Corporate Survivor with Mei Phing : Career Growth In The Corporate World - Ep243: How to stop procrastination (without feeling more anxiety).

Episode Date: January 14, 2025

✅ Watch FREE WORKSHOP, newsletter, work with me ⮕ http://www.meiphing.com ✅ Corporate Survivor™ is the BEST career program on how to navigate the 9-to-5 corporate world, work smarter, earn more and stress less using Mei Phing's 3-Step Framework [Get Clear, Get Confident, Get Visible] so you can grow your career & salary without sacrificing work-life balance... 🚀 ⚡ 📌 ABOUT THIS PODCAST: Welcome to Corporate Survivor with Mei Phing — ex-Corporate Leader turned Career Coach & Founder of The Corporate Survivor™. On this podcast, Mei Phing shares her 10+ years of corporate world insights, experiences and wisdom so you can grow your 9-5 career with clarity, confidence and opportunities. ✅ WEBSITE ⮕ https://www.meiphing.com ✅ NEWSLETTER ⮕ https://www.thecorporatesurvivor.co/newsletter ✅ FREE WORKSHOP ⮕ https://www.thecorporatesurvivor.co/workshop ✅ CAREER PROGRAM ⮕ https://www.thecorporatesurvivor.co ⚡

Welcome to the Corporate Survivor Podcast, where we talk about how to grow your career confidence, build your skills and value, increase your salary, and the many lessons we learn in the corporate world. For more career support, click on over to www.mayping.com. This is Mayping, your corporate leader turned career coach. I hope you enjoy, like and subscribe. Welcome to the Corporate Survivor Podcast. If you're new here, my name is Mei Ping. I've spent more than 10 years in the corporate world,

climbing the career ladder from a fresh graduate all the way to senior director at Standard Chartered in my 20s. So on this podcast, I share with you how to survive, navigate and grow your career with clarity, confidence, competence, and opportunities. And one of the things that we also do here is to have honest and uncomfortable conversations so that you can actually grow your career for long-term success. And this is one of those conversations I want to have with you today.

Now, when I talk to my career program members, as well as my community members, one of the habits that many people tell me they want to get rid of is procrastination now it's easy to say that okay i want to procrastinate less i want to procrastinate less like you can tell yourself this every single year every single month but the question then is like okay what's actually stopping you from getting rid of this habit and how can you refocus to make sure that you can progress in your career. And this is exactly what I want to share with you today. And I'm going to break it down into three categories. And for each category, I'm going to deep dive and I'm also going to share with you exactly what you need to focus on so that you can

get out of this procrastination loop so that you can actually progress forward and hit the career goals that you want. Now, honestly, I'm also a procrastinator myself. So I totally understand this feeling. I totally understand the feeling of like, you know what, maybe later, maybe tomorrow. And, you know, hopefully at some point I will get to it. I totally understand this because I feel the same way as well. And based on my personal experience, I think there are two big fears that's actually stopping a lot of people, myself included, and it's actually fueling the procrastination habit. Now, this is actually, I think, something that people don't really talk about a lot, and it's actually these two fears.

Now, the first fear is the fear of failure. It's kind of like, okay, if I do something about it, if I take action, if I upskill myself, what if I still fail? So it's that feeling of like, what's the point of taking action if I'm going to fail anyway? So the fear of failure is like so huge that it's kind of like overwhelming you and it's actually stopping you from doing anything about the career goal or maybe the career challenge that you are facing right now. Now, there is a second fear that's closely related as well, and that is the fear of judgment. It's like, okay, if I take this action, if I do something about it,

what will other people say? What will other people think of me? What will my boss, my friend, my family, my colleagues think about me? So these two fears combined usually stop majority of the people I know and some of my clients and members in my career program included, that's actually stopping them from actually doing something to achieve their goals or actually doing something to just get out of a challenging career situation as well. So now we're going to get into the three categories and the three scenarios I talked about. Now if you find yourself in a procrastinating sort of like habit that is very very difficult to get out of then I want you to identify yourself in these three categories I'm going to share with you. Now, category number one is you don't know what to do. So therefore you're procrastinating because

it's like, I don't know what to do anyway. So it's like, I'm not going to do anything. Category number two, you know what you're supposed to do, but you feel like you cannot consistently take action because you fear that it's not going to work out. So this is a situation of like, okay, I know what I'm supposed to be doing, but I'm not even sure it's going to work out or not. And luckily it's going to fail. So it's like, what's the point of like continuing on? Or you find yourself like doing it sometimes and then you don't, you know, you don't practice it at certain points in time. So it's inconsistent. Now the third category is, I know what I'm supposed to be doing. I'm taking action, but at the same time, I don't really have to believe that it's going to

work out. It's like, I'm not confident that I can get the results that I want. Now this is really an issue around getting feedback because it's like I'm doing something, but I also feel like I'm going to fail at the same time. So this is also not really a good situation now. We're going to break down these three scenarios. So the first scenario I talked about, if you feel like, okay, I don't know what to do. Now this is where you need to then focus on gaining knowledge, gaining a right strategy so that now you have like a roadmap, you have a framework and a step-by-step that you can then start taking action on. Now, this one, I also find a lot of people procrastinate and kind of like get stuck at this, oh, since I don't know what to do, let me spend time scrolling social media and like, you know, looking through like YouTube videos, blogs and whatever, searching for what to do. But the

process of searching for what to do feels like it's an action but it's actually not an action because you are still unclear of what you're supposed to be doing so i find this is where most people procrastinate by scrolling and they convince themselves saying that well until i find the best strategy then i'm gonna do it later and after spending like months and months scrolling and maybe for some people years as well trying to search for you know the quote unquote perfect strategy eventually they end up doing nothing so this is a it's actually distracting you from moving towards the career goals that you want so you just want to make sure that you don't catch yourself in this situation of like, oh, I'm hunting for knowledge. But at the same time, right, you are not actually taking even one step forward.

So the action, although it feels like an action, but actually it's a procrastinating sort of action. Does that make sense? No. So focus on following a framework, following a strategy, just pick one. Like honestly, at this point, you just need to pick one because in the hunt of like searching for 100 strategies that eventually you do nothing about it, it's actually

just better to just pick one strategy and then start practicing it, which is usually what I tell my career program members. Now, that's that. Now, the second category, as I said, if you have chosen a strategy, if you are in my my career program you are going to follow my three step framework get clear get confident get visible that's what performance or you're going to be following my 30 day job search strategy it's not okay fine so i've chosen the strategy already right i've chosen that specific piece of knowledge i'm going to implement now this is where some people procrastinate as well so they start telling themselves okay you know maybe has given me the step-by-step strategy i'm following the, but where the problem then starts is that like, as you go through the lessons, you feel that like,

what if I don't do this well? What if it's not going to work out? Then you find yourself stopping, even though it's like, you really have the knowledge and you know, you are going to prepare yourself to implement, but you kind of like get stuck in the loop. So I'll give you an example. Let's say, let's say you're looking for a job, right? So you go through my lessons around preparing a resume to position your value. Then where you might procrastinate is that in the midst of the lesson, you might be telling yourself,

hmm, let me try to perfect this resume and let me try to find more solutions and think about it and then spend more time reviewing it like a thousand times before I send it out. So this is actually in a way you are procrastinating as well, because until you complete that draft resume and actually start applying, you don't really know whether the resume works or not. What is actually happening is that you don't even have a draft. So therefore, you're actually not really moving closer to the career goal that you want you are kind of like taking action but the action hasn't actually reached a specific result it's like it doesn't reach completion and therefore you are still kind of like procrastinating in that way and this is where i also want you to

catch yourself to say hey no no i'm gonna follow the lessons or whatever strategy i'm just gonna complete it do it the first time and then then keep practicing. Because if I keep sitting around, right, if I don't complete a version of a resume that is ready to be sent out, then I can't even make any application. So it's technically I'm not taking any action. It's the same as like for my other students who are going through upskilling at their workplace, right? If they go to a lesson where I teach them communication skills, by looking at that lesson 100 times, it's not going to help. But what will help is that,

okay, I understand what Meiping is teaching. I understand Meiping's method. Now I'm going to go to my workplace and going to practice this communication skill and conversation with my colleagues and my boss. So that's actually action, right? You reach the completion point of like taking the knowledge and turning it into action and practice. So that's what you want to focus on. If you find yourself kind of like getting stuck in the lessons, getting stuck

in a specific strategy, this is kind of like how you turn your attention into something that is very tangible, something that is practical so that then you can come and get feedback. Now, assuming you have done that, I think the final category that I see in a lot of people is that, okay, maybe I have the knowledge, I've started taking action, but I'm not sure if I'm getting the results that I want. I don't believe I can get the results. So if you're in this situation, what you really need right now is feedback and you need some accountability and motivation. So why feedback is because, to be honest, nobody does something the first time and then it comes out perfect,

particularly in the corporate world where we're talking about communication skills, critical thinking, strategic thinking, productivity, all these things are things that you need to upskill and at every different level, you require like an upgraded version of that skill. And if you're talking to a senior executive versus a senior director,

the level of like skill that you need to communicate people across different career levels, you also still need to upgrade as well. So what the point I'm trying to make here is that like there's no perfect sort of like first time that you're doing it. It's something that as you continue to practice, right? And then you can come and get feedback,

which is why I tell all my corporate survivor members please come to our monthly mentoring calls because this is really where you can get practical guidance you can get practical feedback so that you know like okay here are the blind spots this is actually the area i can do better and then this gradually motivates you to want to try again because if you keep trying the same thing 100 times but you don't get any feedback then obviously you're going to feel demotivated obviously you're going to be wondering to yourself well how do i know whether it's going to get result or not because i don't even know whether i'm doing it right or doing it wrong now the other element that you might need at this stage as i said right it's like with the day they plant the

seed it's not the day that the tree or the plant grows so therefore some accountability and some motivation might be still helpful as well so So commit to like getting monthly feedback, commit to coming and get guidance, right? I mean, if you're in my career program, then we do it every single month. And for some of my private coaching clients or those who have one-on-one coaching calls with me, we do it every single quarter

so that you don't get distracted. So this is really the best way that you can make sure that you are not kind of like stuck in the mindset of procrastinating, but you're always focused on, okay, this is the small thing that I need to focus on. This is actually the next step I need to focus on. The next step. So it's like if you're in the job search process and you find yourself getting stuck in drafting your resume and you've been like apparently trying to draft your resume for six months, but the resume is not even reached

a completion point, then recognize that, hey, I'm procrastinating. And the completion point of a resume is to come up with a draft version that I can start applying, that you need to get to that point. So if you're in the interview process, then it has to be, okay, what have I learned from this interview? What I did well, what I didn't do well, then move on and practice the new method and the upgraded version of your answers in the

next interview. So that's how you know that you're progressing. And back to the workplace, not just looking through, maybe it's goals matrix or the things that I teach, but it's like, okay, I come up with one version, right? Then I go and discuss with my boss. I go and confirm with my boss what I need to do. Then maybe I come back to this, you know, goals, performance goals matrix again and see whether I need to tweak anything. Or maybe month on month, you do a review on your own and you can come to our monthly mentoring calls and get feedback and learn from other students as well.

And just say, okay, maybe these are the things that, you know, I feel like this goal is not refined enough. This is an area that I need to confirm with my boss again. And then you go from there. So what you can see here is that we always focus on the next step. But that we need to then first recognize it's like what is stopping me what is stopping me from taking the next step and actually what is stopping me from wanting to try the next thing and if there's something that you are fearful of i think it's important to have an

honest conversation with yourself because this is something that you are fearful of, I think it's important to have an honest conversation with yourself because this is something that I was telling one of my corporate seminar members recently, that if you're procrastinating because you say that you're scared and you're worried, do you feel that continuing to do nothing, the anxiety is going to go away? Do you feel like by doing nothing,

the worry is going to go away? Or do you think it's going to get worse? It's like the more that you're scared, therefore you don't do anything. And because you don't do anything, you get even more scared. So actually, you are creating a cycle that's going to get worse. Versus, it's like, okay, I know I'm scared. I recognize it. But I also recognize practically the stage that I'm at right now. And then what is the immediate next action and next step that I can take? I think this is a much better mindset that you don't let your negative mindset literally stop you from achieving anything. Because if you think that by doing nothing, you're going to get closer

to your goals, then I think both you and I know that that is not true. So how can we take one step forward is actually going through that uncomfortableness to still take that one step forward. Because if you're unwilling to have the beginner's mindset at anything, then I think it's going to be a very difficult path forward if you want to grow your career. Like imagine the day that you start your first ever job, right? Your first ever managerial position or your first ever directorship position. That first day is the day that most likely, if you remember, is the day that you always wonder to yourself,

well, how do you know whether I'm doing it right or wrong? But you survived and you made it. And that is the kind of mindset I want you to have. So yes, recognize that you have procrastination habit, but more importantly, instead of like dwelling into that negative feelings, as I said just now, it's even better to identify why am I procrastinating, which category and which stage am I at, then what is the next thing I need to focus on? I think this is a much healthier mindset and this is honestly a mindset of someone who will be successful. So I hope that you find this episode helpful

and I'll see you in the next one bye