Procrastination Ends when We Choose to be Decisive

I want to talk about this idea and why we keep telling ourselves it's okay I can do it later. I'll do it later. I'm not ready yet. I'll do it later. Time isn't right. It's such an important thing that we understand why we do this and the power that we can reclaim for ourselves when we say I'm not doing that anymore. I refuse to delay on whatever the the thing we procrastinate on might be. Let's let's get into it here. What is this thing of I can do it later and why is it our favorite catchphrase when we have this issue of procrastination? What purpose does it serve? I can do it later. Well the first thing to realize is I can do it later is actually a coping strategy. One of the main things that we experience with procrastination is a real feeling of anxiety and anxiety actually comes from not having complete trust in ourselves in our own abilities or in trusting that we will actually do what is required for us to achieve the goal. We don't fully trust ourselves and therefore as we move closer to the action that needs to be taken we start to get a little bit anxious because isn't it true that we've kind of let ourselves down in the past quite often and that is we've actually trained ourselves to be kind of afraid of of our own decision making tendencies. There's a good chance I might actually just let myself down here and not do it at all. So we start to get anxious and anxious and anxious the more the closer it gets to the time when action is required and then just when we're getting there and we're getting too anxious well look I'll do it later I'll do it later I'm not ready yet. So we need to figure out a way around this because we will actually never get to the place we we tell ourselves and we genuinely do want to get to if we keep using this coping strategy of I can do it later because it does work in the moment when we say look I can do it later. We do relax a little bit of course there's a deeper sense of frustration that we're not getting closer to our goal. So the analogy I talk about sometimes is the movie The Dark Knight Rises. Now in that movie the the main character is he's down in the bottom of a well and he has to escape make this really difficult climb to his freedom. Now it's very difficult and you can try it a few times as you can try it as many times as you want but no one has ever really succeeded in getting out of there. You can try and as dangerous it is it's not totally life-threatening because there's a rope attached to you so if you try the climb and you fall the rope will will break your fall so you won't be really terrible yeah you won't kill yourself you'll be hurt. So eventually in this movie anyway he tries and tries and tries he's climbing with this rope this safety rope and can't get out and one of the other prisoners tells him look the only way you're which he says fear will find you again and you will be able to to you'll climb better and harder than you've ever climbed with more urgency and more presence. So he does and that's what happens in the movie. So of course in this analogy here the the prison we're in is you know we're at the bottom of our own the starting point in this big climb we have to make towards achieving our goal now we think on that climb towards achieving our goal well look it's not so bad i can do it later i can do it later now that makes us feel better it's the rope effectively but the rope is the one thing actually that is holding us back i can do it later there is no later what if there were no later you didn't have later now i don't want you to take from that that oh god i gotta get going i literally only mean that you remove the option of doing things later that's all so i'm not even necessarily trying to energize you or give you a real sense of urgency hurry you to do something i don't like you to be i don't want anyone to be hurried about anything i don't think that helps i'm just saying it either gets done now or it's not going to be done at all there's no trying to do it it'll be done when i say it is or it won't be done at all really what i'm calling for here is the way we get over procrastination is we become way more decisive about it and we have much better boundaries with when we take action and when we say and now i'm not taking action we become more deliberate in that because usually with procrastination there's this voice in your head saying do more do more do what we should have done yesterday in fact that's not enough do more it should have been done earlier than this oh it's not it's too late now anyway you ruined it right this little have to voice have to do it you have to you have to you have to that's the thing that actually leads to the problem really causes all that anxiety and the procrastination which keeps us small really that's all it's designed to do right you'll never become our you're the authentic self that you are will never be able to express itself when we listen to that voice and one way we do it is to throw away the rope like in the movie throw away the option of i can do it later the option of moving it to a later time in that day there is no later time i'm not doing that anymore yeah it makes me feel better it eases my anxiety but ultimately it doesn't work and just makes me feel worse about myself the way it works is when you say you're going to do it it's either done then or isn't going to be done at all there's no later okay trust me if you can really implement that technique it will change your life and think about this i'm not even asking you to do more work i'm not even asking you to push yourself harder i'm just asking you to get really clever and outsmart that inner critic that has been using that trick against you for so long i'm just calling for more awareness and for you to get really really clever here with this and just see what happens you're kind of outsmarting your ego with this one i'll leave it there for today guys but again i hope that's useful and i'll see you in the next one take care