How To Beat Procrastination.
This week’s question is on defeating the habit of procrastination (and I have some rather brutal truths to reveal). You can subscribe to this podcast on: Podbean | Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Spotify | TUNEIN Links: Email Me | Twitter | Facebook | Website | Linkedin The Time Blocking Course The Working With… Weekly Newsletter The Time And Life Mastery Course The FREE Beginners Guide To Building Your Own COD System Carl Pullein Learning Centre Carl’s YouTube Channel Carl Pullein Coaching Programmes The Working With… Podcast Previous episodes page Episode 233 | Script Hello and welcome to episode 233 of the Working With Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host for this show. Procrastination ah the bane of all productive wannabes. No matter how motivated you are when you retire for the night to have a productive day the next day, that pernicious procrastinator steals the day, and you find you’ve achieved very little, but you know how everyone of your friends on Instagram are doing, and you can talk about all the funny videos you saw on Tick Tock as if you were a professor of the subject. But what is procrastination, and why do we do it? Those are two questions we need to answer before we can start helping move anyone away from those dark depths to a more brighter, focused and productive light. Now, to kick start things off and before the Mystery Podcast Voice reveals the question, let’s look at the definition of procrastination: “Procrastination is the action of unnecessarily and voluntarily delaying or postponing something despite knowing that there will be negative consequences for doing so. “ Now I want to give you another definition. That of self-discipline: “the ability to make yourself do things you know you should do even when you do not want to” Now the way I see procrastination is that it is the near opposite of self-discipline. Yet, no one wants to admit that—particularly procrastinators. The truth is is a little more complex than that, but it is a good starting point because these definitions can give us some clues on how to defeat procrastination. Okay, with that part done, let me hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week’s question. This week’s question comes from Len. Let asks, hi Carl, I’ve been in full-time employment for over twenty years now, and I’ve always wanted to be more productive, but I’ve always failed. I’m never doing things that are important, instead I do the unimportant stuff. I think I am what some people call a “serial procrastinator”. Have you any ideas you could share that will help an old procrastinator like me stop? Hi Len, thank you for your question and for being so honest. Firstly, let’s deal with the “I’ve always failed” part of your question. Failure is not a finish line in itself unless you make it so by quitting. Failure is an education. Whenever you fail at anything, you learn something—if nothing else, you learn what doesn’t work so you can start again with a different strategy. Failure has nothing to do with you as a person; failure at anything informs you what skills are missing, so you next time you try to can build those skills and strengths, so you don’t fail again. I remember the first full marathon I attempted. I failed. I dropped out at mile 18. I just couldn’t go another step further. I was devastated. I thought there must be something wrong with me. But a little voice inside me said, this was only my first attempt, and I learned that I needed to set off slower and pace myself better, and I also needed to improve my strength and stamina on hills—you don’t run marathons around an athletics track. You run on streets, and they are rarely flat. With that information, I spent the next six months learning to pace myself properly and did a hill session every week. The next time I entered a marathon, I finished it—with