Episode #140 – How to Conquer Procrastination

You Are Not The Problem, You Are The SOLUTION!

LISTEN TO THE PODCAST NOW:

One of the things that will separate you from someone else is your ability to conquer procrastination. A lot of people are afflicted with procrastination because it comes in many different forms and I think that people tend to look at procrastination and label themselves or others as being lazy or unmotivated.
But in reality procrastination is a habitual reaction to overwhelm, fear, stress and even self-confidence or self-esteem issues.

And so labelling it with laziness is truly not helpful at all, and it doesn’t help to build confidence in yourself or others in order to overcome.

I have helped many people overcome procrastination and I was interested to discover that it does in fact come in many forms for many different reasons and the effect of overcoming it is huge.

I see projects get completed by people, I see people grow the skill of follow through – often connected to procrastination of some kind. So of course the results are there because you’re doing more, you’re getting things done probably quicker and most likely under a different thought process than before. And the biggest transformation that is life long, and affirming is that I see people increase their self-confidence, and self-esteem immensely by conquering procrastination. 

It’s common for me to hear from people that they are just lazy and that there is something wrong with them because they procrastinate too much.

Let me say this now, if you are listening and you know that you procrastinate and you just don’t know how to conquer it. There is absolutely nothing wrong with you. Nothing, you are perfect and amazing and maybe through this podcast today you’ll get the gift of looking at yourself a little differently so that you can feel confident and strong and conquer this habit and tendency to procrastinate. Once you understand something about yourself, you must look at it through a compassionate lens in order to change it.

So let’s talk about some different reasons that people procrastinate in order to try to relate back to maybe why you do this yourself if you’re struggling with this.

#1 – Fear

So how do you know that your procrastination is actually linked to fear? You might be a little anxious when you get a new task, you might get increasingly anxious when the deadline for that task is approaching and you might even know full well that it’s approaching but you just are too worried that you don’t know how to do it. If you worry a lot about not doing things right? That’s a clue that there is fear involved. 

#2 – Self-Esteem

If the task involves being outside of your comfort zone and you’re worried about looking silly or stupid, that is a clue that your self-esteem might be a little bit low and causing you to procrastinate. If you are beating yourself up about a lot of things or in particular the fact that once you let things slip and you screwed up or that feeling or self-talk that something is wrong with you, then you might be struggling to find the confidence to do something that you’re not good at.

#3 – Poor Time Management processes

Having a good system of time management is really important for any business person, we often wear a lot of hats and feel very overwhelmed. But it’s not only a system or process of time management, it’s often coupled with a habitual tendency to want to do things later, or scheduling time to do things and then not sticking to it. So when I work with clients who believe that they just need a good process of time management that may be true, but usually it’s that they also need help changing some habits attached to being the end user of that system. Any system works, pen, paper, google calendar, a task list, a written list, they all work if you remember to work the system. But sometimes it’s what happens in between oh yeah I was supposed to update my calendar to opps I never followed through with the great system I created for myself.

#4 – Habits

It’s important to start becoming aware of your habits surrounding getting things done. Humans are conditioned to seek pleasure and avoid pain, so of course we don’t want to do the mundane, boring, and difficult tasks on our list. As I told someone recently, if you get those things out of the way, you can focus on doing the things you really love to do, the things that bring you joy, like maybe making the music, writing the songs, playing the shows.

So first become aware of why you think you might be procrastinating and if you currently have a belief that you are just lazy, I urge you to look at yourself in a very compassionate way and understand that you most likely are not lazy and there are other reasons why you procrastinate to keep your feelings safe. Unfortunately it doesn’t get you any results when you do that, and we don’t need to keep our feelings safe because if you’ve been following me or listening to my podcast for a while, you’ll be well versed in how to feel your feelings and be good with all of that. You don’t need to be safe, be brave, be strong and face that procrastination head on with the most love you’ve ever had for yourself. It will be SO empowering to overcome procrastination, I promise you that.