EP. 128 Perfectionism, Procrastination + People Pleasing: An Interview With Cristina Roman

So how do we deal with this thought of, I know what I have to do, I have a lot to do, but I don't feel like doing it right now. I'll just do it later.

I have two answers to this. So there's two layers. The first thing to hear is, I'll do it later is not inherently a bad thought when you say it and you report it. Like even in the question, I feel like there's a judgment. I shouldn't say I'll do it later. I'm like, no, it's not inherently a bad thing. It's a totally neutral thought. That sometimes is valuable. Like, sometimes it makes a ton of sense to tell yourself, "I'll do that later." So for example, I'm thinking of projects that I'm like, "Yeah, I'm not ready to do that project. I'll do it later." And that makes me feel calm and relaxed. So I just want to neutralize that thought.

I love that. There's another side to the thought, "I'll do it later." Yeah. You're listening to the Stop Dieting Forever podcast, episode 128. What if it were possible to achieve your goal weight and stay there permanently without dieting? Welcome to the Stop Dieting Forever podcast, where you will discover the key components that most diets won't tell you because they want you to keep coming back. Not here. This is your last stop on the weight loss struggle bus. I am your host, Jennifer Dent-Brown, life and weight loss coach, and I am going to show you how to stop Dieting Forever. Let's jump into today's episode. Hey, Lux Lifers, Jennifer Dent-Brown here, your life and weight loss coach. And listen, I have a question for you. Do you suffer from procrastination, perfectionism, or people pleasing? If you answered yes to any one of those Ps, you are going to love this episode today. I had an open and honest conversation with procrastination coach Christina Roman. Christina is a DC-based procrastination coach who helps business owners stop procrastinating and start finishing their half-done projects. Procrastination, perfectionism, and people pleasing are themes that come up often inside the Stop Dieting Forever community. And I knew I wanted to have Christina come on and talk about her special approach to these 3 Ps. Now, as a reformed procrastinator myself, and I talk about in the episode, you'll hear me talk about some of my experiences. I know that I used to deal with procrastination, especially during the workday, by snacking. And I used to snack throughout the workday just to feel better about not doing what I knew I was supposed to do. Because it's so much easier to just go grab a snack and distract yourself while you're eating than it is to sit down and force your brain to focus on something you don't want to do. Now, Christina and I have been colleagues and friends for a few years, and we've had quite a few conversations about the parallels between our two groups of clients. Clients. And we both believe, like, how we do one thing is how we do many things. So if you're struggling with procrastination or perfectionism or people pleasing or all of the above, chances are you're buffering with food. So be ready to take notes. This episode is for you. In the episode, you're going to hear us talk about how we create the conditions to procrastinate. Why we procrastinate and what we're avoiding when we do it, why you don't have to force yourself to do the hard things first, as many of us believe is the best thing to do. And then Christina gives us very specific strategies on how we can begin to overcome procrastination. It's such a fun topic, and I found myself learning new things and taking notes of things that I'm going to start doing just based off of this conversation. So enjoy meeting my friend Christina. Live Lux, and I will see you in the next episode. I'm excited to have Christina Roman here. Christina is an expert in a topic that comes up very often in our coaching calls, and it is the action of procrastination. So Procrastination is just one of those things a lot of us feel like it's just what we do. We don't know how to get around it. We always procrastinate, even though we don't like the result of procrastination. Like, we just can't help it. And for me, for years, I was a huge procrastinator, and I used to beat myself up for it a lot. And one of the things that comes up a lot in my coaching calls is the fact that when we procrastinate and we are sitting in this very uncomfortable feeling, it's much easier to go and eat. It's much easier to like go into the snack cabinet and grab a handful of nuts. It's much easier to distract ourselves with going in the fridge and like, oh, let me see what I'm hungry for, and standing there and like eating versus sitting down and doing the uncomfortable task, whatever that is. A thought that just automatically keeps playing in our head like, oh, I'll do it later, I'll get to it later, right? It's just like we convince ourselves, it's like the bargaining is happening in our brain of, oh, let me just do it later. So because I struggled with procrastination, I am by no means an expert in procrastination, which is why I brought an expert here, Christina Roman, to talk to us about procrastination. And we're gonna have a really open and honest dialogue about what she does as a procrastination coach and what we can do to get off of this procrastination, like, merry-go-round. And we're just going to jump into and answer some questions that the Luxe Lifers have posted in the group. So Christina, go ahead and introduce yourself. Tell the audience what you do and who you help.

Yeah, thank you so much for having me, Jennifer. Always good to chat with you. So procrastination coach, and I specifically work with business owners who have a ton of half-finished projects. And so for anyone listening, if you're like, wait a second, this is a normal thing, I'm not alone. You're in the right place with this episode. My clients will come to me and they have on average 20 half-finished projects at any given time. So if you think about the mental and emotional weight of those projects, trying to keep them in your brain and trying to dabble in all of them at the same time, I'm like, no wonder it's stressful. And when you're stressed, your body's like, wait, we don't wanna do this. Like you said, why don't we go eat? So we create these conditions for ourselves to feel really stressed out, and then we do feel stressed, and then we react to our own stress, and then we get mad at ourselves. And so the work that you do and the work that I do is just breaking all of that down. So first removing that layer of judgment and then getting to, okay, now what are we gonna actually do about it? And what practical things can we implement so that you are not in this land of half-finished projects? So that's a summary.

You just said that we create the conditions to procrastinate, right? We create this condition like we're doing it to ourselves. It's so a different way of thinking about it because I think for a lot of us it's like, I'm just a procrastinator. Like, we have just adopted that identity of like, that's just what I do. And we feel like there's nothing that we can do. But you're telling us there is something that we can do about it.

Yeah, absolutely. And if anyone listening is like immediately goes into blame and shame with that, where you're like, wait a second, so now I'm creating the conditions So now I'm responsible, so now I should feel even worse. I'm like, no, no, no. You create conditions because of your brain and your brain, like the thoughts that are in your brain and your identity are heavily influenced by society and by your upbringing and by your childhood. And I always teach my clients, I'm like, your thoughts are not just there spontaneously. They are there practiced over time because of your identity. And so if you look at things like, race and age and generation and sexuality. I'm like, these are all things that are really overlooked, I think, in a lot of coaching and definitely in procrastination. I'm like, no, those things influence how you show up. So our job is to just get you understanding how that's true and then implementing the changes. So I'm saying that cuz I don't want anyone to go into blame.

That is deep. Okay, so this is the reason why I invited the expert on the podcast, because I would just be like, get over it, just stop procrastinating, just do it, do it, right? That's what I did. But you're saying that we are conditioned, and there's so many different layers of conditioning that has created this thought process that gives us permission essentially to procrastinate, and then we don't know why, and because we don't know why, we think it's a problem. And then we, we beat ourselves up about it.

Yeah. Can I give a super quick example?

I would just say, please give us an, an, an example of like, what do you see?

Yeah. So I teach this concept of 100% capacity. And so when I say 100% capacity, what I mean is your mental capacity, your emotional capacity, and your logistical capacity in any given moment. So for example, like what can you actually mathematically, physically do given the time that you have available. And what I see with my clients, most of them are trying to work well above their 100% capacity. So they're like, okay, I'm gonna do all of these things on my massive to-do list. And then those things don't happen. And then they're again mad at themselves. But I'm like, that was never possible. The things that were on your to-do list, the volume of tasks was never actually possible given your capacity. And so instead of continuing to perpetuate this whole long to-do list, I'm like, let's cut it down. Let's get you realistic about what you can actually accomplish and then you can move forward. But you have something to say?

I have a question. Yeah. Yeah.

Go for it.

How do we know what our capacity is? Because we wanna just like, yeah, I can do all the things. How do you determine what your capacity is to complete something?

Yeah, I'm like, it's a very big question. And so it definitely takes some finessing and some work. The simplest way that I would start is to do the time capacity. And the way that you can do that is literally calendaring out your week. And so I know a lot of people don't love to calendar or they feel like calendaring hasn't worked, and that's a big topic we can dig into. But the number one benefit of calendaring is you can see the truth, the math. Of your time. So like with my clients, they'll put everything on their calendar and then they have all these things that didn't fit. And I'm like, that's how you know you're above 100% capacity because it mathematically cannot fit into your week. So I always say I'm like, the math's not mathing. So that's just one of the first steps.

Okay. I love that. This is why we, Christina and I know each other. We've known each other for a while. We were in a mastermind together. So I love talking to her about procrastination. But that was one thing that I used to do, was like, oh yes, I must calendar my time. And I was very diligent about like time blocks and all the things. But when I couldn't get everything done, there was that self-judgment. I would go directly to self-judgment, like, oh, you know, I'm not doing it fast enough, it's my ADHD brain. Like, everything was a problem. And so then I just quit. I was like, I'm not calendaring anything. I like white space on my calendar. I like to be creative and go with the flow. And so I tried that as well, but I wasn't as productive. And so now fast forward, like, I'm at this point now where I can calendar my things, be more realistic about the time, and I can be very objective at the end of the week when I do my end of the week evaluation. Of how I spent my time and what I accomplished. And it feels so much better.

It feels so much better to be there because you found the sweet spot of being like, okay, I understand that putting it on my calendar, making those decisions ahead of time is actually probably going to get me the results that I want as opposed to winging it. And you brought in again the empathy and the compassion and just the self-understanding of being like, okay, when it doesn't work as planned, Why not? And then I love that you used the word objective. And for a lot of people, this is not an objective experience at the beginning. It's terrible and it's painful and it's filled with shame. And you're like, yeah, why am I not better? Why wasn't I more efficient? All these things. The work that I do with my clients is I'm like, you are allowed to have your opinion, even if it's a negative opinion. We wanna see that. We wanna see what are those thoughts and what are the feelings they're creating. And also we wanna look at the data, just the facts, like what happened and why. I feel like for you the example would be the scale where it's like you can still look at the scale, you can have the number, but you can also be like, what am I thinking about that?

Yeah, totally. It's the exact same. Like I look at the scale, we look at the number on the scale as just data. It's 100% neutral. And then that's when all the thoughts come up, all the self-judgment comes up about that number. And so that's one of the first concepts that I teach my clients. Is that the number is neutral. And a lot of people are very, very, very resistant to that. But when they get it, they get it.

Yeah. And I would say the calendar is neutral.

Yeah.

Which does not feel true to most people, but it is true. And you have lots of thoughts and feelings, and that's where we can then start getting into the pattern. So for example, I'm like, if your calendar is completely packed, I'm like, what are you overcompensating for? Is it like, I don't wanna say no to people cuz then they'll be disappointed in me? Or is it, I should be the go-to person who can get it all done and if I don't, I feel shame.

Mm-hmm.

Your calendar's actually a window into your emotional self.

Oh, I love that. Yeah. Okay, let's talk about the second scenario you just mentioned of like, everybody needs me, I need to do all the things, I need to be everywhere all at once. And my clients get overwhelmed because they're like, I don't have enough time to fit in, like, learning the Stop Dieting Forever process. I don't have enough time to, like, think about what I'm going to eat. And so they continue to eat emotionally. A lot of my members are, like, Type A and perfectionists. They struggle with perfectionism. So talk to me, talk to us, about perfectionism and how that shows up with procrastination and how that just does not serve us.

I think the first thing to say about perfectionism is to deeply understand that it is a mechanism that you've developed again over time because of your upbringing to keep you safe. And it's misguided. But it's designed to keep you safe. And so I actually learned this. I did hypnotherapy and my hypnotherapist has this phrase. She just says like, whatever it is. So overeating as an example in your world or procrastination, it's like that served its purpose and I don't need it anymore. I don't need to be kept safe from my negative emotions anymore cuz I can handle them.

That's so interesting. So you're saying like, when my perfectionists fill their calendars up and they say, I gotta do all the things, it's just almost like a buffer. Like, it's a keeping them so busy, focus on other things, they don't have to focus on themselves.

It's that, and it's trying to protect you from the negative emotions you think are inevitable when you say no. So if your calendar—

yeah, okay. So yeah, not being able to say no as well because you think there's gonna be some negative repercussion or a negative emotion because you tell somebody, no, can't do that.

Yeah. And the thing is, like, I never tell my clients, I'm like, oh, people aren't gonna be mad at you. I'm like, no, they're definitely gonna be mad at you. Let's not pretend that everyone's not gonna be upset with you at some point in time. I'm not gonna coddle my clients by being like, everyone's gonna be happy with you if you say no, they're not. But why is it that you feel you can't handle other people being disappointed with you? Mm-hmm. That's the work.

Yeah, that's so good. That reminds me of one client that I have, and she's like, she's a mom of 4, grandmother, and just traditionally has done everything for everyone else. And so as she became a Luxe Life Friend, it was like learning the process and learning how to set boundaries and be okay. She started saying no to things, and the kids were not happy. They were like, who is this Jennifer person and what has she done with my mother? But that's really interesting of what are you afraid of when you think people are gonna be upset? Yeah.

And like ultimately if you take away all the other layers, what do you make it mean about yourself?

Mm-hmm.

And why is that not okay with you? Yeah. I actually heard a really good description of boundaries. They said the person who's mad at you for having a boundary is the person who was benefiting from you not having any boundaries.

Oh yeah, dang. Yeah, that is true because they just like, you're just an open book. You can tap in, you get, they can get whatever they want whenever they need it because you're incapable of setting boundaries.

Damn.

Yeah, kind of deep.

I know, I know. I was like, shook me. I probably saw it on like an Instagram post and it's like that one sentence where you're like, wait, what? Yeah. And so then it's like you are renegotiating your relationships. And so I think the work you do with your clients and the work I do with my clients, I'm like, it requires you to renegotiate the way your relationships are currently set up. Like, you cannot overcome procrastination without doing some renegotiating in your personal relationships because it's so intertwined with your work. Hmm.

Okay. That's so interesting. All right. Yeah, this is like getting deep. Okay, so let's just jump over, switch gears a little bit. I posted in the group a question in my Stop Dieting Forever Facebook group yesterday, and I was just like, hey, I'm interviewing a procrastination expert. When you hear procrastination, you think of procrastination, like, what are the things that come up for you? And we got a couple of answers back. Some of them overlap, but let's just talk through some of the responses. Christina, we could do like a— not a quick fire, but like a quick round robin.

Love it.

Okay, so the first one, Tanya says— and this is my thought too, I've coached her on this too because I had the same thought— of I'll do it later, right? I have so much to do, I'm feeling overwhelmed, so what I do is that I watch TV, I scroll, I do something that wasn't as important as what I set out to do, like washing the dishes, folding the laundry, researching something for work. Or something that will help with personal growth. So how do we deal with this thought of, I know what I have to do, I have a lot to do, but I don't feel like doing it right now, I'll just do it later?

Okay, answering questions rapid fire is like my heaven, so I'm so excited for this.

Good.

And I have two answers to this, so there's two layers. The first thing to hear is, I'll do it later is is not inherently a bad thought. When you say it and you report it, like, even in the question, I feel like there's a judgment, like, I shouldn't say I'll do it later. I'm like, no, it's not inherently a bad thing. It's a totally neutral thought that sometimes is valuable. Like, sometimes it makes a ton of sense to tell yourself, I'll do that later. So for example, I'm thinking of projects that I'm like, yeah, I'm not ready to do that project, I'll do it later. And that makes me feel calm and relaxed. So I just want to neutralize that thought.

I love that there's another side to the thought, I'll do it later. Yeah, right?

Because as soon as we hear the thought, then we go into judgment, like, I always do this, I'm such a procrastinator, that's my identity, all that. I'm like, yeah, yeah, the thought is neutral.

Now let's investigate whether it's working in this situation, because it does actually help now that you're saying it like that. Because she's saying, like, I have a lot to do because I've coached her on this, right? I feel like we have the same brain because you get overwhelmed because you have all these things on your to-do list. But when you do tell yourself and you go through the list and you delegate or you cross some stuff off, or you just say, hey, I'll do this later, it's not a priority now, it actually is really— it's a relief to be able to take it off of your list.

Yeah, totally. So I call this, um, I didn't make this up, I heard this like 15 years ago and I've never forgotten and I will never forget it. They can put it like on my tombstone, um, do, dump, delegate, delay.

And so do, dump, delegate, delay.

Yes. So I use this all the time. So I have in my program, my clients take an inventory of all of their half-finished projects. And again, that's usually like 20+ projects. And then they decide, they go, am I gonna do this? And they choose one. Am I gonna dump it? Am I gonna delegate it? Or am I gonna delay it? And so you are choosing on purpose to believe I'll do it later. When you delay, but it's intentional.

I love that.

Yeah. And you can use this in really small ways. So like if I go into my email inbox, I'm like, the only 4 options are do, dump, delegate, or delay. That's it. And so it pulls you outta that space where you're like, I don't know, I'm gonna read it, I'll look at it, maybe respond, maybe not, put it away, put it back.

So that's like your first line of thinking when you go into your inbox?

Always.

Amazing.

Yeah.

All right, everybody write that down. Do, dump, delegate, delay. Yep.

Those are your options.

The 4 Ds.

The 4 Ds.

I love it. All right, let's go to the next one. Candace says when she thinks about procrastination, she feels the pain of regret. And she says, I regret procrastination 99% of the time, and I always find the task was never as difficult or unpleasant as my brain kept telling me It would be. Yeah. So fascinating because we know at the end of the day, like we forget like, oh, when I did this before, I'm so happy that I got it done. But we tend to forget that. Like, why does that happen? Yeah.

So the first thing that I would encourage is take the regret and use it as a signal to go into curiosity. So every time you feel regret, we're not telling you to not feel regret, but when you do, be like, wait a second, this is my chance to get curious what happened and why. And so just that quick switch again gets you into that better emotional state, which puts you into a better mode to problem solve. So that's the first step, curiosity instead of regret. And then the second thing is I would encourage you, especially if it's recurring task, is start timing that.

Hmm.

So I have an example. I did a TikTok on this. This was like my most successful TikTok I've ever done. I thought it was hilarious. So I used to think that emptying my dishwasher, I kid you not, I was like, I think it takes like 15 minutes. I was like, it's so tiring.

I hate it.

This is like the biggest first world problem ever. And I timed it one day. It takes 2 and a half minutes to empty the entire dishwasher. And I was like, oh wow. Okay. I'm never complaining about this ever again. So now I'm like, I don't need a car about 15 minutes, I need 2 and a half minutes. And that was just such a small tweak. And so I'm like, I don't like doing it. It's not something I enjoy. But what I tell myself now when I do it, it's, I'm like, this takes 2 and a half minutes. You can do anything for 2 and a half minutes.

Oh, I love that. On your timer on your phone or you just look at the clock?

Stopwatch on my phone. I was like, I have to know how long this actually takes. The other thing that I would always complain about was filling up the coffee maker the night before. I was like, this is exhausting. It takes so long. And that also takes like 2 minutes.

Oh, that's so interesting. Okay. I'm definitely gonna do that.

Yeah.

And that will help with that estimation of time blocking your tasks. Cause there's certain things that I do every single week and I estimate how long it takes me. Sometimes it takes me longer, sometimes it takes me less, but I'm just curious. I don't think I've ever timed myself of how long does it actually take for me to like write a weekly email.

Yeah. Yeah. And it's so good. And then you can average it out. And so this goes actually back to this idea of 100% capacity when you know, actually factually how long things take, then you can plan your capacity better than if you're always winging it and guessing about how long things take. So I actually started timing out my tasks because I'm going to hire a virtual assistant soon. And I was like, how long do these things take? Because I want to hire someone knowing how long they take. And I was like, oh, these things that again, I've been thinking were really cumbersome take like 3 to 4 minutes. So that was really good to know.

That's so interesting. I think that will also help my members who the ones that struggle with weekly meal planning and they don't want to do it because it takes so long. And it might just be interesting, y'all who have that thought, to just set your timer and see how long does it actually take.

Yeah.

And I've also heard, think on the same lines of the time blocking thing, I've also heard like if you just give yourself the time, like give yourself 20 minutes and don't allow yourself to go past the 20 minutes. Usually our brains like function faster and we can get things done in that period of time, which for your perfectionist is a really, really good strategy.

So I'll say like give yourself an amount of time. I say be the Goldilocks of time. So not too little that you feel rushed, but not too much that you are kind of messing around. And so you want to choose a time and then your work will be sitting in the discomfort when that time is up. And you feel that you haven't produced the best work quality that you could produce and still moving on. That's the hard work. Yeah.

Yeah. Oh, I know that is really difficult for some of my clients to be like, oh my God, I have to be finished right now. Yeah. Not perfect.

Yeah. Yeah. Then you have to sit with the discomfort and you have to see what comes up for you. And so it'll keep coming up and then you work through it and then it'll be less and less and less painful. So then you can just start finishing a task and moving on and it will become increasingly, yeah, increasingly clear.

Oh, that's so good. Yeah. It's like intentionally bringing up a negative emotion so you can experience it.

Yes. I love that you said that. I was just thinking about this yesterday that if you don't solve a procrastination issue or if you don't solve an overeating issue, you are signing up for low-grade discomfort forever. And if you solve the problem, you are signing up for intense discomfort, but only every now and then. Mm-hmm.

And when you experience that intense discomfort, it's so much easier. Yeah, you experience it, then you're like, then it's over, it's done.

And you get a result on the other side.

And you know it's on the other side of it. It's like, oh, then that's when you get to the point. Because my clients are always talking like, well, how do I get there? Because I'm always like, You know, I just sat in the discomfort of it. I just felt the negative emotion. I just felt very uncomfortable. I always say, like, lean into the discomfort, get comfortable with being uncomfortable. But once you get really good at accepting, like, this is just where I am right now, I just gotta feel like shit for a minute, then know, like, on the other side you're gonna feel so much better versus that, as you say, that feeling, that low-grade chronic, uncomfortable, negative. Just when I was like struggling with my weight, it was just like a chronic low-grade stress I was always under.

Yeah.

And now that I'm on the other side of it, I'm like, damn, I can't believe I spent all of those years just like low-grade chronically stressed about my weight, how I looked, what clothes I was wearing, who was talking to me, who wasn't going to talk to me. You know, how people were responding to me at work. It's just really kind of sad, but it's the experience I had to go through to be where I am now and to be able to help so many other people. Yeah, I'm glad you mentioned that.

Yeah, and I think what you're talking about is the relief of getting to the other side of a negative emotion. And I think for people who haven't actively learned how to process their emotions, which is all of us until someone teaches us, because I'm like, I sure shit did not learn this growing up. And so I think if that's you and you're like, I don't want to do the negative emotions, understand that you haven't yet felt the relief of getting through that.

Yeah.

And it does exist. It just takes practice.

Mm-hmm. I've told this story before with, to my clients, but I remember the exact moment where I just literally intentionally felt a very, very uncomfortable emotion of sadness. And I, like, didn't do anything. I didn't, like, go do laundry. I didn't go cry on the phone to my friend. I didn't, like, go eat anything. I just sat there and I felt intentionally the heaviness or the emotion of sadness. And it took a couple hours. It was like a wave. It would go in and come out. And I'd be like, oh. And then it would come back again, but it was less intense. But like, by the end of that day, I was like, wow, I just felt so much lighter. And that was like that pivotal moment of like, oh, this is what they're talking about. Yeah, I get it, get it. Yeah.

Can I say one thing in case someone— if you want to do this work and you're scared by it, I think that one of the twist that has really helped me is doing it from the inner child perspective. So comforting that younger version of yourself. So like the version of me that always pops into my head when I think of my younger self is 4 years old, always. So when I think of the 4-year-old self, I think of feeling my feelings as like an opportunity to comfort that version of myself.

Mm-hmm.

And the reason I'm saying that is because it almost gives you more purpose to feeling your emotions. It's almost like your thought is, I'm not here for me, I'm here for that little version. And then you feel really generous and loving and supportive in a way that's sometimes hard to feel towards your current self.

So that might be— instead of beating yourself up, like, that's the easy way to feel, like, I can't believe you're feeling sad right now. We have stuff to do. We don't have time to be sad. Right? Yeah. That's so good.

All right.

Thanks for sharing that.

Yeah.

All right, Gail says, how to get out of being stuck in procrastinating or the mindset of I work better under stress, which is why I procrastinate.

Okay, love this question. So I work with obviously self-proclaimed procrastinators, and everybody who comes to me is like, I get things done right before the last minute. And then they look at me like waiting for me to be like, yeah, that's terrible. And I'm like, okay, what if that's not a bad thing? And everyone has— yeah, that moment, exactly the look on your face. If everyone could see it, they would know. It's the look that's on their face, probably. I'm like, from a procrastination coach, you can actually get things done right before the last minute and not make that a problem. You might not want to do that, but explore that it is a possibility and that it's actually a good possibility. So An example that I always use is I'm like, I pack the day of a trip. Like, I don't pack in advance anymore. And instead of telling myself like, I could have done it the last minute under pressure, I'm like, I'm a genius. I had a time constraint and I did it really effectively. So it's funny to me that we set up deadlines and then we're mad at ourselves for actually using the deadline. I'm like, what if you just use the deadline for what it was there for, which was to compel you into action. So I have a follow-up thought, but I want to hear your reaction to that first.

It's so funny because as soon as you said you pack the day of the trip, my brain was like, oh, you pack the day of the trip? And I know my perfectionists are like, oh my God, I would never do that. But if that works for you and it's not a problem, it's just what you do, and you still get out the door, you still have a suitcase with stuff in it, and you still get to your destination and you have what you need.

Every single time.

Never thought that I— you've never forgotten your underwear or anything?

I actually tell myself, I'm like, the only thing that I actually need to remember is my contacts. And other than that, everything I can purchase wherever I go. And also, I know from experience that you can actually get contact samples on the road. Ask me how I know that, because back in the day, I forgot contacts. So I'm like, everything you can get. I'm obviously not running around like purchasing new things. I don't have that sort of budget. But it's just a way to kind of relax my brain and be like, this This is not as high stakes as you think it is.

Yeah, I was just saying, just that thought right there, like, oh, if I forget anything, anything that I need, I can buy at the location or wherever. And you're like international traveler, so you're not just like doing interstate traveling on a car, you're like living in other countries. And Christina has been all around the globe, globetrotting, so you know that you can get what you need wherever you are.

Yeah, and I never need to. And it's just having that little outlet for my brain that wants to freak out. I'm like, that's very true.

'Cause like Amazon, you can order anything and get it the next day if you really need it.

Yeah.

You can find a Target, a Walmart to go get some underwear. Like, it's like all the things.

Yeah.

All right. So I hope that right there, that just relieves some pressure for me when it comes to packing.

Ugh.

Yeah.

Can I say this last piece about the stress though?

Mm-hmm.

So what I would recommend doing is figuring out what actually is working when I do it at the last minute. Is it that our time constraints so that you don't go into perfectionism? Is it that you worry less about your work quality because you have that deadline? Think about what is actually working here that I could replicate with out the stress. And so what I find with my clients is I'm like, at least 50% of the stress comes from the self-judgment of I shouldn't be doing it at the last minute.

Yeah, 50%.

Just releasing that and being like, okay, that's gone. I don't need to judge myself anymore. Then you handled that and then, okay, now why is it still stressful? And then you start looking at things like, okay, well it's still stressful because I didn't actually give myself the amount of time I would genuinely like. Okay, how do I give myself a little bit more time? Or I didn't anticipate obstacles that were going to come up at the last minute. Okay, what are the obstacles I haven't yet thought through that might come up and how do I wanna strategize for them ahead of time? And so it's like with a few extra tweaks, then you can be the person who actually gets it done at the last minute, but calmly. And it's not a problem. And it's not a problem.

It's just, and you do and you get it done and you get it done in a great way. Yeah. I love that. That's super helpful. Yeah, for all my, my perfectionist procrastinators out there.

Yeah, I like half of solving procrastination is just me telling you that's actually not a problem. And then you're like, wait, it's not a problem? Okay, I don't have to judge myself. Perfect. Like, that's at least 50% of it.

One of my favorite thoughts is like, nothing has gone wrong. Yes, nothing has gone wrong. It's all good. Okay.

Yeah.

All right, so Keisha says, she says, I tend to overthink about matters, and then she procrastinates. So then she's, she spends a lot of time thinking about what needs to get done and then it's still the procrastination. So what would you say to her?

I would say that the overthinking is procrastination.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

So these aren't two separate things. It's not that you overthink and then procrastinate, it's that it's all happening at the same time. Procrastination is overthinking, and then the reason that you overthink is to try and protect yourself from negative emotions. It's your brain in your head being like, if I think hard enough about this and obsess enough, ruminate enough, then I will prevent things from going wrong so I won't have to feel bad. So I'm like, the theme of this entire podcast episode is if you are willing to feel more negative emotions, so many problems resolve themselves.

You no longer procrastinate. Yeah, yeah, that is so true. I teach a lot about making decisions. My clients struggle to make decisions. I'm sure your clients probably same thing. So I love the fact that you just pointed out that ruminating and going back and forth, like, if I do this and then if I do that, then this might happen, or if I do this thing, then this might happen, like going back and forth and being unable to make a decision. This is procrastinating on making a decision and moving forward. Yeah.

Well, you said it at the beginning. I wrote down this word bargaining. It's the bargaining and the negotiating and the second guessing. It's everything that's designed to not have you make the decision, go out there and potentially fail and then feel bad about it.

Yep. The bargaining. I tell my clients, like, as soon as you start bargaining with yourself, then you know that's like a yellow flag that we just need to investigate. Like, what's happening right now. Yeah, that's good. Okay. So when you catch yourself overthinking, just know that you are procrastinating, but there is a way to stop the overthinking and the quickest way to drop out of overthinking.

So I always think about this. You're in your head when you're overthinking and your head is trying to compensate for your body to get into your body, to feel your feelings, which I know is work you do. Close your eyes, tilt your chin down. Because it gets you into your body and then you actually start being like, what is below the overthinking? If I weren't overthinking, what would I have to face? That's how you process the emotion.

Mm-hmm. And that brings it up for you. Yeah. That's so good. Tilting your chin down. That's— I've never heard of that.

Yeah. It's because I realized I like just— this is from coaching people and I was like, when people's chin is up, even if their eyes are closed, they're in their head. Like almost 100% of the time, you're trying to think your way into a solution still, and you're trying to think about your feelings versus feeling your feelings.

Oh, it's so good. Yeah, see y'all, I told you I brought the expert to you.

You're so sweet.

All right, last one. Nadia says a few things for me. She says thinking of the large task and not small milestones. And then she says, second, not prioritizing, I guess, what she thinks needs to be done, or trying to do everything. And the third thing she says procrastination brings up for her is not doing the hardest task first. So I know this is like a layered question. How do you want to attack this one?

I'd like to go backwards, please.

Mm-hmm. I want to start— so not doing the hardest task first.

Yes. So that is a method of getting things done, is doing the hard thing first, which is, um, like if anyone's heard of the book Eat the Frog, that whole idea, do the hard thing first. However, I have a lot of clients who have ADHD, and my understanding of ADHD, which I am still working on— yep, exactly, we're in the right place— my understanding is, so it's Dopamine. And so when you have the dopamine, then you get into more action. And so if you're trying to start, you're trying to wake up in the morning and do the hardest thing first, I would like to say, I'm like not an expert. This is my understanding. You're trying to do the hardest thing, but you haven't actually fulfilled any of your dopamine requirements. So it might actually work better to do the smaller things first, get that dopamine hit, and then you're motivated to keep getting momentum. The caveat would be, be mindful if you then just start doing all the like little small things that actually don't move the needle towards your results.

Mm-hmm.

So you have to be willing to do the small things that don't feel hard and also call yourself out if you start to do things that are not moving you towards your goals.

Yeah, that's like my exact journey of trying to figure out how to do the hard things or how to do the big things. Because when I was diagnosed as having ADHD recently at the end of last year, I always thought like that one method of eating the frog first, doing the hard thing first, was like the way that you had to get things done. And I would get upset, like if I couldn't wake up in the morning and like do this massive journaling process and go do my workout. And so I would always fight with myself to get those things done until I realized, like, exactly what you just said. I need to have a little bit of dopamine in the morning. It's like a little bit of caffeine to get my brain started. And so I just gave myself permission to go on to social media, to check Facebook, check my email. I'm sitting down at the table, I've got my journal, I got my planner in front of me, I'm going to do that stuff. But I give myself permission and be like, oh, what happened overnight? I check into my groups. My clients know I send them messages very early in the morning. I give myself that little bit of a dopamine hit, but I also give myself a time limit. Yeah, so I'm not sitting there scrolling all morning, next thing you know it's like 9 o'clock and I haven't done anything. Nope, by 8 o'clock I'm in my office. And I have a very specific task that I'm working on, but I've gotten my dopamine hit, so now I can focus.

I love that you've been willing to play with that. And I think sometimes having that diagnosis of ADHD helps be like, wait a second, I don't have to do it the way that I've always heard. Now I can experiment. But I'm like, even as somebody who doesn't have ADHD and tons of my clients don't, you also just get to experiment. You also just get to do things how they naturally feel good to you. So I think that one thing that happens in the coaching world is We're like obsessed with thoughts. So we go like, we work so hard to believe good things and positive, productive things, and that's great. But I'm like, sometimes you just need to change the circumstance. So I'll give you an example. I have a client who's like, I just like working in the afternoons. That is when I prefer to work. And I'm like, that sounds like hell to me. That's terrible. Like my brain just goes offline at 3:00 PM. She's like, that's when my brain comes online. And she has been working out of this narrative that morning people are more successful and morning people are the people who get results. She's like, I don't wanna work in the morning though. Like, it doesn't feel good and natural to me. And so I was like, you can work on your thoughts about working in the morning. Like, we can help you think better thoughts about doing morning work or just work in the afternoon. That's the easiest option. Why not take that one?

Especially if you know that it works, right?

Right.

And I feel like for me, my work style has evolved and changed just as I've gotten older, as I've taken on less clients, and as I'm running a membership now, like just different circumstances. I feel like my capacity to work, my hours are just so much different because before, my workout was part of my morning routine. Now I work out much better in the afternoon, and I like to use my morning time from like 8 to 11 for just my creative. This is where I do my big heavy lifting in the morning.

Yeah.

And in the afternoon, like your client start to work at 3, at 3 I'm like, oh, let's check email. Let's go check into the other Facebook groups. The little things that don't need to take a lot of energy, but it wasn't always like that. It's, it's changed over time. Okay, let's talk about her number 2, working backwards. So she says procrastination means for her not prioritizing, and she didn't explain or elaborate on what that meant, but I'm going to assume not just doing a whole bunch of stuff and not prioritizing what needs to get done first.

Okay, love this question. The number 1 missing thing that is not talked about enough in prioritization, in my opinion, is results. So what I mean by that is most people try to prioritize by having a massive list, like that massive to-do list, and then being like, what should I prioritize? And it's super confusing and it's super overwhelming. And you're like, I don't really know. And then you get stuck and maybe do the easy things, right? Maybe dabble in a ton of different things, like distract yourself, whatever it is. All of that can be seriously reduced when you just understand what are the results that I want to create here. So I'll give some examples of that. I work with results with my clients on a weekly basis. So we use the Life Coach School Monday Hour One calendaring system. So what is the result you wanna have by the end of the week? But we also have a project plan that's over the course of 8 weeks. So what is the ultimate result of that project plan that then gets broken down into the week? So for you, it might be like, what is your weight loss goal?

Mm-hmm. Yeah, we work on our weight loss goal 90 days at a time. Love it.

Yeah, I do 8 weeks, but I love that. I saw that you do 90 days and I like that too. Yeah. So it's like then when you're super clear on the results, then you go back and you're like, okay, what actually is the fastest, easiest, most enjoyable way to get that result? And you do just those things, and then you figure out what do I need to stop doing? And what I find is like a lot of things on your to-do list will actually just get deleted or dumped in our, in our vocabulary because all of a sudden you're like, wait a second, this thing has no bearing whatsoever on the result I actually want. So I wanna give people listening a challenge, which is if you think about your average week, What percent of your time or what percent of your energy is directly related to creating the results you actually want in your life? And it's scarily low for most people.

Mm-hmm.

They did a study about this. Should I tell that real quick?

Mm-hmm.

So this was in a corporate setting, so I work with business owners, but this is still really relevant. So in the book Decisive, it's by Dan and Chip Heath, totally recommend it. It's an awesome book. They did this study of leaders in corporate environments and what they found was they had all of the leaders identify all of their top priorities, like their actual top priorities. And then they looked at their calendars and 0% of them had calendared anything related to their number one priority, which is mind-blowing. Yeah. And that's how we live our lives.

That's how we live our life cuz we get caught up in like putting out fires all the time and doing the thing that's right in front of us, or doing the thing that everyone else wants us to do, and we just completely forget about our goals. So it's interesting you said that, because one of the things that I started doing when I have new members join the Stop Dieting Forever membership— what we do on the orientation calls, like, yeah, I give you a tour of like the membership site and all the stuff, but what we spend the bulk of the time doing is working through a clearing, completing, and organization plan for the next 90 days. Because what happens is my clients I see are busy, they're higher achievers, they're doing all the things, and they want to lose weight. So they think like, okay, I'm just gonna like pack on this process on top of everything else that I'm doing. And guess what happens, y'all? Like, you can't do it all. So even before they start the process, it's like, how can we go through what we think we need to do and just clear some things off our calendars, off our plates, complete some things that have been like incomplete forever, organize our lives so we can make room to start to learn how to prioritize ourselves by working through this process that Jennifer has laid out for us.

I love that you do that. I mean, obviously, like, as a time management procrastination coach, that just makes me very happy. But also as a fellow coach, the fact that you set your clients up like that from the get-go, I think is huge and like just shows the level of integrity that you have is being, I'm going to create the conditions to make it as easy as possible for you to have success in this program. I just want to commend you for that. I think that's really neat. And I teach that in my one-day kickoff as well.

Yeah, I think it's so important.

Yeah, it's huge.

So important.

So I have this exercise that I've been teaching at my one-day kickoff. It's called 336 Units, and it's basically, it's a spreadsheet and there are 168 hours in any given week. And so if you divide that into 30-minute blocks, there's 330-minute blocks in your week. And what I tell my clients is I'm like, the homework that you do in my program takes maximum 90 minutes per week. That is 3 units and you have 336. So if you're not doing your homework, we have a problem. Because I'm like, your homework is designed to get you aligned and finishing your projects and actually creating the results you want and having more time and more money and all these things. And if you're not doing the homework that supports that, things are misaligned, they're out of whack. And so that math to me just always blows my mind where I'm like, working out is a perfect example for your people. If you say that working out is super important to you, And you have 336 different units to put that work out in and it doesn't make it into your week. That's a serious reality check.

Mm-hmm. Ain't nothing's happening. Right. I love that because that is, it redirects your brain, as you said, to looking at the result that you wanna create versus, oh, I'm busy doing stuff but not really working towards the result.

Yeah. Yeah, for sure. The results-first planning is like the core part of what I teach cuz I'm like, most people were not trained to look at results. Me included.

Oh yeah, you see my Post-it notes back on the wall? Christina can see them. I had to learn this process because I wasn't taught it. So yeah, so fun. Okay, last thing that, uh, Nadia said was that she's thinking of the large task and not the small milestones. Oh, so procrastinating makes her think about the big thing and not incremental, I guess, celebrations, or not even focusing on the incremental milestones. What's your response to that?

I think notice if you're in judgment about that first, because I'm like, again, I think that looking first at the big picture, aka the result that you want, is a great thing. So first celebrate that you're already doing that because I think inherent in the comment is I'm not doing it right. I'm like, no, no, you're totally doing it right. We just need to now get to the next step. So first celebrate, where am I already doing this really well? So I have a big picture vision, I have a result that I wanna create. Awesome. Done. Now, yeah, how do I break that into milestones and why haven't you broken into milestones? That would be my question. What is it about having milestones maybe that freaks you out or that maybe would force you to celebrate and that's uncomfortable?

Mm-hmm.

Or like having a timeline around things makes you nervous cuz you're afraid you're not gonna meet them. I would just look at like, what are all the reasons that I haven't actually set up milestones even though I consciously know that that's a good move to do?

Yeah, it's almost like that. Would you say it's like that all-or-nothing mentality, like go big or go home? Yes. Yeah, I can't get the big thing done, then I, I'm not going to do it at all, versus let me just start working towards it.

And I was just telling you off the mic about this book called The Gap and the Gain, which I totally recommend. It's really for like ambitious go-getters who still struggle to celebrate themselves and their accomplishments. And so it's this idea of look at not your ideal version and how you've fallen short. Look at what you have achieved. And so then if you're like, okay, I am, for example, I've set 10 milestones and I've hit 6 of them, your brain's gonna go, what about the other 4? And I'm like, no, no, no, no, no. First look at the 6, right? You're 60% of the way to your goal. How did you manage that? And after you've actually celebrated and understood that, then and only then do you let yourself go to like, okay, now what is the last 40% about? How can I achieve that?

Yeah, I'm gonna definitely read that book called The Gap and the Gain. We'll put that in the show notes. And it talks about like, I recently did a podcast on like how to stop the negative self-talk and I talked about negativity bias and how our brains are just wired to see worst case scenario. So of course your brain is gonna be like, you've only completed 40% and that sucks versus like you've done 60%, but your brain just like overlooks that completely.

Totally. So I have my clients do a self-evaluation every week of my program. So they have a specific project plan that they've made and then they've divided that into blocks that they then track. And clients always come to me and they're like, okay, well I need your help because I did 3 out of 6 of my box. Help me. And I'm like, did you celebrate the 3? They're like, no, I don't have time. I'm like, you don't have time not to, right? Not looking at the success makes you feel like shit. Mm-hmm. And stops you from taking action and actually slows everything down.

So crazy. Like, I'm chuckling because I've been there, but it's so easy to overlook the things that we have done. And so many of us do it. And so this is why we need coaches in our lives.

I mean, I always do it every coaching session. I'm like, I don't know. Now I've gotten to a place with my coach where I come and I'm like, let me tell you about all my successes and my wins. Yeah, but that has taken a year and a half, 2 years of practice.

Yes, practice. It's a habit to ask yourself what's going well right now. Like, what am I doing well? What have I accomplished this week? This is why I am a big proponent of the end-of-the-day assessments, the end-of-the-week assessments, monthly assessments. Like, just do it all, do all the evaluations at any point in time. Yeah. Christina, so yes, we're gonna put the books in the show notes, but we also are gonna put in all your information in the show notes. I wanna know, how can people find you on TikTok? You have your own podcast, which I love and listen to all the time. And how can people find you just on the interwebs? Yes.

Thank you so much for putting all my links. And you are also gonna be on my podcast soon. So if anyone wants to come and listen to an episode about buffering, so using things external to solve for your negative emotions, that's what you and I did an episode on. So it's called the Half Finished Done Podcast. And so you can find that on any podcasting app or at peakcoaching.co/podcast. Podcast. My TikTok, which I have not been updating actually, is @piqcoaching. So it's P-I-Q-U-E. And then my website is just piqcoaching.co. And so I do free challenges periodically. So if anyone wants to come and actually do some of this work in a live setting where you get coached, the kinds of Q&A that you and I did, but actually live and working through real issues, then people can sign up for those.

But so people come to the challenge, they have like a project or something that they wanna work on completing, and they can just work on that. Follow your process.

Yeah. So the challenges are actually really specific to different skill sets. So like the next one that's coming up is the bare minimum challenge, and I'm gonna teach you how to actually do the bare minimum in your business, but on purpose to get equal or better results than you normally get.

And be okay with the bare minimum and love the bare minimum.

Not be okay with it. Love it.

Ooh, that's good. How can you love the bare minimum? That's amazing.

Yeah, I'm like, is that— was that rhetorical? I think— don't get me started.

Yeah, so they can. All right, my friend, thank you so much for coming on the podcast and sharing your expertise about procrastination. I know my listeners have learned a ton, so y'all don't be afraid to go back and listen to this again and take notes and do some of these things that Christina has taught us, because I'm like over here taking notes. I'm definitely first thing start timing my tasks to see how long it takes me to do certain things. Yeah. All right, Christina, well, thank you, and I'll be talking to you soon.

Thank you so much for having me.

Talk to you soon. If you like today's episode of the Stop Dieting Forever podcast and you want to learn more about creating a lifestyle instead of following a diet to lose weight permanently, be sure to visit JenniferDent.com. There you'll learn more about my unique weight loss process and how it can work for you. Go to JenniferDent.com to discover what you can do to stop dieting forever.