Dan we got to film - five more minutes five more minutes okay we'll get back to
work I'm enjoying something here (Dan it's your 5th beer!) five more beer minutes five more minutes and
we'll get to it okay so we've all had this experience right where you know
there's something you should be doing but it's so painful even if it's
something small like dealing with an accounting issue or sending an email
response for whatever reason you really don't want to do it and so you find a
way to do anything but that one task that is called procrastination and the
reason procrastination is so bad is that it's not like you just take longer to do
this one task but you waste all this time in the middle right because it's
not just that this task isn't getting done but all the time in the middle is
usually wasted it's very rare that when we procrastinate we enjoy it we say all
right you know what I'm going to delay this I'm going to go to the beach hang
out for the day okay we do procrastinate that way too but generally the
procrastination I'm talking about is when you're sitting at the computer
you're kind of checking and rechecking emails and different things doing odds
and ends but really getting nothing done and I want to go through in this video
some solutions and tips on how to prevent and overcome procrastination so
let's start with in the moment you're sitting there it's 2 p.m. the last hour
you have been wasting perhaps you have that after lunch Lo and there's a task
you're just not doing what do you do how do you break out of that state well the
good news and bad news here the bad news is that I have no easy solution or trick
for you in terms of just boom magically like you're able to get back to work
right but there's a few things you can do one is changing your state and so
when you're sitting there and you're in this email checking mode or social media
just procrastination hell right is you need to break that and one way to do it
is by changing your body and so you can do this different ways you can get up
and jump around your apartment put on some music you can get up and go for a
walk one of the things that I find can be quite helpful is when I am in this
procrastination mode it's just to accept it embrace it and go
to something else for a bit right so if I bite it it tends to get worse and keep
fighting me back where if I just accept it and say you know what I'm going to go
for a walk and at least make good use of this time because sitting on Facebook or
whatever I don't really do Facebook but sitting checking whatever reading some
news is not going to serve me so let's go for a walk at least get some Sun meet
a friend something like that to at least break my state and get out of that and
then maybe come back and make the most of it on this note as well if you end up
wasting a whole day due to procrastination and hopefully by the end
of this video that's not going to happen too much but if you do find yourself
basically wasting the whole day come evening time you're faced with that
question of you go out and meet your friends would you go for dinner or do
you stay home and get that work done because you didn't do it during the day
personally I'm going to add the kit of writing the day off and saying you know
what I'm in a bad headspace today that was a big screw-up but it's done let's
go out and recharge and for me one of the reasons I do this is I know that
human contact is quite important for me so that one of the causes of my
procrastination can often be that I've just been at home working for too long
or not out with friends and so continuing to delay going out with
friends or having fun which usually serves as a reset and then I'm really
productive the next day if I avoid that because I procrastinated then it just
makes the problem worse and the next day is going to be much less productive
right so all this aside the best way to deal with procrastination is a
preemptive strike deal with it before it comes up and there are two categories
for doing this that I really recommend you take action on the first of how you
set up your day now traditionally there's this belief of eat the Frog I
think Brian Tracy wrote some cheesy self-help book on this do the hardest
thing in the day first and this is the classic 1950s self-help advice that
sometimes is useful and for some people but generally doesn't have a lot of
merit and what I think is a much better approach to starting your day is pick
the thing that is fun and enjoyable but it's also very important for your
business so that could be filming videos it could be writing it could
the marketing if you enjoy that or meeting with clients whatever it is that
you enjoy and also contributes a lot to your bottom line take that for the
beginning of the day and some magical things will start to happen so you get
up and you spend your first two hours doing this enjoyable / productive /
profit driving activity and what happens after that is you start to feel really
good about yourself right because you've got this important thing done arguably
and often the most important thing you need to do all day if I spend the first
two hours of my day writing even if I screw the rest up it's still a pretty
good day I'm pretty happy with it I'm not going to beat myself up so first off
you've got enough done that you're feeling pretty good already you've also
taken the pressure off yourself for being productive that day right because
you already got some stuff done you feel pretty good you go into the afternoon
and then you can deal with the odds and end the other stuff that you might
normally procrastinate or those other tasks and you'll be in a better
headspace because you've done something you've enjoyed you're going to be
feeling good about that also just you would have enjoyed it so you're going to
be feeling a bit happier for the day and then when you go into the afternoon and
you have to do the work you don't enjoy as much or you might be putting off
you're going to be in a much better place to actually just power through
that and get it done so we talked about dealing with procrastination in the
moment we talked about on a daily planning basis and now I want to talk
about it life wise in terms of life design and as you probably know I'm a
big advocate of life design I have my teaching a life design approach and this
is all based on building your life around you and your personality type and
your strengths so that you don't have to do too many things that involve
procrastination so the ability to serve in the short term get through things if
you have a something come up that you would usually procrastinate you have it
come up here and they're odds and end it's not a big deal to get through but
if it's coming up everyday all the time that's going to beat your soul down and
it's going to be tough to get done so what I would suggest is finding a
pursuit a job a business whatever it is where the majority of your work is
actually things you enjoy things that you're not going to procrastinate at
least not very often and within that find ways to outsource
or eliminate the work don't like doing that much so I've done
this in my own business as much as possible we're either between hiring
people but more often just eliminating the work I don't want to do the things
that I don't do well or I procrastinate I basically just don't do and it's
different ways you can do that but there's basically changing your business
model right change what you offer change how you work and that way you're not
necessarily going to have to do these things that you hate doing so pulling
back at your life and taking an inventory over the week okay what are
the things I procrastinator what did I hate doing and then looking to eliminate
those or hire someone to help you for them and you've probably heard the
argument for hiring like a virtual assistant or someone like that before
and the main benefit of it isn't just that let's say your time is worth $30 an
hour and you hire someone for $10 an hour right that's part of it but if you
hire someone to do the tasks and it should take one hour it will probably
take them one hour but if it's a task you hate doing and you try to do it
yourself it will probably take you three hours or four hours because we'll be all
this procrastination and dread time built-in with it so for me and my own
experience hiring people to do the stuff that I Chen tend to procrastinate or get
a hind on has been a total GameChanger and I would recommend looking at that as
well when you basically break down a week or a month and look at hey where do
I procrastinate where does this come in and then think long term about how you
can actually eliminate that from your day-to-day life so yes I know that video
wasn't like three easy tips to stop procrastination right away but if you
know me you know that I tend to focus on the bigger picture and sustainable
changes right instead of using some little hack to stop procrastination one
day why not make the bigger changes in how you set up your days and how you set
up your life so you don't even run into procrastination nearly as much and with
that said I know in order to act on this advice you need probably more more
content or advice getting into like how do you actually outsource or break down
the things you procrastinate and eliminate them and that's where
subscribing to the channel comes in because I will have more content coming
up over these topics over the coming months in terms of life's design and
dealing with procrastination and eliminating stuff you don't like to do
and all that so be sure to subscribe and catch you in another video soon