Ep 276 | How to Stop Procrastinating

Thank you for joining me today. It's Brian Gubernick, and welcome to the No Days Off podcast, where we believe that every single day brings a new opportunity to get better. Today, I want to talk about something we've all experienced. I don't care who you are, you've gone through bouts of this, maybe you're going through it right now, and that's procrastination. I want to talk about procrastination. I want to talk about how we can stop procrastinating. Now, why am I talking about this topic? I'll just be honest with you. I've found myself over the past month or two procrastinating more than I normally do. Now I do procrastinate. I am human. There are lots of things that I put off and I put off and I put off. And you know what? Usually it doesn't matter. I mean, like, I'm okay with it. I accept the fact that, hey, I just didn't get to something and it's not the end of the world. But over the past month or two, I've noticed the frequency of my procrastination has increased a little bit. And I think there's a lot of reasons why that may be, but I don't think that's for today's episode. I've just recognized that, you know what, I am procrastinating a bit and I got to change that. I got to change it. Now I know there's studies and books out there that say procrastination is good. And you know what? It probably is in some ways, you know, slowing down and giving you the ability to think some more, or maybe slowing down, it allows, you know, those things that become unimportant to truly just fade away. Maybe you thought they were important, but they're not. I get that there's some benefit to procrastination, but I'm, I'm talking about when you don't want to procrastinate. Like me right now, there are 3 or 4 or 5 things that I've been slower to move on. And I got to get out of this rut. So how do I stop procrastinating? I, I went, you know, on a deep dive to try to figure out, you know, what, what makes sense to me? How can I stop this procrastination? What step, what action steps can I take today? Number 1, I think for all of us, if you find ourselves procrastinating, we got to reduce the number of decisions that you have to make throughout your day. I know for me, when I have a bunch of decisions to make, I get— I may get frustrated, especially if it's later in the day and I've lost a little energy. I get decision fatigue. Making too many decisions, some insignificant, some significant, you end up with decision fatigue. And as a result, when I get decision fatigue, I just say, you know what, I'll push all this off to a later time when I, when I feel better, have more energy, or I'm a little clearer. And usually that's not a bad thing, but when you do it for, you know, a number of days in a row, for a longer period than you want, maybe it's not as great. So every decision we make has some sort of energy consequence. So if you wake up in the morning and you ask yourself, what do I need to do today? Well, odds are you're about to procrastinate today. So if you approach each new day without having given thought to what you want to look at, you know, what's ahead of you, You're going to waste a large portion of your energy just thinking about what you need to do and what you, what you shouldn't do. So reduce the number of decisions you need to make throughout the day by making certain things automatic. I'm going to work out Monday, Wednesday, Friday. I'm going to read a book for 10 minutes every night. I'm going to, you know, wear this outfit tomorrow, or I'm going to wear these outfits this week, or I'm just going to, hell, wear the same damn color, same black t-shirt every single day. New t-shirt, same look. Stop with so many decisions. Make it easier on yourself. We're asking ourselves questions like, like what I just described all day long. And these questions compel us to respond with answers, which compel us to make decisions that just drains you and drains you of your self-control and makes you tired. And that leads to procrastination. So Make it easier on yourself. Reduce the number of decisions you need to make on a given day. Create habits, create systems, make decisions in advance. You know exactly how to go about doing that. Number 2, uh, one of my, one of my favorite books I've recommended here at the podcast. Uh, I wouldn't say it's the greatest book, but I think in terms of action items, it's fantastic. It's called Organize Tomorrow Today. And in the book Organize Tomorrow Today, it outlines exactly what I just described, a number of ways to organize your day tomorrow by doing it right now. So today, you know, I happen to be recording on a Sunday afternoon. I'm going to now think about my Monday coming up here after I record. I'm going to think this Sunday afternoon, what is my Monday? What does my Monday entail? In other words, I'm going to plan out my Monday well in advance. So I'm going to finish my day before it even starts. So it kind of picks up where I just left off with number 1. I'm going to limit my decisions by actually making this decision to avoid procrastination by planning my day in advance. I use a method called the 3-1 method. I've talked about it here multiple times where I have my to-do list. I will circle the 3 most important things to do tomorrow, and then I will star the 1 need to do tomorrow. If I could identify, if I could plan my day in advance and I can identify the absolute big rock, most important things, the likelihood of procrastinating drops for me. Especially again, if I'm doing it the afternoon before the next day and I write it down and I review my plans and I think it through. Now, other people probably have different mechanisms or methods like writing down their, again, their, their one big thing for tomorrow. or, you know, get writing down the 3, I gotta do this no matter what type of things, the non-negotiables. The next thing I think about as far as procrastination goes, or an alternative, I should say an option, a tip for avoiding procrastination. It actually comes from a novelist named Raymond Chandler. And Raymond had this, this process that he called the nothing alternative. He was a writer and every morning He knew he had to write. That was his profession. So he came up with what he called the nothing alternative, where every morning at say 9:00 AM, from 9:00 AM to 12:00, he either— he made a rule for himself. He was either going to avoid procrastinating and write, or he was going to do nothing. Those were the alternatives that he gave himself. He's either going to write or he's gonna do nothing. Meaning that he was either gonna write or literally do nothing at all. Maybe he just looks out the window. Maybe, maybe he does push-ups. Maybe he sits there on the couch and stares at the wall. Whatever the case may be, he would not give himself permission to go do other things like looking out the window, staring at a wall, sitting there in silence, not really doing anything. But his philosophy was, if he wasn't writing, he's going to stare at a wall. The rule was, if you don't write or work, or work on whatever it is he had to work on, he can't do anything else. Those were the only two options he gave himself. And he realized that at some point he's going to start working, even if nothing else but to keep himself from getting bored. Do nothing or focus on your one most important thing. Can't dabble in all these other things. So for you, it's either do your most important thing, the thing you've been procrastinating around, or you don't give yourself permission to look at emails. You don't give yourself permission to take that meeting. You don't give yourself permission to get on the phone and start calling about all these other projects or, or things. Instead, you focus solely on doing nothing until you do your one thing. The next thing in terms of procrastination, it's one I've probably prioritized do the next action habit. Focus on doing, you know, something doable. In other words, dumb down your brain by figuring out your very next action for any given thing that you're working on. It's a very powerful idea. Just figure out the next specific action you need to take in order to move closer to completion. And then just go do that little thing. Do little things and stack those little things. And then you'll look up and you'll see you made significant progress. So for me, for instance, I'm going to record podcasts. That's, I've been doing, you know, 275+ of these things. There are days I'm super enthused. There are days where I'm like, oh, I got to record. And man, it's going to take up some time and I don't have a lot of time and I procrastinate and I procrastinate. So what do I need to do? Well, there's a whole prep process that I go through before I record. Yes. Most of the things I talk around are ideas that I had or something that caught my attention, but sometimes I got to do more research or I got to interview some people and get their thoughts, or frankly, I just have to sit down and jot down what's on my mind. So the next most actionable thing for me to do when I'm procrastinating around recording isn't to stand up in front of the mic and camera and just start recording. For me, it's to open up my notebook and start jotting down the thoughts I have on the subject that I have in my mind. Just writing. If I could just start writing for 30 seconds, I suddenly find myself in a flow state, and now I want to go get a microphone and speak into it. I know that might sound like a silly example, but I do procrastinate around this. In order to get out of procrastination mode, I have to open up a notebook and just start writing. And when I do that, suddenly momentum starts to be created, and I feel like a relief of pressure. When I start doing this. And then the momentum gets stronger and stronger and stronger. The last thing in terms of, you know, combating procrastination, we talk about this a ton here at No Days Off. If you want to change things, change your environment, right? So for me, if I'm procrastinating around something, maybe I should work from a different place tomorrow. Maybe I, maybe I work at a Starbucks. I just physically change my environment and it, it creates a different energy. Maybe I need to change my environment in terms of who I'm hanging around or not hanging around. Maybe I need to get in a more creative environment if that's what it entails. Or maybe I need to get around people that are doing like tasks to me where I'm motivated by their energy. I think that if you want to avoid procrastination, remove all the cues that trigger the procrastination, right? In the first place. Like, what is— what triggers procrastination? Usually it's distraction, it's alternatives. So again, if you want to stop procrastinating, remove all those cues. If I'm going back to the, to the podcast analogy, or example, if all I have is a mic, a light, my notebook, and my computer, there's not a hell of a lot else I can be doing. But if I'm shooting it in a different environment, maybe I'm distracted. So remove the cues that trigger the procrastination. Change up your environment. Get around those that maybe give you energy or get in an area where you can, where you can focus, right? Even your phone in terms of environment, turn that thing into do not disturb mode. Put it out of the room you're working in. Remove the temptation to glance at it. Change up your environment. So procrastination impacts us all. I don't care who you are. I don't care what you tell me. Every one of us goes through bouts of procrastination where we know we have things that are important to get done and we kick the can on them. And sometimes it can be very detrimental. Sometimes, at least in my case, my procrastination has an adverse impact on people around me. And I don't like that feeling and I want to get away from it. So the 5 steps I just went through, great starting place for many of us. I want you to go through that list and ask yourself which of these, if not all of them, apply and what action step can you take today around that thing that you've been procrastinating about such that doing so you get into motion, you start building some momentum, and you check that thing off your list. That's all I have for you today, the No Days Off Podcast. Thank you so much for listening. And remember, every single day brings a new opportunity to get better. So let's get after it.