Are there any goals that are specific in that calendar with a timeline and a consequence built into the calendar? If it's not there, you can't. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Brendan, I get it. If it's not there and it's not there consistently, and it hasn't been there consistently in your life, this is your next level. For a lot of people, really getting to another level of success and achievement in their life is getting them to start working a calendar, working specified plans. Because it's so easy, especially if you're like me, an entrepreneur, you don't have to do that. You could just wing it. And maybe you have been winging it. But here's what we know from the world's highest performing athletes or the most disciplined, high performing executives. They've got a calendar. It's managed exceptionally well for themselves. It doesn't have to be on their team calendar. There's a million things on my personal calendar that are not on my team calendar, but having those in my personal calendar, it keeps me focused and I have to share with you. If it's not written down, if it's not in a real calendar that has reminders set up for it, then it's not real. You don't have a schedule yet, and you're winging it too often, and you can't get to higher levels of effectiveness, efficiency, or even flow if you're constantly winging it. So your job to become more disciplined and effective this year is to have a higher level of specificity of your goal, your. Your timeline, your consequences. Set up in a calendar with reminders. If you didn't know when you set up your calendar, you can set up automated reminders that go out to you. I have reminders that go out to me from anywhere from 72 hours to 48 hours to 24 hours to 2 hours that ping and remind me to hit that goal and that task. That's why I'm able to release, as an example, content every week. It's why I'm able, as an example, to create content every week. Because it just. It says to do it in this little box. And this little box is much more smart than this box, right? This box keeps me organized. This one keeps me free and creative. But if these two aren't working together, I'm a hot mess. And I know you are, too. No matter how much you love spontaneity and freedom and creativity, this and scheduling is your next level. All right.

Hey, it's Brendan. I hope you enjoyed that episode, and I hope it helped you reach another level of high performance in your life. Whether it's just a shift in your mindset or shift in your habits or a shift in your intention for the day. I really honor you for listening to the Brendon show, and I'm deeply thankful. So could you do me a favor? Could you just go onto itunes or Apple Podcasts and rate and review this episode or any of our episodes? And also while you're there, to help me, just download the last five episodes, too, onto your phone. Because, you know, Apple really cares about the downloads and the rating and reviews. And I've never really asked for that in six years of podcasting. And finally my friends convinced me to ask you to do that for me. I've never asked anything with my podcast community ever, but I really, really appreciate if you could do that. Also, if you would like some more in depth training, please don't forget that every single month I go live for two hours and teach new and original personal development, research new frameworks to my entire virtual community in our HPX coaching program. And you can just go to hpxcoaching.com that's hpxcoaching.com to learn all about the different options there. But listen, I'm live two hours every single month with literally thousands of high achievers from around the world who tune in to get these new frameworks for reaching high performance in their life. Sometimes we talk about relationships, sometimes we talk about breaking bad habits. Sometimes we talk about achieving another level of confidence or discipline or goal attainment. But we are there every single month and I'd love for you to join us. Just go to hpxcoaching to see all of your options and really join us. Dedicate yourself to personal mastery. Dedicate yourself to this journey. Not just once in a while with an episode here or there or a book there, but literally a program that could change your life. It's called HPX Coaching and you can go to hpxcoaching.com until next time, my friends, please remember every single day you can choose to be average or ordinary or just kind of go through the motions. Or you can be more intentional, more disciplined, more excellence driven what you do because you know you need to serve those you love and those that you lead. You can choose to be extraordinary. So my friends, go out there today and be extraordinary.

Sa.