134 - How to Finally Stop Procrastinating and Get Things Done

00:00:00
Maybe I need to try out this thing. Maybe try out that thing. Busy work, busy work to make yourselves like, I'm busy, I'm busy. Okay, you're busy. But is the busy work actually moving the needle or are you just doing this busy work just to say you're busy?

00:00:13
Just to put stuff on your plate? Guys, welcome back to motivate grinds to see the podcast where we empower you to level up your life in the areas of faith, fellowship, fitness, and finance. With each and every single episode in it, we pack practical and valuable tips for you guys to not just survive, but to thrive with some high performance habits sprinkled in there just for you guys. If you all enjoy the show, please leave us a rating and a review as it really does help the show and it really does go a very long way. If there's any resources that we mentioned that are here in the show, don't forget to check out the episode's description because they're going to be all listed there and linked there for your clicking pleasure.

00:00:52
So with all that out of the way, we're going to be talking today about something that I myself still struggle with and I am still working on. So you guys are going to have to help me with this one too. If you all got any tips, dm me, but these are some tips that I found to defeat procrastination. So far, these have been working relatively well for me, but I'm always on the lookout for more tips. So if you guys have any, please check out the description.

00:01:16
You're going to find my instagram there. MGs Rasean Hyligar. Go ahead, click on that. Send me a DM. I want to know what you guys are doing to go ahead and help defeat your procrastination as well, or tips that you all have got.

00:01:27
If it's stuff from this list that's working for you, let me know. I can double down. If it's not working or if there's something else that I don't list, let me know. I truly do want to know because I really want to try it and see if it actually works out. What we're going to do is we're going to go through what I have tested that works for me to help to defeat procrastination.

00:01:46
Now, any of these things can work by themselves, but the power comes in when you can actually mix all of them together, when you can combine everything together and really just combine, let's say like points 15 and six or something like that, and you put them man look, let me tell you something, guys. That's where the money's made, right there. Anyway, I'm getting off track here. Let's start talking about how to defeat procrastination. And the first point that we have is to set clear and achievable goals.

00:02:16
Doesn't it sound like a lot of these episodes were starting off with the similar thing of setting clear and achievable goals? Because everything starts off with that. Starts off with setting a goal and figuring out why is it that you want that goal. It's that simple, really. What is it that you want and why do you want it?

00:02:33
If you don't know what you want or why you want it, then you're not going to do anything. And then procrastination is what? Putting off something that needs to get done because of whatever reason. So the reason could be you don't know what you want to do. And so therefore you keep putting off whatever task needs to get done, which is to figure out what the task is.

00:02:54
So you procrastinate and you find something else to do and you make an excuse for why you're not doing it. So set a goal. Figure out why you want to do that goal and work with that. Goals should be generally both work related and personal life related. So it should be work related.

00:03:09
Whether you run a business, you work a nine to five, you're an independent contractor. Whatever it is, it doesn't matter. It should be some work related goal and something in your own personal life that you should always be working towards. Always have a goal. If you have something that you're always striving for, life is going to be that much more fun all the time.

00:03:25
Second thing to defeat procrastination is time management. If you have a goal, you want to give yourself a deadline in order of when to actually get that thing done. You just have to. Otherwise you're never going to do it. And that feeds into your procrastination of, oh, I'll get it done tomorrow because something else popped up that was super urgent, or I'll get it done later.

00:03:45
Whatever later is to you, that could be two months from now, two years from now, I don't know. You probably don't know either. So set a time of when that thing needs to get done, period. Set a time. Find some time, calendar, notification, whatever you got to do.

00:04:03
Set up a time of how long it's going to take, estimate, and what needs to get done and when do you need to get it done by. Let's say it's something that you can do right now. Follow the five minute rule. If it could be done in five minutes or less, just do it right now. For example, if you have laundry that needs to get put away, that's going to take five minutes, just do it now.

00:04:22
Don't put it off until later. Just do it right now. If you need to wash two dishes, okay, wash your dishes and then that's that done. Okay? Wash your dishes, put them away.

00:04:34
That's that. Whatever you got to do. If it can be done in five minutes, do it. If it can't, schedule it to be done for later. Okay.

00:04:42
Another tip that I have for you is to actually modify the Pomodoro technique. Now, a lot of times what ends up happening is that people will use the Pomodoro technique in the traditional 25 five method and that works fantastically. But to help you defeat procrastination, sometimes you just need to get those small quick hit wins. So what I recommend you do is to modify it a little bit. Start with shorter focus periods instead of 25 minutes of focus.

00:05:07
If that is too much for you, start with maybe a ten minute focus session. Just work for ten minutes on something. You'll find it very common when people start doing meditations and things. They can't meditate for 25, 30 minutes straight. They can maybe do two minutes, five minutes.

00:05:21
Start with something that's a lot more manageable and then move from there. Another thing that I want you to do, we talked about this in a past episode, is to create a distraction free environment. Identify what is the most distracting thing going on right now in your life and find a way to minimize that distraction. If you need to use some noise canceling headphones or noise canceling earbuds, whatever you got to do, use white noise to block out the sound. I'm a big fan of binaural beats, so you can get those things for free off of YouTube.

00:05:51
Do whatever you got to do. Find a way to remove as many distractions as you possibly can because distractions are going to absolutely kill your productivity and just make you procrastinate those things even more. Because once you see a distraction, I look over here and I just go, oh, here's my little tracker thing. I have to go put this away. Oh, that also reminds me, my glasses.

00:06:09
I should probably put those on for blue light blocking. Oh, I forgot to put this little stress ball away. Or I forgot to do this. I forgot to do that. All those distractions are detracting from the main thing you need to do.

00:06:21
So put them all away before you get started working. So that way when you take a glance, there's nothing there to distract you. Another thing that I want you to do, this was a big issue for me, and that is to address perfectionism. Address your perfectionism. It's going to be tough.

00:06:38
It's going to be real tough because there is so much of, I want to get this perfect, and this is something that I had to work with for a very long time. And the reason why is because I wanted to get everything done perfectly. It wasn't until I got a coach to tell me, you need to work with mediocrity. And I was like, excuse me, what? He said, sloppy success beats perfect mediocrity every time.

00:07:05
Sloppy success beats perfect mediocrity every time. The difference between one person who seems to be achieving everything and the other person who doesn't that the person who achieves stuff understands. I'm not going to understand everything off the get go. There's enough information out there where I can actually understand what I need, but I'm not going to understand everything. For example, when you're running a business, there's no possible way when you're running a business that you're going to know everything off the get go.

00:07:32
It's impossible. Business is an ever changing landscape. It's impossible to know everything. The best thing you can do is understand. What do I need to do to get a business off the ground?

00:07:40
Business bank account, some kind of accounting software, maybe business email incorporation, basic things like that that you need to be essentially legal. And then from there you figure everything else out as you go. So perfectionism in and of itself is a form of procrastination because you want to be able to get everything perfectly down to a t, and that's literally impossible. But to you it sounds like a great excuse. Yes, an excuse.

00:08:06
Not a reason, an excuse. Oh. Everything needs to be pinpoint perfect. I need to make sure everything is perfectly done. I need to make sure all my t's are crossed and all my I's are dotted.

00:08:15
No, you don't. Okay, if someone draws a beautiful t or someone draws a sloppy t, but you can distinguish so that it's a t, the person who's doing the sloppy t and gets away with it over time will eventually get to a good looking t. The person who puts the dot over their eye two inches off, way too far to the right over time will learn that dot should not be there. It should be right over the eye, but at least they start it. And maybe they might address it in the future, saying, oh, that should be an I, that should be a t.

00:08:45
My apologies, but they got it done. Versus someone who wants to practice every little fine stroke and everything. Now don't get me wrong, there is a time and a place for things to look perfect and beautiful, but there are times when you just need to get stuff out the door. A great example of this is when I first started this podcast, if I remember, I'm going to post a link to the first ever podcast cover art that I had, and you compare it to the one that I have now. The one I have now looks miles better because I actually got a graphic designer to do it, versus the first one I just did myself, because that is when I was starting to learn the lesson of sloppy success beating perfect mediocrity.

00:09:23
I just put something out there and said, the most important thing of the podcast is getting the information out there, because I could spend days creating a great design. But let's say I don't want to do a podcast. I do ten episodes and I don't like it. I just spent days making some art for something I don't even like doing. So let me do the main thing, which is create the content.

00:09:44
And then if I like doing this, which obviously I do, because we're going on, what, three years now of doing this? Almost four or so years. I don't even know. That's a long time, but I enjoy doing it. So now that I enjoy doing it, I can now put more money into it.

00:09:58
I can put more time into the things that actually make it look good now and actually now refine things. But those things take time. Another way to defeat procrastination, get off of social media. Not going to beat this one up again. If you want some more information, episode 131, I'll link that in this episode's description.

00:10:17
That is a way for you to restrain yourself from social media. We went into detail on that whole episode dedicated to it. Check that one out. Another one is to reflect and adjust. This one goes back to you're setting your achievable, clear goals whenever you set the goal.

00:10:34
Sometimes your goal is good, but sometimes life changes. A great example is this podcast, right? If you go back to the first ever episodes of the show, you'll understand there was no such thing as the four foundational pillars or the four foundational cornerstones. There was none of that. It was just me talking about what I wanted to talk about.

00:10:55
I was still finding what I wanted to do. I knew I wanted to be in the high performance space, which we're still in. But there was really no meat and potatoes around what it is I wanted to do with it. What I did when I took my first ever break from the show was I reflected and I adjusted. I reflected on what I was doing with the show, and I reflected.

00:11:12
I realized, what is the thing that I want this show to be known for? What can be that one catchphrase that everybody knows? Four foundational cornerstones and high performance habits. Boom. Then once that I felt that I resonated with that, I figured that's what I want the show to be about.

00:11:27
That's when I doubled down. We still stayed in the self improvement high performance space, but we pivoted a little bit to getting more crystal clear on what it is that I actually wanted to do, and that is reflectment and adjustment. But how in the world does that help defeat procrastination? Like I said, if you don't reflect and adjust, you can have this goal, but maybe the goal that you have right now at this moment is not quite it. And so what you do is you'll find all these little bits of things to do.

00:11:57
Oh, I need to fix my album art. I need to fix the COVID I need to up the amplification on this. Or if you're running a business, maybe I need to try out this new software. Maybe I need to try out this thing. Maybe try out that thing.

00:12:08
Busy work. Busy work. To make yourself like, I'm busy, I'm busy. Okay, you're busy. But is the busy work actually moving the needle, or are you just doing this busy work just to say you're busy just to put stuff on your plate?

00:12:21
The most important thing of business is sales. Are you making sales? Are you scaling and making more sales? If what you're doing is not scaling the business and not making sales, that's not the most important thing. Is it a thing that needs to get done?

00:12:35
Probably. But if it's not bringing in money directly, and that's a big issue right now, you're procrastinating on the issue that actually is the big elephant in the room, realize what it is that you want to do, and then don't be afraid to pivot your goal to wherever it needs to be able to reach that a lot more efficiently. So, guys, with that, let's go through these one last time. So that way you guys know how to defeat procrastination for good. And again, if you guys have more tips than these or some different kind of information, guys, please let me know I am always up for it.

00:13:10
You just tell me anything, I'll shout you out and say hey, check out what's said about defeating procrastination based on this episode. Thanks for the tip. I'll give it a shot, let you know my findings when I start implementing it. So again, defeating procrastination set some clear and achievable goals. Work related, personal life related work on your time management, guys.

00:13:30
Work on your time management. Modify the Pomodoro technique if you need to create a distraction free environment. I cannot stress that enough. Create a distraction free environment, address your perfectionism, manage your social media, and lastly, reflect and adjust. And guys, that's what I have for you for this week's episode.

00:13:50
Thank you guys so much for tuning in to another episode of Motivate grants. Feed the podcast and I hope you guys got something super, super valuable from this week's episode. If you guys enjoyed the show again, leave us a rating and a review as it really does mean the world to us. If you guys want to see the show notes and some of the extra episodes that we talked about in this episode, check out the description down below where you're going to find out all the information that you need. Guys, with all that, I will see you next time.