Mastering Time Management: Breaking Free from the Grip of Procrastination with Lindsay Jani

Christine Li  0:01  
Hi there, and welcome back to the Make Time for Success podcast. This is episode number 144. 

Today I have a really nice treat for you because I have a replay of an episode from my friend Lindsay Jani's new podcast. Her podcast is called Unleash Your Creative Soul. And it is fantastic. I binged listened to the entire series that's out so far. Lindsay is just a fantastic podcaster. She's a fantastic teacher. She's a mentor. She's an entrepreneur, and she's just plain amazing. And the fact that she invited me on her show for an interview was an honor. And it was also so much fun. And I've got the replay for you today. And it's a good one because in this episode, Lindsay really just co creates the episode with me in true form. True true to Lindsay. She really gets personal and describes her own procrastination. And she also helps me to describe my own experiences with procrastination. So you're going to hear my history with procrastination, how I was able to become an expert on procrastination, recovery, the costs of being a procrastinator, and the fears that oftentimes underlie the fact that we keep procrastination around. It's just a big conundrum. And Lindsay helps me to describe how to just extract yourself from that vicious cycle of procrastination. It's a fun conversation. I'm so proud of Lindsay, and her beautiful new podcast and I'm really grateful that you're here to listen to our conversation. Please follow Lindsay. She is again the podcast host of Unleash Your Creative Soul. Let's go listen to the episode now.

Hi, I'm Dr. Christine Li, and I'm a psychologist and a procrastination coach. I've helped 1000s of people move past procrastination and overwhelm so they can begin working to their potential. In this podcast, you're going to learn a 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.

Lindsay Jani  2:48  
All I can say is that your mind is about to get blown today we're welcoming Dr. Christine Li to the podcast. And if you've been struggling with procrastination, and not really getting that important stuff done that you really need to in your business. And it's impacting what you put out how you feel about your work and seeing that stress really show up in other areas of your life. And you're really in for a treat. So thank you Dr. Christine Li, for joining us on the Unleash Your Creative Soul podcast today. I am so thrilled to have you here. And for those who don't know, Dr. Li, she is one of my colleagues in a program that we're in and is just a lovely human being and somebody who I call a friend. So please welcome her to the podcast. And actually, why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do.

Christine Li  3:35  
Thank you, Lindsay for inviting me to be a guest on your beautiful show. Hello, everyone who is listening. Thank you for being here as well. I am a clinical psychologist, I live in New York, I have been online for probably more than 10 years, I've been a psychologist more than 20 years, and I have spent much of my energy and much of my focus figuring out the conundrum of procrastination. It's something that I think we have all experienced at some point or another. Some of us have experienced it more than others. And I would certainly call myself in that category. And I spent decades really struggling or really not knowing which end was up when it came to deadlines, time management, self care how not to beat myself up all the time with my thoughts with my feelings with my experiences. And I lost a lot of I think probably good experiences good energy in those years because I spent so much of my time knee deep in stress, anxiety, near panic a lot of times and it was confusing and it was a real energy blocker. I would say I've always been a very optimistic person since I'm introducing myself I should be honest about that. But I would say that I do have this kind of fear based, everything's gonna kind of collapse part of me that was really, really active back in the day. And so now I'm happy to report that I am an expert in the topic of recovery from procrastination, and all the things that can stem and grow out of that recovery. So that is expansion of your creativity of your health of your good habits of your better habits and of your mindset. And it's been just such a pleasure for me, professionally and personally, to have stumbled upon this area of expertise.

Lindsay Jani  5:40  
Oh, you're such a gift because for anybody who has procrastinated, I am one of them. I raised my hand, maybe not proud, but I'll raise it high. It's one of those things where when you are in Dr. Lee's energy, it is one of these things where you just feel like, Okay, it's time it's time to get started. Why am I procrastinating in the first place? Right? Just so you all know, this podcast is coming to be right now, because of Dr. Lee. I was just doing back to back podcast episodes. And she goes, Well, why don't we just do the record one for years now? And I'm like, oh, yeah, I can launch my podcast now. So I mean, why not? I mean, you are the procrastination coach. So I figured why not overcome this bit of procrastination too. So when it comes to procrastination, I know that most entrepreneurs, online creatives, and pretty much a lot of people find themselves procrastinating. So I know that there can be a lot of different definitions and labels for that. So how do you define procrastination in the work that you do,

Christine Li  6:45  
I just like to have everything be simple for, for myself included, but for the people that I'm trying to help as well. And so for me, the simple definition is choosing not to do voluntarily, something that could be done. It's as simple as that doesn't involve a lot of feeling or a lot of drama. It's just that choice to say, I'm gonna put off what I could have done in this moment. And I like what you said couple minutes ago about, well, why don't we just record a podcast episode for you? And the question, why not or the phrase, why not is such a beautiful one, it really just captures the fact that we could, it doesn't have to be pre scripted. It doesn't have to be a six figure launch. It doesn't have to be any of those things. But we can make it happen. And I think that's just so much of the journey. That's so much of the task. That's so much of where we learn from. And it's so much of what we fear, oftentimes. So part of the definition is, there's that hidden layer of fear that makes us choose not to put into the current moment, what we could,

Lindsay Jani  7:57  
oh, that energy of fear is something that can hold anybody back, right? It's one of those things where you won't necessarily move forward, because you're just scared and it's your basic human need to be scared. So why don't you talk a little bit about how procrastination really manifests like what that looks like to people? Because I think sometimes people just like, Oh, I'm just putting that off. But like, what some of like the root causes of procrastination, like, why do people do it?

Christine Li  8:23  
I would say I have two reactions to that prompt. One is that fear is always my response for what is the root cause what makes people do it? And I think that makes sense, right? That if we're afraid of something, our entire operating system is going to be drifting in the other direction. Because our beings are so brilliant, we don't want to head towards fear, it wouldn't make sense, because then we'd have to use our energy in a certain way we might endanger ourselves, we might make mistakes, and then fall into a low mood, all these really common sensical reasons why we would want to stay clear of the thing we call fear, fool. Now, my second response to your prompt is the word that I just used a couple of minutes ago, which is that procrastination is a conundrum. And I don't think I've ever really used those two words together. But it really is because why do we do something to ourselves? That on another level doesn't make sense. It doesn't make sense that we become afraid of something we haven't even done yet. Or we're afraid of opening our mouths in a public situation and speaking our mind or we're afraid of getting on stage. When we know that maybe when we get on stage, we might be able to get some new customers or help a few 100 people. This is all a conundrum. So we're also battling with different parts of our logical brains thinking well, it makes sense to me to do it here, but my survival sense or the part of me that doesn't feel ready yet. Feels like we should be firmly in the other direction running in the other direction actually and hiding out. So when we're procrastinating we're really in this very uncomfortable, undefined on recognized state. I do believe that people are afraid to talk about their procrastination. It's unfamiliar, it feels hyper personal. It feels somewhat shameful depending on the circumstance. And it doesn't make sense. It doesn't even make sense to us. How can we talk about it with other people coherently? And that's why I love being one of the people in the world who talks about it every single day. Because I'm obsessed with the conundrum. I'm obsessed with the topic. And I'm really obsessed with helping people to figure out a clear path, away from the fear and away from the procrastination because so often I've seen the procrastination just blooms, like a beautiful flower, but it's not a beautiful flower, it blooms and takes up and it takes away people's precious resources, their time, their self esteem, their opportunities, really, it's very, very costly. And I don't think we talk enough about these issues.

Lindsay Jani  11:06  
Yeah, you know, it's really interesting. From my audience's perspective, you know, like, whenever you're starting something new, and you touched on this just a second ago about there being this fear of uncertainty, you know, when you obviously you step into something new, there is going to be some level of fear, right? And there is this fear of like the unknown, but anytime we grow, we are stepping into something that's unknown. So how would you recommend like, or do you have any tips or anything on how to overcome fear? Or how to just like, make that next step where it doesn't feel so scary? Or like, Oh, I'll do it tomorrow? Or because even just saying I'll push it off until tomorrow that is procrastination to based in fear, right? Yeah. So how do you make that next step?

Christine Li  11:49  
Yeah, just do questions. I have two responses to that prompt. And they are my favorite. And I would say maybe signature technique is that I like to help people make everything fun. If it's not fun, I feel like I'm not game for it myself. So why would I expect you to need to want to do something that I don't even think is fun. So we have to figure out a way for your mind and body and your energy to say, I'm gonna I want to run towards it. So typically, that means fun. I remember somebody signed my high school yearbook year, a lot of fun. And I never thought of myself as being a fun person until that person gave me that feedback. And ever since I thought I really liked fun, and I am a fun person, I can be a fun person. And I think we all liked fun, right? Fun is lack of danger fun is I'm gonna get like a higher vibe from this experience. Fun is I'm not thinking about work, I'm not thinking about the costs of work, or the pressure of work, or the competition at work. Whatever you're thinking is fearful about work, you're thinking about just energy and growing. And so that is definitely my one thought there. And so the oven technique is valuing time at an extremely high level, where it's almost like your number one priority, I of course, we have our health, we have our loved ones, I think those are the big three, for me, at least that time is so precious to me. Now we're used to treat it like it was kind of like trash were all there's just more where it came from. And I don't have to prioritize it. Because everything else is so much more stressful, and so much more important. I have tons of time. And of course, I was younger, in those days. And so I didn't feel like I had a lot of time. That's the blessing of us. But it's also kind of the ignorance of us that we don't really know what we're letting go when we waste our time when true waste. And I do like to note that there are ways that we can use our time where there's no productivity involved. And it's not wasteful. Of course, it's rest. It's enjoyment. It's serendipity. It's the circumstances that happen in the moment that we have to pay attention to. So there's so much beauty when we start to just see time as the container or time as the resource. Right? If it were quantified Wow, he would be with it is quantified but we're not respecting each second, a piece of preciousness. And I like to think of it in that kind of way these days.

Lindsay Jani  14:20  
Oh, I love that. I just love that to respect it with that preciousness, right, I think that so many people, we just we make up our own timelines as business owners, right. And sometimes we are, you know, sometimes an artist's work is never done or you know, like when we're working with these timelines that we set for ourselves. And I know that I am very guilty of this. I'll say, Oh, let me get this done. And then I'm like, Oh, well, I set the timeline anyways, I can continue to push. And then I get into perfectionism and all this other kind of stuff, right? Like trying to make things perfect instead of getting it out. And you know, because you know, there's that fear sometimes of not being seen as pulled together and stuff like With that, too, that's how I procrastinate. So how would you recommend even people kind of overcoming the self imposed timelines or at least working with them and finding that sacred beauty and being able to create our own time, but also honoring and respecting it, like you said

Christine Li  15:15  
before? Yeah, I think there's a nice answer. And that is that we want to have the beauty of endings as well. And if you're constantly in creation mode, you may not actually be finishing any of the creations. And creativity is wonderful, but so is production, so is realization of your creativity, so is moving on to other creations. And I think there's a beauty to the process of saying beginning middle end of experiencing all three phases, instead of just the first two phases, because we can get lost and time can get lost in that middle space. And sometimes I said, things should be fun. Or we could try to make things be fun. But sometimes we need a little bit of pressure. Sometimes that really helps. Sometimes we need a friend to say like, why don't we record a little bit of pressure, but it's friendly, fun pressure to do yes, you know, so to also just get stronger in yourself, it really is like a self resilience package. Entrepreneurship, especially. And every time you go over a little hurdle, you get a little stronger, too. So it's really not forgetting that not forgetting what we're doing. The creativity is a beautiful part of entrepreneurship. But it's not the whole thing. We need to get to the point of service and products and delivery and figuring all of that out and exposing ourselves in the right way to our audience and to the people that we need to deliver our products and services to the people we actually wants to connect with. That's the creativity as well, that's the energy that you're gonna get back. Yeah, right. When you're creating and you're just in your own bubble, you're expending a lot of energy without much return, you might be enjoying being in there. But I think that we need to put an end cycle to that cycle, so that you really feel the fruits of your labor.

Lindsay Jani  17:10  
Okay, so as somebody who always sees work as continuing, how do you put the ending to that cycle, knowing that you can continue to build upon it. So I have a neurodivergent beautiful mind. And for me, it's always like having an ending doesn't always exist, right? Like it just keeps on growing. So how would you recommend for somebody who tends to think in having more, you know, outlets? Sparkly, shiny things that grab their attention? How would you recommend putting an ending on something like that? Yeah, I'm

Christine Li  17:42  
actually right in there with you in that bucket there. It's a very large bucket. And I would say, you know, when we get like that there's a consequence on the other end. So maybe it's sleep oftentimes, for me, it's like, I'm gonna lose a couple of hours sleep, when I'm not exactly knowing exactly how to wrap this up or exactly. When the deadline is for this particular thing. Because it's open, right? And it's fine for things to be open, of course, but then it's kind of balancing our own needs. And it's an individual process, right? Some people really don't need that much sleep, I need a ton of sleep. So I know that when I started to get a little bit more loosey goosey with my work hours, there's this natural pushback, because I started feeling the fatigue caused by the sleep loss. So you want to find for yourself what's on the other side of this. Right? What is something that I might want to also prioritize that can help me balance these decisions, so that I can be a little bit clearer. A seven o'clock at night really is a good end time for me on this one. Oh, I

Lindsay Jani  18:49  
like that. Like even giving yourself an ending for the day or like what it can look like before you launch? It's almost like giving yourself and please correct me if I'm wrong, that tipping point of like, what is too much? And what is just enough, right? Yeah. So when we're thinking about the things that would run, at least through my head, oh, I have more time. What's a great way that you would say for somebody to reframe that, like how like, I know that you work with mindset quite a lot. So what's a good reframe for when you catch yourself saying like, I'll just do that tomorrow.

Christine Li  19:19  
Your questions are so great, I can tell because my mind is going in all the different directions trying to figure out a response. So I would say that you just want to practice the other skills. Let's look at thinking, Oh, I've got tons of time and tons of creativity. That's a skill you've got down that you know how to see time as opening up for you and you know how to dig into it and you know how to use it and you know how to create and there are other skills for you to learn one that I'm having to learn as well because I'm in that same bucket as you and that is saying, I'm going to stop even though I've performed a lesson even I thought I was going to just allowing yourself to stop is a skill unto itself. off, it doesn't have to have a purpose. But it is a skill, right? And right, some people have a harder time than others in capturing all these different skills. And I just like to experiment a lot. That's that's me truly, truly, truly I'm an experimenter. So I like to say like, well, what if I just got off this desk of mine and decided like, I'm going to cook instead? Or I'm going to watch an episode of shrinking? Because I like that right now. And what if I experiment? Like, I know that there's always tomorrow? So that's another thing, right? Yeah. Putting it in today, because there is tomorrow and I'm no longer actively, hysterically procrastinating. So I know it's safe. Tomorrow is safe, because I'm protecting today a little bit better.

Lindsay Jani  20:45  
Sure. Yeah. No, I love that. I love that you're like, you know, ask yourself these questions. And that state of curiosity leads to fun, right? And you're just like, what else can I do? Or what could make this better? Or what could What can I do right now? You know, it's really interesting. I was in your, your latest challenge, because it was it was beautiful. She was doing decluttering. And, you know, sometimes we procrastinate on decluttering. For me, sometimes that the start of doing something feels so overwhelming. And I loved your approach and just getting started. Can you talk a little bit about

Christine Li  21:19  
that? Sure. And thank you for participating in that challenge. And for getting so much out of it. It's so much fun to run that challenge because people's energy get released. Oh, it just is an explosion of a community's worth of energy, if you can imagine that is called clarity over clutter. And I really liked that name. I'm not I don't see myself as a great neighbor of things. But that one really hit it's good. Thank you. And the way I teach people is that it's that fear of getting into the clutter that is so problematic, right? The clutter itself is kind of innocent, but it drums up all the feelings, right? Clutter is this interesting symptom that we have of indecision of not using our time so well, sometimes of leaving things undone. And it's a physical representation of that in our precious home space. And it's just wow, right? It's a whole lot of everything. And it's a signal of procrastination, as well. And so like Lindsay mentioned, the first thing I teach is touch your items, right? It's looking at it that really isn't connecting us to the clutter. Because we look at it all the time. It's not really having that powerful and effect on us What if you actually touch one to three items that you're interested in getting out of your space, or organizing or having it moved to a more sensical space? That's going to be the extra energy that you thought you didn't have? Because your mind is going to be set on to thinking what is the next best option for this piece of paper? For me paper is a big bugaboo. And, you know, getting getting your hands on the stuff is a way to move your energy. Absolutely. There's something so

Lindsay Jani  23:03  
helpful in there. I mean, it was just touching those first three things was the impetus for me to clean an entire area of my daughter's room where it was the most overwhelming part to me. So it was just the simple act of not judging, taking a look, seeing what it is and just been I can move three things. And then it spiraled into a 20 minute cleaning session. And it didn't take that long. I think I've been thinking about it longer, way longer. For weeks, versus just cleaning, it knows almost the point of refusing to clean it because it felt so overwhelming. And so just so you know, I've been applying this to other areas of my life too. And it's so wonderful how you can apply simple principles you wouldn't think would be like, sometimes it's the simplicity of something. Yes, that can really make the biggest change. And I feel like we're always drawn away from what simple to what's hard.

Christine Li  24:05  
Yes. And I think I'm trained into complicated. Yeah, we're trained to think, well, if I'm stressing it must be valuable. And I really just hate thinking like that when I do. And you're making me think of two other guideline principles. One is easy is not a terrible thing. Right. And that's oftentimes we want to seek easier second is just a habit that I've developed, which is how do I make this task take less time than I think it might? Or then it typically takes and if I save a minute or two, I'm happy as a class, because I know I'm going to apply those two minutes somewhere else down the road. So I started to think about it really I like almost like counting pebbles situation and I like just to have a good store of pebbles. You don't for me to use that. I've got wiggle room. I've got space in between appointments. I've got time at the end of the day to just float around if I need to, it's okay.

Lindsay Jani  25:04  
Oh, this is all so good. You are again, like I said in the very beginning, your mind is going to be blown. It's so good. So when I have one last question for you, when we are finding ourselves in, in a mode of procrastination, like scrolling on social media, when you notice that you're in the cycle, and it feels too good to stop, how do you get yourself to stop? You know,

Christine Li  25:30  
to answer that one for me, because I would say, really, the source that I go to is kindness to myself, what option do I have here to treat myself kindly and to keep that process alive? Right, there comes a point, when tick tock just isn't giving the joy back to me, you know, like, it's, it's that one video, or it's when the clock hits a certain set of numbers, and it's just far too late in the morning, that I really have to bring it back to myself, and I'm how I want to be treating myself. That's not necessarily time based. That can just be moment based, right? It could be any moment that we decide, you know, what, I'm stepping off this particular treadmill, I don't need this. Now I can always get back. Right, there's no crisis, right. And again, it's just like making the habit of making our decisions to reflect our best selves, and our kindness to ourselves, and our respect for our time, right. We don't have to be perfect. But we do want to respect time.

Lindsay Jani  26:40  
Yeah, because we can't get time back. I think we can all agree that we can't create time. Oh, gosh, I feel like I could speak to you for hours on this. I will respect your time. We're gonna honor and respect your time. Good. Thanks for being a great student. Yeah, please. This is love to have you back anyway, see the ball and cover some more. So I know that people probably have so many questions on how to do this. Um, why don't you tell us about how people can find you tell us a little bit about your podcast and all of

Christine Li  27:10  
it. The podcast is a love of mine. I'd love to the episode that Lindsay just did for us. It's called make time for success. So please give a listen and look out for Lindsay's episode coming soon. And elsewhere. I am procrastination coach. So you can find me on Instagram, Tiktok, Twitter, LinkedIn all pretty much. If you look up Christine Lee spelled li or procrastination coach. My main website is procrastination coach.com. And thank you for letting me invite people into my world too.

Lindsay Jani  27:43  
It's my pleasure. And then I think you also had a little gift to get people to would you like to talk about that? I

Christine Li  27:48  
do. Thank you. It's a relatively new freebie that I've created with my assistant. And it's called the habits worksheet. And I've had feedback from others that it's really helpful to take these prompts that are on the worksheet and just evaluate your own habit. What might need some tweaking, oftentimes, we don't need to just throw the habits out the window, we just need to kind of expand our thinking about what we're really wanting from our habits and how we're using our habits. how consistent are we being it's those kinds of prompts and you can get that free download at procrastination coach.com/habits Worksheet.

Lindsay Jani  28:28  
And for all of you who might be listening in your car or something like that, I'll have everything in the show notes as well. So feel free to go look there and get all the links. So you can find Dr. Christine Lee, thank you for sharing all your wisdom and for helping us get back on track and say why not and make things a little bit more fun. Thank you so much again.

Christine Li  28:50  
Thank you, Lindsay. I want to say like a plus as an interviewer. So thank you and good luck for the rest of your podcast. Ernie, I loved being on your show. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for listening to this episode of The make time for success podcast. If you enjoyed what you've 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. 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. We'll talk to you soon

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