Avoid These 5 Mistakes to Break Free from Procrastination

Dr. Christine Li [00:00:00]:
Welcome back to the make time for success podcast. This is episode number 202. If you've ever said to yourself, there must be an easier way, I think this episode is gonna be right up your alley. Because in this episode, I run through and I run down 5 common mistakes that people make when it comes to trying to be productive that actually drives in into a path of procrastination. My whole goal of being online and hosting this podcast is to rescue people from having to waste their time, overwork, and be unhappy when it comes to productivity. And I think you're gonna enjoy learning about these mistakes so that you can avoid them in the future, and in the process, reclaim your productivity and your happiness. Let's go listen to these 5 mistakes and how to escape them together now. Hi.

Dr. Christine Li [00:01:05]:
I'm Dr. Christine Li, and I'm a psychologist and a procrastination coach. I've helped thousands of people move past procrastination and overwhelm so they could begin working to their potential. In this podcast, you're going to learn powerful strategies for getting your mind, body, and energy to work together so that you can focus on what's really important and accomplish the goals you want to achieve. When you start living within your full power, you're going to see how being productive can be easy and how you can create success on demand. Welcome to the make time for success podcast. So this episode is gonna be a fun one, I can tell already, because the topic will be the 5 mistakes that people tend to make that keep them in a procrastinating state. And the reason it's gonna be fun is because I am in the process of doing this episode also in the process of breaking my procrastination cycle. I have a funny habit of when I decide I'm going to talk or teach or lecture on the topic of procrastination, I find myself dropping into an intense bout of procrastination.

Dr. Christine Li [00:02:30]:
And so I'm very happy to be showing up, finally breaking this delay that I've had with this particular episode, and I'm also assuming that this episode is gonna be fun for you as well because you're going to learn the mistakes that you might be making that you can now eliminate from your repertoire so that you stand a much better chance of being productive and happy and free. So let's get going. The first mistake that people tend to make that keeps them in procrastination is they allow their fear to dictate the scenario that they're in. I will explain. I liken it to always having your life running like some sort of horror movie. When you have a horror movie, you're always waiting for the scary thing to pop out and to terrorize you, or you're waiting in suspense for the evil person to come on to the scene. I'm not a big fan of horror movies, but I have been, as many of you know, a long time sufferer of chronic procrastination back in the day, and I do have to share with you that the experience of procrastinating all the time is the experience of waiting for the fear to become realized, and I think that's a huge mistake. We do not want to set up our lives to run like your typical b level, b grade horror movie, or c grade horror movie.

Dr. Christine Li [00:04:07]:
You want your life to be one smooth sail after another, and that may sound like a big reach for you, especially if you're currently in a deep state of procrastination, but I want to let you know that there are other options for how to set up your system of working. You can set it up more like a romantic comedy where there's some mistakes that you make. There are some mishaps. There's some things that happen that you didn't mean, but in the end, it all works out. You know that the 2 people are gonna get together who are meant to get together. You know that there's gonna be some fun learning that happens along the way. You learn that all the stress that you thought was gonna lead to despair ends up really leading to a brighter tomorrow. That is how you can set up is your productivity, and that is how you can keep ward away.

Dr. Christine Li [00:05:08]:
I think that's a phrase. You can keep procrastination far away from you. You can decide that when you feel fear, it's not a trigger or a cue for you to set up your next horror movie script or scene. Instead, you get to think to yourself, oh, that is just my internal system alerting me to the fact that I care about something, that something is of importance to me, that something needs to be done by a deadline. It doesn't mean that your entire being needs to be put in a fright or in a panic. You really don't have to run from your own work anymore. You can just decide, that was a fleeting feeling of fear, and I'm going to treat it as such. It's gonna be fleeting.

Dr. Christine Li [00:05:58]:
It's not the whole show. It's not the whole script, and it's not the whole scenario. I'm gonna decide that my life is gonna be run more lightly, more with flow, more with productivity, and I'm gonna keep things coming into my life, and then I'm gonna keep things moving out of my life because I don't wanna create any horror shows. Alright. So that's the first tip. Remember, fear does not get to run your show, and you are always in that amount of control of your life and how things run. You get to run it the way you decide you're gonna run it, so run it well. Run it lightly.

Dr. Christine Li [00:06:38]:
Alright. The second mistake that people tend to make that keeps them in a procrastination state is they think that pressure is gonna be helpful to their productivity. I have certainly made this mistake many years, I would say, of my life where I just kept myself steeped in a feeling of stress, anxiety, and pressure, thinking that, well, this is the way that people get ahead. This is the way that people make something of themselves. This is how people learn and progress in their lives. But, really, when it comes down to it, you don't have to wait till the last minute to gather up all this pressure and then decide to work. You can actually decide, I'm gonna try working on this project that I've been a little bit afraid of. I'm gonna try working on it a little bit ahead of time even though that behavior in itself is unfamiliar because I'm gonna decide to pair productivity with calm now.

Dr. Christine Li [00:07:43]:
I'm going to separate from my belief that pressure is what I need to get my brain working. That pressure is what I need to have a creative thought. That pressure and the last minute stress of the deadline is the thing that gets me into action. Again, you're in control of these things. You can decide, I'm gonna move everything up earlier so that I have more space to calm my nervous system, to treat myself well, to actually think about what I wanna produce and how I want it to roll out to the world, and I'm going to remind myself that I am safe. I'm gonna remind myself of tip number 1, avoid the fear when you're working, and I'm gonna then dive deep into the process and know that I don't have to feel pressured just because I'm focused and concentrating and invested. Those are different kinds of feelings that I think are more positively tinged than the feeling of pure pressure, and I think so many of us subject ourselves to unnecessary pure pressure. And I'm hoping that by your listening to this episode, you decide, you know what? I'm gonna try this new policy that doctor Lee has decided to share.

Dr. Christine Li [00:09:08]:
Let's all get on with our business, but do it with joy. Do it with lightness. Do it with an expectation that you will survive. Right? I'm gonna survive this podcast episode, and you will too. You will survive your next big production, your next big assignment. It's going to be okay. Moving on to the 3rd mistake that people tend to make. This is the biggest one, by the way.

Dr. Christine Li [00:09:35]:
The third one is thinking that your work is a reflection, a direct reflection of your value as a human being. Yep. I said it. We make the mistake of thinking that the work that we do really reflects who we are, and we've all been there. We literally have, to a person, been there because we're trained by our education system to care about the work that we put out, to understand what the grading system and things like scores and grades mean when it comes to how you're seen in the class even, how you've done with the material. It is a rating system, and we get attached to knowing the systems that guide our circumstances, and so we were all trained from an early age to think, This next assignment might mean a lot to how I see myself or to how people see me. Now the problem with all of this is that it's just a bad way to be productive. It may work when you're in grade school to get you to be a little bit self regulated, to get you to memorize the math equations, but or the math formulas, I should say, I guess.

Dr. Christine Li [00:10:59]:
But as an adult, thinking that everything you produce is a direct reflection of your worth or value as a person is just a recipe for feeling stressed, slightly suffocated, slightly nervous, and slightly disempowered. You start to lose your power of your uniqueness, your creativity, your voice because you're worried about what this is all gonna mean in the end, and you haven't even started the project. So from now on, I want you to really break up with this procrastination equation that says that your work equals your value as a human being. When you think about it, how could anything represent your value as a human being, your worth to the world? Nothing possibly could encompass or capture or represent that tremendous value, and that, by the way, was a not so well hidden way for me to express that you are of enormous value, and you should work and live and enjoy your life representing that value without fear that someone's gonna judge you on that value. Just live fully, live out your uniqueness, and don't worry so much about your work. Alright. Now we'll go on to tip number 4, which is really mistake number 4, right, because we're dealing with all the mistakes today. Mistake number 4 is thinking that holding on to things will make the thing better, smoother, more impressive, or smarter.

Dr. Christine Li [00:12:45]:
I think we do this kind of magical thinking when it comes to things like managing our physical clutter. We think, you know, right now, today, Thursday, I'm not really in the mood to part with this item, so we decide we're not gonna make the decision on this piece of clothing or this old paperwork today, and then guess what happens? It doesn't get better, smarter, more impressive, more smooth, or anything. It just stays with you forever and ever and ever. It gets to take up your space, your time, your energy. It actually makes things go sour. It makes things go south. And just like we don't want any piece of work representing our value as a human being, we don't want any decisions to hold up our flow, to hold up our way of dealing with things and facing challenges. We wanna be like a prizefighter.

Dr. Christine Li [00:13:50]:
We wanna be in great shape all the time. We want things flowing in, and then we want things flowing out. So don't make it a habit of keeping things for too long. I'm just gonna put it that way. Make it a habit to say, you know what? I know how to let go of things easily. I can always recall things when I need them. I can always get something new. I can always learn something new, and I'm not gonna make the mistake of keeping things in my space, in my circumstances, when they're no longer of use or of value to me.

Dr. Christine Li [00:14:29]:
And I think when it comes to things like physical clutter, so often, people are afraid to release the items because they're worried. You've heard this before. Maybe you've thought this before. People are worried that they're gonna need that item someday in the future, but what they are not calculating at the same time that they're making the decision is the value of being free of that item. Right? What if you don't need it in the future, and what would it be like to never have to think about that item again? Perhaps there's some real true value in letting go and having less things to think about so you have more space to actually think. So remember, let things go. Let them go quickly. You will survive.

Dr. Christine Li [00:15:20]:
Alright. The last mistake that I have to share with you is a quickie but a goodie. It is that we tend to make the mistake of thinking that everything is so darn important. This is a rule or a theory that I came up with a long time ago, and I think it came into existence because I'm a psychologist, and I have a long decade multiple decades long history of working with clients 1 on 1. And, really, when you listen to people in therapy day after day, you realize that not everything is important. A lot of things are, but most things really are not. Most things are things that are gonna come into your life, and then they're gonna leave your life. You're gonna get nervous and stressed, but, again, you're gonna make it through, and you're gonna let things go.

Dr. Christine Li [00:16:19]:
And I just came up with this theory, if you can call it that, that nothing is that important. Nothing is so important that you should sacrifice or jeopardize your nervous system, your sense of yourself, or your well-being, and I would add to that your time usage as well. You should not waste your time. That's the the short of it. You should not jeopardize your nervous system and put yourself on the brink of a panic attack when you might be able to do things with a much more relaxed attitude instead of thinking every little thing is so important. Right? Not everything is that important. Really, most things are not, and I think probably after listening to this episode, it's gonna hit you. You're gonna be walking to your neighborhood store, and you're gonna think, oh, yeah.

Dr. Christine Li [00:17:13]:
I need to get tomatoes, but it's not critical. Nothing is that critical. And when you see that you can open up your emotional space because you've relieved your space from procrastination, from fear, from pressure, from overvaluing productivity, from keeping things for too long, you're gonna be amazed at how you feel and how empowered you're going to be because you won't be making these little mistakes that cause big consequences when it comes to productivity and procrastination. So take the time to maybe even replay this episode so that you really understand the messages that I'm sending you. They're collected over many years of obsessing about this material and lovingly shared with you. I have created a free download so that you can have this on a sheet of paper if you really want or somewhere in an archive on your desktop. You can keep it there as well. All you need to do to get a review of these 5 mistakes and some ideas for how to avoid making these mistakes by going to maketimeforsuccesspodcast.com/mistakes, with an s.

Dr. Christine Li [00:18:42]:
Again, it's maketimeforsuccesspodcast.com/mistakes. I'll see you next week when the next episode drops. Thanks for being here. Bye. Thank you for listening to this episode of the Make Time For Success podcast. If you enjoyed what you heard, you can subscribe to make sure you get notified of upcoming episodes. You can also visit our website, make time for success podcast.com for past episodes, show notes, and all the resources we mentioned on the show. Feel free to connect with me over on Instagram too.

Dr. Christine Li [00:19:17]:
You can find me there under the name procrastination coach. Send me a DM and let me know what your thoughts are about the episodes you've been listening to. And let me know any topics that you might like me to talk about on the show. I'd love to hear all about how you're making time for success. Talk to you soon.