How To Trick Your Brain to Stop Procrastinating

Summary

• Procrastination is not a sign that something is wrong with you or the task; it's a lack of self-management skills.
• Anxiety is a primary reason for procrastination. Assess if completing a task now will make your future easier. Chunk tasks to reduce anxiety.
• To overcome anxiety about a task, develop a framework that breaks the task into small steps that you can accomplish over time.
• Give yourself plenty of buffer time for tasks that provoke anxiety to allow for changes and unexpected events.
• Some people procrastinate due to a rebellious nature against authority. Acknowledge this tendency and act in your own interest regardless.
• Ask yourself if avoiding a task helps or hinders achieving your goals, despite aversion to authority.
• Boredom is a form of procrastination when a task is not stimulating. Seek tasks aligned with long-term goals despite short-term mundanity.
• To combat boredom, create shorter feedback loops for intermittent reinforcement and recruit friends or a spouse for support.
• Introduce external reinforcements such as praise or rewards to maintain engagement in less exciting, yet important tasks.
• When deciding between multiple options, list the upsides and downsides—and what would happen if the worst-case scenario came true.
• Taking action, regardless of whether it's the perfect choice, will often lead to a solution or progress more quickly than inaction.
• If your procrastination stems from perfectionism or fear of failure, change your focus from past failures to current actions.
• Set a reward for yourself after completing a challenging task, such as going for a walk with your dog, to create an incentive to finish it.
• Theme your days to improve productivity and establish clear communication with your team about when and how you're available.
• Teaching your team how to manage your time and their requests can help preserve your themed days and overall efficiency.
• View your time as your most important resource and protect it by training others in how to engage with you effectively.
• Instead of continuing to procrastinate after consuming content on procrastination, take immediate action on the task you've been avoiding.

Video

How To Take Action

I would suggest starting with breaking down big, scary tasks into smaller steps. Think about something big you've been avoiding and write out each step to make it doable. For example, if you're scared of making a business presentation, outline it first, then create the intro, and so on.

Give yourself "buffer time" for tasks that make you anxious. If you need to do something that causes stress, plan to finish it way before the due date. This way, if something goes wrong, you have extra time to fix it.

Remember to act in your own interest, even if you don't like being told what to do. If you feel rebellious against authority, ask yourself, "Does avoiding this task help me reach my goals?" Do what's best for you, no matter the source of the instruction.

To deal with boredom, find ways to make routine tasks more exciting. You could set quicker goals or work with friends or family. For example, if doing paperwork is boring, reward yourself after each section you complete. If your spouse encourages you after you work on your project, you'll feel better about it.

When you have too many options, list the pros and cons for each choice. Think about if you'd be okay if the worst happens. Taking action, even if it's not perfect, will help you learn and grow faster than doing nothing.

If you're avoiding something because you want it to be perfect or fear failing, focus on the action you can take right now. Set a nice reward after you finish a hard task. For example, go for a walk with your dog after you've completed something challenging.

Theme your days to stay productive. Let people know how to approach you with their needs. Teach them to respect your themed days. Your time is super valuable, so show others how to work with you effectively.

Finally, stop putting off tasks after learning about procrastination. Choose one thing you've been avoiding and start it right now. Small, steady steps can lead to big improvements in your business and personal growth.

Quotes by Leila Hormozi

"Getting yourself to do something when you don't want to do it is a skill in itself"

– Leila Hormozi

"The reason that you procrastinate is because you lack skill, not because there's something wrong with you"

– Leila Hormozi

"Anxiety is almost 200% of the reason I don't do things"

– Leila Hormozi

"Procrastination isn't any practical problem, it is an emotional problem"

– Leila Hormozi

"You can control how you behave"

– Leila Hormozi

Full Transcript

are you procrastinating right now maybe you're even watching this video procrastinating by watching this video on procrastination today I'm going to help you understand the three main reasons why you procrastinate and what you can do about it at the end I'm actually going to jump into real conversations with people from my audience live to talk about how to stop procrastinating getting yourself to do something when you don't want to do it is a skill in itself the reason that you procrastinate is because you lack skill not because there's something wrong with you not because there's something wrong with the thing you need to do at hand but because you're lack fundamental skills of managing yourself cuz let's be honest youve probably put it in your calendar you probably put it on your to-do list probably avoided it didn't do it thought about how much you didn't want to do it thought about you could do something else instead thought about how you should do something else instead and then done something else instead procrastination isn't any practical problem it is an emotional problem my friend Dr cashy introduced me to this and he calls it the three-headed monster of procrastination so let's dive into them so the first of the three-headed monster is anxiety so for me I don't know about you but anxiety is almost too 200% of the reason I don't do things and I can tell you personally this is one I have probably dealt with the most and so what it means is that the thought of doing something or the action of starting to do the thing makes you feel anxious and so then you avoid doing the thing this actually was really relevant for me because about 3 years ago now I'd never made a piece of content in my life I had accumulated a net worth of $100 million I think we done at that point 130 million in sales and I still felt terrified to make content about business I would draft up the YouTube videos I would write the tweets and then every time it came to actually hitting post I would just stop my fear of posting content got stronger and stronger my anxiety continued to elevate my brain was saying all these different things it was like one this is not your job LEL you don't need to post content just go like run the business like you've been doing people are to talk it's going to be really uncomfortable who wants to listen to a woman talk about business the reason I wasn't making content wasn't because of those thoughts but it was because of the anxiety that came with those thoughts so to get out of the discomfort I avoided doing the thing I have learned to ask myself series of questions to help myself remember the long-term benefits of doing things that provoke anxiety in the short term the first one I ask myself is is this going to make my life easier or harder in the long term if I do it today and most of the time when I think about it I'm like it's going to make my life easier if I do it today not long ago when someone asked me to speak on stage in front of 5,000 people and I was like oh my God I'm so busy I have so much to do but then I was like will this make my life easier or harder and I was like well does future Leila do presentations in front of thousands and thousands of people yeah she does if I do it now it's going to make it easier for me in the future cuz the next time someone comes to me maybe it's a group of 20,000 people it's going to feel even harder to say yes the second question I ask myself is Leila gaining the skill of speaking in front of thousands of people a good thing well yes I see tons of benefits to that then you have to figure out what committed action am I going to take from here on out in the beginning when I would try to do something new I would just sit there and I would just stare huge amount of the anxiety came from feeling like I didn't know if I was doing it right the reason that we want help when we're starting anything we want more certainty we want our brains to set settle down and say like I think I know what might happen so I went to somebody who I knew that was good at it and that happen to be my husband Alex and so I said can you share your framework with me and for the first 6 months of making content from that day forward I used his framework to make the content so what it helped me do was actually get started a lot of the times the things that cause us anxiety are things that we think that we have to take this giant leap now when I've learned that if I develop a framework that breaks a large task down into small steps I'm much more likely to be able to do it one it's easier to work on over a longer period of time if you just sit down and you just say like start the presentation you have to go from zero to entire presentation done and presenting in like a day but the reality is if you break it down to small steps and you're able to work on each step thoroughly then you're going to also desensitize yourself to the situation and then also most likely be more prepared for it the way I like to do that is I like to chunk time that I dedicate towards the thing I'm going to make space for the thing the second thing I'm going to do is I'm going to break it down into small steps and then the third thing I'm going to do is I'm going to always in anticipate that things will go wrong things might change or other things are going to get in the way or an emergency might pop up during the time you're supposed to work on something I provide myself with way more buffer time when I'm doing something that provokes anxiety that I haven't been able to do before and so what that looks like is I will always for example when I'm making a presentation that's causing anxiety I'll make sure that I have it done two weeks ahead of time because I know that if I really don't like something in the presentation two weeks is plenty of time for me to change it before I have to go on stage the second of the three-headed monster of why people don't get done is rebellious some people I'm saying myself some people don't respond well to Authority or to others telling them what to do when somebody says go left some people just want to go right so it's funny because a lot of the times you know we feel like I'm doing the opposite I want to do what I want to do it's like well maybe what's best for you is also what's what they suggested and there's nothing wrong with that an example of this for me that really made it real was that during Co I owned a company called gym launch and our entire customer base was all gym owners at that time people weren't allowed to be in person working out and so we had to Pivot and teach gyms how to fulfill their contractual obligations to their customers online and when we did that pivot so many of the gyms just wouldn't do it I remember talking to a select group of them and realizing on the call that they simply didn't want to do it because it felt imposed upon them it didn't feel like it was their choice by rebelling we like to think that oh I'm showing this person they have no influence over me but they do have influence in fact they have influence over you to go in the opposite direction so if this resonates for you ask yourself this question does putting off this task help or hurt me in terms of getting to my goal at the end of the day you cannot control every thought that runs for your mind you cannot control every feeling that gets provoked but you can control how you behave but just understanding that you have an aversion to Authority and when somebody in an authoritative situation asks you to do something whether it benefits you or not you like to reject it and guess what that's okay we just need to accept it and then make ourselves aware enough of it that we can feel gross about it and still act in our benefit no matter what and it's the same recurring theme as you see with anxiety which is like you can can still do the thing while having that feeling present that you don't like you can still act in accordance with your goals even while feeling like I don't like that I'm doing what this person wants me to do the third head of the three-headed monster is bordedom so what this means is that the task that you're working on you don't feel excited about meaning you're not getting reinforcement from it you feel bored your mind wanders you want to avoid doing the thing because it's not exciting it doesn't provide you with enough feedback this is fairly typical especially in companies you'll see like lots of people want to take on new projects right but they can't even stick with getting their daily tasks done because the new projects are more exciting and more stimulating than the tasks that they need to do on a daily basis I think this is really relevant for business owners in sales so a lot of times people ask why is it that this salesperson can't transition to being a sales manager well let's think about how much feedback a salesperson's getting you know every day they're closing sales they're seeing money in an account they're getting great job amazing good work there's a very fast feedback cycle and there's a lot of it and then when you move into being a sales manager I think it's much less of a hard skills discrepancy and more of a soft skills discrepancy which is learning how to delay reward and gratification so you move into a job where suddenly you don't make money except for on a quarterly basis where you get bonus off of what other people sell suddenly nobody's telling you every day that you've done a good job suddenly you're only talking to your team you're not talking to customers anymore think about all of what you lose when you when you leave sales and go to a Sales Management role that's why you'll probably hear whenever you have a Salesman that has to get back in the saddle they're like man it feels good to be back in the saddle it's like well what feels good what feels good is that you're missing all those rewards you were getting a lot of times the reason I think people can't move up is because what they're currently doing is actually more rewarding than continuing to move up in the company things that are very important and pay really well like doing financial analysis learning how to build a pipeline properly fitting a CRM you know getting a company audit ready all incredibly valuable but also slow feedback loops and not a lot of reinforcement from others it's the same reason why people have a hard time time losing weight which is because the things that you do to lose and keep off the weight are boring drink more water eat more protein eat less calories walk and work out that's not exciting but if you do a fad diet where you basically starve yourself you're eating these weird nutrients these interesting vitamins they're telling you to do water cleans of this it's like exciting there's movement there's feedback the reason I would say more people succeed when they have a coach for example is because they're getting feedback they're getting reinforcement same when people do it with their friends feedback and reinforcement right versus if you're doing it alone you don't have a coach you're not measuring anything you know you just create this situation in which your environment is working against you and so people end up quitting now in that situation I think there's a lot more you can do to make it more exciting so that you do get faster feedback and you don't have to do that but a lot of people like over a long enough time Horizon it makes sense with people's lives that they don't have a coach 24/7 and they're not constantly working out with their friends so if you feel like you're not able to achieve your goals because you're procrastinating them due to boredom the first question I would ask myself is is this the best thing for me to be working on in the shortterm and longterm often times when we're working on something exciting it's good for us in the shortterm but not leading to our long-term goal and often times when we're dealing with boredom it's good for us in the long term but in the short term it's not very incentivizing and so what I like to say is cool okay is this aligned with the longterm yes then what can we do to make it more exciting in the short term which leads to the second question I asked how do I give myself more intermittent reinforcement to keep myself engaged on this task intermittent reinforcement is creating shorter feedback loops so for example somebody was trying to lose weight in a year maybe you've lost 20 lb but what do you do to keep yourself engaged while you lose .5 lb one pound not even a pound this week can we recruit two of your friends to come to the gym with you can we do at home workouts where you invite your friends and you put a little garage set up together I think the best person that you can get to help reinforce you so that you can get yourself to stick to good habits is a spouse you know ask them to high five you every time you go to the gym ask them to tell you great job every time you eat something healthy so for example while Alex was writing his book $100 million leads he was writing it for 2 years nobody was reading it nobody was seeing the work he was doing he was working 6 hours a day every day on this book and it felt punishing because there was no reward he's not seeing anybody read it he's not getting any feedback so I made a conscious effort to try and support him encourage him leave him little notes tell him how proud I was of him every day and tie it to his long-term goal I was like I'm so proud of you for working on that book 6 hours a day every day this week because you're going to write an amazing book that's going to change people's life every day trying to reinforce my to him that what he was working on was good it was good quality it was a great book and it was going to lead to his long-term goal I think the strongest sources of reinforcement that we can have are the people around us so recruit the people around you to help you while you're trying to achieve your long-term goals and you'll be much more likely to stick with it creating more engaging situations in the in between is how you create that reinforcement so if it is in line with your long-term goals then finding ways to make it more reinforcing in the short term this is why for example companies have short-term and long-term term compensation it's like we're paying people they're getting a paycheck every week and then we're also going to give them a long-term goal where maybe we're going to tie them in with the success of the company cuz it's best for it the short term and the long term hopefully you guys are liking this video so far and it doesn't completely suck if you're still watching now I'm going to go ahead and bring in people from my audience live to talk to them about procrastination what's up Evan my question is how do you kill procrastination that stems from the paralysis by analysis effect when really everything in front of you kind of looks like it would be a viable and profitable option like just for some contacts I run a sem agency and we're kind of just deciding like do we go into paid ads do we go into cold email because we don't want to spread ourselves too thin we're very very new it's a partner and I don't have the budget to do all of them or don't have the time budget to do all of them so pretty much we haven't done anything in two months because of that understood so really it's you're putting off making the decision out of fear that it's the wrong one that it that's right do you have a way that you make a decision besides how you feel about something or what you're thinking no pretty much it's just that which kind of gets into that feedback loop of yeah you know this is the right one I think there's a few things that you can do okay so the first one is that whenever I'm making a decision in business actually probably anywhere in my life um I like to write things down I like to put them in a chart because a lot of the times we make decisions based off of previous experiences that might not have anything to do with this experience or off of how we feel feel about something which feelings have not often as much evidence as we'd like but it's basically like I'll put the decision I have to make and then it's like cool here's the options I have I have options 1 two and three and then I'm going to ask myself what's the upside what's the downside of Route 1 2 3 and then if I made this decision and the worst case scenario did happen would I still be okay with it many times in business there's a lot of risk mitigation like it's not making one amazing decision that's going to make your business grow it's making sure that you don't make a stupid decision all the options you've got let's say that you just eat on all of them which one would you pick yeah Emil I mean we'll burn five grand the max if we don't do it right and that's pretty much it reframe this you are trying out cold email you're not like we're not like this is the new direction of the business like we're going to try it like you know if you try it doesn't work you just do something else if it was irreversible it would be justifiable to say it took 2 months to make this decision ision but it's not irreversible at all and if it is reversible then you don't need to take 2 months I have always found that even if I choose the wrong thing taking action will always get me to a solution and usually the solution faster than not so like in the last 2 months you would have already known if cold email would have worked or not and you would have already if it didn't probably transitioned to like paid ads you would have learned more and gained more skills in the last two months if you had already made the decision yeah that uh well that made a decision in my head for everything and that's going to be I love it hi Callie Hello nice to see you so tell me what was your question I'll set aside time blocks and things to measure my productivity and I'll even like write down I worked on this for so long but my problem is whenever I am in that time block and working on what I need to work on I am not actually finalizing it I'm just working on perfecting and being a perfectionist and it never actually gets finalized M so you're aware that you're doing it but you continue to do it yes and uh I do believe it Sims from fear of not wanting my business to fall off again like I did over the summer so I understand why you're probably putting things off and wanting to feel like you're getting everything perfect before it's done I think that's super normal the question for me is like okay so those are the circumstances you have what's the goal with your business right now like where are you and where do you want to get to literally just get my ideal clients would you say okay let let's contextualize it get your ideal clients and make enough income so you don't need to go back to the 9 to5 yes yeah so then the times when you put that thing on your calendar block right what happens when you see it and you're not able to get something done I start kind of beating myself up I'm like you're falling into this pit again you know and I'm I'm telling myself well I'm sitting here and I'm spending the time working on it but I'm never actually completing it and getting it done cuz I'm working on like the tiny details and like trying to make everything perfect okay so here's what I want to ask you is we do things because we get a benefit from doing them not completing your work also has to have a benefit otherwise you wouldn't keep doing that so what's the benefit what good do you get out of procrastinating like really think about it what good right after you procrastinate what happens is it relief of anxiety is it that you put off something that scares you like I want you to think about what that is it it is from the fear of of getting back into that rut that I was in in the summer when I let it fall off cuz I got I got to a bad point here's what I think would be helpful for you I want you to stop referring to what happened this summer because you can't control the past girl like you can't do anything about what happened this summer but what we do often as people and I'm guilty of this I used to do it to myself is I used to use the past as a reason for why I'm behaving in a nonpr way in the present and so what we want to do is like let's look at the situation objectively you put something in your calendar and commit to getting it done something happens some thought or feeling doesn't matter either way you don't get it done if you had no fear and you didn't even have the memory of what happened this summer what would you do like what would a person do who didn't have that fear or memory in that moment when that's on their calendar get it done they would get get the done yeah yeah the only thing preventing you it is not in your head it's not these feelings it's your behavior get out of your head and get into your behaviors how can you create an environment where it makes it easier to get it done or how can you put something in place so that the moment that you get it done you get give yourself a reward I want you to put something so that if you commit to the task and you stay there and you sit in your seat until you get it done that you have something at the end of that reward yourself with what's something that you like uh I I like going on walks with my dog honestly okay so that's great so here's what we do you do not go on a walk with your dog until you complete the task so the reward for completing this is that you're going to go on and walk with your dog disengage from the mental drama why you feel a certain way about getting work done or not it doesn't matter but we can create an environment where it makes it more rewarding to get the work done and you put contingencies in place and I think that would be really helpful for you yeah I think so too that helps so much hey Carrie hi the network what's that is that your business yes the network we are a real estate consulting firm that empowers women to build their Financial Freedom through real estate investing that's badass I like it so tell me what was on your mind how do we or I specifically uh chunk or batch our work to maximize days weeks for productivity if you have a hard time switching between tasks like yes then I think theming your days is the best thing you can do the hard part though is not that that's not where anybody struggles in fact everyone that I know puts on the theme of their day at like the top of their calendar and they're like I'm going to do it and then they're like oh wait but what about when this happens or when this person needs right and so I think that the best thing that you can do is one let your team know I think a lot of times we we do these things to manage ourselves but we don't realize that like you own the business right right and you train people how to treat you and your time is truly the most important resource in this business right now especially if your business is smaller so I think the first thing is communicating to your team here's how I'm going to be theming these things in terms of things that are needed on a day-to-day hour by hour basis here's how I want to handle them so what that means is that when someone comes to you Carrie they're not saying Carrie I need help with this thing do you have time they're bringing you and saying Carrie I've tried to do X Y and Z and I've come to a point where I realize that I need help I'm proposing three solutions I'm going to put them on your assana board and when you get time could you tell me which solution you think is best given the situation so it's like theming your days then communicating to your team that why those days are themed and that your time is very important and then also communicating with your team how you need to be communicated with to get the best out of you because just like you learn how to manage your team you have to teach them how to manage you yeah and they're they're just guessing and they're probably terrified of you because you seem amazing and very nice and very friendly but nonetheless you are founder and CEO it's a very scary title if you place more importance on your time being allocated in the right places and protecting it you will do right by the business yes I want to look at my calendar and not feel overwhelmed anxiety how the heck are we going to do all this right so that's that's really what I'm looking for and I'm I'm going to take you up on the suggestion for sure yeah and the last thing I'll say is just like if you don't say no to something who's going to for sure so normally at the end of these videos I tell you hey go watch this other video that's related to this I think it's really going to help but if you're watching this video and you've watched all the way through instead I'd like you just go do the thing that you've been putting off and get aead started doing that