Breaking the Procrastination Cycle

Do you procrastinate? Are you aware of its causes and effects? You might not be noticing how procrastination negatively impacts your daily life. 

Join me in this enthralling discussion on breaking the procrastination cycle and together, let's discover how having a mentor or coach can help you overcome procrastination and achieve your goals. With practical insights and actionable tips, I'll share the importance of understanding procrastination as a maladaptive skill and its impact on efficiency and productivity. 

Learn about the Eisenhower Urgent vs. Important principle to create an ecosystem that frees you from the burden of procrastination. Don't miss this episode of The End Game Podcast and take a step towards achieving your wildest desires.

Introduction (00:00)
Procrastination vs. Laziness - Debunking The Myth (01:25)
Why do People Procrastinate? Learning The Impacts of Procrastination
 (03:18)
The Role of Coaches and Mentors - Modeling Succesful Behaviors (04:52)
Accountability and Timelines - Overcoming Procrastination with Structure (07:30)
The Eisenhower Urgent vs. Important Principle - Prioritizing Tasks Effectively (09:05)
Changing Mindset and Cognition - Shifting from Negative Loops to Success (12:21)
Self-Awareness and Mentorship - Identifying and Addressing Procrastination (15:33)

Transcript

0:00

If you think about these different tiers, tier one and tier two, that I explained the important and urgent and then important and not urgent. Those are things you probably need to have a hand in more so than others. And again, less so as you tier down. In tier three, you really should be considering how you're going to delegate that because that is likely not the highest and best use of your time and energy. And so again, this is where a coach becomes important, coaching yourself on how you become aware of that, how you identify what those things may be, but then also how do you create an ecosystem where you're not solely responsible, right? How can we financially, economically create that system where those tier three items are no longer your priorities. Hey everyone, welcome to the end game podcast where I bet you didn't know what you didn't know. I'm Dr. Ryan Wakim, successful entrepreneur and your end game coach. I'm here to talk to you today about breaking the procrastination cycle and how having a mentor or a coach will help you achieve that. So sit back, relax tune in, and be prepared for an enthralling discussion and conversation. Where we are, where we begin with procrastination or the cycle. Procrastination is first how we define procrastination. And when I say that, I want to point out that a lot of people will equate procrastination with laziness that not getting something done, not getting it done right now, not doing something just means that you're lazy as some sort of character flaw or personality trait. And the reality is that just isn't the case. So laziness is an apathy. It is a general, not doing anything across multiple domains and avenues. Whereas procrastination is very much a maladaptive skill set that someone takes in order to feel like they're achieving things eventually, although clearly not right then. And so first and foremost, it's important to point out that procrastination is truly the delay of achieving something as a kind of character flaw by nature. However, I would point out that it is maladaptive, meaning individuals who procrastinate are really creating more work for themselves over time because things pile up, things don't get done. And so the procrastination leads to this kind of built up and continued what I would call CANA"Constant And Never-ending Anxiety" that can become not only overwhelming, but frankly distracting. It really creates inefficiencies in your day to day life, whether that's personal or professional but certainly it's not creating efficacy or efficiency and how you get work done or get X task complete. And so defining procrastination's critical kind of understanding why it's not actually adaptive or a positive coping mechanism or skill. There's many factors as to why someone might feel the need to procrastinate or frankly, why someone does procrastinate that can include issues with perfectionism. Letting perfect be the enemy of the good, so to speak. Fear, we've talked about imposter syndrome and fears associated with success for building a structure or an organization. This creates this vicious feedback loop where you procrastinate, you have fear or whether it's perfectionism involved, something doesn't get done when it really should have gotten done. Now a new task is put onto your plate, which is now a new stressor and that stress and cortisol levels and anxiety just continue to feed off one another in this feedback loop and create a feeling of complete overwhelm. So it kind of goes from constant never ending anxiety to this feeling of almost a learned helplessness, which is complete overwhelm. And then nothing gets done, right? Then you kind of fall over into the not necessarily lazy side of the house, but certainly the apathetic side of the house where now you just feel completely incompetent to do anything. The buildup of this over time really creates an issue with efficiency and therefore impacts your day to day now, even though the new task may not be coming for weeks or months down the line. So understanding why that's maladaptive and how that might impact your success is critically important, but also understanding what you can do about it. Is I would argue more important. Frankly, that's where having a mentor or a coach becomes critically important because these are individuals that can help you. Do a couple of things. Number one obviously if you were to imitate someone who's already done something, or if you were to model a behavior after someone who is successful you're more likely to be successful. And that is true in the realm of procrastination too. If you're able to model a coach who is really good at not procrastinating and learn from them and kind of not just model behaviors, but also listen to them and learn. You're much more likely to change that behavior to take it from a maladaptive coping skill to an adaptive one. So a coach can just by sheer nature of their behaviors. Create more positive or more sustainable behaviors in you as an entrepreneur or a business owner or a healthcare professional. The other thing that a coach can do is you've probably heard or talked about or seen this idea of accountability. So your coach actually can be that accountability, right? That person can hold you accountable to dates and timelines. So not only help mold or model the behavior, but also create the timeline infrastructure so that you can achieve. Said tasks and then feel good about doing them. And frankly, then create a positive feedback loop that isn't this never ending doom loop, but rather modeling behavior, achieving a task on a timeline has been agreed upon with accountability and then achieving or receiving a reward. So now you're, you're actually rewarding a positive behavior or a positive coping skill or mechanism as compared to maladaptive or negative. So having a coach can give you the behaviors, the timelines, the infrastructure, and frankly, the pleasure or reward of achieving those tasks in that construct. So that's where coaches and mentors become important. The other thing that coach or mentor can do is as you get more granular in that scenario, really work with you in those behaviors as to what are the positive coping skills or the adaptive coping skills that will get you to achieve that task or target in that construct or timeline. As we think about what are some of the things that a coach might help you be accountable to, or might give you as techniques to create this new behavior or this adaptive skill include a to do list. Maybe you as a procrastinator out there even have to do lists, but if you have to do lists of to do lists and you have a hundred sticky notes in to do lists, that's only creating that feeling of overwhelm. And it's only going to Kind of negatively feedback into more anxiety, more fear, more perfectionism, and frankly, more feeling of failure. To do lists are important as with many things when used appropriately. So using a to do list under the right parameters can be very successful that often has to include by when dates. So if you're going to use a to do list and you're just going to randomly pull it out a hundred things you have to do with no thought about them at all or a timeline, the chances of them getting achieved are pretty low. We've talked about journaling on this podcast before, and it's that same idea, which is when you put a goal out there, or you're looking to complete a task or a target, if you do not put a time construct on it. The chances of it getting achieved anytime soon without procrastination drop off dramatically. It's important to build a to do list with other key indicators which include timelines or by when dates. And then there's another infrastructure you can look at it through, which is this idea of Eisenhower's principle of urgent versus important. So if you're not familiar with this principle. You can certainly Google it, but to trim it down for the purpose of this audience Eisenhower's important urgent principle is there's actually four different categories that a task or a to do list task could fall into. And that is Basically this two by two of important and urgent. So if it's important and urgent, it should become number one priority or a top three priority on your to do list. If it's important, but not urgent, then that should take kind of second fiddle. That should be the next chunk of to do list items. If it's not important, but urgent, these are the things in life that tend to distract us from being effective or efficient. So, things that pop up day to day, the constant fires. If you're a business owner or an entrepreneur, you, this is what you spend 80-20 rule. This is what you spend 80% of your time on that only gets you 20% of your results. So these are the reactive, the fires, the things that pop up day to day in running a business or owning a business or building a business. That actually are not really all that important. They're not going to provide kind of growth or sustainability or frankly, purpose or fulfillment and you personally or professionally, but there are things that do have to get done. If it's not important, but urgent, it does become a kind of tier three on your priority list and frankly, those are the things that you should really be looking at how can you delegate those tasks? Right? So if you think about these different tiers, tier one and tier two that I explained, the important and urgent and then important and not urgent, those are things you probably need to have a hand in more so than others. Less so as you tear down. In tier three, you really should be considering how you're going to delegate that because that is likely not the highest and best use of your time and energy. This is where a coach becomes important. Coaching yourself on how you become aware of that, how you identify what those things may be, but then also how do you create an ecosystem where you're not solely responsible, right? How can we financially, economically create that system where those tier three items are no longer your priorities because they're the things that will keep you from completing tier one and tier two. Tier four, obviously, is they're not important and not urgent. Those are the things that you should either strike off your list altogether. Or find a way to have someone do that very efficiently and cheaply. So as you think about tactics for overcoming procrastination, I would say the Eisenhower Urgent-Important paradigm is a very easy and critically important way to justify the tearing of your time and your energy. You've heard me talk on this podcast many times about health set, mindset as a psychiatrist, I'm always interested in the mindset. And so your mindset matters. And I talked a little bit about this just around maladaptive and adaptive and kind of positive feedback loops versus negative loops. And the reality is if you do some of these things and you create more healthy, sustainable, action oriented behaviors under the kind of supervision or mentorship of a coach then you're truly doing, or you're hopefully truly doing a mindset shift from kind of the doom loop, the negative, the anxiety, the overwhelm to feeling purpose, fulfillment, reward, success. It is also about not just changing the behavior, but changing the cognition. If you're familiar with different therapy types we don't go into mental health treatment on this podcast, but the most, most widely used and successful psychotherapy treatment type is called CBT, which is Cognitive and Behavioral Therapy. So, as you think about what you might do with a therapist, you can really butt up against that a lot with a coach or a mentor. Especially around different behaviors or mindsets like these, like procrastination, which can be impacted by both a behavior change and a mindset or cognitive shift. And then when you pair the two together, you get synergies and exponentially different results. So when we think about procrastination, we don't just want to tackle the behavior and modeling behaviors and how that behavior pans out every day. But we also want to be changing our mindset, changing our cognition around that behavior and words matter. I say that a lot in my profession. So rather than be in this overwhelm and anxiety provoking delay in efficiency, it is now success, fulfillment, purpose achievement. And again, those can be validated by a coach or mentor. It's important to understand how we define procrastination. It's important to understand what kind of creates that environment for procrastination and the, in the negative feedback loop and the maladaptive thoughts and behaviors, and then what we can do about it. And frankly, what you can do about it is accountability, mentorship, coaching, modeling. Eisenhower's principle and the mindset shift involves around all of that. So using journaling, writing things down, using those to do lists but then doing not just that, but taking it the next step to add the behavior, to add the infrastructure around tiering those to do lists so that it's not just a hundred random sticky notes all over your, your desk or your computer screen. In conclusion, I want to make sure that you can become self aware. I've done a lot of addiction work in my career. And so the first step is identifying that you have a problem. So step one is, Hey as we talk about, you don't know, you're, you might not know what you don't know. Individuals often. It's not uncommon for people to be procrastinators and really not even know it. So maybe you want to ask a friend. If you feel like you're in overwhelm constantly, maybe ask those around you or your circle of trust, your inner circle. Do they see this as a problem? Because sometimes peers or family members might be the first to point it out. So the first step is to identify that you have a problem. From there, these are some things you can do to ensure that you become less reactive with time and more proactive. And so with that, I will conclude today's podcast. Again, I am Dr. Ryan Wakeham, successful entrepreneur and your end game coach. I'm ultimately here to teach you how to exist today so that you can expand tomorrow and create the ultimate end game of your wildest desires. If you liked this podcast, please share it, like it, follow it. Tune in next time. I look forward to talking to you soon.