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Most people actually have goals and aspirations for their lives. But despite knowing what they want, they find themselves spinning their wheels (present company included) because of procrastination. In this episode we review 9 strategies you can implement now to stop procrastinating! And don't forget to sign up for Tune Up For Life!
Are you ready to take the steps necessary to thrive? Join us every episode as host Adam Gragg discusses what is holding us back and how to move forward with purpose, along the way developing healthy relationships and navigating life transitions while overcoming fear, stress and anxiety. Adam is a family therapist, mental health professional and life coach helping individuals and organizations find the transformational clarity that unleashes hope. Live the life you want, the legacy you decide.
Ep42_Procrastination
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Adam Gragg: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Decide Your Legacy podcast. I'm your host, Adam Gragg. This is episode number 42, 10 ways to overcome procrastination. If you haven't already done so, and you found this podcast helpful, please give this podcast alike and a review on Apple or Spotify or wherever you get your podcast content. Really appreciate it. Helps the podcast grow organically and reach more people.
So a question I get consistently from people is how do I overcome procrastination? I keep, I know what I wanna do, but I keep getting stuck. I can't get to that next level. And we're gonna address that today.
I'm real excited about this topic. I have struggled in this area myself recently, really in recent years. And a lot of it has been because I've wanted to escape my own emotions. I've wanted to, you know, I procrastinate cause I don't wanna feel, cause I don't wanna face some things. Things that I know I needed to address.
And so there's a real emotional component to procrastination that we're gonna hit on today. And that might sound a little bit different and unique as far as this topic, but it's gonna make a lot of sense as we tie it in. I like to share a few risks that I've taken. And so let me go. I actually had a list of four this time.
Believe it or not. So, one is that I pranked my parents again in California. I surprised them. I was in town to see my buddy, and a friend who had a stroke, a, a major stroke, and I was in town to see him. And actually I was also in town to go and hike half dome. So I hiked half dome in Yosemite as well, which was a risk, not a huge risk, but I joined a business support group, which was a risk for me, new people.
New situation. People can judge me, you know, you're when you take a risk, you're being vulnerable and I've been working on a business plan. You know, you guys are a part of my journey. I have not, for a number of years, had a very clear written business plan. I did over five years ago, but things have changed in my life significantly.
So I've been working on writing a clear business plan. So again, if you've never heard this podcast before, I'm Adam Gragg, I'm a legacy coach, speaker. I am a mental health professional for almost 25 years. My life purpose is to help people find transformational clarity to overcome their biggest fears so they can live and leave the legacy that they desire.
Living without regrets. And I talk about stuff in such a way that you could explain the concepts to your six year old child and they would understand they would understand they'd say, mom, dad, that makes sense. Basic concepts that are transformational. I am also a fellow traveler. I struggle with procrastination.
As I mentioned, my emotions took over. I was stuck. In my emotions and I was procrastinating. I wasn't getting really much clarity in making, getting much traction in my life at all. I was in survival mode. And right now this podcast is a challenge to me because these are the things that I used to do that really helped me and that I do somewhat, but I need some reminders.
And this is, that's why I'm so excited about this topic, because it's really gonna help me as. Procrastination is super important thing to address. I addressed last episode, episode 41 on how to resolve conflict successfully. We often procrastinate on dealing with conflict on dealing with those core issues, because it could lead to some rejection.
It could lead to some uncomfortable emotions. It could lead to us having to. Ugh. I don't know, feel worse before we feel better at times, but dealing with it and identifying it and finding really basic strategies can help immensely. It's gonna also procrastination have an impact on your mental health because when you don't get things done and you start seeing that your list is growing longer, it makes you overwhelmed and it helps you.
It puts you in a situation where you don't feel accomplished. It impacts your legacy because you're not accomplishing things because you're not moving in the right direction. You're not moving in the direction. You know, you want to head in, and most people, when I ask them, you know, what are your goals over the next six months?
What are your goals over the next year? Most people I find, and I really use that. I usually don't use the word most, very often, but I would say most people like 70% of people that I ask that question, they can identify clearly what some of those goals are, what those goals are. I like to have top three or four goals and to focus on those and then to break them [00:05:00] down and to move from there.
We're talking about motivation here. We're really talking about motivation. What can get us to move past the procrastination to getting things done. If you have found this podcast helpful at any point, please subscribe. To the link in the show notes. It's to a, you're gonna get a shatterproof yourself.
It's 27 items. It's a mental health stress checklist that you don't wanna miss out. We're talking here pretty clearly about delayed gratification. I mean, procrastination means we're gonna go and. Tell ourselves that if we're gonna overcome this, that I'm willing to do the hard stuff and to be uncomfortable now to live in the discomfort zone for a period of time.
So I can live in the comfort zone later. So it's that easy now, hard later, hard now, easy later kind of mentality, delayed gratification, something we. Pretty much always believe in. I mean, most people believe in that believe in that concept, but we wanna live it out. And there is a bonus in this episode that you're only gonna get.
If you click on the show notes, it's a 15 second video that I have made and it's on a tip. I'm not gonna discuss today, but it's one that will be helpful to you. And it's on the topic of procrastination. Please check that out. So, number one, I got 10 items here. Number one, identify your ideal day and your ideal week.
And we're not talking about a vacation here we're talking about not perfect, but your, your ideal, realistic, ideal, realistic day. So you have 168 hours in a week. What are you gonna do with that time? And I know the weekends, there's gonna be more flexibility, but you're gonna block out. And this is something that you don't have to stick to perfectly, but when are you gonna spend time with your family?
When are you gonna work out? When are you gonna get up? When are you gonna have some fun and engage in your hobbies? What are your office hours? When are you gonna work? Some of it's gonna be easy to schedule some of it's not, but this should be a fun activity for you to just dream, to get a calendar. You can print one off easily, just a one week calendar and decide and write down what your ideal week would look like.
Great way. Great place to start. It's gonna give you some clarity, which is necessary to avoid procrastination. So the second tip is identify what's important versus urgent. Again, this will give you some clarity, the four quadrants of time management. I know Steven Covey popularized this, some call it Eisenhower time management model. I'm not sure who actually invented this, but just briefly, if you're not familiar, you can get a piece of paper divided into four quadrants and everything in quadrant one top left. Those are urgent and also important tasks.
So we gotta get this done. Now we can't wait a sick child. The building's on fire. I have COVID my grandfather died, whatever, something that has to be dealt with now. And you can't wait. So you're gonna go ahead and list items that belong in that category, both urgent and important quadrant two. Now these are not urgent yet. They're also. Important. So it's not urgent.
Doesn't have to be done right now, but it's very important. So exercise engaging in your hobbies, nurturing relationships, following up on leads, sales leads, you know, organizing your finances. They're not gonna feel really urgent, but they have a very high level of importance quadrant three, which is the bottom.
Left quadrant that's urgent and not important. And oftentimes for me, it's overdoing things. It's perfectionistic things, or it's being sucked into other people's tasks and drama. And it's. It feels urgent, but it's really not that important. And that urgency often comes from other people in quadrant four.
It's not urgent and it's not important. So it's, if you think of time wasters, it could be overdoing. Your hobbies. Hobbies are quadrant two, but if I'm gonna play golf five days a week and not get any work done, that would be a quadrant four task. So they're time wasters can be video game, social media, things that you're engaging in consistently that are not urgent and not important.
Do you wanna minimize everything in quadrant three in quadrant four? Most people are gonna have about 20% of their tasks in quadrant one, cuz you are gonna have some urgent tasks. People can be addicted to urgency. Quadrant two is where you wanna spend most of your time to identify those important yet not urgent tasks and prioritize them.
And that leads me to number three in overcoming procrastination is you wanna plan the night before plan your day, the night before, take five minutes. The night before, what are my top three objectives? The next day that lead me towards my top goals. And for me, it's one of those things that if I put my running shoes out and my running top and my socks and sweatshirt, and those are by my bed and got that one thing I want to do first thing in the morning, it's gonna be more likely that I get outta bed and go ahead and go on a run or go to the gym.
If I pack my lunch the day before. it starts off the day, much better. And I end up not procrastinating in a lot of other areas, cuz that one thing is already done. [00:10:00] If I have my three top priorities written down on my schedule, then they're on my mind. First thing in the morning. So plan the night before number four, have a written schedule and stick to your schedule.
So on number one, I actually ask you to have your ideal schedule, but now it's in writing. I'm actually. The week before you can take 20 minutes on a Sunday night and do your entire week. I think that's something I've found very successful people do is they do take some time to reflect on a Sunday for the week ahead.
And then we stick to our schedule at a very high level. And that to me is 70% of the stuff on the schedule is getting done. Or more, hopefully more hopefully 80%, cuz you're gonna know which tasks are urgent and important. The ones that are both urgent and important, you're probably gonna have to get those ones done.
You want pretty high level of completion with those, the not urgent and important tasks are gonna be some. That you gotta get done. They're gonna be difficult. It's gonna take some delay gratification, but you wanna get those things crossed off your list. They're gonna be on your schedule and on your to-do list, but you're putting some time in advance to get that on paper on purpose.
Number five is have written goals. I have found, and you may have even heard this, but there was a study that was done in the seventies and it was all of graduates of, they all were graduates of the Harvard MBA program. And the study found that only 3% of those graduates actually had written goals.
Believe it or not, you would think there'd be, it'd be much higher, but people don't often have written goals. People can't even really tell you what their new year's resolution is. If you ask 'em right now, they may have made one, but go ahead and ask some of your buddies at work. You know, do you remember what your new year resolution is, there's a good chance they forgot.
So written goals make a huge difference. But in this study they found that those the 3% cuz they followed up and they followed up with everybody that graduated in that year and it was believe it was in the early seventies and they found that those 3%. with the written goals, had outperformed everyone else combined as far as income, as far as success in their life.
I mean, they had outperformed everybody. I mean, it was amazing. It'll blow your mind. I mean, I found out and first read about this study about 15 years ago when I was doing a lot of trainings for companies on goal setting and just blow your mind. So have written goals that you look at consistently, and I'm gonna link in the show notes to some articles on setting goals.
Which can be really helpful for you. Some really good resources. I'm also gonna link in the show notes to an article on the four quadrants of time management as well. So you're gonna have those and you can look and kind of dig in deeper number six, count the cost of procrastination. So really think of what it's gonna cost you.
If you continue down this path, you know, if I don't face. These things in my life. If I don't get these things done, how is it gonna impact my future? How is it gonna impact my legacy? What five years from now is my life gonna be like, if I don't get these things done. So I procrastinate consistently on certain things professionally, a lot of it is on creating content.
It's one of the things I love the most, but it's one of the things that I can procrastinate. Because it's not urgent. It's very important, but it doesn't always have a sense of urgency unless I plug it into my schedule and have this really disciplined diligent kind of rigid mentality. Although I know, you know, rigidity, I don't like, but I like to have some rigidity it's can be healthy in a way, in a lot of ways, but procrastinate.
So like, if I neglect my health, I'll become diabetic because I'm, pre-diabetic, that's not true for me, but I mean, that's counting the cost for some, if I don't live on a budget, I'm gonna have financial difficulties. And if I'm procrastinating on spending and cutting expenses and living on a budget, count the cost.
I remember when I first started my business and website and I wanted to post a article every week and my buddy Daniel. I made a deal with him. Actually, it was a deal for him, not me, cuz I told him I'd pay him $25 for every week that I didn't actually post something. And I ended up paying him a couple hundred bucks I believe because, and he just took it.
I mean, it was part of the deal. It's like I wanted to somehow have some weight to getting something posted on the blog that would be read, you know? And now I get thousands of people reading stuff that I've written and I wouldn't have. If I didn't have some kind of motivation cuz I like money. And I remember that really motivated me significantly for the first couple years of writing was to actually have to pay him 25 bucks every time I didn't number seven is ask for help.
And really, this is what I've done when I've joined this group, this business mastermind business support group, it's expensive, but I've already, and I've only been involved for three months, like I said before, it's a risk, but I've already seen the payoff and having people talking about my struggles as a business owner, hiring.
Delegating making financial decisions and getting feedback from other [00:15:00] business owners in different industries. I've seen this help me significantly, and this is me asking for help. It's I'm not weak and I'm paying to be involved in this thing. I'm not weak for asking for help. And although I can tell myself that at times, like I should be self-sufficient and I'm not by having to lean on other people.
It's a cognitive distortion that I struggle with, but I end up procrastinating. When I'm not willing to actually ask for help, everything is on my shoulders. So it becomes overwhelming to me and learning to look at my to-do list and my schedule and say, here's what I can, here's what I can delegate to my admin.
Here's something I might be able to delegate to my parents or someone in my family. Here's something that I might be able to delegate to a friend and they may enjoy actually doing it. They may enjoy helping me in that area. That is crucial learn to delegate. And it does take some practice because if you're gonna delegate, you have to be willing to say, Hey, they are gonna potentially get it done at a lower level than you'll get it done, but they're gonna get it done and they're gonna learn and grow in the process.
So if they can do it 65% of the level that you can do it at as long as it's not one of these. Urgent and important type tasks, then you can try to delegate it and it may be a way it may be something where they get actually better than you. They improve and grow. Delegation can be a tremendous blessing to other people.
It shows that you value them and trust their abilities and you see their potential as well. So learn to delegate. Learn to actually let go learn to ask for help. Number eight is deal with perfectionism. So the flip side of procrastination is perfectionism. If I can't do it perfectly, I'm not gonna do it at all.
So I'm gonna keep putting it off and putting it off and putting it off. And maybe even subconsciously, because most of what we do, and most of what we think is subconscious, by the way, I mean, we wanted to bring it to our conscious awareness, but it's a cognitive distortion. So I had a client recently.
Tell me that he struggles with. If it's not perfect, I'm a failure, I'm worthless. And he learned that growing up and had another client tell me he learned that always turn the other cheek, you know, always was the key word that I picked up on there. Cuz there are times when you gotta stand up for yourself.
perfectionist and perfectionism is this rigid mentality. Always must. The perfectionism language is like never can't won't that sort of thing. We wanna make sure we watch our language and we deal with that cognitive distortion of perfectionism, cuz it's highly tied to your procrastination. There's a poem.
Adam Gragg: That's helped me with procrastination some, and I read a poem a couple weeks ago. I wanted to read this to you right now. It's if by ARD Kipling, it helps me to deal with perfectionism, which helps me with procrastination. So if you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you.
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, but make allowance for their doubting to, if you can wait and not be tired by waiting or being lied about don't deal in lies or being hated, don't give way to hating. And yet don't look too good nor talk too wise. If you can dream and not make dreams your master, if you can think and not make thoughts, your aim, if you can meet with triumph and disaster and treat those two imposters, just the same.
If you can bear to hear the truth, you've spoken twisted by naves to make a trap for fools or watch the things you gave your life to broken and stoop and build them up with worn out tools. If you can make one heap of all your winnings and risk it. On one turn of pitch and toss and lose and start again at the beginning and never breathe a word about your loss.
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew to serve your turn long after they are gone. And so hold on when there is nothing in you, except the will, which says to them, hold on. If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue or walk with Kings nor lose your common touch. If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you.
If all men count with you, but none too much. If you can fill the unforgiving minute with 60 seconds worth of distance, run, yours is the earth and everything that's in it. And which is more, you'll be a man. My son.
So to me that is like living in the middle, described living in the middle. I'm not gonna be sucked into success or failure. I'm not gonna get sucked into to my image. I'm gonna be willing to make mistakes. And if you're willing to make mistakes and you're willing to get something done, then. You're gonna be willing to fight that procrastination, cuz it's just getting that thing launched. Just like getting it out there and getting it done.
Sometimes I have clients who are perfectionistic and procrastinate frequently just do something intentionally imperfect. So don't make your bed today. You know, leave your bed, not made, you know, that's the kind of thing, or miss a workout intentionally, or leave the dishes in the sink. You know, don't do things that can have long term [00:20:00] consequences, but you have to fight the perfectionism.
Intentionally. Number nine, the last thing I wanna mention is to have a, have a very clear life purpose statement, something that you're so passionate about, that this is what I was made to do. I've shared before my life purpose is to help people find transf.
Clarity to face their biggest fears to live and leave their desired legacy. I want nothing more than to help people find that clarity that propels them forward. And you have a unique life purpose statement as well. That thing that's a big, huge, yes. In your life that you gotta say you are gonna be embarrassed and ashamed.
If you don't live this out, cuz it's such a strong calling on your life. So there you have it, 10 things, 10 ways to deal with procrastination. What insight did you gain and take away from today? What insight did you gain and take away from today? You're not gonna change without awareness and insight, then accepting it's a problem.
And then taking some kind of action. So make a decision, take some kind of action today. Something you learned today will lead to you. Taking an emotional or relational risk. It'll be something uncomfortable. It'll be something in your discomfort zone. That's gonna help you to do things. Think about. Live life differently.
If you found this helpful again, there's a link to shatterproof yourself 27 item checklist, mental health stress management checklist. Don't miss that. If you want me or someone on my team to come out and speak to you would love to help, would love to talk to you. We do it over zoom. We do it live as. Make it your mission to intentionally and courageously live the life now that you wanna be remembered for 10 years after you're gone, you decide your legacy.
You decide your future. No one else. One of the top regrets of dying people is they did not live the life they wanted. They lived the life someone else had for them. You decide your legacy. No one else. I appreciate you greatly. And I will see you next time.