The Ultimate Guide to Getting Rid of Procrastination

Welcome back to the show. This is Episode Two. I think it's no use having big dreams if we don't know how to move past our resistance and fear. But of course, I want you to keep those big dreams and go for them. That's why in this episode, I'm going to share the top five most important elements for being able to recover from procrastination. And to find your natural energy and motivation again, this is the episode you're going to want to return to over and over again, just to make sure you're staying at the top of your game. Let's go listen. 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 if 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. When I started thinking about doing this podcast for real, I had to deal with my procrastination first. For me, it's always my resistance that comes first, then the creativity kicks in once I'm finished holding myself back. So I thought the best way to help you is to start by addressing the issue of procrastination first, upfront, nothing else first. So why should we focus so intently on procrastination? I think there are a number of reasons. One is that it's a really big sign of our resistance and our conflict. Procrastination is an indication that we've got two ideas about one decision do we act or do we not act to we reject? Or do we accept? Do we trust? Or do we not? The second reason why we should focus so intently on procrastination is that it's often a sign of importance. Typically, if things are insignificant to us, we could just move on do it, or put it off without that horrible sense of dread that procrastination tends to bring with it. So procrastination is an important signal. The third reason is that there are so many consequences of procrastination. You know what I mean? late fees, isolation, feelings of shame, feeling misunderstood, losing opportunities, and maybe worst of all losing our confidence and hope. And there's another reason to focus on procrastination because procrastination is super sticky. And what do I mean by that? I mean, that once we get into the habit of procrastination, it's very difficult to extract ourselves from that habit. And why? I think it's because it's a habit that we use over and over again. So it's a really well worn habit. We therefore need to really work actively to counter procrastination, because when our fear gets too big, it just overwhelms us. And it makes the exciting part of taking action feel not so exciting. So we cower in fear. And then what happens is that we stay stuck, we never get to feel that excitement of taking the risk of taking the action. So in order to counter procrastination, we have to make ourselves stronger than any resistance that we might feel. And so I've decided to put together a system and it's a system that includes five of the most effective strategies that I've used to recover from my own procrastination, I believe they are five best things you can do to start getting things done. One day, many years ago, while driving home from New York City to the suburbs where I live, I came up with the acronym smack to remember these five elements, it's s m, AC K. So you can remember you can smack your procrastination down. So I'm going to start and teach you these five elements now. S is the first one. And S stands for simplicity. I always recommend starting here because oftentimes, we fail to move things ahead, because things are too complex. We're feeling too disorganized, or we're just completely unclear about what we're doing. And so when we decide to simplify, we end up getting organized and we end up seeing things much more clearly. So, just remember, clutter represents indecision, and clearing the clutter then means we are getting our way back to clarity. And of course, it's not just physical clutter, work on the mental clutter to buy mental clutter. I mean, having too much on your mind worrying all the time overthinking that's mental clutter. You can also take care of calendar clutter. And what is calendar clutter that is overlapping meetings, having no blank space in your calendar, no room to rest, and in general, not allocating your time well. But of course, the physical clutter can be one of the greatest obstacles in our way. So I will add closet clutter to the list, get rid of your excess, get rid of your broken items, get rid of your unused things, the unwanted clothes that are distracting to you. And what happens when we simplify, we end up finding a lot of things we end up finding time, energy and money. Personally, I feel an immediate lift of spirit, I feel an immediate boost. When I find the energy to declutter, I wonder why I don't do it all the time. But I have to admit, I do feel that decluttering can be very daunting energy wise. In Episode Three, you're going to hear my guest, Courtney Carver, she's an expert on simplicity. And she's going to describe the life changing effects of living with less. So we're going to have a simplicity expert, come join us on episode three. The next letter in this MAC system is M and that stands for mindfulness. Whenever I work with clients, for whatever reason, whether it's anxiety, procrastination, depression, whatever the topic is, I always believe that the first sign that the client is changing or making some moves in a different direction is that they become more mindful. When we procrastinate, it's as if we're refusing to see that things must change. We live in a static and flexible way, insisting to ourselves that things stay the same that things don't get done. But when we do things like go to therapy and talk about things, we become really present and more aware. And then through that presence, we have more power, we have the power to take on the challenges in front of us, we feel stronger. So for me, the definition of mindfulness is bringing yourself to the present moment, as best as you can leave the past in the past, and let the future be the future. let's establish our power by focusing on what we can do in the present moment. In Episode Four of the podcast, I'm going to bring on my dear friend Melanie Moore, to explain how her life was completely transformed. Once she was able to really dig into the power of her mindset and her vision. It's a fantastic episode. So get excited for that. So the letter A stands for anxiety reduction, Elizabeth Gilbert has been quoted as saying, All procrastination is fear. And I have to agree with her. And I always wish that I had said it first. But I'm grateful to Elizabeth for saying that. So remember that if we're wanting to actively tackle our procrastination, we have to dig up our fear, we have to face our fear and overcome it. Because our worries force us into a negative mindset. And all that does is caused us to get distracted, we start losing sight of our goals. And that is never helpful. So our aim is now to reduce our anxiety. And of course, there's so many different ways that we can do that, including improving our sleep, exercising a bit more, improving our mindset, changing how we see failure, going to therapy, or getting a coach, planning your time better or having an accountability partner. And of course, you can continue to listen to this podcast. In Episode Five, you're going to hear how my guest Lisa canning decided to do away with her anxiety about working hard, hard in her career, I should say, and found that she ended up expanding all of her possibilities in both work and with her family of 10. So you're going to hear so many great stories and you're going to love Lisa's personality and great laugh. The letter C moving on is communication. And I think communication is the unsung hero of getting things done and a severely underrated skill and ability that we can all improve on. Procrastination tends to really do us and when it comes to communication because procrastination makes us disconnected from other people, it makes us more isolated. Because we feel the sense of shame. That comes when we're not doing the things we're supposed to be doing. Procrastination prevents us from feeling like we can alert people when we are going to be late, or when we need help. And that, of course, just worsens our situation. So when you're thinking about getting out of the procrastination trap, think about communicating, because communication solves almost every problem. So put your situation into words and take my word for it, you're going to survive, you're going to feel much better when you find support through communication. In Episode Six, coming up, Tracy Goodwin, who is a gifted voice coach is going to come teach us how to examine our voice barriers, so that we can get back to our natural voice. My goal in this podcast is to bring in information and guest experts that will really expand your view of what's possible to you and Tracy is certainly someone who could do that very powerfully. So the last letter were up to k, kindness to self, I believe this is the most important component of all of the letters. SMC K. Because when we're yelling at ourselves, we're not really good for anything, we won't be able to act at our best. So let's stop doing that. Because when we yell at ourselves, it's like, we're splitting ourselves into two pieces, or three pieces, or four, it's just completely disempowering. But when we're able to be kind to ourselves, we're able to be in alignment with our goals and our actions. And just what we want to do. I'm not a scare, but I came up with the idea of talking about skiing here because I imagine what it must feel like to be confident in your skiing ability, and to be gliding through the snow, down a slope with confidence, even though the slope is super steep. That's the kind of feeling that I want for you. The feeling that kindness and being kind to yourself, can give us. Oh, I almost forgot. Episode Seven is going to feature Susan Chang. Susan Chang is one of the nicest people I know. So I thought, who better than to bring Susan on to describe how when we adopt kindness to ourselves, we can make better decisions in how we conduct ourselves at work, and in our home life. So look out for that episode as well. So to recap, the five letter system that I've developed that I believe is super helpful for helping you recover from procrastination is called smac. Ss for simplicity, M is mindfulness. A is anxiety reduction, C is communication. K is kindness to self. And you can start with any letter that you want to. But I want you to know, the more letters you address, and combined with the other letters, the more powerful your actions and energy are going to become. That was my experience. And that's why I cling to the smack system. It's really come in handy for me so many times in the past. So for you now we're going to come up with an exercise for you to do. One way that you can start on this anti procrastination journey is to find one way that you're talking negatively to yourself or about yourself, and figure out how to drop that habit that one habit can go so far for you. If you need help with this, I suggest you Google positive affirmations and you'll see hundreds of positive affirmations come up and just pick a phrase that happens to be the opposite of the negative statements that you're telling yourself. Use those affirmations as positive ones as a replacement. So that's your exercise for today. And if you're interested, I've put together a free download regarding the smac solution includes, of course, the five categories, but it also includes lots of different quick action steps that you can take for each letter of the solution. You can get that free download by going to make time for success podcast.com slash two. It's just the number two. So I look forward to seeing you in our next episode with Courtney Carver on simplicity, we've got an exciting journey ahead, beating procrastination and finding the time to make success. Thanks so much for listening. I'll see you next time. 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'd 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.