You Can Stop Procrastinating by Doing Less

I think I had better say something original here about productivity and procrastination, because there are so many videos out there on the topic. I don't want to waste your time regurgitating what other people have said or making you sit through other forms of torturing yourself and trying to hustle yourself and get g'd up to take action. I wanted to say something original in this video, and I think this is original. So the issue here, and this can lead to profound changes in your personal productivity, and it's in how we understand procrastination, how we define it even, because I'm going to offer a different definition of it here, and it's a definition I talk about in my book, After You Don't Show Up. So here's the original concept. Procrastination is typically, traditionally defined as failing to follow through on things, even though you expect the worse off for that delay. So failing to follow through on things, that's how we've typically defined procrastination. And using that definition, it implies that the solution would be that if you're going to overcome it, that you will need to take more action, more consistently, that is. And I think that's wrong. I think there's a much more useful way we can understand what it is, and it'll lead to a solution that actually works. So how I would define it, as opposed to saying procrastination is the inability to follow through on things in spite of expecting to be worse off, I define it as procrastination is not a problem of inaction. Procrastination is a problem of reaction to inaction. Procrastination is a problem of reaction to inaction. So this is where we get into the nitty gritty of it, of the solution. How do we overcome it? And it's very counterintuitive. So let's say you decide I'm going to do something today. Okay, I'm going to do it. Time comes, I don't do it. There's the inaction. Now, as far as procrastination, the traditional definition is concerned, that's the problem. So now for the next time, what you've got to do is do more action. In fact, do the action pretty quickly, actually, even. You probably should do it soon, but you've got to work on the inaction problem. My solution, what I propose is that we stop and we look at the reaction we have after we didn't do the thing. So it's a problem of reaction to inaction. So no one thinks to look there, but that is where this problem becomes chronic. Okay, so what is the typical reaction we have? Well, first of all, of course, we beat ourselves up. Sometimes we shrug our shoulders and say, what's wrong with me? Why aren't I doing this thing? But much more sinister is not sinister, maybe, but unhelpful, is that we get into a habit of recommitting after we failed to follow through. I call them reflex promises. Okay, look, not now. I'm not feeling this. I'll wait until this afternoon, when probably I'll be feeling a bit better, and then I'll try it again. That's the reaction. Okay, and that's coming from like attempts to fix the problem. Okay, I didn't do it, I need to take the action. So I'm going to do that. And that is a wrong response. It's a wrong reaction. Right? That's called I call them reflex promises. It's and they come up again and again and again after we fail to show up for something. Okay, and it looks like the right thing to do. It implies that you care and you want to fix the thing and you've identified the problem, I need to take action. Okay, I'm going to recommit. But it's the recommitting. That's the problem because it happens after you've just broken your own word, your own commitment to something. And what's actually required after that happens is to stop and say, hang on, what happened? What just happened there? Instead of recommitting to something again, even after we've just broken our own word, we say stop. Okay, I'm, I'm gonna need this bit of space here. Now, figure out what just happened there. It is slow right down. And stop recommitting. And really figure out what happened there. Now we think we already know what happened there. I'm a bad person is what happened there. I'm lazy, not organized, not serious enough, not mature enough, not disciplined enough. I'm not a serious person. Therefore, I don't have to really look at why I didn't show up there at all. I already know. But all of those things I just said there are all judgments. They're labels you stick onto the behavior. I think you have it solved when you don't have it solved at all. You think you do. We all think we do. And that happens. So the solution here is to not recommit, to pause and assume instead of assuming you already know why you didn't show up, you assume I don't know why I didn't show up there. And that's going to take a little bit of sitting with a little bit of space, a little bit of reflection, a little bit of not recommitting immediately. In the book, my protocol is that you don't recommit to it that day. Okay, so you give yourself the rest of the day, a boundary from recommitting or a boundary from promising. It removes these reflex promises. I'm not going to use them now anymore. See, the reflex promises are there. They're actually a defense mechanism, right? So they're like, it's still, okay, I didn't do a thing. Well, look, I'll do it soon. And that helps us calm down. It helps us relax. It helps to restore a sense of I'm still in control. I can still salvage this. But if we're doing that, that underlying explanation, well, I'm just not a serious person, is the default explanation for why you didn't show up. And it's wrong. Okay, it will never let you figure out, actually, why aren't I showing up? So again, the definition I'm using here is procrastination is not a problem of inaction. It's a problem of reaction to inaction. That's where it becomes this chronic problem that can go on year after year after year. And we think it's only, I really need to mean it this time. Next Monday is going to be different. I'm really going to try now on Monday. Like you haven't tried before, right? You have tried. Trying is not the issue. Effort is not the issue. Insight, lack of insight is the problem. So when you stop long enough to look and assume that you don't understand why you didn't do it, and you'll look and you'll probably see those explanations come up in your mind. What's wrong with me? Everyone else can do this. Why can't I do it? What's wrong with me? That's what's wrong. That's the answer. And you don't let yourself recommit to it. You say, well, okay, that's the initial response maybe that's coming up. But you sit with it. You realize, actually, that answer is not going to do it for me now. Actually, that's not moving me forward here. Hasn't helped. I've said that to myself a million times. And I'm still here. If that was really the solution, I probably would have got more benefit from it. It would have helped me somehow. And it's a hopeless solution. It doesn't give you anything other than trying to change your personality or something. And the truth of it is the answer is much more human. And it's more detailed. It's more nuanced. It's more personal. But it's more human. And the typical one is that you've taken on too much or you've been influenced by your culture to the point where you think you have to do everything perfectly all the time. It puts so much pressure on you, creates this resistance. And it's like, oh, well, following through is hard when there's a lot of resistance to it. So we start to look at how can I not overwhelm myself? And that's actually useful. How could I have better boundaries with things? How could I stop putting immense amounts of pressure on myself to do things? These are just examples of things that you will discover when you pause and you look and you give some space to reflect instead of recommitting, re-promising, reflex promises, reflex promises. And it's remarkable how quickly you can turn this whole thing around once you stop doing the one thing that most of us have been doing for years and that no one talks about. That's why I wrote the book on it. I think it's an original concept on personal productivity. And I think original concepts in personal productivity are rare. I have read dozens and dozens of books over the years, and I could name three that I think are genuinely original, helpful, insightful. One of them is Neil Fiore's book, The Now Habit. Another one I think is a really great book is The One Thing, which is very insightful. I'm not saying there aren't others. Of course there are. But I'm just saying it's a rarity because our culture is, the way we're defining procrastination is the problem of inaction. And it's therefore, it's all about the build up to doing the thing and making sure that you're in the right space of mind and that you're planning properly and you've got the time management system in and you've got all these things and it's all before. And nobody stops and thinks, what about after you didn't do it? What's happening there? Because that's where it becomes chronic. That's where you can regain control over this. And it's so simple. It's not about doing more. It's about stopping for that day and saying, okay, something significant just happened there and I can't just go on and keep recommitting. I need to pause with that. Not showing up for something that I promised myself I would do is significant. Now, the problem is there's so much guilt around it. When I'm saying it's significant, I'm saying the opposite. It's not something you should feel guilty about. The problem is we do feel guilty about it. But it is significant enough that we should say, pause. That's interesting. That requires a little bit of time and attention now. Because if it happened in a personal interpersonal relationship with a friend and you kept doing it, what's it going to do to the relationship with your friend or your partner or your wife or your husband, right? You keep saying you're going to do things and you don't do it. In interpersonal relationships, it's much more obvious. They're going, well, that's going to damage the relationship. But we're in this pattern, unfortunately, of damaging the relationship with ourselves. And the problem isn't a lack of promising, usually, or a lack of action. It's the re-promising, right? It's the not pausing to figure out, hang on, what just happened there? So check out the book. The link is below. But it's a very original approach to this. And it doesn't take a lot of time for it to start having an effect. Usually within, I talk about a protocol for five days. If you can commit to trying this approach for five days, and they only ask for five days because it's such a weird idea. Like I'm telling people, don't do more. Okay, pause, which is the opposite. And people who have this problem of procrastination, the reason people don't want to read the book, if they don't want to, which I understand completely, is that everything inside them, that inner bully that's in there is like, hurry up, do more. You're out of time. You're out of time. You're wasting your potential. You got to do more. Anything that tells you pause, there's going to be that voice in there that feels a bit uncomfortable with it. And that's why I'm only asking for five days, right? If you try it for five days, sincerely, there's a protocol, steps in the book about how you do it and things to look out for when you're applying it. But if you can try that for five days, I can almost guarantee you that you will have some sort of a serious insight about how you're relating to yourself and why you've struggled so much with personal productivity. So that's the invitation. The book is there. I'll be making more videos on this and talking about it. I think it is a very, very powerful idea that isn't talked about often enough. So that's why I want to keep talking about it. And I think it has a huge potential to help people come out of this conflict that they're in with themselves all the time and not understanding it. Because most people who have this problem are incredibly trustworthy people. And that's what baffles them. Why do I keep undermining myself? Why can't I commit to myself? I can do it with other people. I'm very reliable. Ask a hundred people, ask ten of my closest friends, and they'll tell you I'm very reliable. But why am I not being reliable to myself? We don't know how we've been undermining ourselves. We think more action is the solution. And that's actually going to undermine us more. So it's counterintuitive, and that's why. But I only ask for like a five day commitment to try this. And after that, I'd be amazed if you didn't have a genuine, significant and profound change in your understanding of why you've procrastinated and why you've struggled with this for so long. You'll come away from it with a new approach to this that is completely opposite to what you've tried before, more than likely. Probably completely the opposite to what you've done before. So I'll leave it there for today. Thanks, guys. And I will see you in the next video. My information is below. The link for the book is below. And you can find me my information for one to one book as well, if you're interested. I'm also running weekly support groups for this issue. OK, rebuilding self-trust. So the link is you can find that on my website. It's under community. There's a tab for it on my website. And we will be meeting weekly to discuss anyone, help anyone who is working through and applying the ideas in the book. Thanks for with me. See you soon. Take care. Bye bye.