Stop Procrastinating

In this episode, we dive deep into the art of conquering procrastination. Discover innovative strategies designed to propel you from stagnation to action. Learn how the "Five-Minute Rule" can jump-start your productivity, why tackling your "worst-first" sets the tone for success, and how gamifying your goals turns tedious tasks into thrilling challenges. We'll guide you through creating "Procrastination Nukes" to obliterate distractions, setting micro-goals for manageable progress, and building momentum with a "done list." Unlock the power of accountability partners, transform your approach to tasks, embrace productivity, and say goodbye to procrastination once and for all.

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Read Transcript Here:

Michael LeJeune: [00:00:00] We're going to be talking today about how to stop procrastinating right away. In fact, today, you should be able to stop procrastinating in several areas. I think it's really important to understand why people procrastinate because if you can understand the why, it helps as you are crafting a plan out of procrastination. I found at least for me and the people that I work with, typically there's four main reasons.

The number one is accountability. As a business owner, as an executive, as an adult, we have very little accountability in our lives. And that lack of accountability allows us to basically move the goal line as far out as we want. Oh, you know, that's a little too difficult. I'll save it for tomorrow, next month, next year, before I die. It can be as ridiculous as pushing it that far out because we don't have accountability.

Now, the second one is we don't know how to do something. So when you don't know how to do something and you [00:01:00] have 50 questions on even how to get started or what you're going to need, there's so much overwhelm that that often stops us from doing it. So not knowing how to do something is a major one here.

The third one on my list is one that gets a lot of people. And that is the anxiety around the task. It could be a task like paying bills, doing taxes, doing employee evaluations, things where there's some sort of confrontation that's going to happen. Or like in the paying the bills side of it, where you're going to be paying it and you're like, it's going to be very stressful to watch my money just dwindle down in the account or whatever it may be. So if there's anxiety around the task, whether it's internal, external, or whatever it may be, that will often cause people to not want to do the task and push it off.

The last one here is probably one of the most common. We just don't want to do it. And it could be because we don't like the activity. It could be because we'd rather do something fun. It could be for [00:02:00] any particular reason, we just don't want to do it.

And I found that procrastination usually falls into one of those four buckets: no accountability, we don't know how to do something, we have anxiety around it, or we just don't want to do it. You know, it's one of those things.

I'm going to give you 10 quick strategies here that will help you overcome procrastination and have you actually doing the things you need to do. And when it comes to doing the things you need to do, those things are not as simple as paying the bills, doing the taxes. It could be reaching out and making your phone calls to contracting officers. It is sending them emails. It is responding to an employee who does have an issue and they're trying to get some help with it. It could be a client that's reached out and they have something that they feel is in the scope of their contract. And it's not, and you don't know how to handle it or don't want to handle it or whatever it may be, right? There's all kinds of little things that create challenges in our day. The more we let that eat at us, the harder [00:03:00] it is to grow the business.

Let's dive in and let's talk about these 10 strategies.

The first one might be the simplest one of all the strategies. It's simply creating a deadline. This goes back to that accountability bucket. If you don't have a deadline of some sort, then it makes it very easy to just keep pushing it off. It's a task on your list, your to do list, or however you keep track of those things. And it doesn't have to get done today, tomorrow, next week, next month, because you haven't created a deadline for it. I like internal and external deadlines. So with my new book that's coming out: a couple of months ago, I finished writing the book. And one of the first things I did was I set a launch goal. Like here is the date we're going to launch the book. And then I started telling people, I started posting it on LinkedIn and telling this to other people that I'm working with partners that are going to help with the launch and stuff like that. Once you can externally put that deadline out there, now there's some pressure to actually get the job done by the deadline. So creating a [00:04:00] deadline is a big factor in winning the procrastination battle.

The second one is really, really important as well. And that is identifying what your procrastination triggers are. Is it more of the lack of accountability? Is it the fact that you don't know how to do something? Is it the fact that you have a full inbox and it creates anxiety when you have a full inbox? What is it that triggers you to not do the things that you need to do? And is it just a certain type of task? Maybe you love confrontation and those are the types of things you attack first. Whatever it is, you need to identify what those triggers are that cause you to procrastinate and then address them. Have a plan for that. Like the full inbox one, that is something that is overwhelming to a lot of people. I was just talking to a client this week and I said look, my inbox is almost always empty or has just two or three things in it. And the reason why is the stuff that doesn't need a response today [00:05:00] goes in a review folder. I just drop it in a review folder. And once a week, I have something on my calendar that says review folder. And it's about an hour long block of time once a week and I go through the items in my review folder and I deal with them. It's as simple as that. But having a full inbox could be one of those things. It's overwhelming and that's a simple way to overcome the full inbox.

?Another one on the list here, number three, is embracing the five minute rule. Now there's a five minute rule. There's a two minute rule. The five minute rule is: if you are looking at a task and you're overwhelmed by it, commit to spending five minutes on it. That's it. Set a timer on your phone or whatever, and just spend five minutes on the task. You'll be amazed at how much you learn about the task, how much you are able to break it down into smaller chunks just by spending five minutes on it. Because often the hardest part of doing a task is the first five minutes.? So that's why we have the five minute rule. If you'll just use the five minute rule to jump in and start on it, you'll [00:06:00] often get really invested in the outcome and that will take over your procrastination. So there's the five minute rule.

The next one is one that I'm actually not a fan of this, but that's my personality style. This actually works for a lot of people. Number four on here is doing the worst task first. There's a book called Eat the Frog out there. A lot of people are big fans of that. I never even read it because I'm not a worst first person. I don't look at everything on my list as, Oh, this is the worst task or whatever. I just look at them as tasks. So it doesn't really apply to me. But there are a lot of you listening that are going to say, Oh yeah, gosh, I cannot stand making my calls every morning. I can't stand writing emails. I can't stand resolving things in QuickBooks, whatever it is, right? So for you, doing the worst thing first to get it out of the way so the rest of the day is open is a great strategy.

Now there's a reverse to this same strategy. I'm not going to label it as number five here, but the reverse [00:07:00] of this is saving the worst for the end of the day. Because if you do the worst thing first, some people will want to cower in a corner and suck their thumb for three hours because they just did something horrible and they just can't mentally handle it. I've seen that issue before. And so I have some clients where I'm like look man, don't meet with anybody before noon or one o'clock or two o'clock or whatever, because that just really causes a lot of problems for you. So we're going to do that worst thing of the day last, but we're going to schedule it, which I'll get to that as one of my favorite items here on the list here in just a minute. So you may want to do the worst thing first or the worst thing last, but you need to put it in your schedule somewhere so that you know the hardest thing on your plate is actually being addressed.

The next thing on the list, number five, is to gamify your goals with some sort of reward system where you earn points for doing the things on your task. Maybe like a sales task, maybe you earn three or four points. Versus an accounting task, you only earn one point. But at the end of the day, if [00:08:00] you've earned 20 points, you get to go eat at your favorite restaurant, or you get to do something that maybe go to the movies or buy yourself a book or whatever the thing is. But gamifying your goals with a reward system is a great way to stop procrastinating because you now have something that you're excited about and you can attach that to the items on your list. Because a lot of times, people are just going through the motions, kind of like on that treadmill, just doing the work. And it feels like you're not necessarily getting anywhere. The rewards in government contracting are so far out that you could go a month or two or three or six and not feel like you've accomplished a whole lot. So instead of doing that, if you gamify those little things that you have on your plate every day, you can be rewarding yourself in some way that actually makes you feel more fulfilled about the job you're doing. So gamifying your goals is really good.

I like this one a lot. Number six is harnessing the magic of micro goals. I [00:09:00] love micro goals. Instead of having something where it's like, I'm going to write a book. That's a big goal. You could start with, I'm going to outline the chapters of my book. I'm going to outline the first half. I'm going to come up with three or four main themes for the book instead of writing a 300 page book. That's a big goal, right? And then you could break it down even further of, Hey, today I'm going to start on chapter one and this Saturday I'm going to work on chapter two and stuff like that. So now you've got micro goals, micro tasks that are getting done.

Let's look at sales. Same thing.? Today, I don't have to identify who I'm going to call, call those people, do the follow ups and then whatever the other four or five tech, put it all in the CRM and all that. I don't have to do all that. The first goal is, I need to identify who I'm going to call. Let's just start there. That's a micro goal. We're going to identify who we're going to call. Then we're going to put on the schedule when we're going to do the calling. Then we're going to do the calling and we're going to put it in the CRM and whatever the next tasks are.

So breaking it down into micro goals [00:10:00] makes things easier to do versus just, Oh, I'm going to update the website. Updating the website's not one project. Well, it's one major project and it has all these minor tasks that are involved in it. That's just a way to break that down and make it easier.

I talked about the five minute rule earlier. Number seven on my list is the two minute rule. If you look at something, whether it's an email, a piece of mail on your desk, whatever, and you know it's only going to take two minutes to deal with, deal with it right now. Touch it once. That is the goal. We don't want to touch things multiple times. Touch it once, deal with it and get it over with. That's the two minute rule.

The next one, number eight, is probably one of my favorites. I calendar everything. Everything. Recording these podcasts goes on my calendar. What I'm going to talk about goes on my calendar. All these little things go on my calendar. It relieves so much mental stress for me. It's really like I've not necessarily done the task, but I know I've handled the task by blocking out the time somewhere [00:11:00] on my calendar to deal with the task. Calendaring everything has probably been one of the most revolutionary things I have ever done in my business.

Number nine on my list is get an accountability partner or coach. You don't necessarily have to hire somebody. There's probably somebody you work with, a colleague, a friend, a family member who has some goals or tasks they want to work on. You can meet every Friday, every Monday, whatever it may be and review. Hey, here was my goals. Here's what I did toward them. How did you do? That sort of thing. Just having somebody to hold you accountable is very, very helpful.

The same thing with having a coach. That's part of our job when we're working with clients is to check in and say, Hey, two weeks ago, you said you were going to do this. Did you do it? Okay. Well, why not? Let's deal with that today so that in two weeks from now, when I give you something else to do, you are not struggling with getting that done and now we're getting way behind. Having a coach is very, very helpful in getting stuff done.

And number 10, one of the greatest things that I've looked at here on the list: it's really, really helpful [00:12:00] for a lot of clients is start outsourcing more things. Take things off your plate. If you've got a bucket full of things that you don't want to do or that cause you anxiety, that's probably the bucket you need to get rid of first. It could be hiring an actual assistant. It could just be delegating to someone on your team. It could be one of your children. I was talking with a client this week and he has a daughter who is got her own car and everything. I'm like, Hey, she could run errands for you. Just buy her a tank of gas, or I think I said with him, I was like just take her out to one of our favorite restaurants. My daughter loves Carrabbas so the other day I was like, Hey, if you get this thing done, then I'll buy you a tank of gas and take you to Carrabba's for dinner.

You could do something as simple as paying one of your children to help you with things or having something more formal, like an assistant or just delegating to your team. But have a way to outsource items so you're not so [00:13:00] overwhelmed.

I guarantee you, if you take a look at why you're procrastinating and you look at one of these solutions, one of these 10 here, you'll find something that works for you. You don't have to implement all 10 of but there's probably two or three that you're like, you know, those would really work for me. I need to create better deadlines, identify my triggers, and really embrace that five minute rule. That's really what I need to do. And that may be your thing. Your thing could be more focused on the calendar or whatever it may be, but there's one or two things that will allow you to start attacking the items that you're procrastinating you will then start to move the business forward.

As always, if you have questions about any of this or need any of our help, you know how to reach me via LinkedIn or email. We'll see you next episode.

Narrator: I really hope you enjoyed the podcast today. If you did, I would really appreciate it if you would like and subscribe to the podcast and screenshot it and tag me on LinkedIn or whatever social media you use. Thank you again for joining us today and we'll see you next [00:14:00] time.