Transform Your Productivity: Secrets to Defeating Procrastination

Dr. Christine Li [00:00:00]:
Welcome back to the Make Time For Success podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Christine Li, and this is episode number 195. If you've been listening to this podcast for any length of time, you know that some of my favorite topics to talk about are procrastination and productivity, and this episode would definitely fall in that category of procrastination and productivity. But the focus of this episode is about the conflict that we find ourselves in when we're procrastinating. What are the emotions that contribute to that conflict? What does conflict actually mean in our lives, and how do you elevate yourself out of that situation where you just feel like you have no energy, you have no options, and you have no get up and go. I'm looking forward to sharing this episode with you. Let's go listen to this episode together now. Hi.

Dr. Christine Li [00:01:02]:
I'm D.r 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. Alright. Today's topic is pretty much the universal situation. It's a situation where you know you want something done.

Dr. Christine Li [00:01:55]:
You really, really know you want it done, but you also know you don't wanna do it. And I've decided to make this particular conflict the center point of my career as procrastination coach and as a psychologist, and doing so has really helped me, as I think, you know, it's helped me to heal all the wounds that I've incurred by being a procrastinator for most of my early life, and it's also helped me to learn so much about myself, my strengths, my weaknesses, the things I needed to learn in order to avoid procrastinating into my older years in life. And I've used this podcast platform to really share a lot of what I've learned and to share some of the stories of what to do so that you can maybe get some inspiration and decide, you know what? I'm going to do some exploration about my own patterns. I'm gonna do some investigation so that I can try to avoid doing all this procrastination and avoidance. And instead of that, I'm going to enjoy getting a lot more stuff done. I wanna share before I get into some of my reflections and thoughts about this procrastination conflict, that I myself was pretty much in a pretty big bout of procrastination before recording this particular episode. I do not know what it was. It was maybe the topic.

Dr. Christine Li [00:03:39]:
Maybe it was I don't know, the time of year, the end of summer. It was maybe the heat. I don't know. But I was having a lot of difficulty, even though I was prepared with the content. I was having so much difficulty just settling my nervous system down, getting in that zone and saying, you know what, Christine? It's okay to press record. I finally did, and I'm happy to show up every week to share these ideas with you. So let's get going with my ideas about what to do and how to think about the situation when you feel stuck and you know you need to get stuff done. So the first idea that I have for you is that you need to learn how to embrace your discomfort as if it were a friend of yours.

Dr. Christine Li [00:04:30]:
So I think that's pretty clear just on the surface, but I'll go into a little more detail. I think we just have to get braver. We have to get familiar with the habit of feeling our discomfort, feeling that we don't wanna approach things, and then deciding, I'm not gonna avoid this thing just because I feel like it's going to make me uncomfortable, or if it is already making me uncomfortable. We need to decide that we're gonna stick with our goal instead of reading our feelings all the time. Because our feelings can be, first of all, inaccurate. And second of all, our feelings can really take up so much of our time when they cause us to avoid the things that we actually have decided we want done. So instead of trying to review everything, every story, and do all the things instead of your goal, Stick with the goal instead and decide, you know what? This may be a little bit uncomfortable, but I'm gonna get the win anyway. I'm going to get to the finish line.

Dr. Christine Li [00:05:41]:
I'm going to create this book chapter. I'm going to record a podcast episode. I'm gonna end up feeling better despite the discomfort that I'm feeling right now. So the next time you get this twinge, oh, I'm feeling uncomfortable, decide for yourself, I'm definitely not going to run. Instead, I'm going to try to explore, what is this feeling trying to tell me? Instead of avoiding the discomfort, use it as a little bit of a compass. It's like a personal compass for what's going on with you and showing you the way forward, actually. Sometimes fear is really just a signal that things are really important for you. And sometimes when you decide, oh, I hate this.

Dr. Christine Li [00:06:30]:
I don't wanna do this, it is a demonstration, perhaps, of the opposite is something that you do want. So don't discard the things that you feel uncomfortable with. Just decide, I'm gonna make the most out of this. I'm gonna read this situation like a master, and I'm gonna get the win no matter what. Alright? And I'm gonna expand on this point a little bit with this second idea, which is that we really wanna understand the feelings that come up when we find ourself in this stuck position, stuck in quotes. If you're watching me on video, you will see my fingers moving in the quote position. So when we feel stuck, what emotions come up for you? Right? When you feel stuck, what is happening for you? And when I was preparing for this episode, I decided to write down a whole list of feelings that I know I can associate with the feeling of feeling stuck, and the emotions just started rolling. I created so many in an instant.

Dr. Christine Li [00:07:41]:
So I came up with these emotions first, sadness, frustration, desire, impotence, fear, and more, of course. And, of course, all of these feelings don't just happen 1 by 1. Sometimes they come at us all at the same time and they can coexist at the same time. So feeling stuck is not just this nebulous feeling that we have. It's actually made up of thoughts and feelings and experiences. So decide for yourself. Instead of just getting tanked or sunk by the decision that you feel stuck, you're gonna get curious. You're gonna decide, I wanna figure out what feelings are coming up for me now, and I wanna find out what is this emotional landscape that I'm dealing with.

Dr. Christine Li [00:08:39]:
What does that play for me now, and what can I learn from this information? What is it queuing me into? What do I need to know about myself so that I can make the most out of my choices, out of my actions, out of my decisions, and know that your body is just trying to support you. So if you a 100% believe that, which you should, then you can believe that every feeling is just, like I said before, a little bit of your compass. It's a little bit of your map forward. So make sure to keep your map close. Don't run, and just get confident. Get confident as you learn to be a master of these feelings. Okay. Now on to the next idea, which is that we want to learn to commit to what we're doing.

Dr. Christine Li [00:09:39]:
We want to learn to commit to one thing at a time, and that will help us to avoid being in that conflict situation. Now conflict, I should explain, is just a simple situation. Conflict, of course, doesn't feel simple all the time, but conflict just means that we have 2 different thoughts or feelings about the same thing. So let's say let's give you an example. Let's say you have to go to the grocery store, but you don't want to. So a is I want to go to the grocery store, and b is I don't wanna go to the grocery store. Right? A is that, you know, you need the food, but b is you don't wanna move your butt off the couch. So the conflict is there.

Dr. Christine Li [00:10:31]:
Right? Because you have 2 different ideas about the same need, the need to get the food. And so my tip here is just to say make the decision one way or the other. Choose a or choose b. Doing so will be better than staying in the conflict area, and that is doing nothing but feeling like you're doing something, like pretending like you're doing something by staying in the conflict. The conflict is just pure procrastination. It's that state where time starts to float away from you, where you start to not think clearly, where you start to feel a little bit lazy, where you start to wonder what is going on, and why is this feeling so difficult for me? So my advice is to choose a or b. And mind you, b is the option where you literally do nothing, but I'm trying to teach you here that getting 100% behind that choice is gonna be better than you staying in the conflict area, because staying in the conflict essentially traps you, and it traps your energy, and it blocks you from having any pathway to move forward because your brain is trying to work out, what do you want? Right? Do you wanna move or do you not wanna move? And if you stay in that in between zone, you're not gonna get very far. You're not gonna get many results to celebrate.

Dr. Christine Li [00:11:59]:
You're not gonna feed yourself, and you may never move off that couch. So I want you to get a win somehow. So decide, I'm gonna get behind my choices no matter what they are because they're my choices, and this is my road ahead. Okay. The next idea that I have for you is to practice patience with yourself. If you followed my work and my messaging for a long time or even a little bit, you know that I really prioritize treating yourself in the kindest way. I think that's the only way, sometimes, that we stand a chance against stress and pressure and self criticism and other people criticizing us. If we don't treat ourself with kindness, then we're just gonna buy into everybody's negativity or the situation that's happening or an accidental mistake, we're gonna believe, you know, I'm terrible.

Dr. Christine Li [00:13:02]:
I'm not worthy of anything. So you wanna have this baseline that you're always deserving of kindness and patience with yourself. And that when you treat yourself with kindness and patience, you're just gonna grow from there because you are treating yourself like a little seedling that is a beautiful flower ready to sprout. It just needs some time and some care and the right environment and some wonderful sunlight. So treat yourself like someone who deserves care, who deserves time to work things through and has faith that everything is going to work out. So back to being patient with yourself. When you try to bulldoze through things like I'm just going to get this done, even though I'm just hating this or I'm really resistance or I really wanna run away from this. Sometimes we miss out on the process.

Dr. Christine Li [00:14:04]:
Right? And I've been taught by so many different teachers and coaches that it's not really about the reward. It's about your journey to that reward. And although I spoke a couple minutes ago about getting the reward and enjoying the reward, I do also wanna be one of those coaches that tells you, you know, it's all about the journey. It really is. So allow yourself to go slowly when you need to. Allow yourself to get frustrated with yourself if you need to, but then unpack that and return yourself to that feeling of safety where you are treating yourself kindly, where you're learning, where you're growing on this path and in this particular journey, and allow that patience that you're giving yourself to be the foundation of what you're growing into. Right? It is a beautiful flower. You are a beautiful project in play, in development.

Dr. Christine Li [00:15:08]:
So what is shifting within you when you're making this particular journey? You need to be patient with yourself to really allow those lessons and those stories to sink in so that you can learn about yourself as you're being productive. Okay? So remember, be patient with yourself. The next idea that I wanna share with you is that there may be historical events at play. By that, I mean, that's just a fancy way of saying you've got some hang ups, That there may be things that happened earlier on in your life where you developed a story about yourself. It may have been that you made a big mistake in math class in 5th grade, like I did. That's a real story, by the way. And you decided, I'm just gonna make the rest of this up, that because you didn't understand about how zeros worked in multiplication of tens. Like, the example that I didn't understand in 5th grade was when you add a 0 to 10, it becomes 100.

Dr. Christine Li [00:16:19]:
It's like a shortcut for multiplying these numbers. Right? And so that story was a core memory, but a memory that basically ended there. It's it was just stunning because I was the only kid in that class who didn't get that quickly. So if I were to extend that example to mean I am someone who never gets things on the first try, imagine the kind of damage that could have caused me. Imagine how much more reluctant I might have been the next time somebody was trying to teach me something a little bit complicated, whether it be math or English or history, statistics, psychology, whatever. Because I would have this little invisible wall up guarding me from having to feel the fear or the embarrassment or the shame of not being someone who gets things very quickly. Right? And I do think, by the way, that each of us has strengths in this way. Like, some of us get things really quickly, and some of us don't.

Dr. Christine Li [00:17:30]:
But we don't want them this this is back to that patience idea that I just spoke to you about, that if we're gonna get hung up about any one of these things about ourselves, we're gonna set up these invisible walls that cause us to feel not in flow, that cause us to hesitate, that cause us to lose time when our brain might otherwise magically immediately process information for us and really help us. So that's what I mean by historical barriers. You want to decide for yourself. The next time an old story comes into view, starts to interrupt your good functioning as an adult, you wanna pause and say, you know, what was it about that 5th grade math situation? Or what was it about that time that my family moved and I felt terrified going to the new school? I wanna look at that story a little more closely as an adult in my zone of safety, so that this story doesn't keep tripping me up as an adult because there's no reason for it to do that anymore. I'm ready to let that story go. And I think the fact that you even care to listen to this particular podcast, Make Time For Success, means that you care about your future. It means you care about the quality of your performance. And I do believe that also indicates that you might be curious about any old stories that you're dragging into your adulthood that might be innocently that may be the wrong term, but we'll say innocently tripping you up.

Dr. Christine Li [00:19:17]:
You're not meaning to trip yourself up or to feel frustrated or afraid of doing new things, but these old stories might be slowing you down. So take the time, get some coaching if you need it, get some therapy if you need to resume therapy, or go to your therapist and say, listen. I listened to doctor Li today, and she reminded me of this story that happened at Great Adventure Amusement Park when I was a 6th grader. And you just wanna talk that stuff through. And when you do that, that tends to lessen the power that these stories hold over us, and it might take a few rounds of this talking business to get the power fully out of your system, but it will be worth it because you'll be that much more empowered, that much freer to just make your choices, get your commitment set, and then move forward. Okay. Moving on. This is the last point that I have to share with you.

Dr. Christine Li [00:20:19]:
You wanna step into your full power. This is probably my favorite of all of these tips today. You wanna decide for yourself. I'm feeling stuck right now in this particular conflict situation, but I always have this tool in my back pocket. I have this tool of deciding to refer to my higher self. What would my most powerful, most wise, most equipped higher self do in this situation? How would I think? How would I feel? How would I strategize? How would I process this situation? And how would I use my power if I were that higher version of myself. And mind you, you don't have to think of yourself in the future because that higher self version of you already exists in you, if you can believe that. Just wrap your head around that idea that we're always all of us are aiming for certain goals.

Dr. Christine Li [00:21:30]:
Right? We all have goals of some kind, whether it's to be healthier, smarter, faster, a better cook, whatever. I keep mentioning cooking on this podcast, But whatever it is, you've already set that as your destination. So you've already created that higher level version of yourself, and there is, of course, different levels of wisdom within you that you can access. You just have to kind of pause and do that. Right? It's either your intuition kicking up that information and helping you out, remembering those old stories to help you as you're listening to this episode, but you can also actively decide, you know what? I'm gonna kick myself into higher self mode and say, you know, if I weren't afraid, if I weren't trying to run from this situation, if I actually was very patient with myself and willing to let go of old patterns of ways that I've been dealing with these kinds of situations in the past, what would I come up with? What brilliant idea do I have just ready to come to the surface? Let's go search for that. Alright? So that's what I mean by stepping into your full power. And I hope at the end of this episode, which we've come to, that you decide that it is worth your time. It is worth your energy.

Dr. Christine Li [00:22:57]:
It is worth your focus to operate in your full power as best as you can, as often as you can. So get out of that conflict. If you're in it right now, get unstuck. Let me know what's going on. If you care to share, just DM me on Instagram. I'm at procrastination coach, and let's have fun. Instead of resisting and being all nervous about everything, let's get comfortable with our feelings. Let's do the things we are meant to do, and let's have a whole bunch more fun.

Dr. Christine Li [00:23:34]:
We're gonna do this all together. I'm so grateful we're on this journey with each other. Thank you so much for listening to each episode on the Make Time For Success podcast, everyone that you can have time for. And if you're needing a little more assistance with getting unstuck, I've created a free download for you as a companion to this episode, and it should be very helpful to help you work out some of the questions you have within yourself, some of the feelings, some of the old stories. I have different prompts for you on this worksheet. All you need to do to get this worksheet is go to https://maketimeforsuccesspodcast.com/unstuck. Go to https://maketimeforsuccesspodcast.com/unstuck to get that free worksheet, and I will see you next week. Take care.

Dr. Christine Li [00:24:34]:
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, 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.

Dr. Christine Li [00:25:16]:
I'd love to hear all about how you're making time for success. Talk to you soon.