The 5-Day Procrastination Experiment

Five days to change your life. I'm not even suggesting you need 30 or 90 days, 90 day challenge. I'm even worse than those self-help guys. I'm saying you can change your life in five days. Five days. So I'm undercutting the self-help guys with this, the hustle culture stuff that's out there. But I am saying that at least one area of your life can dramatically improve in five days. And that is that getting things done and showing up for yourself can dramatically improve in that period of time, because it's not a willpower problem. If it was a willpower problem, you wouldn't need 90 days, right? But it's not. It's actually, I've identified it as a self-trust problem. Self-trust isn't a muscle. Self-trust is a way you relate to yourself. And it can be, usually takes a long time for self-trust to erode, but once you figure out how it all works, you can restore self-trust incredibly easily and quickly within five days. But getting things done and showing up for yourself becomes a lot easier. When we don't have self-trust, and last people, what are the chances that you're going to do that thing that you said you're going to do? Some people will say 10%, 15%, 50%. But that's kind of the same. Even if it's as high as 50%, that's the same as saying, I don't know if I'll do it. So we don't know. We can't trust ourselves with the things that we're committing to. When we have no self-trust, or very low self-trust, it's incredibly anxiety inducing. So what if you could, before I tell you how to do it, and I'll tell you my ideas in a second, imagine you knew for sure that if you said you're going to do something, you would do it. Would you feel better about things? I think most people would feel a lot less anxiety in their life. And getting things done becomes an awful lot easier. So five days, it doesn't take that long. It's doable. I've seen it. I've done it myself within five. For me, it was about three days of applying this approach and it clicked. But I've never seen it take longer than five days from the people I've worked with when they follow the protocol. Protocol is in my new book. It's called After You Don't Show Up. And the idea in it is that you commit to doing this for five days. So effectively, the method is called the incredible method. It's about storing credibility, getting into credibility. Incredible, right? So in the book, this is the approach. You do commit to things. So you commit to doing a task, something that's important to you, something that you've procrastinated on. You set a time for it. You lock that in. And you watch whether you show up for it. Now, if you show up for it, that's great. But if you don't show up for it, this is where the protocol comes in. What happens after that is that if you didn't show up to do the thing, you step away from it for the remainder of the day. No more scrambling. No more trying to make up for it. No more trying to negotiate with it. No more, well, I didn't feel like it, but I will feel like it soon. None of that. You step away from it completely. And that's really all you do with it. Now, you can also go into reflection on, okay, I wonder what was really going on there with the fact that I didn't show up? What were the real reasons that aren't judgmental and simplistic judgments of myself? I'm not good enough. I'm not organized enough, et cetera, et cetera. Now, what was the real reason I didn't? Was I overwhelmed? Did I take on too much? Was I trying to be a perfectionist, et cetera, et cetera. But the bottom line is you step away from it. So why only five days? If I ask people to do this for like 30 days or 90 days, it's too weird and too counterintuitive that they won't even think of entertaining it. But if I invite people to try that for five days, they might actually do it. So let's walk through what this would look like. So let's say you've got something that's important to you. Okay, I'm going to commit to it today. I didn't show up for it. Okay, now I've got to step away from it. Day one, you've got nothing. You haven't done any work. And what you have is you haven't made a series of promises and broken them all, which erodes your self-trust, but you certainly have no work done still. So after day one of doing this protocol that I'm advocating for here, you're no more productive. Day two, you make a commitment. Did I show up for it? No, step away from it. Today is off now. I can go and do something else, but I'm not doing that task. Day two, no productivity. Day three, you may have the same experience. You make the commitment to do the task. But what you have after three days, let's say you step away from it for the third day, you've still got nothing done in this task. You've made no practical progress in it. But what you're learning is that there's a couple of things. One is you're reflecting on the real reasons and with that space of not scrambling, making what I call reflex promises. Well, not now, but soon. Not here, well there. That's what I call reflex promises after we don't show up, which is the entire problem. But you have more space now to reflect. You're not scrambling. You're not negotiating. You're actually looking at what's going on here. Why am I making commitments to myself and not actually following through on it? But the other thing that's happening too is that you're realizing there's a consequence for not showing up for something. Typically, we've been told or we've been led to believe that you not doing the task is the reward. You get to go goof off and play video games or whatever it is. But the truth is you not doing the task is actually a form of punishment. I'm using the word punishment there. It's a consequence. Because the truth is you do want to do the task. So it's actually a little bit painful to do this, really. Day four, same thing's happened again. The same thing happens again. You commit to it. You didn't do it. But day five, I've never met anyone that got to day five and didn't have this thing go, okay, my commitments now actually are serious. When I either do it when I say I will or there is no negotiating around it. It's this constant negotiating with ourselves that gets us into trouble with this. So if you've got five hours this weekend, listen to the audiobook. The book is on audiobook now as well. It's on audible. You take a hike. I don't mean that in a bad way. Go take a hike, go take a walk and listen to the book. It's like five hours. And it'll give you a completely counterintuitive way of looking at this that you've never heard before because it's a very original way of looking at it. But again, that's why I only asked for five days because it's too weird to attempt to do this for 30 days or 90 days. But the good news is you don't have to because it works within five. Again, and I've done this with dozens of people personally. And there's always this aha moment within that space. And from that point on, once that thing lands and it clicks, it's like, ah, it isn't a motivation problem. It's a self-trust problem. I'm making fewer promises. But the ones that I am making, I am committing to and I'm honoring and if not, I know exactly what's going to happen. I'm going to step away from it. So you become far more knowledgeable about what's really going on around these broken promises. See, typically we think we know why we're not honoring the promises. We think we know. It's because I'm not organized enough. I'm not good enough. I'm not disciplined and not trustworthy. I'm not a serious person. None of that's true. This is actually probably what's happening is the exact opposite. You're trying to be trustworthy. You're trying to be motivated. You're trying to be disciplined and have willpower. You're trying to force yourself. You actually care about it too much, if anything. So this will, this is a protocol that you can try and I can promise you, I can't promise you, but I can almost promise you that if you try this for the fight and you commit to it, I'm doing this for five days. Now, in order to make that promise yourself to try this, you have to be willing to have done nothing on that task for five days. I think that you will. And certainly beyond the five days, you'll relate to it completely differently. You'll become way more consistent in it. But in order to do it, you have to be willing to say, I might not do, and I want to, I'm going to try my best, but for five days, I might end up doing nothing in this. So I wouldn't advise that you do it if you have like a deadline for something in three days time. Try it with something that you have time to learn this method. But you will relate to yourself very, very differently after you do. It's not about trying harder. It's about stepping away, reflecting, having a boundary with yourself, no longer choosing, no longer on some level torturing ourselves with personal productivity. You don't need to do any of that. You can be perfectly productive and consistent and learn to trust yourself without bullying yourself or coercing yourself. So the links for the book are below. There's also a group we have on Tuesdays. I'd love to see you there where we talk about this, how to develop self-trust in personal productivity, but in everything, every way you relate to yourself in life. So check that out. The links are below. You can contact me for one-to-one work as well. Links are there and hope you find it useful. If you are trying the method or you're in the middle of it or you're about to try it, comments below. Love to see them. Take care of yourself. Talk soon. Bye-bye.