128. Breaking Free Of Procrastination

Episode Transcript

Verbs Boyer:
So, guys, one of my favorite shirts that I see, not too often, but there’s a shirt that says, “Procrastinators unite… Tomorrow.” I always chuckle when I see this shirt because it’s like, man, that is the perfect way to describe what a procrastinator would think. “Hey, let’s do this, guys, maybe a little bit later, we can get together and get it done.”

Blake Stratton:
Right now is tough, because I’ve got some things going on, but.

Courtney Baker:
Yeah. Let’s watch one more show.

Blake Stratton:
Yeah.

Courtney Baker:
And then we’ll do it.

Verbs Boyer:
Do you guys have specific ways that you find yourself procrastinating?

Nick Jaworski:
When we’re watching 30 Rock, at the end of the day, and my body is saying, “Please just go to bed.” It starts even to try to sleep but then Jack Donaghy, Liz Lemon, they rope me right back in, and sometimes I’ll watch one more episode. I procrastinate my own sleep. How ludicrous is that?

Courtney Baker:
That is really counterintuitive. Yeah, that’s a good one. I find that I procrastinate things when I have so much to do. I kind of freeze, I’m just like, I don’t know. It’s so much, I don’t even know where to begin. And so I start organizing Google Drive folders. That’s kind of my M.O. It’s…

Nick Jaworski:
That’s your happy procrastination place [crosstalk 00:01:27]

Blake Stratton:
Yeah, something that really brings you a core level of delight. I watch TV, other people they go snack, or they talk to a friend, but Courtney, “oh boy, I need to escape this chaos. Let me just get cozy in a Google Drive folder for a little while and forget about the world.”

Courtney Baker:
Listen, you want to talk about going deep, nothing though is more controllable than a file folder system. I’m sorry. Let me move files around. That is so controllable. Sometimes these big projects are big things. You got to do deep work. There’s some people out there, they’re listening, and they’re like, “I’m with you.” Okay. So, what did the shirt say? Procrastinators-

Verbs Boyer:
Procrastinators [crosstalk 00:02:19] unite tomorrow.

Courtney Baker:
I need a Google Drive folder escapist unite shirt.

Nick Jaworski:
Sorry to break in here. I had the house to myself for the first time in probably two years for about three hours on Saturday, and I had a proposal I needed to write, but guess what I did instead?

Courtney Baker:
Oh, what?

Nick Jaworski:
I was outside picking up dog poop in our yard.

Courtney Baker:
That’s terrible.

Nick Jaworski:
I was like, “This is really important- [crosstalk 00:02:50]

Verbs Boyer:
[Crosstalk 00:02:50] Nick, is this your go-to procrastination activity?

Nick Jaworski:
This is really important, I need to do this right now.”

Courtney Baker:
Oh my gosh. Okay. For the record, that was way worse than Google drive, okay?

Nick Jaworski:
Oh yeah. I really was like, “Well, this thing that I need to do, it needs to happen now. Not this important business thing I need to get taken care of”. So [crosstalk 00:03:09].

Courtney Baker:
[Crosstalk 00:00:03:10] What’s the worst-

Nick Jaworski:
It’s real, the struggle is real everybody.

Courtney Baker:
What’s really bad, though, is when you’re procrastinating something, and then when you actually do it, it’s so easy, and you get it done in no time. And you’re like, “why have I been torturing myself-

Blake Stratton:
Yes.

Courtney Baker:
About that thing?” That actually didn’t take any effort, or any time, I just had to sit down and do it, but I instead tortured myself about it.

Verbs Boyer:
Yeah. It goes to prove that there is an alternate approach that you can take to eliminate the threat of procrastination. And so that’s what we’re going to talk about today. We have four strategies to walk you through, maybe a fifth, but we won’t get to that one until later, but-

Blake Stratton:
Love it.

Verbs Boyer:
It for four strategies.

Blake Stratton:
Love it.

Verbs Boyer:
Thank you, Nick. Thank you.

Blake Stratton:
I didn’t laugh out loud, but I was laughing so hard on the inside.

Verbs Boyer:
Welcome to another episode of Focus on This, the most productive podcast on the internet. So you can banish distractions, get the right stuff done, and finally start loving Mondays. I’m Verbs, here with Courtney Baker and Blake Stratton. Happy Monday to my comrades.

Blake Stratton:
Happy Monday unto you, sir.

Courtney Baker:
Yeah. Last episode, we talked about Blake catching the claps on that intro song. I tried to do that. It’s harder than it sounds so for, by listening, if you want to join us on trying to hit the claps, it’s like a little double clap, right, Blake?

Nick Jaworski:
Blake is not hitting the clap.

Courtney Baker:
(Confusion 00: 04:50) He’s not I didn’t think so either.

Blake Stratton:
I was nailing the claps. You’re experiencing a delay in what the audio routing to my ears versus the…

Verbs Boyer:
Blame it on the wifi.

Blake Stratton:
I was nailing it.

Courtney Baker:
Yeah. Well, I think today’s topic is a really good one. I think a lot of people, we all have moments where we procrastinate. I think it’s going to be really helpful, for whatever stage of life, for anybody. Gosh, even my five-year-old procrastinates. I think this will be really good, and timely, in the like, what’s it called when you’re in this part of winter where it just drags on and on, and you’re like, “is it ever going to end?”

Verbs Boyer:
Which [inaudible 00:05:37] is it doldrums? Are you wearing the doldrums of winter?

Courtney Baker:
It’s the doldrums of winter. That’s exactly what I was thinking. Thank you, Verbs. It feels like a good time or a time where I find myself wanting to procrastinate things because I’m over winter. That may be me, but I think these are going to be really timely for everybody, me included.

Verbs Boyer:
All right. So let’s start off with our first strategy. Strategy number one is to focus on less.

Blake Stratton:
Focus on less, not to be confused with Focus on This, but focus on less. This may seem a little counterintuitive because if you’re struggling with procrastination, there’s a good chance that your work, your responsibilities, your task-list is expanding, and it’s growing, and, maybe, you actually are feeling this anxiety of I can’t do it all. And so, I don’t know if you guys have ever done this, you feel like, “oh my gosh, I’m so overwhelmed. I don’t know what to do. I know I can’t do it all”. And then you end up not doing anything.

Courtney Baker:
Yeah.

Verbs Boyer:
Absolutely.

Blake Stratton:
If you had just chosen something, even that would’ve been better. I think when you have a long, long to-do list, or many different responsibilities or things that are come and do, or that you’ve got to do, or you’ve committed to, that overwhelm is a huge contributor to why you’re procrastinating because it’s about the feeling you have. It’s the feeling of, “I am defeated before I even get started. Before I even start this, I already know that I’m not going to win. And so, therefore, or I don’t want to experience the pain of losing. So, I’ll just delay. I’ll just delay. I’ll just delay”. Has either of you felt that way before?

Verbs Boyer:
Absolutely.

Courtney Baker:
Absolutely true. And I think this is where the Daily Big 3 helps hone your focus. I think, for people that are using the system on a consistent basis, it helps work against this daily. So hopefully you’re not getting to that point where you’re like, “I have so much to do” this practice will prevent that from happening by having that smaller list of a Focus on This, and narrowing your focus.

Courtney Baker:
Again, you’re going to get more done than just three things, but if you approach the day of like, “Hey, to win today, I’ve got to get this Focus on This done” that fear of overwhelm of just like, “I’m going to fail at this before I’ve even started” is solved when you start. All that wasted time that you would have by looking at that never ending to-do list and procrastinating on Google Drive, or whatever you do to procrastinate, is solved. You’re able to leave the day feeling like, “okay, I got some really great things done. I got the most important things done”.

Verbs Boyer:
That was strategy number one, focus on less. We’re going to move to strategy number two which is to prioritize clarity. I think this one is probably the one that’s most helpful. We’re not just talking about now prioritizing tasks and making sure we’re segmenting our highest leverage task, but we’re actually prioritizing clarity itself. Do we have clarity, even on the task that we’re saying we’re going to set as a Focus on This? I think that’s important as well, making clarity a top priority. If not, that’s where overwhelm creeps in, and we feel ourselves start to drift into the Google folder activity.

Courtney Baker:
I think this point is key. For me, personally, a lot of times, when I find myself procrastinating, it’s an issue with clarity. I have confusion around what actually needs to get done. I’m unsure. I’m confused about the next step. And, frankly, I think confusion is one of the greatest friends to procrastination.

Blake Stratton:
Let’s talk about how we can prioritize clarity. If confusion means we’re probably going to procrastinate, how can we prioritize clarity? The first thing that I think of is, we mentioned setting a Focus on This in the first part, that’s actually connected because you have to make some executive decisions about what is most important. I would even say, think about how you write your Focus on This. If it says “marketing project” and that’s your Focus on This, that actually, you may not realize it, but there’s confusion in there because it’s not a step. You can’t do “marketing project”. You have to make revisions on a PDF or approve advertising copy, right. Make sure that what you’re writing down is an actual task, if that makes sense.

Blake Stratton:
I picked this up from David Allen. He talks about writing down your tasks as if you had to delegate it or as if someone off the street would have to know what you’re doing, right. Where you would say, oh, not that you, obviously, you couldn’t delegate approving advertising copy to someone that doesn’t know how to do that. But to write it with such clarity, because in taking the time to clarify what those things are-

Verbs Boyer:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Blake Stratton:
It’s almost like your brain starts to get to work as to, “oh, right, I can picture myself doing that. I know exactly what I’ve got to do next”. That’s assuming, by the way, that you know what to do next. I think another thing you could do is to ask some questions. Now, both of you, probably more so than me, are, oftentimes, in team environments where stuff is getting passed around, tasks are being assigned; what does that look like for you, creating clarity in that environment?

Verbs Boyer:
Yeah. I’ll say this, before I answer that question there. I think, often where clarity is also needed is when I’ll say for me, I feel if the work that I’m doing is created or is connected to the larger vision, and I have clarity on that as well, then the smaller tasks I assume, “Hey, those are connected to the greater vision”. That helps me mentally get into the work and narrows down the opportunity for procrastination in my mind. I’ll share this story. Courtney, I checked with you beforehand that I could share it. It pertains to your wonderful, amazing team. As we’re talking about simple things that we can do to get over our own procrastination, it may be something as simple as asking a question, but to set it up, we’re in the process of working with the marketing team on some cross-collaborative projects.

Verbs Boyer:
Now the marketing team is probably light years ahead than all of our other teams in the Asana Platform. They know how to assign a task, get them done, and I’m not mentioning names here to protect the awesome and wonderful, because this is, mainly, my downfall here. There’s a project we were working on, and they’re assigning tasks, and I’m like, “how did I even get assigned to this task? More importantly, what is this task? Where did it come from?” And there’s assignees, dates, contingencies, and all this amazing stuff, as far as how marketing assigns these tasks.

Verbs Boyer:
I was like, you know what? There was two or three days where I saw the task pop up. There was some activity in there, and I kept pushing it to the side because I had no context for what this task was. Low and behold, it came down to me asking a simple question, sending a message and saying, “Hey, we’re getting up to speed with how you guys use a sauna. Do you mind shooting a quick loom, so I can see how to track with these appropriately so I’m responding in the right areas?” And Courtney’s team was glad to do it. Five minutes later, I got a loom in my DM, and it brought clarity to what was actually going on, and it’s going to help me continue to communicate with that team. It came down to not pushing it off and pushing it off but to ask a simple question to get the clarity that I needed to go forward.

Courtney Baker:
I think that’s such a great question. I think a lot of times, we make it harder on ourselves.

Verbs Boyer:
Absolutely.

Courtney Baker:
It’s much easier to be like, “I’ll just deal with that later” when the answer is a small question that you’ve got to ask in a meeting or a slack message, an email, even a phone call-

Verbs Boyer:
Yes.

Courtney Baker:
Sometimes it’s a two-minute conversation and then it’s like, again, you’re not holding this thing that you’ve got to go figure out in your head of like, “oh, I’ve got to figure out Asana”, and like that task, it’s out there standing. And so, when you can get clear ask a question, it can open up a greater path towards completion. I bet, Verbs, probably the next time you get something in Asana, you’re able to mac it out in no time.

Verbs Boyer:
No, absolutely. And again, the context your team provided was great. Again, just so we can be on the same page, and aligned was the important part there. Truthfully, sometimes it takes us getting over our own pride or maybe a fear that we may have that we don’t want to look stupid or incompetent in front of our teammates, or something like that. As long as that feeling or those feelings reside, you are more prone to inviting in that procrastination due to the lack of clarity.

Courtney Baker:
You know what I think is interesting here is, with these steps, especially this one, is examining our thinking that cause the procrastination and…

Verbs Boyer:
Oh, that’s great.

Courtney Baker:
For this one, you examine it and say, “okay, yeah, I just didn’t get clear. I didn’t ask the question I needed to, to move forward”. I can think so many times where I’ve procrastinated if I take the time as part of my weekly preview or in a moment to think, “okay, what about my thinking?” You cause that procrastination. It can bring clarity to what I need to do for the future, not to end up in the same place.

Verbs Boyer:
All right, so that was strategy number two, prioritize clarity. Moving on to strategy number three, automate your startup.

Blake Stratton:
Automate your startup. We talk about having a ritual, actually four rituals, during your day, a morning and evening ritual, as well as a workday startup and shut down. This strategy is something I use every day. The stuff that’s easy for me to procrastinate in my work, is also the stuff that I don’t particularly enjoy doing. They’re usually not the most important things in the world. They’re the types of things where it’s like, “boy, if you don’t take care of these administrative tasks, it starts to take a toll over time” and so, there’s consistent upkeep, those types of things. It’s great for me to roll that into my startup. The win here if you struggle with procrastinating is you are taking away the choice, you’re taking away the opportunity to say, “no, I’m not going to do that”.

Blake Stratton:
You’re taking away the internal dialogue of, “do I feel like doing this or not?” The magic is your brain, when you have a ritual, start to associate a rhythm of tasks, right.

Verbs Boyer:
Sure.

Blake Stratton:
In the same way that you don’t consciously think about, “oh, I put my left leg in my pants and then my right leg in my pants” you just put your pants on, and put your shoes on, and turn on the car. You don’t think about those individual steps. If there’s tasks that you consistently procrastinate, going through your email for instance or routine things you’ve got to do to contribute to your team in some way, or maybe they’re personal tasks, household management type things.

Verbs Boyer:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Blake Stratton:
If you roll that into a ritual, it starts to automate that process. So the decision fatigue of having to go, “Do I want to do this today? Do I not? I mean, I can go one day without doing that” you delete that conversation, and it becomes an automatic thing that you do without thinking. The closer you can get to doing that, the less procrastination will take place, the more consistency you’ll build, and it won’t become that big of a deal, I think, in your life.

Courtney Baker:
I will say part of my morning ritual I built-in, this is the lamest thing to procrastinate, but guys, I love procrastinating laundry, okay. No one at my house likes to do laundry. Does anybody like to do laundry?

Verbs Boyer:
Nope.

Courtney Baker:
There’s probably some people out there. As part of my morning ritual, I start laundry every morning. And it’s part of it’s in my ritual. And so that way, what was happening was every weekend I was having to spend so much time folding laundry. And I’m like, “this is not what I want to be doing on a Saturday” so I automated that as part of my morning ritual so that when I got to the weekend, I wasn’t spent, basically, all the work I procrastinated for the week, having to do it on the weekend. And that worked really well. Now I’m trying to teach my five-year-old how to do it. I’ll let you know how it goes, okay? There’s a better version, which is, to delegate the thing altogether, but that’s another day.

Verbs Boyer:
That was strategy number three, automate your startup. Strategy number four is anticipate distractions. This is a good one. Obviously, distractions are literally everywhere. A lot of us, over the last couple of years, have worked more in our home environments. There’s more distractions that may present themselves in that context. There’s absolutely no escaping them.

Verbs Boyer:
From just the common technological ones, our phones, our favorite websites or people around that can tend to be a distraction because, hey, if you’re a sociable person, you want to chime into whatever’s going on in the conversation. At home, you want to clean up, fix, or organize these things so you can remove those from the equation. You mentioned laundry, Courtney, did you ever find yourself working, obviously, we work remotely from home, but is there ever something in the back of your mind that says, “you know what, I can go ahead, and it’s washed. I can go ahead and knock this out, and it’s done” then that distraction ends up being a rabbit hole of folding laundry for you?

Courtney Baker:
Oh, you mean, does my thing that I procrastinate become a distraction? Is that what you’re saying?

Verbs Boyer:
Exactly. Well, once it’s going, it’s either laundry or somebody’s got to fix these Google folders.

Courtney Baker:
No, I don’t. I don’t find that self. That being, folding clothes is never a distraction for me.

Verbs Boyer:
Okay. Okay. Well, people, that’s a good one because you mentioned that you have two younger daughters, if you know…

Courtney Baker:
Oh, that’s a great one.

Verbs Boyer:
They’re downstairs, and something doesn’t sound right while you’re upstairs.

Courtney Baker:
No, this is absolutely, this is absolutely true. That is, the distractions working here are, especially on Fridays, my entire family, my husband’s a pastor, and so he’s off on Fridays. Everybody is here usually on Fridays, and I’m upstairs working…

Verbs Boyer:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Courtney Baker:
And so certain sounds like one-year-old’s screaming, or something fun that sounds like it’s happening downstairs. That’s really interesting. And so I have tried to anticipate those distractions with sound machines, large headphones to try to keep, basically, able to perform my best on Fridays. Otherwise, there’s a constant pull. Even wondering, so a little bit of FOMO like, “what are they doing down there?”. Even when you go down for, I don’t know if y’all find this, maybe you’re going to get some more coffee or lunch. It’s easy to get sucked into whatever activity or things are happening, to the point that it distracts you from what you’re needing to accomplish for the day.

Courtney Baker:
I try to remind myself like, “Hey, I need to knock these things out” so I can keep that constrain at the end of my day and be fully present with my family, rather than trying to do both. That’s where I usually feel the worst it’s like, “oh, I’m failing at both of these things” so anticipating those distractions and figuring out good ways to transition, down to get coffee, but back into work well.

Blake Stratton:
If you struggle with distractions, and it feels like I don’t feel I’m procrastinating, but I can tell by the end of my day that I’ve indulged in so many distractions that I haven’t gotten done what I had wanted to get done, and it feels like procrastination. I have, maybe, a hot take on distractions, you guys.

Verbs Boyer:
Right.

Blake Stratton:
I think this person should actually embrace distractions. Anticipate distractions, but embrace them. And here’s what I mean. It’s really, really hard to go from, “Oh yeah, I get distracted easily” to “now that I’ve identified and I’ve anticipated these distractions, I’m going to avoid them all day long, and eliminate them and be one fluid, constant stream of uninterrupted productivity”. Personally, I think there’s advantages to strategic distractions so to speak, or strategic procrastination, in a way, where you recognize, “Hey, I’ve only got so much mental bandwidth, I’m going to schedule in”, rather than over-scheduling myself with, I’ve got to do this task, this task, this task, this goes back to our first strategy of focusing on less, but “I’m going to schedule in distraction time or break time”.

Blake Stratton:
I think we’ve done an episode on this before in the past, but maybe it’s every hour, or every 45 minutes, or every 90 minutes, or whatever the rhythm is. You set a timer. I have an app on my phone that I do this with, and I say, “Okay, great. Now I’m going to just doodle around. Look at social media. I’m going to go for a walk. I’m going to go upstairs, and, you know, play a quick game with my daughter, or have a snack or something like that”. I think, if you can change the narrative, so much of procrastinating, I think, is associated, okay, Nick, I told you this might be a scuba episode, an initial blub-blub down, as we go deep, would be procrastination is a problem. Oh, thank you.

Blake Stratton:
I think the real problem with procrastination is the perception of yourself when you’re procrastinating. If you feel ashamed you, in the long run, are way less productive, and don’t reach your potential. That blub lasted like 15 seconds.

Courtney Baker:
I loved that.

Verbs Boyer:
That was like…

Courtney Baker:
Great music, man.

Blake Stratton:
My thought is rather than feeling, “oh, I can’t be distracted, or there’s too many things” say “yeah, there’s going to be distractions. I can anticipate those. I can even schedule an extra bonus time into my day, that’s buffer time, and yeah, I’m going to get distracted” but who knows? Maybe you’ll think of an amazing idea when you’re going out for a walk scrolling on your phone or when someone interrupts you. I think, anticipation, allow yourself to embrace it a little bit, schedule it in. And most importantly, don’t lower the view you have of yourself if you dip into distraction on this journey.

Verbs Boyer:
Blake, since we’re in scuba mode, do you ever feel it’s difficult to get back into work mode after even you’ve scheduled said distractions, whether it’s a walk, whether it’s a scroll through social media. What does the on-ramp back into work look like for you? Have you ever violated those boundaries once you’ve scheduled it?

Blake Stratton:
Sure. Yeah. I think that’s tough. That’s a good question. To me, it’s helpful to know what your triggers are. We talked about automation and activation triggers. Especially if you’re dipping in and out or there’s distractions to have certain triggers, sometimes that’s a physical place. When I go into my office and close the door, that’s enough for me. Sometimes I have to listen to something. I use an app that has this productive music or whatever. I turn on the certain soundtrack, whatever, and all of a sudden I’m like, “oh right, I’m working. I’ve got to shift back into gear” so…

Verbs Boyer:
Right.

Blake Stratton:
I don’t know. Those are a couple of things that work for me, physical context and some audio triggers. You could go deeper. I have a one last semi-scuba thing I’m saving for, maybe, a final thought that, maybe, would be another activation for that. Verbs, do you have anything that you use? I know you’ve got kiddos as well, and homeschool, and all that happening in your house. How do you sink back in?

Verbs Boyer:
I like your take on that as far as scheduling distractions. I haven’t gotten into that too deep. I do know if we do experience distractions most of the time. When they happen, where they’re coming from. For me, if it’s my phone, in a particular week I’m checking email, or scrolling through social media, I’ve gotten into the habit now of leaving my phone somewhere else in another room. During break time, if I need to check it then I could do it then. Again, as you mentioned, being a homeschool family, even today. When we record our podcasts, our children, normally, are downstairs doing school but they know, “Hey, on these days at this time we’ll go upstairs. We’ll do school up there”. They’re learning, they’re in school mode, and it can be a distraction because there’s extra noise going on in the background. We’ve got into the rhythm of, “all right this day, this hour, if you guys are in this area of the house, it’s going to be helpful for this process”.

Verbs Boyer:
The good news is you don’t have to give in to procrastination and let it become in between you and your productivity. You can break free from it by focusing on less, prioritizing clarity, automating your workday startup, and anticipating the things that distract you. Blake, I’m going to go straight to you. You mentioned you might have something for this final thought here for our listeners.

Blake Stratton:
A final thought. Okay. This is something that’s been super helpful for me, which is the perspective, what I’ve mentioned in the last strategy, the perspective you have about your procrastination and having a perspective that’s empowering. To me, if I’m procrastinating, my perspective is not “come on, man, why are you not, oh gosh, can’t you get anything done? And you really should have done this”, but, rather going, “you know, if I’m procrastinating, then that means there’s some need that I have that’s probably not getting met”. If we’re in a constant blitz of I’ve got to go, go, go and do, do, do, then we will not know what we need or what’s missing, and procrastination will persist. This another scuba dive, maybe, deeper strategy if you struggle with procrastination. I’m going to give a practical piece of advice, which is to add in some time, either during your day or when you find yourself procrastinating, to simply sit quietly, close your eyes, and breathe in and out. You can call it meditation.

Blake Stratton:
To me, it’s quiet time. I’ll use a timer and set it for 10 minutes if I find myself feeling distracted, procrastinating, or something. I’ll set a timer for 10 minutes, sometimes 15 minutes, and embrace some quiet. What I’m doing is listening and understanding, okay, what is it? Because sometimes, for some of us, we procrastinate usually because there’s a feeling that we’re trying to avoid. A feeling of failure, or a feeling of embarrassment, or a feeling of discovering that we’re really not who we hoped we were, or something like that. Again, not to be too deep, but a feeling’s just a feeling. If you can understand what’s missing, understand, “oh gosh, I think I’m afraid of feeling this” you can give yourself space to feel a feeling.

Blake Stratton:
It may not be pleasant, but guess what? It’ll pass. You’ll be okay. Then you’ll get recharged. Or sometimes I pause, and I realize, I’m almost falling asleep, and I go, “oh, I’m exhausted. I am physically tired”. Well, great. Now I know that I can address that in other areas of my life, or I’ll pause and I go, “you know what? I’m really bothered. Why am I bothered? Oh, it’s not related to work at all. It’s this whole other thing that happened in this different domain of my life” right? If you don’t pause, breathe in and out and give yourself, give your brain, give your body a chance to tell you what’s going on. Is this making sense as a strategy to pause and kind of have a moment to listen in to go, “what is it that I’m missing? What is it that I’m needing?”

Courtney Baker:
Yes. It’s making total sense. What I hear you saying is, Nick, this weekend, when he was picking up poop in his yard, should’ve sat down on his front porch…

Blake Stratton:
Sat down right there.

Courtney Baker:
Have a quick moment with himself. Why wasn’t he doing that business proposal? Why was he, instead, doing the worst chore of all time and dug in. Maybe it was, Nick, was it a sense of failure? Were you afraid of getting turned down on that proposal?

Verbs Boyer:
Boom, called it.

Blake Stratton:
And so, even if, maybe not to open Pandora’s box, maybe you uncover something that you can’t fully address. I promise you, you’ll at least feel a little bit more powerful because you’ll understand like, “oh, I don’t know how to deal with this fear of failure” Okay, you can at least know that it’s there, know that’s what’s going on, and make a powerful choice with what to do with it down the road.

Blake Stratton:
Sometimes I’ll pause and I go, “you know what, what do I need? I need to do something fun. I need to go outside”, or I need to call up Courtney and be like, “listen, I’m so sorry. I need to get into this Peloton craze because I find myself needing to burn some energy” or something, right. If you don’t pause, you’ll go undiagnosed. The real roots of why you’re procrastinating will go undiagnosed, and guess what? Then it’s going to be that much harder to get out of it and build and do what you want to build and do. That’s my final thought.

Verbs Boyer:
Well, thank you all for joining us on Focus on This. This is the most productive podcast on the internet. So share it with your friends, and don’t forget to join our Full Focus Planner community on Facebook. Yes, we will be here next week. Yes, it will be another great episode, but until then, stay focused.