SOLVED with Mark Manson - Solved, Highlights: The Real Reason You Procrastinate

Episode Date: February 11, 2026

This is a segment from the full episode on procrastination. Procrastination isn't a time management problem — it's an emotional regulation problem, and once you see that, everything changes. We break down how your brain uses avoidance as a mood-management strategy, why every philosopher from Plato to the Buddhists was partially right (but nobody had the full picture), and the specific internal and external levers you can pull to actually get shit done. We also run through the six types of procrastinators so you can figure out which flavor of self-sabotage you've been perfecting — plus the RAIN method, minimum viable actions, and why making boring things fun isn't just a nice idea, it's the whole game. We also put together a free companion guide for the full episode with all the takeaways, references, and tools to help you get your sh*t together once and for all. Download it here: https://solvedpodcast.com/procrastination Sign up for my newsletter, Your Next Breakthrough. It will help make you a less awful person: https://markmanson.net/breakthrough Get clarity on what actually matters. Try Purpose, Mark's AI mentor app that learns your patterns, challenges your blind spots, and helps you take action. Get 7 days free at ⁠https://www.purpose.app⁠ Amazing Offer From Our Sponsor: Boost your focus with science-backed music from Brain.fm. Start your 30-day free trial at brain.fm/solved Chapters: 0:00 Introduction 1:44 Understanding Emotional Regulation 9:34 The RAIN Method 14:04 The Six Types of Procrastinators 23:09 The 80-20 of Procrastination 43:39 Conclusion Follow Mark Mark’s IG: https://www.instagram.com/markmanson Solved IG: https://www.instagram.com/solvedpodcast/ Twitter: https://x.com/markmanson LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markmanson/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@IAmMarkManson Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey guys, before we get into it, if you listen to the show, you probably consume a lot of personal growth content. The books, the podcasts, YouTube videos, all of it. And you've probably noticed the gap between knowing what to do and then actually going out and doing it. You've got the insights, but what you don't have is something that connects them to your actual life. That's why I built purpose. It's a personal development AI that learns you, your patterns, your blind spots, all the stuff that you keep circling back to over and over again. Instead of handing you another framework, it gives you specific personalized direction.

So check it out. You can try it for free for seven days. Go to purpose.app. That is purpose. Dot app. Hey, everybody. Mark Manson here, and it's the start of the year. A lot of us are trying to get our groove back.

Set goals, build better habits, maybe actually follow through on some of the stuff this time, not just talk about it. So what I wanted to do is I wanted to bring back one of the most useful segments that we did last year. This one is about procrastination. It's from a longer episode where Drew and I went deep on the psychology, the history, and the science behind why we put so many things off and what actually helps us stop doing it. But this part, it's actually where everything kind of snaps in the focus. It gets to the real reason why we put off stuff that actually matters to us.

It's not just about setting a timer or download another app. It's not because we're lazy, but because we're emotionally loaded. It's about identity, shame, fear, perfectionism, failure. all the real messy stuff going on under the surface that influences our desire to procrastinate. So if you've ever delayed doing anything important in your life, which is all of you, you fucking liars, I know it's you. It's me too. Don't worry. I think this is going to land for you. It's a great refresher. It's a great way to kick off the year. And if you want the full episode, it's already in your feed. We cover everything from Aristotle to modern brain science to all of the best productivity techniques to yes,

Yes, you guessed it, what fucking apps to download. And we've got a free procrastination guide to go along with it. So you can grab it in the show notes or head over to saltpodcast.com slash procrastination. It is absolutely free and it is full of research, tips, and practical tricks. All right, let's get into it. My name is Mark Manson, three-time, number one New York Times best-selling author, and this is my co-host and longtime lead researcher, Drew Bernie. When you say procrastination is a strategy for mood regulation.

Like, explain that like I'm five. Okay. What does that mean? Okay. So, Marky. Marky. Marky poo. In case people like don't really,

emotional regulation is one of those things that like everybody's heard the term. But like, it's fuzzy. What does it actually mean? Yeah. Let's just take an example of when you are going to procrastinate on something. You have a work task you want to do or you need to do. Yeah. You don't want to do it.

That's kind of the point. Right. When you approach this task, you might get an anxious feeling. Dread. Dread. Bortem. Yeah. Or the perfectionism can even come in at that point, too.

Like, oh, my God, am I not going to do a good job at this? And if I fail. Anxiety. Anxiety boils up. Anger. Why the fuck do I have to do this? Yeah. Any negative emotion associated with the task will increase your likelihood of procrastinating in that moment.

And so what we do is we look into, usually into our immediate. environment or past strategies that we might have used as well to alleviate those uncomfortable feelings that we have. And that's when procrastination takes away. Okay, I've approached this to task that I find unpleasant. Don't like that unpleasant feeling. Get me out of here. Let me do something else.

Let me distract myself with, you know, these days it's your phone or whatever it is. Yeah. Or, you know, this is why you can also, like, people will procrastinate by cleaning their houses or something like this, something, some boring task because they find that even less awful than whatever they're, they're going to be right on, right? Right. Does that make sense, Markey? Yes.

Okay. I was going to call you Daddy Drew. I don't know. I was like, oh, I don't know. Yeah, yeah. That gets weird. It gets really weird. Please do not call me that.

But, yeah, yeah. Ever. Early on in this, when this framework was being developed, a lot of the psychologists called it giving in to feel good, right? So you look for whatever feels on a relative basis, whatever feels better in the moment than whatever you're uncomfortable with. Yeah. And you go to that and you give in to that urge. Yeah. There's some impulsivity around that.

Totally. As well, there's environmental factors that go into this. But at its base at its core, it is that, that. that emotional regulation, that moment when you choose between do I need to do the thing that needs to be done or do I need to, I just want to remove this anxious, uncomfortable, angry feeling that I'm bored feeling, painful feeling, whatever it is. Yeah. Yeah, I still, it's funny because I didn't think about this when we were researching the episode, but like now that we're talking about it, I'm kind of like seeing it in my mind. Again, it's kind of two sides of a coin.

Yeah. One is managing the environment, managing, giving yourself fewer opportunities for that avoidance, right? Like clearing the junk food out of the fridge. Turning your phone off. Turning the phone off, leaving the phone in the other room, all those things. And then the other side of the coin is that emotional management, the awareness, understanding the emotions that are coming up. And then understanding perhaps why those emotions may be arising for unnecessary reasons.

Right? Like, are you being too perfectionist? Are you protecting your ego? Are you rationalizing past behavior? Are you trying to impress somebody? Do you is the reason you're motivated? The reason you want to do this thing, a shitty reason, and it's actually not very motivating at all. Like all of those facts, all of those things that we've talked about, do you have a lot of shame around this and you just like don't, it makes you feel icky and horrible about yourself? And so you just find any way you can to get away from it. All of these. factors that we've been talking about up to this point, almost all of them are factored into that emotional negotiation of like, why do I feel this way? Is it reasonable to feel this way? And now that I feel this way, how do I manage it well? That's one side of the coin. And then the other side of the coin is the, how do I give myself as few escape routes as possible? Exactly. Right. And that's the behaviorist stuff, the environmental design stuff. Right. Coming back to the skill thing, that it's the two sides. of the procrastination skill coin, right? It's like on the one side, it's the environmental design,

the managing your triggers, managing your nudges, and on the other side, it's managing your own emotions. Right. Understanding why you associate certain things with a task and how to kind of manipulate the levers or dials in your head to make the task feel easier, whether that's through breaking it down in the smaller chunks, whether that's gamifying it, whether that's finding accountability with somebody, rewarding yourself with something. There's all sorts of levers you can pull to like manage those internal emotions. Right, right. Everything we've talked about does, it crosses that point of emotion regulation that you have to manage, right?

Exactly. Yeah. There's, it's, and it does, it goes back to it's a short-term relief for a long-term detriment. Right. Right. All of this is, what it comes down to is I don't have to. to feel that discomfort right now if I just do something else. Yes.

All of those things are kind of like getting at that. Yeah. Like whether it's in your environment or just an emotional. Well, and what's amazing too is that like all of the thinkers that we talked about throughout this entire episode, from Plato to Augustine to Aquinas to everybody, it's not that they got it wrong. Right. It was just incomplete.

Right. It's like Augustine said he's like it's the failure is you are you are sacrificing. your higher level value, the thing that is more important to you but difficult to do for the lower level value, the thing that is easy to do but much less valuable and less important. Plato saw it as like an ignorance of the repercussions of your decisions, like not understanding like how you're doing in that very moment, even to like the Buddhist perspective of like not being aware of what your internal triggers are. Like this is what I found really interesting when I looked at the Buddhist side of it.

Like, again, it's correct. It's incomplete, but it's completely correct. Like, and in fact, I actually found a meta-analysis of 14,000 participants of who practice mindfulness and meditation. And they showed significant improvements in time management, task initiation, and also a sense. You talk about that sense of like how long it will take to complete something. Their sense of how long it would take to complete a task actually got more accurate after the mindfulness as well. And so again, it's like, emotions tend to be funhouse mirrors in our brains, right? So like when you're angry, things that are small appear very large and things that are large appear very small.

You know, it's like when you're anxious, there are other things that are things that appear very close or actually very far away and vice versa. Right. So it's it's understanding that you're looking at a funhouse mirror. You know, meditation is a practice of like developing the ability to recognize the fun house mirrors. and adapt to them and still navigate through them. And whereas when you're just, you know, I think where Plato was correct is that the actual ignorance is just believing the fun house mirror is real. Yeah.

Like that's the ignorance. Yeah, definitely. And one of the big recommendations from this group of researchers, Tim Pitchell, especially and Fuchsia, Sirwa, is more mindfulness around these things. So we can talk about this now. the rain method. This is what, this was an article

that Tim Pitchell wrote and he's written about it in his books as well. But it's a mindfulness tool that gets you figuring out that fun house mirror kind of brain that we all have

and being able to deal with it. And he calls it the rain method because it's an acronym. It's recognized, allow, investigate, and non-identification. Okay.

So it's just a very basic kind of, I believe it's from Zen Buddhism, I mean, maybe actually too, but it's recognizing in the moment when you do feel that resistance, those uncomfortable feelings that pop up. I think most people, like when those that pops up, your initial reaction is to look for a distraction. This says, okay, wait, just recognize when it's happening.

That's all you have to do at first. This is, I'm approaching a task I don't like. I'm just going to sit with that, right? And that's actually the second step is allowing those emotions to just exist and not push them away, not reach for distraction, just allow them to be there and don't flee from it. The eye in it is investigate those emotions. Get curious. Why do I feel this way? That's something you just said too. Like, why am I feeling ashamed about this? Why am I feeling anxious about it, angry about it? Are my expectations reasonable? Am I blowing things out of proportion?

Am I just tired? Then I sleep last night? Yeah. Start asking all those questions. Ask those questions to investigate and get deep with it too, right there. And the last one is not identification with the emotion. This is a very Buddhist thing. Very Buddhist. Yeah, which is, you know, I am not this anxiousness. I feel anxious. I am not this anxious. Yes. Don't, you don't want to fuse your identity. Like you just said, if you fuse yourself with that fun house mirror image that you have in your mind, then everything becomes like a fun house mirror room. Right. And to Freud's point, you'll protect it. Yeah. Right. If you do, if you decide that you are anxious and perfectionist, then you will, you will, you will,

will actually protect that self-definition. Yes. Which will cause you to, like, actually your procrastination will become part of your identity. Right. And we talked about that earlier about people who identifies like, oh, I just work better under pressure. What they probably don't realize they're doing is that they are incorporating their procrastination as a part of their identity. And so now they will start unconsciously protecting it. Right.

And continue to procrastinate to show like this is my identity. To prove to themselves and others. Yeah. This episode is brought to you by Brain FM. You know what nobody tells you when you're trying to get your shit together? Focus is not a vibe. It's kind of a war, actually. It's you versus every notification, every dopamine hit,

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As far as practical takeaways go, that for me, after realizing that, I realized I did some kind of version of this or bits and pieces of it. When I really did need to get something done, I would kind of like, you know, buckle down be like, okay, I don't like this. Why don't I like this? All right, I just get going. Putting it all together like that, though, has been super, super useful for me. And especially the non-identification part, that last part is very important, I think, too.

Like you just said, don't wrap your identity up and whatever you're doing. Totally. For sure. Well, speaking of identities, I've got like a fun exercise for us before we wrap up with like the tactics and strategies for everybody. Dr. Linda Sappenden, and she's a clinical psychologist, she wrote a book in the 90s called The Six Types of Procrastinators. And so she has six types that she is identified through her clinical practice. Fun. And I thought it would be fun to kind of like now that we understand all the frameworks, right?

I think it would be fun to go through these six types and kind of identify. what the factors are, like that lead to their procrastination. And I imagine that listeners will see themselves in at least one of them. So the first one, which I know you've dealt with is the perfectionist, right? Fears imperfection sets unrealistic standards, refuses to accept good enough. And it ends up having to use time limits to avoid endless revisions or redos. do you feel attacked? Yeah.

I feel like I'm getting better at it. I mean, this is kind of my, this is my beast to slay this year, I think, was the perfectionism. I actually feel like as I'm getting older, I'm letting more things go. I'm like, all right, that's not going to be perfect. Do you think that's just from accumulating so many imperfect experiences? Yeah, I don't think I've actively worked at like getting over. It's just been, I like now accept reality for what it is. Yeah.

Yeah. All right. The second one is the dreamer. Loves big ideas, but struggles with details, breaks goals into steps and needs to use structured plans to maintain consistent habits, tends to wait for inspiration rather than just take action. I relate to this one a little bit. Like, my mind definitely, I like to dream big and like have these kind of giant aspirations. And that's fun and that I think that is like overall, it's a net positive to have like big goals and dreams. But the drawback of that is the intimidation factor.

Because it's like if you have this massive world-changing plan that is going to take 10 years to execute and then you wake up on day one, it just feels so minuscule and insignificant. And so, yeah, it says here that the dreamers have to break their goals down in the steps. I am like, as you know, I am an evangelist for this. Like this is my number one go-to. for any, anytime I'm procrastinating, I mean, to the point where like, if I'm procrastinating writing this outline for this podcast, I will tell myself,

literally just write one word. Yeah, that's all it takes. Start with a word and then go to a sentence and then go to the paragraph, right? Like, it creates the momentum. It removes the intimidation. It, like, generates emotional momentum. It's, it's the way to go.

Like my brain tends to just want to make everything as big and ambitious as possible. And so it's like I'm the work for me is constantly breaking things back down and making them smaller. Yeah. So that makes sense to me when it's something like do a podcast outline. Where I struggle with that though is, okay, I'm breaking something down. Makes sense. It's doable. I have self-efficacy around it.

I can do this thing. My problem often comes in when it's tying that back to the bigger picture. Oh, yeah. You know, it makes sense with like a podcast outline because that's a tangible thing. Sure. But it's like if it's more abstract, further in the future maybe, and I'm doing this one little task, I have a really hard time marrying what I'm doing, like writing a sentence about something with some grand goal that I have.

So I'm actually, I didn't expect to do this, but I'm going to bring Eisenhower back into this. Oh, okay. So Eisenhower is a great quote that I love where he says, plans mean nothing, but planning is everything. Okay. And I truly believe that like planning, projecting, forecasting, 99% of it's bullshit. Okay.

You know, it's like none of it's going to come true. It's funny because I just worked with our head of operations on like a projection for 2025 and 26. And I mean, I've been doing this long enough that I'm like, this is bullshit. None of this is going to come true. But it's still useful. I still do it every single year. it does exactly what you just said, which is it like, it ties this individual podcast. Shooting this segment of this podcast is now tied to this episode, which is tied to the projection for the podcast

this year, which is tied to the overall business strategy, which is tied to like our overall mission and goals, right? So it's like, it lines all those things up. That's what I find is that, like, it's like, the numbers don't matter. Like, it's nothing ever plays out the way you expect it to. But the act of creating that plan or projection ties all those things together in your head. That makes sense to me now. Yeah. Next one, the warrior. Avoids risk due to fear of failure.

Struggles to reframe fear as growth. Needs to take small manageable steps and challenge catastrophic thinking with more realistic outcomes. I am definitely not this person. I don't think you are either. No, maybe a little bit, but nah. I've definitely known people like this who are just like almost like. like, doom sayers. Like, they just think everything's going to go wrong.

They worry about everything all the time. And it is. Like freezes them in place, kind of? Is it like a, like a fight or flight response or more of a fight-flies freeze response? So they're freezing? Or what is it that makes them procrastinate about this? I definitely think, you know, if you think fighter flight, I think it's the flight side of it. Like, I mean, procrastination is essentially just the flight and the fighter flight.

But yeah, for people who are prone to worry and fear chronically, I could see how it's just like, you just don't want to do anything because what if it goes wrong? Right. You know, like they're just kind of always imagining the worst case scenario. Yeah, which you would think it's kind of like almost a perfectionist thing, but it's not. Yeah. It's more because the perfectionist is like, well, what if I don't do it perfectly? But what if I, you know, what if I'm embarrassed by or whatever? Yeah. This is like, what if it just everything just the worst case scenario comes to mind?

What if it goes wrong? What if I'm worse off than I am now? Like, yeah, the perfectionist is like, here my bar is way up here. What if I don't hit it? Whereas like the warrior is just like, what if things get worse because I tried this thing? The crisis maker. So we talked about this. Thrives on last minute adrenaline.

Enjoyes the emotional rush of doing things last minute. Needs to create earlier artificial deadlines, needs to work in scheduled sessions, and needs to reward themselves for finishing ahead of time. I think we've covered this person quite a bit here, but it is interesting to see them show up in the list here. The next one is the defier. I definitely relate to this one. Resists imposed tasks, dislikes authority, struggles to reframe actions as personal choices, needs to identify with the direct benefits, use autonomy to stay in control rather than react passively. As a person who just chronically hates being told what to do to the point, like, is just like unnecessarily contrarian at times.

A big cultural component of that one though too, you know, where if obedience or at least tradition or service to your family society, whatever it is, there's a big cultural component as well. This feels like maybe a little bit of a privileged procrastinator. Yeah. Could be serving too many college kids. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Like it's just, I mean, my personality has always been like if somebody tells me to do something,

my first reaction is like, no, I'm not going to do that. Right. And then finally, the overdoer takes on too much, tries to accomplish too many tasks at the same time, unable to manage their energy effectively. They must learn to say no, delegate their tasks, focus on high impact tasks, prioritization, which we talked about, and then set boundaries to reduce overwhelm and burnout. This is me. Definitely a little bit of me in here, too. Like, it just... You try to take on a lot you do.

I have a hard time saying no. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I definitely see this one in myself. To me, this feels like the... If there's one of these that I imagine has grown over the last 10, 20 years, I could see it being the overdoer.

Yeah. Just because they're the opportunity of things to do and engage in as grown exponentially. Yeah. So the need to create boundaries and say no has also grown exponentially. and those are hard things to do. Like, it takes, there's quite a cognitive load to, like, turning something down or refusing to do something. So, yeah, those are the six types of procrastinators.

I think it's a little bit useful before we get into all, like, the specific tips and strategies and stuff. Like, I think it's useful to kind of ask yourself where you are and what you need to, what each of us needs to focus on to improve this for ourselves. Absolutely. Let's talk about environmental design. That's right. What's a good way to implement environmental design to help with your procrastination? The core premise of this is altering your surroundings so that the desired behavior that you're targeting is just easier.

Or the one that you don't want to do is much harder. Distractions and stuff like that. So we'll talk about how to do that. So set up your environment so that for success basically. Some of the ways, like we've mentioned right now, if you're being presented, procrastinating on your diet. Don't buy junk food. Don't keep it in the house. That's like an easy win you can have right there. There's kind of like actual just physically alter your environment. That's kind of the first category. And then the second environment or the second category, I think is creating rules for yourself. You know, like when you were saying things like, you know, leave your phone in the other room or, you know, people will say stuff like, oh, only check email after 2 p.m. or something like that.

Like it's, I think it's really useful to get explicit of like this is a. rule that I live by. Like, this is a rule that I have for myself. Because if you try to, I think the key principle here is that when you leave it up to your own decision making, you can't trust your own decision making. Right. And not in the moment at least. Yes.

And not consistently over a long period of time. You might get it right the first day or the first week, but like eventually you're going to start making the bad decision. And as soon as you make the bad decision once, that's going to justify every future bad decision. So it's just like you have to create a rule. I'm not allowed to have my phone in my office, period. Similar to environmental design, another big one is social accountability.

We talked a little bit about the Confucianism, and we've kind of skirted around this, you know, with all the talk of emotions and behaviorism and conditioning and all this stuff, the ego stuff. We haven't addressed it really directly, but like it is worth understanding that probably the strongest driver of our emotions, period, is other people, right? It's the people in our lives that we like, that we trust, that we respect, that we want to win the respect of or the trust of. They are some of the strongest levers on our own behavior. And you can utilize that.

I mean, first of all, on a very abstract level is being conscious of who you led into your life. You know, there's this old saying that you are the average of the five closest people to you. I think there's a lot of evidence that that is true, right? It's like if the five closest people to you in your life have absolute shit habits and they get nothing done and they're always complaining and laying around on the couch and brain rotting, like that is going to nudge you into those behaviors because that is what is going to get you social validation and approval. And fundamentally, we're human. We all need social validation and approval. So surrounding yourself by people that you admire, people that have good work habits, good health habits, that have the habits that you wish you could have, just by spending more time with them, you are more likely to adapt a lot of those behaviors. But then on a very, like, tactical level, finding somebody who has the same goal as you and is also struggling with that goal is and then like working on it together, it's just your chance of success rises exponentially.

Like the difference between, say, I don't know, trying to learn a new language by yourself and trying to learn a new language with a friend, your chance of success is going to like 5 or 10x if you do it with a friend. And I think that's true of pretty much anything. And a big part of that is just more fun and interesting, which we'll get to in a second. But I think the biggest thing is just accountability. Yes. You don't want to be the asshole who like skips French class. Like, you don't want to be the dick that, like, paid for, you know, convinced your friends to, like, join a CrossFit gym with you and then never shows up. Like, it's just, that's embarrassing.

That loses respect that, you know, people stop trusting you as much. And so, like, that is a huge lever that you can pull within your own brain. All right. So that's the external stuff. Those are the external factors that we can manipulate to help our own procrastination. Let's start talking about the internal stuff. Yeah. So let's start with the big question.

I think you, let's take, let's take opposite starting points. Why don't you start with like the big, hairy questions, and then I'll kind of like break it down into the small questions. Okay, okay. Well, first, we talked about purpose and finding a why for your actions, right? And I think that's just foundational and fundamental, as we already discussed, to getting things done. I mean, procrastination kind of becomes an afterthought when you really have a strong purpose. tied to what your daily actions, right? So reconnecting whatever task or a job or whatever it is to a deeper sense of meaning and purpose

and what is this doing for me in my life that is going to bring like a greater sense of purpose around things. That I'm starting there. So kind of finding your why, the Simon Sinek thing, you know, you could dig into that. Why is something important to you really digging into the reasons like, okay, why is this, I have this job or I have this task or I have this task or I. I have this creative project I want and finding the underlying drive and value that you associate with that. So go back and listen to the first episode on values.

That will give you a very good foundation for this as well. Yeah. But starting there, starting with why, why am I doing any of this and like really getting into and digging into playing the why game with yourself like a 30 year old? Why? Why? Why? Why am I doing this? Why? Why? I think that's a really good place to start anyway. Yeah. I think too, like having a basic understanding of like what a good why is versus a bad why. Yeah, we didn't really talk about that. Did we?

Yeah. But generally speaking, I think the best way to characterize like a good why is that it's something that is bigger or more important than yourself. Yes. You know, I think if you dig down and ultimately you find that your why is just pointing back at you, it's like, oh, I'm doing this just because I want people to respect me. or I'm doing this because I want to impress this group of people that I wish were impressed by me or, you know, whatever. That's going to be a weak why. And generally the strongest whys are the sorts of things that you're like, you know what? I don't matter, right?

I will do anything for my kid or I will do anything for my church or I will do anything for the environment. Right. You know, like it's like when you find something that is greater and more important in yourself that even if you, you die, you hope it continues on past you, like, that is generally indicative of, of some, some, a good form of why. The other good form of why I would say is, um, is around creativity. Like, it, like, if there's an action that you appreciate just in and of itself, like, if it's, um, if it's something that you would do if nobody was watching and nobody knew you did it. Right. Like it's, it's, then that's probably a good why. It's just,

like the pure enjoyment and satisfaction of that thing, right? It's like I would still play music if nobody ever heard me play. It's just because it's like the pure joy and satisfaction of playing is fundamentally enriching in my life. That's a good why as well. You know, it's like try to stay aligned with that. Right. Yeah, we talked a little bit about in this section two, we talked a little bit about this

where if you do start out with the why that you later, find that, oh, this isn't very good why. The example I gave anyway was, yeah, I started working out because I wanted to look good, right? Yeah. But it eventually did change into something else. Sometimes that can't happen. So sometimes we need to abandon something if we don't have a good why for it, but sometimes

the why can change too, right? So like in that case, I changed from my vanity, which is, if I'm honest, it's still important to me, right? Sure. On some level. But really what it grew into was, oh, this is a lifelong skill that I'm developing that's going to help me until the day I die, basically. Like, hopefully I'm not going to be one of those 80-year-old people, like my great-uncle

who I'm still out there skiing and I can, you know, do the splits and all of that kind of stuff. So your Y can change, but sometimes you also just need to let something go because it's just, there's no foundation for your Y and your purpose. I think that's a really good, a really good point, though, is that, like, those weaker whys don't go away. Yeah, yeah. You just need to find the bigger, stronger one.

Like, yeah, you never will stop caring. You will always want, you know, the cute boy or girl to, like, find you attractive. You will always want respect from your peers. You will always want to impress certain people. Like, that's a very natural and human thing. It's just like, that's not sufficient. You need to find something bigger than that. Because if that's your only why, then you're just on a very ugly treadmill.

And it's not going to get any slower. Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. Okay, so, yeah, zooming in a little bit here. So zoom in it. So we're going, that's the super big picture now cutting in super, super tight. I have this concept that I've called for many years the minimum viable action, which is this is the breaking down or chunking down, you know, actions into a smaller component pieces. I call it the minimum viable action because it's basically what you do is you take whatever you're procrastinating.

You break it down into sub actions. And then you continue to break it down to the point where it stops feeling in. intimidating. And then the point where it stops feeling intimidating, then you say, okay, cool, I'll go do that. So really simple examples. Like, let's say I want to develop a meditation practice. And I wake up one morning and I'm like, oh, man, 20 minutes of meditation. Like, that's a huge pain in the ass. And it's like, okay, well, let's break that down. Like, what about five minutes of meditation? It's like, yeah, it's still kind of like, okay, what about one minute of meditation, right? Like, just go sit on the fucking floor. How about that?

I don't even have to. Yeah. Just sit on the floor and just do like 30 seconds. And it's like, okay, yeah, that's not intimidating. So then you go do that. And then what you find is that once you do the tiny action, once you're on the floor for 30 seconds, then you're like, well, I can do five minutes. And then you do the five minutes. And then you do the five minutes. sit down and do five, that's better than zero, right? So the minimum viable action is always,

it helps guarantee that something gets done. Even if it's not as much as you would hope or imagine, it's just that something gets done. I've applied this in almost every area of my business and my productivity. Like, this is just, this is my absolute go-to. In my personal life, anything that I'm struggling with or I'm delaying, this is the first thing that I go to. Because I'm like, how can I break this down into something that's not intimidating. Okay, yeah. So the next one is addressing those underlying emotions. This is kind of the crux of it.

This is where we want to end up and be able to really address what's going on, dig into what's going on. Why are we putting this task off? Why are we anxious about it? Why are we angry about it? Why are we bored? What's so painful about this task? And addressing those emotions that we attach to these dreadful tasks that we have to do or perceived

dreadful task. So we talked about the rain mess. method. This is one way. It's really just more about mindfulness, though. Being aware, so your rain method, remember to recognize, allow, investigate, and non-attachment to those emotions. So it's just a way to be more mindful at every single stage of what's going on during procrastination. Yeah. And you can, I mean, there's different ways. You could be more mindful around this, but this, I've found any way just on a moment-to-moment basis when that does pop up, this is a really good way to just get, like, really get in there and be like, okay,

what's going on here? Why am I feeling this way? Where am I feeling this in my body? Why am I feeling it there? All the things you think about when you hear about mindfulness practices. That's how you can start to address the underlying emotions. And I think it's important to emphasize because I imagine that there's some subset of listeners right now who like just went through four hours of information and the history of procrastination and Ecracia. And they get to the end and they're like, ah, fuck, it's about emotions.

You mean I got to go to therapy to get my work done? And it's like, no, no, you don't have to. Like, sure, it would help. But like, you don't have to. Like, this is ultimately it's more about, it's not about fixing your emotions or like solving your emotions. It's more about becoming aware and accepting of your emotions, like not being hijacked by your emotions.

Just like, as you said, like recognizing what's going on beneath the surface so that you can work with it instead of against it, right? So if anxiety comes up, you can like alter the action or the expectation in your head until you get it to a point where it's not so anxiety-inducing or, you know, or if there's like a despair or sadness or whatever, like you can kind of play with, you know, your goals or or your, the way you approach an activity to try to find a way that makes it a little bit more exciting or fun for yourself. So like it's just until you're aware of the emotion that's underlying the procrastination, you can't really adapt to it or use it in any useful way.

Yeah. And I mean, a lot of this to, these all tie together, right? And so if you have like an environment that's bringing up a lot of these emotions too and fixing that will help. But again, it still just goes back to the mindfulness part of that. You have to be aware of those triggers in your environment or maybe it's a person or, you know, a work situation that happens a lot too. but yeah

becoming more self-awareness we talk a lot about self-awareness in a lot of different areas and that's a skill too that you develop over time and self-awareness around why you do and don't do things I think that you have to find some method whether that's through more meditation

or maybe you do need to go through to therapy just to get a little more self-aware around your emotions but at the end of the day yes I'm sorry it's about emotions then you do have to address it. You have to figure out a way to address them. And again, it goes back to being honest with yourself. Like me, I just know that there's certain things that I do procrastinate that I like,

and I have these emotions that I don't like around them. But I was like, look, accept that. That's just how it's going to be. And it's probably never going to change. I'm never going to have this like real big excitement to, I don't know, clean my house or whatever it is. But that's okay. You got to work with that. Well, let's talk about how I deal with my unpleasant emotions, which is I just find a way to make it fun.

Yeah. Party boy, Mark. Yeah, there you go. So a friend of the show, Ali Abdallah, has a great book about this called Feel Good Productivity. And for me, my favorite thing about that book, it was reading that book. It was one of those things that I had personally believed and felt for a long time, but I didn't really know how to say it. And I'd never really seen it said well anywhere else. And I feel like he was kind of the first person to say it, which is like you can, find a way to make boring things fun. There are actual ways that you can apply certain principles

that just make something that's dredgery feel more interesting. I think you mentioned CrossFit earlier. I think CrossFit is like a prime example of this, right? Like most people don't enjoy working out. So what did CrossFit do? They gamified it. Like they created systems and achievements and goals and challenges and they have you track your progress over time and then they put you in a social environment and they put you in teams and the teams are competing against each other. These are all just like really basic how to make it fun 101 techniques. And you can do this with anything. You can gamify anything.

You can track progress on anything. You can, again, if you've got social accountability, you know, you can set up a little game with your friend of like, okay, let's see who can study more hours this week or who can learn more French words this month. You know, create little friendly competitions between yourself. in somebody and track your progress over time, create little rewards and incentives for yourself. It's, you know, human nature is pretty simple. And if you understand how to how to leverage it, you know, you can get a lot further. Yeah. What are some of the examples? I don't use this one as much.

Maybe I hate fun or something. I don't know. But what are some examples of specific examples you've used around, I mean, you've been on a big health journey. I know just tracking in general you think is fun, which is, you know, some people might not think just tracking is fun. I think progress is fun. Progress. Okay. So one thing that I find very fun, I'm a very competitive person. And one of the, like, I agree, tracking is annoying.

Yeah. I don't, the tracking itself, I don't enjoy. Okay, okay. What I enjoy is the competition with myself. Okay. Right? So it's like I know how much weight I lifted on every, on every exercise last week, right? Oh, wow.

Okay. It's fun for me to go into the gym. this week and be like, let's see if I can do one more wrap. Right? Like, let's see if I can do this. Let's see if I can add five pounds to this. Like, let's see how that feels. I mean, and don't get me wrong.

I'm not like skipping to the gym every morning, you know, like hopping out of bed. But like, it makes it interesting enough that it's not as hard to go. And it's not as hard to finish the workout. It takes what would be a pretty dull and boring workout. And it makes it interesting and exciting. And the other thing you can do is you can pair, like you can batch activities with each other. So, you know, if you, let's say there's a podcast you love, like two handsome men talking about procrastination for four hours. You can, you can make a rule with yourself that like you can only listen to the Solve podcast while you're doing housework.

Like this is, I've got a couple podcasts that are just frivolous and fun. Yeah. And they're my chores podcast. I don't listen to them any other time. It's like when I'm doing the dishes and taking out the trash and, you know, cleaning the office, like that's when I put this podcast on. Because it's kind of, it takes what is normally just a painful, boring experience. And it makes it interesting for me. And you can lump activities together like that. You know, if you love audiobooks, you know, make a deal with yourself. You can you can only listen to audiobooks either while you're working out or. while you're getting ready for bed, you know, and it's, there's no other time. So what's fun for you could be fun for somebody else? Yeah, everybody's fun is a little bit different. But, you know, the principles are the same. I think Ollie even goes through this. He's like, gamify it, make it social, and then like batch it with something that you enjoy.

Right, right. You know, so those are the three tried and true methods. I think he has a couple more in his book. Okay. I'm probably not thinking of at the moment. Yeah. So, all right. Last one, and I know this is the spicy one, but we're just really quick.

productive procrastination with an asteris. Yes. This is personality dependent. If you are an ADHD person like me, you might get a lot of leverage out of this. Be careful. Like it is like juggling steak knives. You can hurt yourself. If you're not very focused and adept at what you're doing, the productive procrastination,

it can get out of hand very easily. So just to review really quick, it's when you procrastinate one task by doing some other tasks that is also intimidating or difficult to do. And it can be very effective if it's honed well and honed correctly. It can be extremely effective, but you can also waste a lot of time spinning your wheels, doing a bunch of shit that seems useful, but is not. And like you said, it's like another subtle form of avoidance. So the difference between productive procrastination and just unproductive procrastination

is like a very fine line and I would urge people to consider it but also be very, very careful about it. All right, everybody, that's it for today's highlight. If that resonated with you and let's be real, you're listening to a podcast segment about procrastination, so probably resonated. It's worth checking out the full episode.

We go way deeper into the roots of why we avoid important stuff and how to actually build habits that last. And don't forget to grab the free procrastination guide, we packed it with takeaways tools, research back strategies, to help you get your shit together. You can find it in the show notes

or go to solvepodcast.com slash procrastination. And if you're enjoying the show, please do drop us a review, give us a follow, whatever platform you're on. It's the best thing you can do to help us out, help us get the word out. Thank you guys again. I will see you next week.