How To Stop Procrastinating In Your Business — Interview with Grace Brodeur

Hello.

I have Grace Broder that I want to interview today. She's a former client of mine and she's a performance coach. She specializes in helping entrepreneurs to overcome procrastination so they can increase their time, their financial and their mental freedom. She's built a community of over 250,000 and supported over 500 procrastinators in her programs. Instead of just working with time management strategies, her solutions directly address the root cause of self sabotaging patterns so her clients can rapidly increase their productivity and their confidence. I'm really excited to talk to you today, Grace. Thanks for being here.

Thanks for having me, Greg. I'm really excited to be here too.

It's my pleasure. So I know that your work with procrastination productivity comes from your own personal experience. Where did this all start for you?

Yeah, so I noticed that I just procrastinated through college and then even into my first career. And everything from pulling all nighters to running up into deadlines I found would routinely happen, even though I was a very hard worker. And it wasn't until later that I realized this had a strong tie to my perfectionism. Lots of overthinking, lots of, you know, endlessly perfecting something before sending it out, as well as just emotional avoidance. And so anytime an uncomfortable emotion would come up, like uncertainty, any sort of fear, anxiety, overwhelm, the default would be procrastination. And when I put those two together, as well as when I started to really study the mind and the body, I noticed that a lot of people were pursuing solutions in the wrong place, including myself. And it led me to become a coach in this world.

I love that. Yeah, so it's the emotional side in a way, and the emotional management involved in productivity. I feel like that's what a lot of traditional solutions miss. Right. When it's just about time management, what do you feel like? I know you have this concept of we don't avoid tasks, we avoid feelings. Can you share a little bit about what that means?

Yeah, of course. And so if you think about something that you're currently procrastinating, it could be any sort of feeling that you might be avoiding. Maybe it's boredom if you just purely don't love the task. But a lot of times there's also fear behind it. Fear of, what if I don't do this well enough? What if someone judges me? You know, even thinking about procrastinating taxes, which is something a lot of people do, there's usually avoiding that feeling of confusion because it's not exactly a straightforward process. And what a lot of people don't realize is that's the reason that they are putting something off. And that's not really something that time blocking your calendar or eating the frog, like doing the task at the first start of your day necessarily addresses. And so by understanding what feeling you have under the surface, you might be able to get to a solution much faster.

It's interesting. I feel like for me, there's almost phases of productivity as an entrepreneur. There's like three to six months where I'm killing it, and then there's usually like three, two or three months where I just can't get myself to do anything. And it's almost like in those times when I'm in a productive context in general, it almost doesn't matter what productivity strategy I'm using. I'm just going to get stuff done. And in those phases where I'm in more of a slump, it almost doesn't matter either. So I think that really speaks to the importance of, like, what emotional phase? And is there something that you're not confronting that's keeping you in that slump?

Yeah, I think this is, you know, I say emotional management, but this is also, you could be the broader use, the broader context of energy management. It's a lot easier to do something when you're feeling more motivated, when you have more energy. You can think about a day where you knock out 10 different tasks and you're just feeling really great. It's like action produces more motivation, produces more action. And the reverse can be true. If you're not doing something, then you get in your head about it, then you're feeling less motivated, then you're less likely to do it. And so this principle of really mastering energy management can do significant things to your productivity. But it's often not shame that gets us through to the other side. It's understanding what has been blocking us or what's been weighing on us and.

Moving through that instead of meaning, don't just beat yourself up. Like, that's not the right strategy.

Yeah, it's. Shame is not the way to change. And yeah, it's the way our brain is often wired to say, why aren't you doing something? You are so lazy. Just do it. All these things. But if instead we're looking with curiosity of why haven't I been doing this? What's going on in my life? Or what might I be worried about is a question I often have my clients ask themselves, then you might be able to get a little bit More insight and show yourself compassion as well as give yourself what you really need in order to move forward.

What are some of those common reasons that often come up about why people are putting off work?

So overwhelm is a huge one. I see a lot of people getting, especially business owners get very overwhelmed with how many things that they can do and will experience thoughts like, I have way too much to do and not enough time. If you are a parent and you're trying to grow a side hustle, or you're trying to manage your business while also managing any family emergencies going on while also managing your personal life, life can very quickly become overwhelming. And when we are in a state of overwhelm, our response usually is to freeze rather than to move forward. And the more that you put something off, the more overwhelmed you might become about it. So overwhelm, whether that is you have a lot of things going on at the same time, or overwhelmed with maybe a new business initiative that you have that has a lot of ambiguous steps with it, it's usually not straightforward work that gives us the most problem. It's work that's very ambiguous, very creative, that has a lot of more unknowns, a lot more uncertainty, and that can feel anxious, that can feel overwhelming, and it can cause us to put it off. But there's also. If you get to a place of burnout and all our body is trying to do is just maintain energy, it's going to also be a lot harder to then work on something that requires a lot of energy, both physically or mentally.

Okay, so overwhelm is a big one. Burnout is a big one. When I think of overwhelm, I think of those scenarios in business where you're pushing yourself out of your comfort zone, like you hire a team member for the first time, and then there's overwhelm that comes with that. You're like, I have to keep doing stuff. But also I'm trying to manage my own state of feeling like I don't know what the hell I'm doing. There's so much to learn, and what if I fail? All of that.

Exactly. Yeah. And the more that you entertain those thoughts of, what if this goes wrong? What if this fails? Or even if you're a coach and you're trying to say, fill a group program and your brain just keeps going. What if we don't fill it? What if we embarrass ourselves? What our brain. Our brain is very smart. What it's going to do is it's going to route us to. Well, if you don't try, you won't fail. But then we'll simultaneously be, you know, judging ourselves, like, why are we not doing this? We need to do this. And so it's almost like two parts of ourselves are working against each other. And until that, until you can introduce more safety or until you move through those feelings and just also really build up that muscle, I call it, of doing things uncomfortably, then it's going to feel like there's almost a block between what you are currently doing and what you want to be doing.

It's like when you get that first person in the group program, so now you have one, so you have to do it. But you can't have a group program with one person. And yeah, the common reaction is just to totally freeze. And it's the opposite of what you need. I don't need to freeze, I need to go fill these other spots. Exactly. In that scenario, how would someone work with that? I mean, you mentioned the question of like, what might I be avoiding or what might I be scared of happening? What other things can help?

Yeah, so there are some short term solutions and I can walk through those. And there are also some long term solutions. And so some short term solutions are using what I've called in my programs a fear exposing exercise. And so that's getting really clear on what specifically you're worried about how you would handle it if it happened, as well as giving all the evidence support to support why it wouldn't happen. And so what this is doing is often our brain is saying it's living in the what if scenario. What if this doesn't go well? What if I fail? What if I embarrass myself? And instead you go to that place and say, even if I were to enroll one person, okay, I could just say, hey, hey, great news, we're actually spinning this into a one on one program. You're going to get a ton more support. You know, the person on the other side would be thrilled. And then, and then your, then your brain's like, oh, this is actually not so bad. You know, we could handle this. So you have more safety with taking steps to move forward as well as a map for yourself. So what are all the steps that you could take in order to prevent this worst case scenario from happening? And then all you can do is focus on taking those actions. We have to focus on the action and not so much things that are outside of our control. And so for that specific scenario, there's maybe a quick exercise that you could do that often makes you More on board with taking action. But in terms of longer term solutions, it'd be looking at, okay, what's the, what is the specific trigger that's causing a uncomfortable emotion reaction in your body? And how can you learn emotional management through various tools. Specifically, somatic tools work really well so that instead of living in that state of freeze or that state of a lot of discomfort usually in our chest, our gut, our belly, we can navigate that feeling. And it's a lot easier to take action when it doesn't exist. And as you learn that more and more, and as you sort of practice these somatic tools, we'll often find that it's a lot easier to take action even when there is fear present.

That makes sense. I know a big thing for business owners is when you're in a cash crunch, like you have a month where there's low sales or your expenses have gone up or something like that. And I'll speak for myself, sometimes it's like you almost don't want to even confront it. Like you know it's happening, but you also don't want to confront it. And then you're in the freeze response. So it sounds like you're saying one of the big tools is actually gaming out that worst case scenario, like play it all the way out. And that'll also give you information on what you can do now. Because at least the certainty of what the situation actually is and confronting that will ease some of the anxiety.

Exactly, yeah. Because a lot of the time what our brain does is it blows up the fear into something larger than it needs to be. You think about how many times you've procrastinated something and then you finally started it and you thought, why on earth didn't I start this sooner? This was so easy. And it's because fear left unmanaged will often grow. It's like there is a monster in the closet. But it could be this size, it could be this size, you know, so with finances it's like, well, I don't know what's behind the door, so I just won't check it. And instead, if you can show yourself that you could handle any scenario, you as well as voice that fear, it often helps bring it down a couple octaves so it feels a lot more comfortable approaching. And that specific fear exercise is adapted from, I think Tim Ferriss has something.

Similar to fear setting. Right. And they did make me think of that. Yeah. And I think that's a great analogy of the monster in the closet. Like even if the monster is huge it's still less scary to just know what you're dealing with. It could be tiny. It could be the world's biggest monster that I'm dealing with. So that makes a lot of sense. You mentioned taxes as one thing that people procrastinate on, and that seems like almost a different category. Like, that might not be overwhelm. Let's say you've done it before. You know what you're doing. Let's say in this case you don't have a cpa. I would say just get a cpa, but let's say you don't have a cpa.

Yes.

What's that about? I mean, to me, that just seems a very basic. I just don't want to do it. It's just an odd task I would enjoy. And I'm procrastinating.

Yeah, well, it could be different for most people. What I found with a lot of my clients is just that they are worried about filling incorrectly. Even if they've done it before, there's still a degree of uncertainty, and there's this fear that the government might come for them. If they get it wrong, they might have to end up owing more money. And so I would say nine times out of 10, I see this as the problem. But, yes, it's also just not an enjoyable task. It's a tedious task. And there are very many. There are many things in our lives that are often tedious and we just simply don't want to do. And with those sort of tasks, I found that it also magnifies our resistance. If there are. We don't know necessarily how long it will take. And so things that are even a slight degree of ambiguous, or things that have multiple steps to them where we don't know, okay, if we start on this, how long it will take, our brain often inflates that task as well. And so one thing that you could do is just sell yourself on the next step is something I often say to my clients. And so if it's something like doing your taxes, like, what's the very first small thing that you could do? And set kind of a time limit of how long you think it might take, and attach that small step with the feeling you will have once you've completed it. And so if you ask yourself, how would I feel if this was just off my chest? I would feel relieved. I would feel so good. And if you can immerse yourself in that feeling and then ask yourself, what's the very first small thing I could do? You'll be more Motivated to say, even just open up the documentation or take the first step. And once you're doing that, it's often easier to keep going once you've just got yourself into it. So, for example, I used to hate making presentations. Now I love it. So I would just literally open up PowerPoint. And if you're not taking the first step, you need to really condense it, make it even smaller in your mind. Otherwise you might continue putting it off.

So you want a really big perceived benefit that you're imagining and a really small output. Perceived output required.

Exactly. Yeah.

Nice. Okay, I want to go over, for those who are watching on video, I love this graph and I want to have you explain it from one of your blog posts. So let's see. Here it is. What is this? I love it. I just want you to explain it.

Yeah, so I often explain. I would say there's a big misunderstanding with procrastination, that procrastination is often just laziness. And what I do in this graph is just show how much perfectionism can play a role in us putting something off. A lot of people say, oh, I'm not a perfectionist. I do a lot of things imperfectly. And that's not perfectionism. Perfectionism, if you're unfamiliar, it's this expectation that we do things perfectly. It's this high, high standard that creates a ton of friction between us and the thing that we want to accomplish. Because when we start off, say, wanting to create a new initiative or like even I've had people who are trying to write books and they're trying, they're looking at the perfect book, you know, the end result, the final copy. And this compared to where they are now just seems like such a long journey that's going to take so long. And it. And so what happens is perfectionists expect themselves to just get it right the first time, to not meet any roadblocks, or they also expect themselves to not fail. And they're so afraid of failure. And what happens is that places way too much pressure on ourselves. And when we're under pressure, often we. Until it comes to a deadline, we will resist starting the task. And so what happens is people run up until when they literally can't put this off anymore. And then they get kick it into gear. And on the flip side, they're usually saying, oh, I'll never do that again. I'll never procrastinate again. That's not how it works. If you continue to have this extremely high bar set for yourself when you go to Start off, which is why embracing messy action, starting imperfectly, looking at creating a draft, you know, like lowering the barrier to entry, essentially will help you start at a much earlier date, and then you continue to refine and end up at the place that you had wanted to be.

That makes sense. So we want to start off with lower expectations, smaller tasks that we're expecting of ourselves and let that build on itself.

Exactly. Yeah.

Awesome. All right, so we've gone over the graph. What are other scenarios that you see people running into? I know one that we talked about was delegation. Right? Like, if you can't delegate, it's hard to scale your business. Why is that so hard for folks? How can they get better at it.

With delegation? The people I've seen who are most resistant to delegation and something that I experienced earlier on, is this fear of releasing control. A person who's more prone to anxiety will experience that fear as long as they have their hand in all the honey pots or whatever. As long as they have visibility on everything, ultimately that they feel that is lowering their anxiety. But what that can do is actually produce a lot of burnout because you are remaining the bottleneck of your business. And so they'll look at something, and I'll see the conscious thought they'll be saying is, oh, I can just do this, or, why would I pay someone to do this? That's costing me money? Or it will take so long to hire someone. And these are all kind of. This is all a lot of fear, often in disguise, where deep down they're really worried about, okay, what if this person messes something up and they embarrass me in front of my clients? Or, what if I hire this person on, but then I can't afford to continue paying them? Or all these other fears. Or they do hire the person, but then they're not offloading as much as they could because, again, they want to maintain that sense of control or that sense of visibility that disappears as you start to delegate things to your person.

I saw this quote from Alex Hormozi, which was something along the lines of like, you either suck at hiring or you suck at trusting. Right. You're not delegating. You either didn't have someone who was good enough that you were just like, yes, they're awesome at this, so I don't have to worry about it. Or you have the right person and you don't want to let go of control. You suck at trusting. That's harsh, but probably true in most cases.

Yeah. And there's also this I would add on to and say there's also this resistance to correction because a business owner might be worried, what if they'll dislike me if I'm honest on what I want from them? Or, you know, I come back and say, this isn't up to my standard. Especially if you have unconscious perfectionist standards. And so maybe they are not quite as, you know, set on detail orientation because they don't have quite that fear of failure that you might when they do something wrong. You could experience a large wave of just uncomfortable emotions that, you know, if left unmanaged, will either come out in the form of overreacting to what they did or just saying, oh, I don't want to hurt their feelings, I don't want them to get upset. And then never giving them the feedback they need and saying, oh, I'll just do this myself instead. I won't. I'll just correct this myself instead.

That makes sense. So you could almost project your perfectionism onto the person that you are working with. And so maybe you suck at hiring, you suck at trusting, or you're not giving good feedback, you're not training, you're not realizing there's going to be some reps that you have to put in before the person gets it right.

Exactly. There's a whole period of onboarding and learning and trusting that takes place. And so you do have to give that enough time in order to see the that through. But of course, there is also the option or the case in which the person just purely isn't a high performer. So I'm not saying that's always the case, but oftentimes people can be nurtured into a great relationship if you give them the chance to voice both great and improvement feedback.

How do you know? Like, I think VAs are a great example because most entrepreneurs, even if they have a small team, that's one of the first hires. We all know people who have just gone through VA after VA and they're like, all the VAs suck. And it's like, who's the common denominator? You know what I mean? It's you. So it's possible it's the person's management style. Other times, like you said, it's not the right person. The person isn't a good fit for that position. How can someone discern if they have a team member who they feel is not performing, whether it's their own expectations or whether it's just not a good fit?

Yeah, that's a great question. What I saw, because the first VA that I had was definitely not a good fit. And I was sitting there going, is this just because I'm still recovering from some perfectionism? Am I crazy? I actually remember I was working with you during that point, and I think it was you who finally said you got to let them go in that scenario. I was finding and some indicators that other people could look for is if you are asking for things by a deadline and they're not giving it to you by that deadline, or they're not updating you by that deadline, then that might be a red flag. And that's happening routinely now. The thing might be, if you do give them the chance to improve so you give them that feedback on what you would like to see done differently, and they're just not taking action. They're not implementing it. So if you find yourself repeating what you're telling them a lot, that could also be a red flag. And then I would say that if you take an honest moment with yourself and kind of a gut check, which for me, I wasn't doing so much because it was my first time ever having a va, that usually you can have an intuitive voice that's saying, this is just not working out. They're not like my style. And often if they are similar to you and you feel good about them, you'll have a bit more of that intuitive voice saying, oh, no, we, you know, you just need to give them more feedback, and you're resistant to doing that.

I think expectations are so important because if you have the wrong expectations about something, you'll feel like it's not working, and then it can put you into that state of avoiding it. It's like when people get started with sales and they're just learning sales and how to get clients, they're like, well, I'm not converting. Someone could say, well, I'm only converting 50% of people I talk to. And I'm like, that's amazing. You're winning. But to them, if you're expecting 100%, you might just be like, I don't even want to be on sales calls anymore because I'm getting rejected, so I'm obviously doing it wrong. Same thing with if you're launching a program and someone's like, I have, you know, a week left, and I only have it like, you know, a few people in the program. And it's like, well, everyone buys at the end, so don't worry about it. You know, keep doing what you need to be doing. But if you don't know that everyone buys in the last 24 hours or a huge portion of people, then you might go into that freeze mode.

Yeah, it's a fantastic point. It's really important that we do set expectations, both, you know, our expectations of the person that we hire, our expectations of ourself, as well as what their expectations are in this role. Are you expecting more of them? Are they feeling like they are doing different activities than you originally told them they would be? And that's where having I found the best thing with the team members I've hired on is just extremely open communication, where they find they're in a very safe space to tell me when they see an improvement that they want to suggest or when I could be doing something better to support them. And so making sure you're always voicing, hey, is there anything I can be doing better? But as well as when you do give feedback that you're giving it from a place that will feel safe for them as well. So you're not just pointing out the negative things and instead you're also really encouraging what they're doing. Well. And if you have this open sort of safe style of communication, it doesn't leave much room for any resentment or things going unchecked. And ultimately if you have that, it's a lot easier to see if this is the right person for you or not.

Totally, totally. All right, so we talked about at the beginning that entrepreneurs can go through that roller coaster energetically. Sometimes you're more motivated, sometimes you're less motivated. I think that's pretty common. I heard once that like entrepreneurs are almost like, could be defined as manic depressives. Like kind of like correlates well with that personality. And I'm curious for you, when you work with clients and that comes up, you realize someone's in a slump or you know, even maybe working with a client and you've locked them in and now they're just going to hyperspeed getting stuff done. It feels good, they have that adrenaline, but you can tell as their coach it's not sustainable. How do you suggest people work with that? Is it more about aligning the rhythm of your business to your naturally natural energy cycles? Like I had Becca Tracy, who I interviewed and she has a launch based business. So she's just like, I know that my energy goes up and down, so when it's up I just do the launch and then when it's out I just don't work. And then I know other people who are like, well, I want a more consistent evergreen type business month to month. So then I think you have to learn to keep yourself maybe at a more even keel.

Yeah, I've had both styles, actually. A whole chunk of this year was transitioning from mega launches to just more sustainable, consistent months, which I found has. Actually, I haven't burnt out at all this year. It's been a year and a half since I have. And I think that the energy levels are much less likely to fluctuate when you're actively doing a lot more things that give you energy, as well as offloading what doesn't give you energy. But however, if you do have that launch dial, I think the best thing that you can be doing in order to prevent that slump from going on for too long, which can often provoke anxiety or make you start to feel almost scarce if you have a business revenue that goes like this, at least from my experience, is putting a lot of systems in place so that the business can still run a lot of itself even when you take those months off. I do also do, I do think that it takes normalizing the low motivational periods where maybe you're not in love with your business or maybe you just don't feel as motivated as usual because we're humans and not robots. And the more that you can kind of normalize that period, not judge yourself and, and just really go inwards and ask, what do I need at this time? The faster that you might move through that period. Right. Instead of trying to bury that and shame yourself through.

Seems like a common theme in your approach is kind of bringing stuff to the light, like making the unknown or the unacknowledged more known. And I agree, normalizing for me, I know, like talking with other entrepreneurs who I don't feel like I have to put on this professional front with and just being like, this sucks. Everything sucks. I hate my business and I want to, you know, burn everything down. And then seeing them in that place, it's like, okay, that partially just comes with the territory, you know, that's partially what it is. And there's a lot that you can do. But we're also not robots. We're not going to perform consistently every single day. Another thing that I've noticed is sometimes I've had clients who say, well, my business isn't giving me energy, it's not motivating me or kind of igniting me in the way I want, so I must have to shift the business. And sometimes, like, you can offload tasks that drain your energy. You could do parts of your business that give you energy. But sometimes I'll say I told this client, I'm like, it's not really your business's job to give you energy. Like it's work. You should give your business energy. Your business requires energy of you. So if there's something that you need to do outside of your business to get energy, like after this, I'm like playing pickleball with a friend. It's like, that's going to give me energy and then I'm going to work. Do you know what I mean? But like, I think this idea that your business should constantly be fueling you is. There's ways that can happen, but I think that it gets people into trouble.

Yeah, it is. Again, just setting up your expectations. If you are setting that expectation that it always gives you energy, you might feel disappointed in your business or in yourself when it's not. And I do think that there are so many things that we can do outside of our business to give us energy so that we're not dependent on that business. You know, for both our creative energy being fulfilled, but also, you know, financial energy that is a form of energy or all these other things. If we become too dependent on our business. Right. Then that can put a lot of pressure on it versus if we build up things outside of it as well and have that balance going on. But I also do think that sometimes it's certain blocks that we could have going on in our life that are draining our energy. And that's where you were saying earlier. Bringing things to light and really addressing what that is can help that from reoccurring over and over again year after year. If you have that same block.

Yeah. One thing that I'm curious for your perspective on this that's been working well for me is productivity wise is kind of compressing my work into smaller hours than usual. Instead of saying I'm going to work about eight hours today, 9 to 5 ish. And then I have a few calls. So I'll try to be productive the rest of the time saying like, what if I just shortened it to. For me, like a five hour window is working really well. And that adds, it gets me in flow better because it sort of adds a level of challenge. I know, like the flow research collective folks talk about this. Like that compression, compression of your work can have you take the smaller time, prioritize better, get to work faster and feel better. Because I think it's one thing if you get three things done over eight hours and you were unproductive for two of those hours, that'll feel a lot worse than if you get the same three things done, but in five hours. And the whole time you're working. Like, I know for me, a lot of the guilt and shame comes and I'm like, I didn't really. I just sat around. I should have just gone for a run. Like, I should have just gone and done something else if I wasn't going to work anyway.

Yeah, it's worth acknowledging, right, that we're not ever going to have these perfectly productive weeks. In a perfect world, we would just sit down, we would work on things, we close our laptop and be done. But we do have a whole lot of distractions going on. As entrepreneurs, we wear many hats that emergencies come up during the day. And so it is recognizing that that can happen. But I do think that a couple things that really help are focus days that can help you, for example, have five really productive hours instead of eight if you take even just 15 minutes at the start of your day. It's one of the best habits I have to identify, like, what are the three most important things that I could be doing today that will likely set you up for a lot more success than you know. If you don't have that list or even if you just keep it in your head, what can happen is productive procrastination. We can roam around the house, we can be reactive to whatever comes to comes our way instead of being proactive and looking at, okay, what's important for me to get done that maybe isn't necessarily urgent and making sure we're keeping tabs on that. So I think that can certainly help you condense, you know that into five hours instead of eight as well as leave you feeling satisfied at the end of the day because instead of this long to do list, you actually have a list that's manageable. But I think the second thing that I found is really helpful is monotasking. So I think the research shows that it takes somewhere between anywhere from 10 to 25 minutes or so to get into a flow state. And once you're in a flow state, it's a lot easier to get into that deep work zone. And that is why monotasking. So focusing on one thing for a sprint can go a lot smoother than, oh, I'm just going to work on this thing and be reactive to an email that comes through or messaging my team. Right. Your brain is resetting its attention each of those times versus the deep work sessions I run for my clients. A lot of them get on and they're like, wow, those two hours flew by. And I Got so much done because they were monotasking on one thing the.

Whole time, for sure. I know for me that things like apps like Focus or Freedom and then self control is one for Mac that just block my email and Internet and then like just having my phone in another room. I mean, obviously you know all this stuff, but I don't know how people would do any deep work that wasn't a phone. I mean, obviously you can get on a phone call and do the phone call and not worry about distractions. But I don't see how you would ever, in today's world, not get distracted unless you were blocking the distracting, like, sights in your phone.

I do think that I would challenge that. And I think that the more conscious of a person you are, the more you can catch yourself when you go into that mode of distraction. And so even a simple pattern interrupt like can this wait? Really helps me when I notice, for example, a notification pop up and I immediately want to dive into it. It's just a very human tendency. I say, can this wait? And then you exercise that muscle of not acting on an impulse or not being reactive to something. I also do think that something as simple as setting a timer and setting that up on your phone so that you see that can bring a little more conscious awareness to staying on track with things. But I don't personally use any of the blockers because I've no longer found them necessary. And I'm not. I wasn't always that way. But I do think that, for example, meditation is another really good thing that makes a person more conscious. Instead of going kind of on autopilot unconsciously from task to task, it might introduce a more degree of self awareness when that is happening, why that is happening, and being able to come back to the task you had, that's.

That's good pushback. Do you find that in general, you're more to the side of building awareness as a way to be more focused and productive as opposed to changing your environment? Because one of the reasons I mentioned that is I'm like, if I cannot have to rely on willpower, discipline, or like, then I may as well set that up and then I'll just be able to use that for something else. So it's interesting for you that you're like, now I don't really use those. I try to use it as an opportunity to just build my awareness.

I think that it's both. I don't think there, and I do agree with the fact that, okay, instead of giving yourself even the opportunity to Just turn it all off. And that can reduce a bit of the friction. Right. I just don't think it's necessary. I don't think if you don't have that, that you can't get to this place of doing deep work. And so that was more what I was challenging. And I personally have found through, for example, having three deep work sessions a week that are group run. So for example, we all hop on, we all co work is a great way that I automate that process and it causes me to not have that distraction. And so I do rely on that as well. And I love those sessions, they're community filled. But then outside of that, I'm not necessarily blocking things because I don't struggle with that. So I think it's really dependent on the type of person you are and what you find works for you.

That makes sense. It doesn't have to be either or. It can be both things. Because playing devil's advocate against myself with the environmental shifts or just focusing on the behavior is. You could block the Internet, you could turn your phone off. If you really are avoidant to that task, you'll find another way. Like you'll go clean the kitchen. You know, I mean, you'll constantly be like trying to alter the behavior without treating the root of it. Which is why I like your approach.

Exactly. Yeah. And that's why, I mean I've done so much of this work. Right. So it's very different. For me to say I don't need to turn on those blockers is because I notice when I'm resistant to something, I have all the tools to get me through it. Right. Versus someone who's just saying I can't focus and I don't know why. A lot of the reason why you can't focus is because you have that lingering, lingering uncomfortable, uncomfortable emotion going somewhere around in your body and unconsciously your body, your nervous system is want to. Will want to just kind of avoid that distract you from it.

What's your protocol if you feel like, I don't know, it's just your, your SOS Mayday protocol. You're like, I realize I have the awareness that I am really avoiding stuff. I might even feel like in a slump, low energy in my business and I want to be able to get some things done. Do you have like a reboot or you've mentioned some questions that you asked. Going to the worst case scenario. What's your little checklist to get yourself back in the zone?

Yeah, so I have, I have this procrastination cheat sheet that I have from my clients and that I often use myself. And I'll just give kind of the condensed version of that, of things that I think are really great. The first thing is a brain dump. And so often what is going on in our mind just needs an external processing of sorts. And I found a brain dump is the quickest way to do that. You can also, of course, verbalize it to someone else, and that can shed light on what's going on and what's reducing, causing some friction for you. But I think a brain dump is the best way. It takes five to 10 minutes. It's just a stream of consciousness. And now you know a bit more of what's going on. It's very different if it's in your mind versus if it's on paper. And then what I'll do is often go into what I call a mind map. And so that's pretty much everything that I know I need to get done. Okay, what is the bare minimum I need to do today? And if I can really shrink that, like, if I have a map for myself for the rest of the week, as well as just a really. If I'm in a slump, I'm like, what is the smallest, like, the smallest win I could have for today, my brain will be much more likely to approach that than thinking about the mountain of tasks that I have. And often motivation comes on the back end of action. So if I do that really small win, even if it's just getting back to an email that I've been meaning to, then all of a sudden, the day is much more of a victory, and I'm more likely to do more things. So those are more quick, kind of easy, straightforward things to do. But then I'll also work with the emotion that might be present. And so if I notice I am working on something and it's just resulting in some fear or some tension, I'll often turn to EFT Emotional Freedom Technique, because it's what I found is one of the most rapid ways to take you from maybe an overwhelm rating of an 8 down to a 2 in a matter of 5 to 10 minutes. What I often say is that we can't always think our way to the solution. We have to work with our body. And what this. What Emotional Freedom Technique is designed for is just moving that energy instead of pushing it down, ignoring it, helping you release, whatever that is. And so I'll kind of walk around and start doing some tapping, saying, I release and let this go. And so if You've never heard of that technique and you're like, what on Earth is EFT tapping? There's plenty of free resources on YouTube. You could just type in the eft for whatever emotion you might be experiencing. And that's a way to honor what you're going through, release what you're going through, and often get you to a place of neutral instead of a place of overwhelm.

With the mind map portion of that, we had the brain dump. The mind map. Tell me more about that. What does that specifically look like?

The mind map or the brain dump?

Yeah, yeah, the mind map.

Yeah. So the mind map. What I always tell my clients is that it's very hard for our brain to create and follow a map at the same time. It's why we were always trained to build outlines in school before writing a paper. If you tell your brain, write a final five page essay versus create an outline, create a draft of an outline, even that you know you will change over time, our brain will be so much less resistant to doing that. And so creating a mind map is somewhat similar. If you're looking at, you know, what are all the tasks that I have to do that I'm currently juggling in my mind, it's so much easier to get those written down so you can see what you're working with. And then just look at the three buckets I place my items in are what absolutely has to get done today, what absolutely has to get done by the end of the week. And then I have a backlog. And by just grouping those activities into those three buckets, I'm able to see, okay, all I need to do for today is just focus on these items. But if I haven't created this mind map, my brain is just looking at that giant mountain of tasks and then saying, we have so much to do, so little time, I have no idea how to do this. Versus having very concrete actions that you could take that your brain can kind of follow. Our brain is quite lazy in that, you know, if you have a specific step, like let's say you, you needed to file for a passport. I've seen people procrastinate that. It's like, look up how to get a passport and then print the form or whatever, that's so much easier for our brain to follow than just getting new passport. So getting those really specific steps is another way to build a really great mind map.

One of the things I wanted to discuss is when we worked together, you had this big launch month and it was a record month for you and I'm sitting here feeling like great as your coach. I'm like I'm the man. You know, she had this and then like learning also the impact that that had on you emotionally, obviously it took an energy toll and you needing to just be like, I just need to go take a vacation. It sounds like since then in the last year and a half you've kind of gone to more of a evergreen month to month consistency model. But could you share a little bit about what that experience was like for you and then the learnings that came out of it?

Yeah, it was a huge month, that's for sure. It was my first six figure month but it was also only my 11th month in business and so I still had quite a young business. I had only just started to bring on two team members part time and it was still sort of training them. And that month was probably the most burnt out I have ever felt in my business. It was a huge win to celebrate. But with a flux of a lot of clients in this group program, mostly diy but with light support program that I was running comes a lot of other things, a lot of expectations, a lot of, you know, refund requests for the first time because I offered refunds or even just. I think we often underestimate a lot of what goes into that month as well as the aftermath. And I had significantly underestimated the delivery, the delivery of everything. And so I just remember that was very difficult to keep up with a lot of the activities I normally did that helped really balance my energy. You know, it's really hard to keep up with mindfulness practices, exercising which I was just in a very smaller form than I usually did, which are often what you need most when your nervous system is going through this like flux of incoming clients that with expectations and with as well as ones that I had for myself. And it was all this pressure without as much time to do all the things that helped me process that pressure that just set me up for burnout and needing to escape for a bit. And that's why ultimately I said I don't really love this idea of huge months can feel very exciting but I'd much rather have you know, three 40k months then like one 100 and I don't know, 10,000 month. I think that's what it was because that will feel a lot better for my nervous system that will, my partner will not experience that stress as much and I'll be able to keep up a lot more with you know, my usual routines that have me feeling really good or, you know, sleeping well. So it was, it was a really big month for learning though, where I had gaps as well, because that's where I saw, okay, I really need to lean on more support. I need to be very honest with what support, you know, anything that needs to change. And also I need to fill any gaps with my programs because any mistake will be magnified, you know, times 100. Yeah, yeah. So it was a good month for that, for those learning lessons as well.

Yeah, well said. I mean, because you were, I mean, month 11 as a business owner and then bring in 110k in a month. It's like, that sounds good. And like, as your coach, I'm obviously going to like share the case study. But then I remember I always run this case studies by people before I put them out and you were like, this is all fine, but like, I just want to make sure we include that. Like, that also sucked in a way because I think when some people, you know, we can all read and compare ourselves to other entrepreneurs and how people are doing, but it can also sort of be like, be careful what you wish for. You know what I mean? Because revenue isn't everything at the end of the day, you know, we don't know also when we see like really, really big entrepreneurs. In a lot of cases, people have dedicated their entire being to what you're seeing. They created everything. And so if you don't have kids, a partner, hobbies, you're not taking care of yourself physically. You don't have a spiritual practice like that leaves a lot of room to achieve things, but then you don't have the balance. So you're, you know, you're going to go up and down in terms of your, your feelings about life based on that one thing, which is the business.

Yeah. And that's where it can start. You can experience a lot of disappointment. Right. If it's not going the way that you had hoped. And it's also where you kind of put too many eggs in one basket in an area of your life instead of having this well rounded picture. Right. Everyone knows this. However, it's just a very natural tendency. And I see a lot of people I've worked with as well where we're chasing after more money. And that's where it's really key to ask yourself, okay, why do you want more money? Or what is the thing that you want behind that? I think it's a really big almost life cheat code to say, okay, what's your goal? What is the reason you want that? Goal. What is the feeling you think that will give you? Is that more security? Is that more freedom to do more things? Okay. If you're denying yourself the very thing that you are going after this goal for, then you're just going to a, you know, put a lot of pressure on that goal in order to get what you want and deny yourself that in the meantime. Um, but then B, all, you know, according to the hedonic treadmill principle, like, everything always will go through a high, will go through a low, but will usually come out to here. And if you're expecting like, oh, I'll be happy once I hit this, then you're setting yourself up for failure.

I know. We're both Enneagram type threes. Is that right?

Yes. Yeah.

For anyone who doesn't know the Enneagram, I'm finding I'm bringing it up, like, in a lot of these interviews. Um, fortunately, my guests also are familiar with it. It's a. It's a typing system where there's nine different types based on a core side of childhood wound, I guess you could say things that we become scared of, things that we kind of base our sense of self on. So threes are like achievers. Threes really like to feel like they're winning, they look good. And when we're not winning, it can feel like we. We are failures. Not just that we're failing. So sourcing your worth from what you do. I'm curious for your perspective, how does that play into productivity and performance as an entrepreneur? Because I've noticed. I thought of it because we were talking about comparison. Like, I know for me, if I'm too much in comparison, I'll actually freeze up in the business and do less. So what sorts. How does that play out for you and your business?

Yeah, well, I think for Enneagram threes, but also for a lot of people, it's coming into. Once you come into more internal validation, there isn't as much worth, I guess, placed on external validation. And external validation is often what, you know, what is being chased after when we're associating a lot of our worth with our work, rather than saying, you know, and this is something that I remember someone told me this back when I was in my really peak achiever days and. But also peak anxiety, peak, you know, everything else that comes with that. And they just said, you're enough right now. And I was like, that's not what I want to hear. I want to be validated. Like, be true. I am enough. Like, but this is more what is.

This enough that you speak of? I'm not familiar.

I wasn't in the self development world at that time. But essentially what's going on usually unconsciously is, is that we don't feel enough. We don't feel worthy, you know, and that could be anything from what we learned growing up from caregivers to also what society preaches is success and kind of chasing after that. But if we unconsciously, kind of at a subconscious level, internalize, I'm not enough, but the more that I do, you know, I might fill that enoughness. This is really the thing that has to be unlearned in order to feel good right now rather than wait to feel good based off of your performance.

What have you found helps with cultivating that worthiness internally? You mentioned meditation. I know that's been a big one for me. What else has helped you?

Well, something that's really. I've been surprised, but a lot of my clients first just love hearing is worth is a birthright. Nothing that you will do outside of you will increase or decrease that. And so you can know that a bit consciously, but really letting that sink in, you know, you're, as soon as you're born like that is you have your worth. It's a birthright. And when you can start looking out for when you're where in your life, you feel like you have that almost lingering sense of not enoughness, when you find where that is located, which for me was in body image stuff. It was. And the type of work that I was doing. And when you can kind of place a little magnifying glass under those areas and really start to work through what those driving beliefs are and unlearning them, then you can start to come into more of that worthiness. Now the second thing I say a lot of people are missing is doing more activities that will give you more respect for yourself. And so unfortunately, through a lot of the procrastinators I'm working with, they've lost a lot of trust with themselves because they keep saying, I'll do this tomorrow and then they don't do it tomorrow. And it continuously is breaking trust that they have with themselves. Right. If you told a friend, hey, meet me at this coffee shop at 9, and then they didn't meet you, you're not going to believe them. Like maybe the third and fourth time that they're not showing up, you're like, well, I've given up trust with this person. So you are rebuilding trust with yourself. With myself, I found was really helpful, which Comes in the form of also changing your inner dialogue. But also I found setting boundaries. The more that I set boundaries, the more that I really put myself in my needs first, the more my confidence grew and the less I needed that external validation. And so when I, when a client would say, hey, can I reschedule? And it was one hour before the meeting and I said, no, I have a 24 hour cancellation policy that was showing me, hey, I'm placing more like you're enough to say no. And also showing myself safety with putting myself first is really something that helped me build up a lot more of that internal validation.

Thank you. I like those tips. I just interviewed Suzanne Kohlberg, who, she calls herself the nope coach. And she's all about helping people with boundaries. And that was really cool. So I like the connection between boundaries and, and self worth. I hadn't thought about that and it makes a lot of sense.

Yeah, yeah. No, it's. Boundaries are, you know, very much in the, is this world of therapy. But there's a lot of areas that, you know, people can look for in their business where, you know, maybe your not saying something to a client that you've really been wanting to say, or maybe you're saying yes to a client out of scarcity because you want to get clients. And instead when you start to really honor your needs or speak up when you need to, or, you know, say no to a person when they're asking for something that you really don't want to give, that will lead to less resentment towards other people, less resentment in your business. And you'll also be setting yourself and your business up for less likelihood of burnout. So they're really an important territory to look to.

Agreed. All right, so as we wrap up, where should people go next if they want to dive deeper? What's the next best step for folks?

Oh, thank you for asking. Yeah, I think that there are so many free resources that I have both on my website. Grace. Sorry, that's my email, graceberder.com but also people can find me on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube withcoachgrace. And there's where I have a lot of free videos as well as a free workshop that exists. So I would say just diving into those materials will help you be a lot more aware of why you've been procrastinating something as well as what to do when you notice it's happening.

Wonderful. Thanks, Grace.

Yeah, thanks, Greg.