Perpetual Procrastinator to Naturally Productive

How do you go from being a perpetual procrastinator into one of those naturally productive, always on-time, gets everything done early people?

You might think it's a bunch of productivity tips and hacks to teach you how to "10x" your day but I'm here to tell you that's your one-way ticket to burn-out.

I used to be the biggest chaotic hot mess of a procrastinating, get nothing done human you can imagine and today I run a successful integrative productivity coaching company working 45 hours per month. I also raised and homeschooled five kids while coaching, training, and consulting for the last 20 years.

Wanna know how I did it?

Well the first thing you should actually know is what made me NOT be productive in the first place.

That's right... you've been asking yourself the wrong question. You can look up all the tips and hacks you want, it's not going to make you actually DO any of them.

Like most unproductive people, I left childhood knowing I was either too much or not enough for people, depending on who you asked. I was pushed away by my too-busy parents who never dealt with their own childhood traumas and found me extremely overwhelming to deal with. I basically raised myself and I didn't do a great job.

By the time high school came around, my teachers knew me as the kid who scored in the top percentile on every standardized test they put in front of me but I never applied myself and rarely did my homework. I graduated but barely and college wasn't on my radar.

I had a big need to prove myself. I wanted to show everyone that I was a whole lot more than they thought I was. I bought my first house at 19 years old, fixed it up and rented it out while I bought another one. By the time I was 22, I owned four homes and was renting out three of them. By 25, I was filing bankruptcy.

I found out that I worked in bursts of energy. I would go as fast and hard as I could for as long as I could and then I'd shut down for months. With a real estate license and a career in sales, that left me on rollercoaster income and a feast or famine lifestyle that just brought in more and more chaos.

As you can imagine, there's a lot more to this story, and along the way through future issues, you'll hear bits of that story. I like to be fully honest about my journey because it's always helped others relate to the fact that yes, you too can become naturally productive, no matter how much chaos and stress you have in your life now.

Here's the basic formula to becoming naturally productive:

1. FOCUS: Find What Really Lights You Up

I mean the real experiences you want to have in your life and career. Not the crap you think you're supposed to do, want, or have but the life and career that would always have you smiling. What does THAT look like on a daily basis?

2. TIME: Work It Into Your Schedule Now

Don't wait until "one day" to create the life you want. Bring it to life right now, one step at a time. This is how I got to my 45 hour work month. When you SCHEDULE the life you want to have, you GET the life you want to have.

3. ENERGY: Create The Energy You'll Need To Do It

That means not working 14 hour days. You work some, you play some, you relax, you enjoy, you move your body, stretch and work your muscles, you eat actual food (the one ingredient kind, not the stuff on tv commercials), and you sleep, like really enjoy and value sleep.

4. EMOTION: Rewrite All The "Stories" That Show Up Along The Way

You know all those "stories" that tell you what you think people are thinking, how you think people see you, how you feel scared to take action in that moment that could possibly lead to something big so you stop yourself and don't do it? Rewrite those old stories and don't ever let someone else make you believe you're not capable of achieving your biggest brightest dreams.

Most of us live in chaos, stress, and overwhelm because we're trying to prove those stories wrong, we get stuck in our fears of the stories maybe being true, and we stop ourselves right before we have our breakthrough.

Sometimes, we get all the way past breakthrough, stepping fully into success, and then self-sabotage our way right back into failure, because those stories tell us that even if we did it once, doesn't mean we can keep doing it. We just got lucky.

The true HACK to becoming more productive is knowing that your productivity is rooted in your emotion. When you feel better on the inside, you perform better out in the world.

It's that simple.

Interested in more of the Productive Flow story? Watch the video at www.ProductiveFlow.com and stay tuned for more simple innovative strategies to increase YOUR natural level of productivity and get more done.

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