"I'll Do It Tomorrow" Isn't the Problem

What's the one thing that we're told procrastinators tell themselves again and again? The worst thing that they tell themselves? In my view, what do you think? Before I relay that, what's the worst thing that procrastinators say again and again? You know, the big lie that they tell themselves. Well, in my experience, what we've been told is that procrastinators, their famous refrain is, look, I'll do it tomorrow. I'll get to that tomorrow. That's in self-help, productivity, you know, hustle culture. That's typically presented as the big lie. The thing that you have to stop doing, right? No more of that. That's just an excuse. So where do I sit on this? Well, believe it or not, I'm going to say something strange here, but I'll explain it. People who tell themselves I'm going to do it tomorrow, they don't quite have the answer yet, but they're a lot closer to it than most people are. Okay. I'm kind of going to defend the idea of telling yourself you'll do it tomorrow. Now, there's a big caveat in that, but it is presented as the big lie, right? Because almost invariably, nothing changes the next day, right? So that pattern of I can do it tomorrow continues indefinitely. So why would I ever defend that? Why would I defend people telling that to themselves? Well, the thing is, what's the alternative, right, to saying that you're going to do it tomorrow, right? So, okay, stop saying that. And instead, what? Get serious now. Is that what we're supposed to do instead of telling ourselves we'll do it tomorrow? Recommit, even though you've already committed today, by the way, that you do it, but you didn't. And that's when we tell ourselves we'll do it tomorrow. So instead of telling yourself to do it tomorrow, recommit harder today. Do it now, right? Do it soon. That recommitting today, okay, okay, I didn't do it now, but look, I will do it today. I'm doing it now. I'm doing it now. I'm doing it now. I'm doing it now. I'm doing it now. I'm doing it now. That approach is much worse than telling yourself you'll do it tomorrow. I will get to the problems around saying you'll do it tomorrow, but that's much worse. The problem with saying I'll do it tomorrow is not what people think it is. This is the crux of my argument here, okay? So yes, people do say that I'll start tomorrow, I'll do it tomorrow. What's the problem with that strategy? The problem is that when people say it, they don't mean it. But not in the sense that they don't really mean they'll do it tomorrow. They do mean they'll do it tomorrow, right? They have every intention of, okay, I will, I'll do it tomorrow. But what they're really saying is, I hope I'll do it tomorrow. I intend to do it tomorrow. However, today is still not off the table yet, actually. And how do I know that? Well, people, I've asked that to many, many people in therapy. And I'll say, okay, imagine you tell yourself you're going to do it tomorrow. However, today, maybe in an hour's time or two hours time, a huge burst of motivation comes up in which you really feel like doing the task that you delayed upon today. Would you ignore it? Would you wait until tomorrow? Or would you do it there today? And invariably, people say, no, of course I do it today. If the motivation showed up magically somehow, I would do it today. So what people really mean when they say I'll do it tomorrow is hopefully I'll do it tomorrow. But today is still not off the table yet. Not really, not fully. They haven't made a commitment that today is actually finished. And there's a huge problem with that, because you're perpetually in this state of obligation to doing something. So my approach, and it's in my new book, After You Don't Show Up, is you don't make recommitments in the same day. So you committed to something once, if you do it, great, you can continue, you make another commitment, then you do it, great. But as soon as you stop, you don't show up for a commitment, you stop and you pause for the rest of that day. And that gives a space for you to reflect maybe on what happened to you breaking that promise to yourself. So I'm not really telling people, you would get a chance if you're following my strategy here, you commit, okay, I didn't show up. I'm not going to do for us today. Tomorrow. Okay. Tomorrow is a new commitment. Tomorrow, the opportunity arises again, when you can attempt to do it again. But for the remainder of the day, the current day, you don't re-attempt to, you don't even make a promise again to try that same task. Okay. Now what, so I'm not saying to people, okay, just tell yourself you'll do it tomorrow. What I'm saying is, you firmly and decisively tell yourself, I won't be doing it today. There's a difference. Okay, it's not about saying when you will do it, it's about saying when you won't be doing it. I will not, okay, I didn't do it, I didn't show up for that thing. That's it, I'm not doing it now for the rest of the day. See, that's different to how people have typically traditionally told themselves, I'll do it tomorrow. I'll do it tomorrow. But today is still open, actually, secretly. My approach is a full commitment to saying when it won't be done. See, what that does, it gives you clarity, it gives you space, gives you rest even, right? What do you do with the rest of the day? Go and enjoy it, right? But just don't do that thing. Because we can perpetually be in this cycle of making 15 different promises to ourselves in a day, and this is corrosive to our sense of self-trust. So with this approach, by the way, usually takes about three to five days. In the book, I invite you to try it for five days. Because that's, for something that sounds as strange as this idea I'm talking about, you try this thing of, okay, if I commit to it, I don't do it, I leave for the rest of the day. That sounds threatening when you first hear about it. So I ask people, look, try that for five days. If you're still not showing up for the thing after five days, I'd be amazed. Because usually it's within about three days. The self-trust that we've been corroding with all these promises, recommitments, comes back super quickly. And then your start times start to mean something, and showing up becomes so much easier. But it is kind of about, it sounds awful like I'm saying, just tell yourself you'll do it tomorrow. I'm really not telling you that. I'm telling you, tell yourself you won't do it today for the remainder of the day. There's a difference, a subtle difference. It's about when I won't do it, knowing when you will not be doing it, with absolute certainty and conviction. That's the difference. Telling yourself, oh, look, I'll do it tomorrow. Typically, there's no conviction in that, because you really kind of secretly hope you still do it today. So this, my approach, I call it the incredible method in the book, is about adding conviction to when you won't do the task. And you will be amazed at how that can revolutionize your approach to personal productivity, not by becoming this great, organized, super driven, motivated person, but by restoring something that gets corroded and eroded through hustle culture and kind of self-help stuff, which is try harder, commit harder. No, it's about saying, well, no, I'm not going to undermine myself now. I'm going to stop, and I'm going to pause, and I'm going to look at why I didn't actually show up there when I said I would. And typically, it has nothing to do with you being a bad person, or anything like that, or not being organized enough, or not being disciplined enough, or not trying hard enough, or not wanting it enough. You're fine. The interesting thing about productivity is that when you realize, ah, this is actually pretty straightforward and easy, you realize that it's not to do with being impressive. It's just, it's very easy. It's very basic. It's very, very easy and doable. It doesn't require any huge characteristics that only special people have. It's ordinary. But what it is at the root of it, instead of all that grandiosity, is trusting yourself, getting curious as to why I don't honor something. Curious, not judgmental, right? Because that blocks that understanding. It's like, okay, why did I do it? Well, I was lazy. Okay, what am I going to do now? Well, first of all, laziness had nothing to do with it. And the recommitment to doing it when you don't understand the problem is going to make you fail again and again and again. So we pause. What really happened there? Let's drop the judgments. Let's drop the labels and the simplistic thinking. What really happened there? Oh, I was overwhelmed. I thought I had to do 17 different tasks instead of just one basic task. That's usually the big reason, right? That's the primary reason why we don't show up for things is we're overwhelmed. We have created this mental task that would intimidate anybody. And that intimidation and the fear builds up in the body. And then the body says, okay, don't worry, we have an out here. We can say we're going to do it later. And that helps us relax, feel less overwhelmed. But of course, that strategy keeps undermining us. So if you have been one of the people who has been saying, look, I'll do it tomorrow, I'm not doing it tomorrow. Well, actually, I kind of prefer your strategy, even though it doesn't work to the hustle culture or the come on, get serious approach. That just really means don't get curious, because we already know why you're not doing it. You're not serious enough. It's not to do being serious. Everybody wants to have a life in which they feel like they can trust themselves and to do things in their life to create a life that they want. There's nobody that doesn't want that. Everybody wants that. Everybody's motivated. Simple question. Think about the life you want. If there was a button in front of you in the table right now, or your chair, or wherever you are, would you press that button if it meant that it would happen? I think you would. I think you're motivated. That's enough. You would choose that thing for yourself. Everybody wants it. Everybody wants it enough. The reason it's not happening is very, very subtle. It's invisible why it's not happening. Nobody talks about the real reason, which is we're trying to restore trust in ourselves the wrong way. What I'm proposing is reflection, pausing, stopping, looking, understanding, instead of judging, labeling, berating, coercing ourselves. That's the problem. The roots of that go back a long way. They're probably rooted in childhood. They're rooted in your experiences in school. They're everywhere in our culture. Hurry up. You're not doing enough. You're doing it wrong. You should have finished it by now. You're behind. That's what we hear in our culture, in our families of origin, in school, and everywhere else. The problem is it doesn't work. It sort of assumes the worst about people, that you need to be told what to do. You need to be told what's in your best interest because that can't be trusted. But really, it is about self-trust. You can trust yourself. When you do trust yourself, and you know when I say I'm going to do something, there's an excellent chance that I'm going to do it, a very high chance. And if I don't, I know exactly how I'll react. And it won't be through scrambling and recommitting. It'll be stopping and understanding what just happened. And you don't have to do a lot of that because the reason it doesn't take long for self-trust to return is that once you stop judging yourself and look for the actual reason you didn't do the thing, it's so obvious and it's almost always the same reason. It's obvious. It's not complicated. If you just stop long enough to look, you'll realize, where did all that pressure come from? Did I put that pressure myself? Am I learning that? Why do I feel I have to hurry up all the time? Why am I constantly in a rush to do things? There's a little thing to remember. When you become productive, well, I think you should never be in a rush. Being very productive means never rushing. Now, there are people who are productive and are rushing, but that's the other end of the spectrum. This is the workaholic side of it, right? And so I've talked in other videos that procrastination and workaholism are the exact same problem. They're just two sides of the same coin and you don't want to end up in that category because the problem with that is you're rushing and you're doing a lot, but other areas of your life are going to fall into disrepair. You're going to pay heavily for that somewhere, either physically with your body or in your relationships or somewhere else. So if you're rushing, you're doing it wrong. That'd be my advice, right? Certainly if that's a lifestyle, the way you live your life, if you're constantly rushing around, and the problem is for some people that does work and then they can justify that. Well, I need to continue to look at everything that's getting done. But if you stop and look at other areas of your life, there's a price to be paid there too, sadly. And usually it's physically in your body eventually. So ideally what we want is a situation where this is very ordinary. It's not about pushing or coercing or bullying or demanding. It's about making simple, informed requests to yourself, commitments to yourself, honoring them and enjoying that if you honor it. And if you don't, you get curious about why you didn't instead of trying to recommit, recommit, recommit, come on, beat it harder. You have to do it now soon. And it's all threat. So that's what I'm proposing here as the solution. This is all in the book. It's called After You Don't Show Up. How one counterintuitive rule ends procrastination. And I mean end it, not manage it. Put it out of your life. You won't have this anymore. And it's counterintuitive because it sounds eerily like tell yourself you'll do it tomorrow, which is the big lie apparently, we've been told. The only reason, again, just to finish here, I'll emphasize the main point of this video. The reason why saying, sure, look, I'll do it tomorrow. The only problem with that is that you don't actually mean that when you say it. Usually you mean, yeah, I'll do it tomorrow. But secretly today isn't still open. I probably still kind of should do it, especially if I get motivated. One of the things in the book that I talk about is, okay, I didn't do it. You don't show up today. That's it. We're done. And you have to be super careful about motivation showing up after that day. You do not do it that day if you get a sudden burst of motivation. And there's kind of a discipline involved in that, which is very strange. Isn't that weird that I'm saying this, that don't do it when you're motivated in those moments. If it's not when you said you would. This is another reason why motivation has nothing to do with this problem. You don't want to be waiting around for motivation. And there are times when motivation shows up and you shouldn't do it. If you said you would do it, you're not doing it for the rest of the day. If it shows up, don't give into the motivation to do it at that point. It's not a good move, actually, for repairing self-trust. So look, this is a counterintuitive idea. That's why I've written a book. It's a kind of a long explanation for a very weird sounding idea, but I genuinely think it can end procrastination for people. And it takes about five days. Usually self-trust returns, if you follow the method in the book, within about three days. Something changes. The start times that I'm making a commitment to actually are significant. They actually are meaningful. They're not something that I have 15 other options to do later on if I don't do it. That's the reason we're not committing to it, because we don't have to commit to it. Now, you don't rush the start times. You don't put pressure on yourself to do it, to show up. You don't take on huge amounts of work. That's going to not help. But you'll understand that if you didn't show up, maybe those are the contributing reasons to why you didn't. But reflection will help you see that, not recommitting. Recommitting will never let you see that. So again, it is counterintuitive. It's a bit complicated, but it works. And check out the book if you like. And go easy on yourself if you have been perpetually saying, I'll do it tomorrow. You are closer to the solution than you thought you were, than most people are. So keep that in mind. Thanks for being with me. See you again very soon. Bye-bye.