[00:00] If you ever find yourself putting off the work that you know that you need to do, but instead you find yourself busy checking email, busy scrolling social media, maybe you’re checking ESPN. com or going to get a cup of coffee or whatever it might be filling up your water bottle instead of doing the work, then this episode is for you.

[00:17] And I’m about to give you nine ways that you can beat procrastination and get to the important work so that you can reduce stress, reduce anxiety, feel more present when you’re at home with your family. And just feel that sense of accomplishment that comes with getting more work done so you can actually reap the benefits in your business and in your life.

[00:39] Welcome to another episode of Success the Athletic Minded Man. Real talk on harnessing your athletic drive for clarity, consistency, and focus in business and life. This is your host, Jim Harshaw, Jr. And today we’re talking about procrastination. We all do it. We all have to find ways to overcome it. Now, I’ve been coaching for almost a decade now, and I’ve taken hundreds of men through my program who said things like this.

[01:03] They said, This is John and John, if you’re listening, you know who you are. John said, I’ve seen and felt more personal change in myself in the past 10 weeks than any other period in my life. Now here’s one from Mark. Mark wrote a book, an amazing book. He’s actually a podcast guest here a couple of years ago.

[01:19] And Mark said, thanks for helping me bring my best self to this project. You helped me solve an enigma that I’ve been struggling with for the past five years. Not only did I tap into my personal greatness as I pursued this endeavor, I left a legacy for my children and grandchildren I will forever be indebted.

[01:35] We helped him overcome procrastination and get the book from inside of his head out into the world. And it’s an incredible book. It’s called Cognitive Dominance. A brain surgeon’s quest to out think fear, by the way. So check that out for sure. I want you to think back into your athletic life, right? This is for the athletic minded man.

[01:55] So I’m assuming you competed in sports at some level, high school, maybe even college. And if not, you certainly know what it’s like to be in the athletic world, right? There’s no real procrastination that takes place there. At least most of it is squeezed out. It’s wrung out by the infrastructure that is in place.

[02:12] Like when I was in college wrestling, there’s just like this conveyor belt. To getting stuff done, there are deadlines, there’s accountability. There are people creating the schedule for you and you just show up, right? The, the practices at a certain time every day, you just show up. The matches take place at a certain date and time.

[02:29] You just show up. You’re around a bunch of other people doing the same things. So there’s this force pushing you along. But when you’re in a role like me. Like mine, I’m a business owner, and I think probably a lot of you are business owners, or you may be in some kind of role where you eat what you kill.

[02:44] You’re self reliant on your own performance, and it is so easy to be a procrastinator. And, you know, I, shoot, recording this episode, I put like five of these tactics that I’m about to share with you, I put like five of them into place, like just, just in like the last two hours in my prep for this. I’ve put these in place.

[03:03] So I’m sharing, I’m practicing what I preach. I’m sharing with you the things that work for me. They work for my clients and they’re going to work for you. So first let’s define procrastination before I get into these nine tactics. Here’s the definition that I found on the internet. I think this is a really good definition.

[03:20] It’s the tendency to delay activities that have to be completed. Before a deadline, often despite knowing that there will be negative consequences for delaying them. There’s really two kinds of procrastination that I’ve come across in my research for this. Cause you know, I’ve been working on this stuff for years, but I still go in, I do the research, I prepare for this.

[03:37] And that’s where some of the procrastination can come in, right? Always trying to be more prepared and perfectionist and putting things off. But in the research I came out, this is the first time I’ve heard of this, these two concepts, but one called active and passive procrastination. Procrastination. So passive procrastination is when you’re doing it unconsciously.

[03:55] You’re putting something off. You had to find yourself playing video games or scrolling social media or checking ESPN. And then there’s active procrastination, which is putting something off like intentionally, because you can, you know, that you can get it done. You have the confidence that you can get it done.

[04:11] You work well under pressure and you’ll get that done. So for example, I I’m presenting actually by the time this publishes, by the time this airs, I will have already done it. I’m hosting a panel. For the Inc. 5, 000 awards in Virginia, Richmond, Virginia. And I know I have to prepare for that. I’ve done some prep already, but there’s an email that may need to send out and some final preps I need to do.

[04:30] I’m going to wait until a few days before to really start diving into that and really getting into it because I know I’m going to get it done. And, and I think it would be best to do that closer to the event. That’s. That’s active procrastination. I know I have to do it and I’m confident I’m going to get it done.

[04:46] And why do we do this? Why do we procrastinate actively or passively? Why do we do it? Let’s actually, let’s, let’s just focus on the passive procrastination. Cause that’s really the, the problematic one, active procrastination. No problem. You do it. I do it, but it’s really the passive procrastination, the unconscious stuff that really.

[05:02] That really is affecting your life and holding you back from all the success that you want, right? Whether it’s financial success, spending more time with your family, your wife, your kids, working out more, all of that. Why do we do it? Why do we procrastinate? There’s a dread there. There’s a fear there.

[05:19] There’s A big task that may take up your time and you might miss out on something else. Or here, here’s the procrastination that comes into play for hitting record. When I have to record a, an episode like this, is this going to be good enough? Like, is this going to measure up? I don’t want to sound stupid.

[05:36] Well, what am I missing? Like maybe if I did 10 more minutes of research, or maybe if I go through my notes one more time, I’ll nail this thing, but gosh, I don’t know if I’m ready. And I have to hit record before I’m ready. And this is the kind of thinking, unconscious thinking that holds us back. Right?

[05:55] It’s a fear of failure. Sometimes it’s caring too much. Sometimes it’s FOMO, fear of missing out, right? If I go deep into this big task, then what else am I missing? There’s all this mountain of other stuff that I’m supposed to be working on. So if I’m over here focused on this, what am I missing? There’s so many reasons, unconscious reasons.

[06:15] And so we have to find strategies to override that strategies that will help you to, to perform, to execute despite the fear, despite the hesitation, despite whatever unconscious mind games your mind is playing on you, we’ve got to find ways to overcome those. And that’s what I’m going to give you here today.

[06:38] I’m going to give you nine specific ways to overcome procrastination. Now here’s the deal. There’s one thing. One thing that makes all of this work, because none of this is going to work for you, unless you do this one thing, unless you start with this one thing, unless you understand this one concept.

[06:53] This underlies everything that I’ve talked about in this podcast for years. It underlies my entire coaching program. It is this. The Productive Pause. And if you’ve been listening for any time, you know the definition. The Productive Pause is this. It’s a short period of focused reflection around specific questions that leads to clarity of action and peace of mind.

[07:16] Clarity of action and peace of mind. Peace of mind. That is the catalyst that makes everything else possible. Listening to this episode will do you no good if you just listen to it and then roll right into my next episode or a prior episode or something like it. You have to stop and do a little bit of thinking about this, right?

[07:34] Even if you just hit pause at the end of the episode, speak out loud, think out loud, take a couple of notes, jot a couple of things down, and then move on. That short productive pause will help you get. You know, 90 or 95 percent of the value and the benefit out of executing these. Now I’m going to give you nine things.

[07:50] Some of these, maybe you already do. Maybe some of them you already have in place. There’s going to be some here that are going to be probably surprising to you and that you’re not really privy to and not something that you’ve not done before. And the last one, number nine actually is my favorite. So stick around to the end because this one is really, really important.

[08:06] All right. So let’s just get, I’m going to, roll through these pretty quickly. Make sure you grab the action plan, go to jimharshawjr.com/action. If you are in. The paid or premium group. So we have a premium group as well, but I’ve been talking about this paid group that we launched just a couple of months ago, a bunch of amazing guys in there sharing ideas, you’re getting my content.

[08:26] I have an entire seven day video course in there. It’s totally free, but also the action plans are going to be linked in that free community. It’s also in my premium community as well. That will be linked, uh, every week. So every time a new action plan comes up, if you’re in the free community, or if you’re on my email list, you’re getting these delivered right to you, easily accessible.

[08:47] All right. So the first one, number one is this before I give you the name of it, the, the sort of headline here, I want you to understand this. It is so important to have clear, achievable objectives. In my coaching framework, the first thing we help our clients do is get clear on what they want in their life.

[09:08] Clear on what the right goals are for you. So number one is goal setting. You actually have to do it. Listen, I know, you know, I know, I know you’ve heard this. This is not like some goal setting. How do you even spell that Jim? Like, no, I know, you know this, but are you doing it? And listen, if you’re one of my clients and you are not setting your micro goals, you’re missing the point.

[09:28] You have to set the goals, right? And this is for everybody. And if you’re not on the inside here, you don’t, maybe you don’t understand what a micro goal is. You can probably extrapolate what it might be, but you have to get clear on what the big long term vision is for your life, then you’re in your core values.

[09:43] Then your goals have very clearly defined goals. They’ve got to be written down. You have to be tracking them. Everybody says, Oh, you got to write goals down to, to make them really work. No, you have to track them. If you’re not tracking them, forget it. They’re a waste of your time. They’re going to collect dust up on a shelf and you’re not going to take action on.

[10:00] Okay. So number one is goal setting. Now, listen, there’s goal setting on the longterm scale, you know, next year, three years, five years. And on like the daily scale, these are the not even micro goals. Micro goals are monthly, the daily scale. This is like, what are your action items? All right. So I’m going to stop beating that horse.

[10:19] Cause you’ve heard me say it before and I have entire episodes on it and I have a seven day course waiting for you. Go to jimharshawjr.com/free. And there’s a whole seven day course that gets you started off on this. I’m going to stop there for now. You get it. You’ve got to take action on this.

[10:33] Here’s number two. You’ve got to prioritize. What do I mean by that? Okay, Jim, I get the term, but what do I actually do? Give me the blueprint. Okay, here’s one way to prioritize. Turn away from your desk at the beginning of your work day, before you open your email inbox or anything else, and just write down what are the three things I’ve got to do today to win the day.

[10:52] Like, what do I have to do to win the day? One, two, three. Right? Just three. Four is fine, five is fine, whatever. Pick a number. For me it’s three. Three is just that magic number. What are the three things you’ve got to do when you prioritize those? You’re going to be more likely to take action. If here’s the big challenge with procrastination, I sit down, you sit down and we go, okay, a hundred things to do here.

[11:19] I don’t know where to start. If I start on this one, then I’m not starting on those ones. All those ones are, you know, they’re the, my email inbox is piling up. And if I start on something over here, then there’s this other thing that’s, that’s piling up behind me. So let me check ESPN. You know, I haven’t checked my phone for a while.

[11:32] I get a check, see if my wife texted me. Well, if you prioritize. You know where to start. You know where step one is, and you can take that. If you don’t know, if you don’t define step one today, you will not do it. Okay. That’s number two. Number one’s goal setting. Number two is prioritization. Number three, accountability.

[11:54] I talked about that infrastructure that you had when you were playing sports. Someone else Told you where to be, when to be there. And if you didn’t, you didn’t show up, your ass is on the line. Coach made you run laps or you didn’t get to start that weekend or your teammates shunned you, whatever it was, there’s accountability.

[12:11] There’s accountability and athletes have that, right? Uh, I have a friend who his whole business. Is doing something that we call these, these deep work sessions. We used to do these with my program and we should probably bring these back. Actually like once a week, we would have a one hour block where people would show up, it’s just a zoom call.

[12:32] And at the beginning of the zoom call, you would state what you’re working on. You work on it for one hour, no email, no checking your cell phone, nothing else, just focusing. It was great. People would get so much work done. And I have a friend who literally. I want, I’m pretty sure another friend of mine who is friends with him, uh, said he makes like six figures a month and that that’s all he does.

[12:51] Literally. He helps people do these. These focus blocks of time and it’s fascinating. So it’s so critical. It’s so critical to have accountability, just whatever it is, right? Whatever, whatever that is for you. And when you get a coach, when you become part of a program like ours, it’s just built in, like when you’re an athlete, it’s built in when you’re in the military, it’s built in out here in the real world.

[13:13] It’s not. And so you have to find that you have to, especially if you’re in a self reliant job, right? Eat what you kill, you’re in business, you are, you know, financial advisor, you’re in sales, it’s up to you. You don’t have that accountability. If I didn’t have accountability, it would be hard, right? I certainly feel a lot of accountability because I’ve got to provide for my family, but I’ve got these other things in place, prioritization and goals, but I also have accountability.

[13:36] I have coaches and I have a mastermind team members, et cetera. All right. So that’s number three accountability. Number four, mindset. You’ve got to visualize yourself being productive. And if you don’t see it, if you don’t feel it, you’ve got to talk yourself into it. I love sharing with my clients, this video of Aaron Donald.

[13:53] Aaron Donald, I think he was a pass rusher for the Rams, like 10 Pro Bowls. He was mic’d up for this one pregame and he’s one of the best, one of the best ever at his position. And there, he was mic’d up before game and he’s like pacing back and forth right before kickoff on the sideline, like on the field and just.

[14:12] Talking smack to himself, like you got this. You say you want to be great. Today’s the day. Today’s the day. Go be great today. You say you want this, go do it. You put in the work, like just amping himself up. Like who does that? It’s kind of weird, but guess what? Guess who does that kind of thing? The great ones, the great ones do.

[14:27] If it’s good enough for them, it’s good enough for you. You’ve got to do the mindset work. You’ve got to share, you’ve got to say the right words to yourself because your default, Aaron Donald’s default is not good enough. Your default is not good enough. You’ve got to amp yourself up. You’ve got to put your mind in the right place.

[14:44] You’ve got to visualize. You’ve got to say the right words. You’ve got to do the mindset work. That’s number four, number five. How do you deal with failure? How do you deal with failure? How do you deal with setbacks? You know, this podcast used to be called success through failure. Go back to prior to January 1, 2024.

[15:00] Everything prior to that is called success through failure for the prior, like three years or. More than that, actually several, uh, I don’t even know how many, several, a lot more years than that, actually, um, been doing this for a long time. And you’re going to hear so many amazing people talk about failure, like world class athletes and Navy SEALs and New York Times bestselling authors talking about Failure and how they deal with failure.

[15:23] You will fail. And, and if you fail at something, you are going to be more likely to procrastinate on the next time around, next time you do it, unless you embrace failure as learning. Failure is feedback. And some people say, I don’t believe in failure. Well, it’s just, failure’s just a term. Maybe you don’t believe in failure.

[15:39] It’s really just saying, you know, there, there’s no, you know, there, there’s not win or lose. It’s win or learn. I, okay. It’s just semantics here. We’re just talking about failure. You get better from failure. You learn from failure and it doesn’t feel like it. Doesn’t feel good. We don’t want to fail, but it’s, it’s part of it.

[15:55] It’s part of it. Okay. So when you fail, especially when you fail, you’ve got to have these other tactics in place. The mindset, the accountability, the prioritization, the goal setting, that stuff has to be in place to get you to move forward. You have to deal with failure like champions do, like winners do, right?

[16:12] And it sucks. It hurts just like it, you know, for you, just like it does for them, but you’ve got to move forward. And take action despite that. All right. Here’s number six. This one’s a little surprising for you. Change your state. Go for a walk. For me, it’s go for a walk. I, I, I will literally go for a walk just around the block.

[16:28] You know, walk out my, my office doors here. I have a office basically built a building and, you know, in my backyard, a he shed, not a she shed by the way, but like it’s called a she shed. It’s not, it’s a he shed. And I go, I just do a walk around my, my neighborhood. It’s great. I get outside. We have a little park.

[16:45] miniature pond feature with some frogs and fish in our backyard. I’ll go over there and check them out. I’ll do three burpees. That’s a big one for me. I love doing my three burpees. Just gets my body moving. Not enough to really get the heart rate up, but just enough to get my blood flowing a little bit.

[17:00] You know, get some sunshine, go take a bath. Drink some water. Uh, and this sounds like procrastination, but this is a tactic to change your state that will put you in an action oriented state, right? So you can move forward, take action, stop procrastinating. All right. That’s number six, quick review. And then we’re going to get to number seven.

[17:19] Okay. Number one, goal setting, having clear goals. Number two, prioritization. Number three, accountability. Number four, mindset. Number five, dealing with failure. Number six, change your state. Number seven, remove distractions. This is an easy one. It’s easy, easy to do. It’s also easy, really not, not to do. Put your phone on airplane mode.

[17:38] Just, just for 15 minutes, close your email inbox. Just, just for a little while, whatever those distractions are for you. Just remove them. Alex Ramosi is a business guru who I follow. He has like, I think I heard him say this once on a video. He has like a dark room. There’s like no windows. He puts on, he puts in earplugs, complete elimination of distraction.

[18:03] And this guy gets some freaking work done. And this is again, he’s one of the best in the world. What he does, his, uh, you know, businesses that he’s invested in. They’re making hundreds of millions of dollars right now. They’re in his portfolio. I mean, just, this is again, what the best in the world do. Like.

[18:18] Are you removing distractions? Well, if you’re not, if you’re like, okay, that sounds like good advice, but I’m not going to do it anyway. And you wonder why you’re procrastinating. This is why you’ve got to take action on this stuff. All right. That’s number seven, remove distractions. Number eight. I have a hard time with this one.

[18:36] Celebrate success. My business coach. Whenever I published episode 400, she made me celebrate success. She made me celebrate it. And what did I do? I, I, I did the one thing that I love to do. And this doesn’t sound like a big deal, but I went for a freaking walk in the woods. I went for like a walk in the woods.

[18:57] Just got outside, looked at the, I love being in the woods. I mean, I’m, I’m a, I’m a tree hugger. I love to hunt and fish and, and camp and hike and, and, um, man, I just love being in the forest. I love, you know, what do they call it in Japan? I don’t know. Someone told me they call it in Japan. I got tree bathing or sun or something like that.

[19:17] You know, it’s like, I love that. I love just being in the woods. Sitting there, taking it in, you know, feeling a breeze and the cold air, the hot air, the hearing the leaves. And that was a celebration for me. So how can you, whenever you do that, you’re giving yourself a little reward. And, and that helps, you know, reduce procrastination because you know that whenever you, you accomplish that thing, that project, that task, that thing you’ve got to do, if you’re going to celebrate it.

[19:46] Then there’s a little bit more motivation, a little bit more impetus there for you to, to get started just to get started because it’s the start that stops us. It’s the start that stops us. All right, here’s number nine. And this one is really, really important. You’ve got. To find the catalyst, the smallest step, the smallest action that will get you to move forward.

[20:12] That is literally how I get anything done. Any big task done when I find myself procrastinating, which I do all the time, when I notice it, when I’m aware of it, then I say, wait a sec, what’s the catalyst, what’s the smallest thing for recording this episode just now, just today, here, here’s what I did.

[20:32] Here’s what I, here’s how I found the catalyst. Cause I was. Starting to procrastinate. I knew I have a limited amount of time to get this thing recorded. Here’s what I did. I, I said, I’m just going, I was about to, I’d go fill up my coffee so I could procrastinate a little bit more. I said, hold on, before I do that, I I’m going to find the smallest catalyst.

[20:51] I’m going to open my list, my Kanban board. It’s just a sort of in my, um, in my project management software that I use Asana, uh, I opened up my, my list of topics. And identified the one that I’ve been, I’ve been working on. I’ve like a whole list of topics that I kind of work on, curate topics and ideas.

[21:10] And, and, uh, this one was, was mostly baked already and I was ready to kind of record it. And so I identified the topic and I knew I needed to still do some more research and work on it. And I’ve been putting this episode off, you know. Go figure procrastination, but I identified this topic. I identified a few more ideas.

[21:28] I kind of cleaned up my notes. I went into AI and actually in my, my coach, Jim AI, this is fully trained in all my podcast episodes and all my, my, my philosophy went in there and got some more ideas, uh, and then I hit enter, I, this was, this all happened within just a few minutes. Kind of quick review. I was like, I’m just going to review it.

[21:45] That’s it. Just review it. That’s it. Just going to quick review. And then I went into my AI. Got some more and I told it what I was going to record a topic episode. I said, give me some more ideas or give me some ideas for this. And I hit enter. And then I left my office. I hit enter and I knew it would be when I came back to my office.

[22:02] I would already be, you know, at 30 miles an hour and rolling. You know, I would be already moving. I would already have momentum. Then the other thing that I had to do, the other catalyst is open up my recording software. I use riverside. fm it’s called. I type in, you know, I don’t wait for the, the, the, the motivation to do it.

[22:18] I literally manually just override myself. And I say, you know, type in Riverside. fm. It opens the software. And that was, that’s the hard part, right? Once I do that, I’m already moving. It’s kind of like putting on your running shoes. Like, I want to go for a run. Like, I can’t get myself to do it. Just put on your running shoes.

[22:37] Don’t even plan on going for a run. Just plan on putting on your running shoes. That’s it. And once you do that. Still don’t plan on going for a run. Just plan on walking outside your door. That’s it. Don’t plan on anything. Oh, you can turn around, walk back in if you want. But then once you’re outside the door, you’re going to be like, man, I got my shoes on, I’m already outside.

[22:53] I think I can do it. You know, I’m just going to run for a few minutes, just run for a few minutes and stop if you want. But after you’re a few minutes in, you’re already going to be wrong. So these are actionable, tactical things for you to do. So I’m going to roll right back through these real quickly.

[23:05] Number one. Goal setting. Number two, prioritization. Number three, accountability. Number four, mindset. Number five, dealing with failure. Number six, change your state. Number seven, remove distractions. Number eight. Celebrate success. Number nine, start with the catalyst, the smallest step for you. All right. Now, if you want to take action on this stuff, go to jimharshawjr.com/free. And you can get access to my free course and community in there. I’m putting new content in there all the time, interacting in there all the time. We can, we talk about these podcasts episodes in there. If you want to have a coaching call, go to jim harsher, jr. com slash apply. And we can talk about how to apply this directly to your life.

[23:49] Don’t let this go in one ear and out the other. Don’t procrastinate. Take one action from this episode right now. Good luck.

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