Overcoming Procrastination: Unlocking the Secrets to Getting Started

Dr. Christine Li [00:00:00]:
Welcome back to the Make Time For Success podcast. This is episode number 205. One of the most frequent requests that I receive as a psychologist and coach is to help people to learn how to get going, to learn how to start when they've been stuck in procrastination and overwhelm, to just take the first step. So I thought I would devote an entire episode to just this topic just in case you happen to be wondering about this topic yourself. I, just this morning, got over a little bit of a procrastination hump. I'll share that story with you inside the episode. So let's go listen to that material right now.

Dr. Christine Li [00:00:49]:
Hi. 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.

Dr. Christine Li [00:01:36]:
Hello. Today's episode is about difficulties getting started, and I thought, wouldn't it be nice if I could just share with you a story about my own life and how I deal with things? This story came from this morning. And what has been happening is I have been procrastinating on a relatively minor task related to my business, related to just tabulating how many sales I've made and what kinds of sales I've made. I'll just leave it at that. And because the task is relatively tedious and relatively dealing with numbers, something I tend to steer clear of when I can, I found myself procrastinating for probably two and a half weeks unnecessarily because this task, when I did it this morning finally, took me less than 10 minutes? So I blew energy that could have been used for other things for the past two and a half weeks over something that just took me about 10 minutes. And I mentioned this because it didn't surprise me that I delayed. It probably won't surprise you to hear stories like that coming from someone who considers herself an expert in procrastination, or maybe it does. But maybe you relate to this story as well that you may just wonder why did I procrastinate or wait so long on something that I was pretty sure or I can pretty much predict will take less than 10 minutes.

Dr. Christine Li [00:03:22]:
Well, this episode is really just gonna be a conversation between you and me with me talking and you kind of absorbing, but also being my muse and my guide for what to do on this show. And we're gonna talk about the core reasons why we have difficulty starting and some small shifts that you can make so that you can get started faster and more often and get a lot more done. Alright. So let's start with why starting is hard. And I just wanna let you know that it's not about laziness and it's not about a lack of skill. Right? I know how to go through a list of items, and I know how to deal with numbers. I just don't. It's not my favorite thing to do, and that's one of the reasons why I was avoiding the task this morning.

Dr. Christine Li [00:04:15]:
So I never want you to think that just because you're procrastinating or having difficulty starting on something, that that must mean that you're a lazy person who doesn't know how to do things because we don't wanna distort what is going on. Yes. We wanna be upfront with ourselves that, yes, we are having difficulty getting started, but we don't wanna make matters way worse by then piling on the insults to ourselves or just piling on all the layers of self hatred or difficulty that we can stay clear of. So keep your lane clear. Make sure you have a clear route forward. Just know that you're having difficulty starting. Label it as procrastination, but, again, don't start beating yourself up because that's just gonna make starting even harder. Alright.

Dr. Christine Li [00:05:09]:
So some of the core reasons why starting is hard. The first one that I have for you is we generally fear failure, embarrassing ourselves, imperfection, doing it the wrong way, maybe disappointing the people we're delivering the project or product to or the the assignment. And all of these fears absolutely can make it really difficult to start because we've got that fear. Fear is like, sometimes it can feel like a brick wall. Sometimes it can feel just like an emotional wall. Both are difficult sometimes to get through. And so I always say that the way through our resistance, through the desire to procrastinate, or through our fears is to really settle in, calm down your nervous system, decide to connect yourself with why this thing, this item, this action, this project is important to you, why it's on your plate in the first place, and then to proceed as if you know you're gonna be a success and as if you trust that you're gonna be safe even if somebody's criticizing you in the end, even if you don't like the project in the end. You have to really just infuse your operating system with the ideas that you're safe, you're calm, you're capable, and you're gonna be okay when all is said and done.

Dr. Christine Li [00:06:40]:
And all of that can be true when you practice these practices of being kind to yourself, of not beating yourself up, of practicing starting often, saying yes to projects so that you can grow and grow these skills of productivity. It really works like that. You have to just practice overcoming these hurdles and walls because they're just beliefs in our minds oftentimes. They're not actual brick walls, thankfully. They are little blocks, and let's just make them littler and littler as we go on. So that first core reason why starting is hard is because of fear. The second one is that oftentimes, we approach the starting line already feeling overwhelmed. Why does that happen? So many different reasons.

Dr. Christine Li [00:07:34]:
We see projects as potentially being too big for us. They're completely massive or they have multiple layers or they feel like they're gonna take forever or they feel like they're just too much, maybe too much emotionally, or they are just too complicated for you to feel safe or comfortable proceeding. And when we're faced with challenges like the ones I just listed, our brains come in and try to rescue us. They try to say, you know what? You might wanna hold off. We're gonna make you feel overwhelmed as a signal that your ego is getting stressed. Your system is getting stressed. It's your brain's natural protection mechanism, but because you listen to this podcast and you listen to what I say week after week, you already know that just because your brain and your body are doing things doesn't mean that you have to stay overwhelmed. You could take that as a sign, an alert, a cue, but that doesn't mean you have to take it as a stop sign.

Dr. Christine Li [00:08:46]:
And, actually, many more times than none, I think that's how other phrase would work, you wanna actually say, I'm going forward even though I feel overwhelmed because you know what? Progress is important to me. Success is important to me. I desire getting the results that I intended when I started. That is why I'm not going to stay overwhelmed. But, yes, overwhelm is a reason why people have difficulty starting oftentimes. So the third core reason why starting can feel hard is the fun friend named perfectionism. When we lean towards being perfectionistic, we tend to stall out. We tend to feel like, what's the purpose? What's the point if I'm never gonna be able to make it as perfect as I need it to be? It's kind of like your big dream and your big hope that everything's gonna be perfect is actually the biggest barrier to you actually flowing towards productivity and getting what you want created in the world and feeling good about yourself.

Dr. Christine Li [00:10:01]:
So that desire to be everything to everyone, even to yourself, is just too stressful, and it causes you to start at the starting line feeling stressed. So I'm gonna suggest that we drop the perfectionism, and we just say, you know what? I expect success for myself, and that's a very reasonable goal for me, but there are lots of different avenues that I can travel to get to that success. And perfectionism is not my chosen preferred route. I'm gonna choose a route that says, you know what? I'm gonna look for the opportunities. I'm gonna look for the support. I'm gonna look towards my intuition. I'm gonna rely on my experience. I'm gonna try some options now.

Dr. Christine Li [00:10:52]:
I'm gonna start early in the day so I know that I've got my full tank of willpower ready to go to support me, things like that. You're just gonna optimize your chances for things turning out well instead of insisting that everything ends up perfectly. Because when you do it the way that I'm suggesting, by just starting off feeling great, feeling supported, feeling smart enough, you end up gliding towards a really nice finish. It might not be perfect, but it's definitely gonna be successful and good enough, and we want good enough because good enough gets us to bed on time. It gets us to the deadlines on time. It gets us to feel like we're satisfied, and it spares us the kind of doom and stress and burden of having to be perfect all the time. Right? Who needs perfect? Really? None of us really need perfect when you think about it, so think about it. Alright.

Dr. Christine Li [00:11:54]:
The 4th reason why starting can feel hard is a lack of direction, and I think this is one that I really need to unpack with you because I feel that in the years when I was really, really struggling with procrastination big time, this was the core reason why I couldn't start barely a thing. I was always feeling fuzzy about what I was doing, why I was doing the thing, and how I was gonna proceed. So every point along the way felt like a zone of confusion. And when I started to take more action and get more of that productivity practice that I mentioned a couple minutes ago, I started getting clearer and clearer and even more clear from there. And, of course, as you know, I started helping more and more people, and that was just this wonderful cycle of education for myself that I learned that I could learn about myself and my skills by helping others. I learned that I could learn about myself and how to help others by taking action. Every piece of what I was doing was helping and supporting the other piece. Right? My mind and my creativity expanded when I got out of this, I don't know what I'm doing, confusion zone.

Dr. Christine Li [00:13:24]:
And then I felt smarter. I felt more creative. I was definitely more productive. I was quicker to do things, and I felt way more successful. That's why I entitled this podcast, Make Time For Success, because we need to create this room for success to take root. We need to believe in ourselves for success to take root. We have to stop all the brick wall building that we do in our lives quite innocently because the brick walls really don't help, and we have to really review what the core reasons we as individuals fail to start sometimes so that we can knock those reasons out, knock them down, and just take action. And this is gonna lead me to the second part of this episode, which is a list of simple shifts that we can all take, simple actions that will help us to actually start.

Dr. Christine Li [00:14:29]:
The first tip here is you wanna start by taking really tiny actions, and I shouldn't actually say actions because I really mean take one tiny action. That is always my go to release valve when I'm feeling like I need to procrastinate or really when I'm overwhelmed or when I'm feeling stressed. I will always say, what is the tiniest action that I can actually do in the next 5 or 10 minutes? And it works every single time because there really always is something you can do that's teeny tiny that is gonna get you unlocked from that zone of procrastination. And I want you to tuck this tip away. Don't forget this tip because you can pull it out when you need it in a crisis. You can say, okay. What's the next tiniest thing that we can do to get ourselves out of this crisis? Even if it's a mood, you can get yourself out of a mood. Even when you feel lazy, you can take a teeny tiny step and, again, unlock that energy, unlock yourself from feeling like you haven't started.

Dr. Christine Li [00:15:32]:
All it takes is 5 minutes. The second tip I have for you is the 5 minute mode. Whatever kind of phone you have, you're gonna say, I'm gonna set the timer for 5 minutes, and I'm gonna work this amount of time. And by doing that, you relieve your brain of having to review all the different fears and struggles you're having with your work. Instead of the fears and the struggles, you're gonna focus on, let me work for 5 minutes, and that should help you to begin as well. The third tip that I have here is something that I really want you to highlight also. This one is important. You want to remember to celebrate every teeny, tiny success.

Dr. Christine Li [00:16:18]:
I see this so often. It's nuts that people go through their day, they do wonderful things, and they are not noting these wonderful things, even if they're minor wonderful things. You're kind of leaving yourself up to slipping backwards because there's nothing keeping you motivated all the time necessarily when you're not celebrating. When you're marking the progress, when you're feeling proud of yourself, when you are actually celebrating, that is a signal to your brain that you wanna keep going because the brain likes to know that it's doing something that has been proven successful, proven doable, that it hasn't threatened you in any way, that it hasn't threatened your survival. So when you celebrate things, it's really marking for your brain, oh, go here. Let's do this again. Let's repeat this kind of behavior. So you wanna remember to repeat the celebrations.

Dr. Christine Li [00:17:22]:
You wanna remember that this is important, and you shouldn't skip this step because we wanna make work a joyful endeavor. Instead of thinking it's something to be feared, it's something to be feared, it's something to be dreaded, it's something to be avoided for 2 and a half weeks even if it's a teeny tiny task, we wanna get rid of all of that side of our operating system as we can, and we wanna say our work is a joy just like having fun with our friends and our partners and our families is a joy. We wanna say our work is a joy too. And guess what? When you get to that phase of working on your success strategy, your whole life becomes a zone of joy, and that's really what I want for each of you. The 4th tip that I have for you in terms of shifts that you can make to get yourself started is you wanna get really good at countering your negative thoughts. Some people who are listening may say, but, doctor Lee, it's really hard. My brain is so powerful. It's generating a lot of negative thoughts, and I'm gonna share my thoughts on that.

Dr. Christine Li [00:18:37]:
The first thing is that you wanna aim for a neutral thought, a thought that would not even make you struggle in any way. Instead of saying, oh, wow. I'm worried that I'm not gonna be able to finish this in time. You can even neutralize that thought by saying, I wonder how long this will take me. It's just an open question. It's not this fear based thought that threatens to make you run out of time because that fear, like I explained earlier in the episode, that fear is that brick wall that starts to get built up and prevents you from taking effective action forward because you're not gonna wanna hit a brick wall. So whenever you're working and in the middle of your work session, these negative thoughts come in, you just wanna pause, but for a very short amount of time, and you just wanna neutralize the thought. And by neutralize, I mean, take it down to a neutral level so you're not feeling positively necessarily, although that is welcome, but you're definitely not feeling negatively anymore because that negativity is draining your energy, draining your focus away from what you're really wanting to concentrate on, and it's really distracting, actually.

Dr. Christine Li [00:19:58]:
It's it's not really gonna help you to keep the start and the middle and that process of working going. It's just gonna keep you in a state of fear. So let's get rid of the negative thinking Instead of worrying about how much time you have or how good it is, you're just gonna say, I wonder how this is gonna be when I'm done. I wonder how long this is going to take. Just neutral, calm your nervous system down kinds of statements. Alright? So couple more thoughts before we wrap this one up. I want just to reassure you that you're gonna be okay. That may be the number one tip for getting started.

Dr. Christine Li [00:20:43]:
Right? We can scare ourselves. We can scare ourselves silly about even minor things sometimes because we are creative. We have wild imaginations sometimes, and sometimes we make our lives hard. And instead of doing that, we're gonna just start a new habit, and we're going to say to ourselves all the time, I know this is gonna end up okay. And you're gonna start with that phrase, and then you're gonna use all the tips that I shared with you in this episode. You're gonna use timers. You're gonna neutralize your negative thinking. You're gonna do teeny, tiny first action steps and so on and so forth, and you're gonna use everything that you're learning from this podcast to say, you know what? I have time for success, and I'm gonna make more time to be more productive, more calm, more joyful when I am doing my work so that I can enjoy not only my work but the entire rest of my life as well.

Dr. Christine Li [00:21:43]:
When you work without fear, you work well. And when you work well, every door starts to open for you, and it's a wonderful, wonderful state to be in. And the last note I have for you is that any action is really better than staying still, stuck, and anxious. I have found that to be true every single time I've tested it. So take those tiny actions. Be proud of yourself. Remember to celebrate. Remember always to visit me on the podcast, Make Time For Success, because I love having you here.

Dr. Christine Li [00:22:18]:
I love sharing these ideas with you and my fun stories of procrastination with you, and we're all in this together. We all have struggles with fear. We all have struggles with starting sometimes, but we don't have to make that the end of the story by any means. If you want some help getting started, I have a free download for you. It will help you to remember the tips and the ideas that I've shared in this episode, and there'll be some worksheet items for you in the worksheet as well. So some mini exercises for you as well. All you need to do to get the free download is go to maketimeforsuccesspodcast.com/start. Again, it's maketimeforsuccesspodcast.com/start.

Dr. Christine Li [00:23:09]:
I want you to know that I've been doing these worksheets for a little while on the podcast where each episode has its own special worksheet. I've enjoyed creating them for you, and I wanna say I'm happy to report that it seems like the listeners of this show, you guys, are really enjoying the worksheet. So keep downloading them. I'll keep making them, and let's work on these projects together. Alright? I will see you next week. Take care. Have a

Dr. Christine Li [00:23:43]:
good one. 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, maketimeforsuccesspodcast.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.

Dr. Christine Li [00:24:24]:
Talk to you soon.