Stop Procrastinating | Change Your Life: Living Skillfully

Nov 16

8 Action Takers Tell Us How They Deal With Procrastination

Posted in Tools

Something a little different today.

I’m in the lead-up to launching my Stop Procrastinating, Start Succeeding course (the launch date is 22 November), so I asked a bunch of people a couple of brief questions about procrastination – what they struggle with and how they deal with it. These are people whose blogs I follow, or who follow me on Twitter, mostly – but all people with businesses and websites, who therefore know at least something about taking action.

Some of them were (presumably) too busy taking action to get back to me. Others, or their assistants, did get back to me to say they were too busy, which is fine. But eight people generously took the time to share with me, and so with you, their tips for overcoming procrastination.

Their answers are below. Not only does this give you a chance to hear their words of experience, but you can also discover what interesting people they are and what quality material they’re publishing, because I’ve linked to their Twitter accounts (from their names) and their websites. They’re a good-looking bunch, too, as you’ll see from the photos.

Mars Dorian

Mars Dorian is ridiculously interesting at MarsDorian.com, where he consults on spreading your influence. Mars says:

Procrastination has many evil minions, but I believe that the lord is still notorious fear. Fear of ridiculing yourself, fear of screwing up, fear of making it not as perfect as it could be. Ahh, the list is endless. But fear really is the worst enemy in my life.

The way I fight it is all about NOT thinking. I have cultivated a naive aura, which I brought back from my earliest childhood. So, if you want to do something, you just do it. You don’t think about what could happen, you just GO FOR IT with the attitude of a naive child that’s curious as heck. It’s hard to get there, but it’s so worth it. Life becomes incredible when you leap before you think.

Jade Craven

Jade Craven is influencing the influencers at jadecraven.com, where she helps brilliant people become the rockstars in their industry. Jade says:

This may go against what other people are saying but I don’t have one main area of struggle against procrastination. For me, everything is a struggle. I’m terrified of change so will put off decisions that will result in new and different stuff happening. I’ve never freelanced full time until quite recently so I’m used to having frequent distractions.

While I don’t have one main area, there is one main reason. Growth. My business is growing at a fast pace and I find myself using procrastination as a tool to keep me within my comfort zone. I know I’ve been shooting myself in the foot by doing so but it took a while to recognize why I was doing it.

To deal with procrastination, I stopped rebelling against it. I’m used to working a certain way and I just have to make slight modifications. Instead of watching Star Trek when I’m stuck, I allow myself to watch an episode when I’ve accomplished certain tasks. I’ve hired coaches to help get some insight on how to work through the change. I have a totem tennis pole that I specifically use when I need to work through a tough situation.

I’m now embracing procrastination as part of my work day but it’s hard to maintain the balance between productive procrastination and doing nothing.

Henri Juntilla

Henri Junttila is showing the way to a passionate life at wakeupcloud.com, where he makes a living doing what he loves and shows others how to do the same. Henri says:

It goes in cycles for me. I may go through a period where I deal more with perfectionism, then another where I’m all into worrying, but in the end they’re all based in fear.

I’ve learned to trust my heart throughout the years, and I’ve learned to trust the process. We all go through our ups and downs, and they’re all there for a reason.

Sophie Nicholls

Sophie Nicholls is a fellow Clinical Hypnotherapist and personal development practitioner, who uses creative writing to help people find the right fit for their abilities. Sophie says:

My biggest area of struggle with procrastination? Those mean, nasty voices that say, ‘That won’t be good enough,’ or ‘You don’t have enough knowledge/experience/skill to do that…’

Those voices can be so persistent, so subtle, so persuasive. Sometimes, you don’t even slow down enough to realise that they’re there, whispering to you, in that wheedling or finger-wagging or just plain malicious way. Sometimes it’s easy to confuse those voices with the facts, the evidence.

To deal with it, just noticing the voices – your unhelpful ‘self-talk’ inside your mind – is often enough. Becoming aware of them, with kindness and curiosity – ‘Ah, there’s that thing I do…’ – can instantly dissolve their power. Because these voices simply have no intrinsic value except that which we choose to give them.

Once you become more consciously aware that the voices – or a particular voice – are there, you can find all sorts of creative ways to work with them. It can be as simple as changing the tone of the voice to something more encouraging and reassuring. Research suggests that when we ‘reframe’ our self-talk to something more helpful, it’s very important to consider the tone of voice as well as the content. For example, we can ‘reframe’ the content of our inner dialogue but, if we’re saying the more helpful things with the same mean and nasty tone, it still won’t feel good. So find an internal voice that fills you with good feelings. If inspiration fails you, ‘borrow’ a lovely, reassuring voice from someone else.

And, of course you can simply choose not to listen to that particular voice. You can tell it to get lost or interpret it in a different way: ‘Ah, that’s the voice I get when I’m feeling anxious. I used to listen to it but I don’t anymore…’

Vlad Dolezal

Vlad Dolezal is a life coach at vladdolezal.com, who wrote the best procrastination course that isn’t my one. Vlad says:

My biggest procrastination struggle was with distractions. I would always be all concerned with being super-productive, jumping on my computer, all eager to start working… then get distracted, and spend hours on reddit, without anything to show for it except a few really cool links I could share with friends. Oops!

To deal with it, I learned that distraction actually doesn’t come from the distraction itself (I’m sure there’s a better way to say that :p). Rather, it comes from a tired mind deflecting your effort, because it’s too tired to deal with the work.

So I learned to take regular breaks, and sometimes just lie around thinking about anything and nothing at all. This lets my mind rest and then do the work when it’s ready. So, paradoxically, lying around or doing fun stuff, as opposed to always feeling pressured to be busy, is one of the most productive things you can do!

Robin Easton

Robin Easton is the author of Naked in Eden: My Adventure and Awakening in the Australian Rainforest. Robin says:

The feeling of being overwhelmed and not knowing where to start could sometimes slow me down or even stop me. I think this feeling can be more prominent in people who are creative in many areas. I am a writer, a glass artisan, a potter, a musician, a nature photographer, and moving into documentaries, and many other creative projects. For some years in my life it was hard to choose what to focus on because I wanted to do it all. And then even within each project there always seemed so many options, which overwhelmed me.

I learned to pick ONE project to start with, one I felt intensely passionate about. Then I told myself, “I am going to complete THIS project. I also will embrace any setbacks, rejections, challenges as part of the process. I will not seek out difficulties, but if they occur I will not let them stop me. I will simply assess them, learn from them, and continue my work.” So in essence I decide that I will not go into a project with the mindset that things have to be perfect. If I had that mindset I wouldn’t achieve a thing.

I sat down one day and made a list of everything I’d have to do to complete my book, including get an agent, and find a publisher. I wrote down all my ideas (and questions) just as they came into my head.

Once I had a list, I prioritized everything on it. I then started with item number one, and saw THAT as my project. I temporarily forgot about the rest of the list. This allowed me to focus on one thing at a time. It broke the project down into mini projects that became manageable. Every time I found myself thinking about the other thirty things on my list, I said, “No, forget them. Just be here right now.”

Pat Flynn

Pat Flynn is a dude from California who makes a living on the Internet. He teaches other people how he does it at smartpassiveincome.com. Pat says:

My biggest area of struggle with procrastination is definitely the distractions, especially things like Twitter and Facebook which I use for my business as well, so the line between work and play is blurred and I often find myself watching a youtube video or reading an interesting post that has nothing to do with my business, without even realizing that I’m doing it.

To conquer this, I actually invested in a laptop computer that is reserved for personal / play time only. All business stuff can only be done on my business computer, and any type of person things I do on the computer are only done on the new laptop. A lot of people have criticized me for this technique (saying it’s just an excuse to buy a new computer, lol) but it honestly has done wonders for my focus. When I’m in front of my business computer, I know that business needs to get done and I actually have Facebook and Twitter disabled, and only enable it during times which I’m investing in social media that is strictly dedicated to my business.

This technique has also helped me learn to turn off that “business/work mindset” when I really should be enjoying life and spending time with my family. Before getting the new computer, I would often think about the business or the work that needed to be done when I really shouldn’t have.

Catherine Caine

Catherine Caine provides website advice for delightful weirdos at beawesomeonline.com. (Katherine Kane was the secret identity of Batwoman. Coincidence? You decide.)

Catherine says:

My biggest problem is something I call Someday-Maybe Syndrone. I keep thinking of a thousand million cool things I COULD be doing, and never actually do them.

To deal with this, I schedule the important stuff. Especially the stuff that sounds cool but will always fall off the back of my priority list. Cool exhibition coming to town? I schedule it. Seeing my friend on the other side of town? In the calendar!

I resisted that for a looong time because it sounded boring and unspontaneous. But I get more of the stuff that really matters done.

Do you notice something else about these people? Most of them can help you with your next steps once you stop procrastinating and start succeeding. Hop on that link and sign up to get a $20 discount when the course comes out next week! (Don’t put this one off.)

(And if you have a website, mailing list or social media following and you’d like to partner with me in promoting it, in a way that will benefit you and your people, look into my Stop Procrastinating, Start Succeeding Partner Pack.)

Technorati Tags: procrastination, stop procrastinating, success, taking action

comments: 8 » tags: change your life, life lessons, stop procrastinating

Nov 9

How to Digest Your Goals in 7 Fun and Easy Steps

Posted in Techniques

As part of writing my Stop Procrastinating, Start Succeeding course, I’ve been researching other people’s advice about procrastination, and one of the commonest pieces of common sense about it is, “Break down your tasks.” After all, often we put off the tasks we’ve set ourselves because they’re too big and intimidating, right? So you need to break them down.

Well, I assume a reasonable level of intelligence in my readers, and it seems to me that you’ve probably thought of that already. So if that piece of obvious advice isn’t working for you, perhaps “break the task down” is itself a task that needs to be broken down and turned into a method. Or even a game…

Let’s play the Task Digestion Game!

Digestion is a complicated thing.

You actually have a small second brain to run your digestive system. There are more nerve cells in your digestive organs than there are in your spinal cord, plus a whole vocabulary of signalling chemicals – many of which also occur in the brain in your head. It’s tricky being an omnivore.

And breaking down your big goals into achievable steps isn’t always easy either.

One of my key goal-achievement processes is what I call “two-level goals”, where you start with the things you really want to achieve and end up with the steps you can take right now to move you closer to them. I’m going to use a digestion metaphor to describe some steps to get from those high-level goals to those concrete steps or tasks, and I’m going to do a worked example using one of my own goals.

1. Chew it over

The first step to digesting your goals is to take firm hold of them and chew them into big pieces, just small enough to swallow.

One of my goals is “Live a profitable life of service to my Right People”. Let’s chew that up. Let’s break it into three parts to start (I like threes).

“Live a profitable life, of service, to my Right People”.

And let’s chew those three into three parts each, starting with “by”:

“Live a profitable life”: by doing some good, making some money and enjoying the process.

“of service”: by connecting people to resources, teaching them skills, and showing them that they can be glorious.

“to my Right People”: OK, “by” doesn’t fit here, so I’m going to say “people who appreciate what I provide them with, take action, and share the results with others”.

You could keep on breaking down into further threes (and you could use twos or fives), but you get the principle. You’ve given yourself a certain number of slots and declared that your goals will break down into that many slots, and then a number of sub-slots. Just start ad-libbing it and you’ll be surprised how it flows. It’s like impromptu theatre: if you commit, keep moving, and don’t second-guess yourself, creativity results. (I just signed up for an improv class next year, so you’ll be hearing more about that in the future, by the way.)

2. Get it damp and soft

Another thing that happens in your mouth, besides chewing, is that the food gets mixed with saliva, which does a little bit to break down some parts of it but mostly just makes it easier to get down your throat, to the next stage.

Let me introduce you to a concept that just struck me a moment ago: the Smear Chart. This is like the love child of a brainstorm and a mind map (and is nothing to do with papilloma viruses). You know how in a brainstorm, you put up a whole lot of concepts more or less randomly, without censoring or critiquing? And how in a mind map, you make a beautifully ordered chart of concepts that connect and branch from each other? Well, a Smear Chart is somewhere in between. To make a smear chart of my work so far, I write out the three main concepts (profitable life, service, Right People) on a piece of paper, then write the three next-level breakdowns around each concept (without overlapping, but with no other layout rules).

Then I do the smear: start free-associating and slapping down words, approximately clustered around the nine concepts I already have, but again, without being rigid about it.

Like this (click to embiggen):

You’ll see that I’ve used different colours to distinguish the three levels – the free-associated words are in red.

3. Add solvents and churn

Once the food hits the stomach, its muscular walls get to work and mix the food into the stomach acid to form a substance called chyme. (Look how educational this post is.) Also mixed in there is bile, which helps to break down fats.

These substances start to break down the larger molecules so they can be absorbed later on in the process.

How would you break down the lowest level on your smear chart so that you get closer to actions?

What about some good questions? Like this:

Have I succeeded at anything like this before? How did I do it?
Who else has succeeded at this? How did they do it?
Can I get anyone’s help?
Is there a course or a book I can learn from?
What’s the most obvious next step?

4. Absorb the easy stuff

Once the chyme leaves your stomach, nutrients start to be absorbed through the walls of the intestines, which are specialised for the task – their surface is arranged in such a way that there is a great deal of it in a very small space.

The things the body can use straight away, like glucose, go directly into the bloodstream.

So go and do some of the stuff you came up with that you can act on immediately.

For example, if I decide that I want to do more speaking, I might book into a public speaking class.

5. Reconfigure for the current situation

If you change your mix of fats, carbs and protein dramatically, it takes a few days for your gut to reconfigure itself so it can digest most efficiently. (In the meantime you may notice a slight “upset stomach”.)

If you’re changing your approach to be able to head towards your goals more effectively, give yourself a little time to realign your life accordingly. Figure out what a person who’s succeeding at that goal does, what their day and their week looks like, and make changes that bring you closer to having a day and a week like that.

I’m experimenting with this at the moment as I focus on the “enjoy the process” part of my “live a profitable life” goal. I’m introducing a rhythm of work and rest that is getting closer and closer to an enjoyable, sustainable process.

6. Crack the hard stuff

Some of the nutrients need further processing before they can be used. For example, fruit sugars have to go through the liver to be broken into their component parts before they can be used.

Use the “chew it up” exercise again on the bigger, harder tasks that come out of the chyme, to break them down until you get to something you can do immediately.

Then go and do it.

7. Get rid of the crap, after you get the juice out

After all the nutrients have been pulled out by the small intestine, the large intestine’s job is to reabsorb the water that has helped to break everything up so it’s easy to reach, and expel what remains (dietary fiber, dead cells and other unrequired odds and ends). At the end of this process, what you have is, quite literally, crap.

There will be some crap that results from breaking down your goal. There will be things you thought you had to do that you really didn’t have to do. There will be false starts and learning processes, including the kind where you learn not to do that again. There will be the equivalent of dietary fiber: Something that’s not actually a valuable product in itself, but is essential to the process, like an administrative spreadsheet. There will be things you need to get rid of in order to clear space for achieving your goals.

Reabsorb all the juice – the process itself and all the valuable stuff you learned from doing it. Then get rid of the crap.

So there it is. It’s a game. It’s a metaphor. It’s fun, educational, perhaps mildly disgusting in an amusing way – and helps you get creative about your big, important goals, so you can come up with some useful steps towards them.

For much more like this, sign up now to the preview list for Stop Procrastinating, Start Succeeding. I’ll let you know when the course is ready (and give you a discount, too.)

Technorati Tags: procrastination, stop procrastinating, success, taking action, digestion, goals

comments: 0 » tags: coaching, creativity, goals, nutrition, stop procrastinating

Nov 2

Rewarded For, or Rewarded With?

Posted in Techniques

I’ve just finished my final course in the Certificate in Health Science I’ve been doing through Massey University. It’s been a very interesting course, on why people choose to eat the way they do and how to influence them to change.

Naturally, a lot of it applies just as much to other kinds of changes apart from eating, and that’s what I’m going to talk about now – in the context of procrastination, which is my big theme at the moment.

One of the readings (Birch & Fisher, 1998) talked about the influence of rewards on children’s eating behaviour.

It turns out that if you use a food to reward a child with, that becomes a desirable food. It’s obviously special and important and desirable, or it wouldn’t be used as a reward, right? But if you reward a child for eating a food, that food must be a nasty food, or you wouldn’t have to offer a reward for eating it. (My clever friend Gabrielle rewards her kids with fruit for this reason.)

photo credit: Pink Sherbet Photography

It works for non-food rewards, too. Another study (Lepper et al., 1973, discussed in How Rewards Can Backfire and Reduce Motivation) found that if you reward children for performing a task that they enjoy, like drawing, it not only reduces their interest in doing the task but it decreases the quality. (This is why turning your hobby into your job isn’t always a great idea.)

One of the conventional pieces of wisdom you come across when researching procrastination is, “Reward yourself for finishing a task.” Now, sometimes this can work, if it’s an occasional thing to tip the balance (like when I recently motivated myself to finally finish up my accounts for last year by promising to buy myself a kayak out of my tax rebate). But if you’re constantly rewarding yourself to be able to get the task done, it only reinforces your view of the task as something so unpleasant that you have to be externally motivated to do it.

Of course, there’s the inherent reward of feeling the obligation to do the task lift off your shoulders once it’s done. There’s the sense of achievement in having done it. But we can also do better than that.

What’s My Motivation In This Scene?

“There’s nothing good or bad but thinking makes it so,” the old saying goes (and while that’s an oversimplification, it’s got a good big nugget of truth in it). If the task must be done, it must have some benefit. Unless someone’s standing there with a whip while you labour at the oar you’re chained to, you’re getting some kind of benefit out of doing the task, or you would have stopped. (And if you really can’t find a benefit, it’s definitely time to stop.)

What’s the benefit? Focus on it, and make it as vivid as possible to you.

A good approach to this is to keep asking the question, “And that’s important because…?” It’s a marketing trick for getting at the benefits of your product so you can motivate people to buy it, but it works just as well for personal motivation.

The Mary Poppins Strategy

That helps to make the task more important and reminds you why you’re doing it, but there’s a further step: what I call the Mary Poppins Strategy, because it focusses on making the task itself more enjoyable. I got this from Vlad Dolezal over at Fun Life Development, whose free procrastination course is by far the best I’ve found – though not as good as my upcoming Stop Procrastinating, Start Succeeding course will be, naturally ;-).

The Mary Poppins Strategy is this: Find a fun way, even a silly way, to make the process of the task enjoyable.

I think we take ourselves far too seriously a lot of the time. “Oh, I’m an adult, I have a partner and a mortgage and a responsible job, I need to take it all terribly seriously because that’s what adults do.” And so we suffer through the chores that must be done by serious adults. We don’t have to.

Whenever I have to do a tedious, repetitive task on the computer, I have some upbeat jazz that I play. It keeps my mood up, gives my brain something to do and makes the time go faster.

Here are some more suggestions:

Do the dishes in a silly hat.
Put on funky music and dance as you vacuum.
Be in your body as you wash the car, feel the suds and the water, experience the movement as you scrub and rinse.
Listen to comedy as you do the accounts (I haven’t tried this yet, but I’m going to next year.)
Vlad’s example: If the task is boring because it’s too easy (like sweeping the floor), make it more challenging (for example, by hopping on one leg while you do it).

Don’t, whatever you do, resign yourself to suffering through these tasks and maybe rewarding yourself for completing them with some kind of external bribe. There’s a better way. Make the process its own reward.

(This post, like a lot of my blog posts lately, is by way of being a draft for material that will go into my upcoming Stop Procrastinating, Start Succeeding course. If you sign up for the advance list you’ll be the first to know when it comes out, and you’ll be able to get it at a nice discount.)