#SYDWAC - Overcoming Procrastination

Start your day. Great. Start your day with the coach. I am your host, certified high performance coach Sean Butner. And today we're going to be talking about overcoming procrastination. So have you ever had that time scramble before where right before deadline, where you thought, man, I should have started this sooner, or you just justify that, I'm gonna put this off till tomorrow because the timing's not right. I'm super busy. And then you get caught up in that panic that is, you know, the. The dead meet the deadline rush. So procrastination is being human, right. We all avoid difficult things. We all put off things till later. We all wonder why we hadn't finished sooner or started things a little bit earlier. And you know, when we say, you know, that fence that we were working on, that project, I back, it should have been done in two weeks, is now year three. You know, we were like, wow, I should have really just done that sooner. And when we do complete those projects, it feels really great. When we are feeling like we're in our momentum, that we're making progress towards the things that are really important to us, that's when we feel happy. That's when we feel engaged. That's when we feel confident in the world. So procrastination is human, and it's also when we overcome it, it feels really great. So what if we could overcome procrastination without entering that panic mode of trying to meet the deadline right before it? And in my experience, there are three different reasons why people procrastinate. Myself included, right. I am along, you know, for this ride too. And the first is they're just not clear on the next steps or their next action of integrity. Meaning that if you're working on a project and you know where you're going, but you don't know how to get there. So if you're working on a software project, you know that you need a cool feature that'll do A, B and C, but you've never done it before, and you're just kind of overwhelmed with, you know, there's 50 different ways I can start this. There's, you know, a million people I could talk to or not talk to. There's things that I could research and so trying to figure out, like how much time do I research, how much time do I spend reaching out to people to learn, how much time do I spend just trying stuff out and seeing what's working, what's not, and where the things kind of reveal themselves is one of the big hurdles that I have coached People through and have had myself on projects so, you know, not clear on what to do. The next action of integrity, meaning that sometimes things are gray. You have to make a decision in life, and you're not sure out of the five options you could do, three of them seem okay and seem equal. And how do we make that decision in a way that is true to us, true our authentic self, true to what we believe in, the values that we have, the thing, the goals and ambitions we have out in the world, you know, and trying to balance all of that, you know, sometimes we know we shouldn't do something, but it's easy and we do it anyways. And that's not an integrity. So that's an example of that. So we want to make sure that we are clear on what the next step is. And that next step is with integrity of who we are, what our values are, what we're, you know, trying to accomplish. So that's the first big hurdle people have. The second thing is they're just exhausted all the time and they can't figure out how to manage their energy. And last week, if you guys were on you, I talked about doing an energy audit of your calendar. Basically, the easiest way to do an audit or to see if you're exhausted or not at the end of the day is measure how you feel. If you always feel wore out, consistently feel exhausted, consistently feel like you don't have any more to give, you're probably not managing your energy on your calendar a bit, and we'll talk a little bit about that in a second. But when you're tired, you don't. You put stuff off and you don't follow through in a timely manner. And that can set you up for that crazy, you know, again, deadline rush that we're talking about before. So third thing that I. I've noticed for myself or clients or friends and family and all people procrastinate when they are avoiding something, you know, very, very much in human nature. You have to have that talk with your employee to say, hey, you are not measuring up. You know, so you have that performance thing, like, are you happy here? What's getting in your way? How can we help you get, you know, your productivity up? In a business setting, it could be having that hard talk with the family member saying, hey, you need to quit smoking because you've had a bajillion heart attacks. You've been. You have all these health issues that are related to this, and you still won't give up the thing that's causing it. And, you know, you love that person, and, you know, it might be a fight, you know, it might not be listened to or heard. And so that could be a huge reason why you put off that conversation, amongst other things, you know, so these are the three kind of big hurdles people have in procrastination, in my experience, and that there's plenty of. Plenty of more. So it's not comprehensive, but these are kind of the bigger bucket ones that I see in my practice as a coach and in my life, you know. So how do we overcome procrastination? Well, procrastination really is just poor daily habits in my perspective. And so to overcome those obstacles that I just shared, the first thing, you should have a planning ritual where at the beginning of the day you say, okay, what's important to me? What am I going after? What are the big projects on my radar? What's getting done today? Right? And if you can identify one task that will move the football forward, as they say, or move your projects forward, move your life, move those meaningful things forward, do that in the first hour of your day after you plan everything out and the whole day will shift for you, right? You'll feel accomplished and you'll want to keep going versus stressing out about you're not getting enough done, right? So that's the first thing. Plan your day, plan your projects, and get that first thing done in the first hour of your workday. The second thing to do is the energy audit, right? And again, very like, the simplest energy audit is how do I consistently feel at the end of the day, every day, and if it's drained, there's something going on on what you've scheduled, right? And so, excuse me, but I think helps people. What's helped me is to open my calendar and say, okay, what are the things that I'm doing that are taking energy away? Right? Again, like, I'm an introvert. So doing videos like this can really hurt or drain my energy, right? So I have to balance it with a walk later today, right? So I'll go outside, I'll get some sun, get some exercise, get some movement, and that helps balance that out a little bit. I'm also doing meditation every day. I'm doing movement breaks every hour. And so having that stuff planned on your calendar and knowing that, okay, this boosts my energy, this boosts my energy. This drains it. At the end of the day, you want to feel more energized than when you started. In my opinion, if you can aim for that and just break even, that's still really good. But thinking about the things that you have scheduled in this way of. It gives me energy. It takes away energy. That's really helped. A lot of folks that I've talked to have huge breakthroughs and like, oh, I need to add more exercise or, oh, I need to shift my diet because after I eat the 50 donuts for lunch, I sugar crash and I'm just junk for the rest of the day, you know, so that's the power of the energy audit. I encourage you to make that part of your daily habit of what's, you know, what gives me energy, what takes away energy, what can I add to my calendar, what can I delegate? What do I got to get rid of that kind of stuff? What are neutral things that are, okay, so energy out of guys. Okay. Third thing is to, you know, have a daily habit of reflection and trying to get perspective on why you avoid certain things. So if, you know, you had that thing on your to do list for a week and, you know, it's like, it takes me five seconds to do this. It's so painful. It's so terrible. It's so whatever, you know, why. What's getting in the way, right? And journaling can really help, you know, the, you know, weapon of mass destruction for personal development. You know, the. The first thing that everyone I think in personal development should have is some type of journaling habit where they can talk things through or work things out in their head. Can be really great. Having a coach can be really great. So I advocate that. Of course, just having a close group of friends that you can bounce ideas off of, you know, hey, like, I really need to talk to, you know, Jeff because he really messed up on that project and isn't helping out or whatever. How do I go and talk to Jeff, right? Why am I not. Why am I resisting? And a lot of times with people, it's, you respect them, you don't want to hurt their feelings. You don't want to come off as a jerk, you know, and it's center focused. And a lot of times if you work on a team, you know, one bad apple can ruin the whole bunch. So having being the leader in those moments and you don't have to be a jerk about it, right? I'm not saying that. But you can be a leader in those moments. You can say, hey, we need to change behavior here. We need to change something here. This isn't working out. What do we got to do? Get people enrolled in it and it can help you overcome that. Or, you know, it's just like, I hate doing this thing, you know, what do you got to do to build your energy up before it to go execute it properly? There's a bunch of different strategies we could talk about. I could spend a whole day probably rambling on about this. But it comes with basically, here's the idea. It starts with understanding why that avoiding behavior is happening. And then you can figure out the next steps. Right? So these are the three habits I suggest to help you overcome procrastination if you have it ever in your life. And again, we're all human. I know if you're here, you are probably a high performer. So you probably have your own strategies on dealing with procrastination. I would love to hear hear those. So comment below where you're watching this video. I'd love to hear what you guys think about how to overcome procrastination. They said these are kind of the three biggest buckets that I deal with in my practice. And it's a very small sample of the whole human population. So I'm sure there are other things that are missing. I'm sure there are things that you do that are really cool and could inspire myself or someone else. And I'd love to hear it. Okay. Oh, and then before we log off, this Friday, I am hosting a free workshop called Transformational Performance Habits. So if you want to do a worksheet on that energy audit that I just talked about today, you'll want to sign up either the link in my bio or below. We're going to also have a framework for making big decisions so you don't put those off. It's a cool way to kind of look at it to make sure you're doing the right thing. And. And the third thing that we do is the energy audit. It's the decision framework. It's one more thing that I'm live right now and it's escaping my brain. I should have this on a note here, but it's all on the link below. You can check out what we'll actually work on in that hour, hour and a half. And then afterwards you can ask me questions about the workshop or anything in personal development or high performance that might help you in accelerate through the end of this year. Because it's, you know, the end of the year is coming, the holidays are almost here, and that throws a lot of people off their goals and ambitions for the end of the year. But not you guys, right? Not us. We can do this all together and finish the year strong. So that said, guys, go forth, live with more joy, more personal growth and more impact in your communities. And I hope you sign up for the workshop this week and see you then, but talk to you tomorrow. Take care.