The Mindset Mentor - 5 Keys To Stop Procrastinating

Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome to today's episode of the Mindset Mentor Podcast. I am your host, Rob Dial. If you have not yet done so, hit that subscribe button so that you never miss another episode of this podcast. And if you're out there and you love this podcast, please do me a favor, give us a rating and review however you listen to us. If it's Spotify, if it's Apple Podcasts, go to those platforms, give us a rating and review. The more positive rating and reviews that we get, the more those platforms actually show this podcast to people who have never listened to it before. So if you could do that for me, take it 10 seconds. I would greatly, greatly appreciate it. Today, we're going to be giving you five keys to stop procrastinating. If you are a lazy person,

Starting point is 00:00:46 or if you feel like you have a lot to do and you really want to create an amazing life, and you have all these goals and aspirations, but you find yourself procrastinating a little bit too much, this episode is specifically designed for you. So let's just jump straight into it. So the first thing I want you to do, number one, stop lying to yourself. That's the first thing I want you to do. I want you to admit your laziness. Now, it's kind of like a 12-step program, right? The first thing you need to do is just actually acknowledge the laziness that is there. Stop lying to yourself. Just admit it. Yeah, you know what? I've been really lazy over the past six months and I really have been slacking on my business and growing my business. I need to get

Starting point is 00:01:31 it together. Just admit your laziness first, put it on the table, and once you can admit it, then we can actually start to work through it. But you're going to keep lying to yourself and telling yourself that you're doing the best you can and you don't have a whole lot of time and you're trying to keep it together. Just be honest with yourself. Because sometimes we just all have to be adults and just say, hey, you know what? Yeah, I have been lazy and I'm going to change it. So the important thing though is to admit your laziness or that you have been lazy. Don't call yourself lazy. Don't call yourself a procrastinator. Because if you say, I am lazy, I am a procrastinator, that is an identity statement. And when you say something and you identify with it, it makes it much harder to break.

Starting point is 00:02:13 Because there's a small difference. Just listen to this. I am lazy versus I have been lazy. I have been procrastinating a lot recently. One of them is an identity statement. One of them is talking about behaviors that you've been having recently. And so the reason why I say don't say I am blank is because when you say I am blank, your subconscious automatically stores that thing as true. You are not lazy. You have just had lazy tendencies as of recently. Or shit, you've had lazy tendencies your entire life. But really

Starting point is 00:02:45 what it comes down to is stop identifying with it is an important aspect of it. But admit your laziness to yourself. Call it what it is. And once you admit it and you put it out there on the table, then you can say, but I no longer want to have this laziness. Just like, hey, I'm wearing, if you're looking at this video, I'm wearing a blue shirt, right? I happen to be wearing a blue shirt. I am not the blue shirt, but if I want to change this blue shirt, I can change this blue shirt. Same way where I have been lazy, not an identity statement. I have been lazy. I've had some laziness, some procrastinating in the past six months, the past year, two years, whatever it might be. I no longer want to wear this shirt of laziness. I want to change it and

Starting point is 00:03:23 realize if I'm being honest with you, I think humans are just inherently lazy. Like I honestly do. Like if you look at it, if we go back a million years ago, and I live in Texas, and it's the, let's say it's the middle of summer in Texas a million years ago. It's really hot here in the summer. I would imagine, just a guess, that at noon, 1 p.m. ish, if anybody who is in Austin, Texas, the place that I live, and it's 105 degrees in the middle of the summer a million years ago, they're probably not out working all day long. They probably wake up right when the sun is starting to rise. They do a lot of work. They go out. They do their hunting. They get their water. They do what they need to. And then in that time when it's the hottest, probably, if I'm being honest with you,

Starting point is 00:04:08 sitting under some trees, relaxing, maybe eating some food, all of that stuff. And then once it starts to cool down towards the end of the day, the sun starts to get closer to setting, it's another opportunity to hunt, to do things, to go find water, all of that stuff. And so I think just by knowing and coaching people for the past 17-ish years, 18-ish years at this point, that I just think humans are inherently lazy. And that's okay. But it doesn't mean that's who we have to be all of the time. We can work ourself out of it. For me, I was a very lazy person for the first 19, 20 years of my life until I found a company where hard work was rewarded. And I actually started to build that inside of myself. So I

Starting point is 00:04:44 do believe that we will be able to build it inside of ourselves, hard work, if we really, truly want to. And stop blaming anything outside of you. Take control of it. Say, hey, this is my fault. I am lazy. I'm sorry. Shit, I'm even doing it myself. Not I am lazy. I have been lazy and I'm going to blame myself and I'm going to take full acceptance of it, but I am going to change it. So that's the first thing I want to make sure that you do. Okay. That's the first thing to get past is you have to admit it. The second thing is you have to make your goals. You have to, first off, take your goals and make sure you have goals and then you need to make them bite-sized. Right. And so I don't mean that if your goal is to make a hundred thousand dollars

Starting point is 00:05:20 this year to chop it in half and go to $50, dollars this year. What I mean is to make that take that goal and make it smaller. Right. Like if you get a plate of steak put out in front of you, you don't start to stress out about the entire plate of steak because you have to fit the entire thing in your mouth. It's one bite at a time. Right. It's the same thing with your goals. It's one bite at a time. So, you know, let's say, for example, you're a sales rep and your goal is to make $100,000 this year. And you do your math because as a sales rep, you should know for how many calls you need to make turns into how many conversations, how many conversations turn, how many closes that you have. You can look at it and say, okay, based off of making $100,000 over the course of the entire

Starting point is 00:05:57 year, that means that I need to make calculations, a hundred calls a week. Okay. And if I'm working five days a week, I take those hundred calls divided by five and I come up with 20. I need to do 20 calls today. So what you do is you focus on the 20 calls that you need to do today, not the hundred thousand dollars that you want to make over the course of the year. And what you do is you start to focus on the action-based goals, not the result that you're working towards. You always want to know the result that you're working towards, but you need to take your goals and make them bite-sized. What do you need to do today to move the needle? Now, you might do 20 calls and nobody answers.

Starting point is 00:06:32 You might do 20 calls and you have more people answer than normal. There's going to be on days, there's going to be off days. All it's about is knowing your numbers and working towards that thing. You know, if you want to save, let's say you want to save $6,000 this year. If you want to save $6,000 a year, that's $500 a month. How can you save 120, what is that? $125 a week, right? You start to make them bite size because it's hard to focus on something that's really far in the future sometimes. And I found with a lot of people, we have really big goals and the bigger that our goals are, the more that we get paralysis by analysis. And the more that when we start to look at our big goals, we see all And the bigger that our goals are, the more that we get paralysis by analysis.

Starting point is 00:07:05 And the more that when we start to look at our big goals, we see all of the stuff that we have to do. We see the entire process, all of the work that has to go in. And I've actually found a lot of people become demotivated by the size of their goals because they're too big and they seem too far away. So how do we get past that? Let's start focusing on what do I need to do today? How do I take action today towards whatever it is that I'm trying to work towards? So you take your goals and you make them bite size. Hey, today's program is brought to you by Athletic Greens, the health and wellness company that makes comprehensive daily nutrition really, really simple.

Starting point is 00:07:38 AG1 by Athletic Greens is the category leading superfood product that brings comprehensive and convenient daily nutrition to everybody. Because keeping up with the research, knowing what to do, and taking a bunch of pills and capsules is hard on the stomach and hard to keep up with. So to help each of us be at our best, they simplify the path to better nutrition by giving you the one thing with all of the best things. I literally take AG1 every single morning because it just makes getting all of my vitamins and minerals so easy. And with one tasty scoop of AG1, I get 75 vitamins, minerals, and whole food source ingredients, including a multivitamin, multivitaminal,

Starting point is 00:08:10 probiotic, green superfood blend, and more, all in one convenient daily serving. So if you want to take ownership of your health, today is a good time to start. Athletic Greens is going to give you a free year supply of vitamin D and five free travel packs with your first purchase. Go to athleticgreens.com slash dial. That to athleticgreens.com slash dial. That's athleticgreens.com slash dial. Check it out. I think one of the most key ingredients to my mental health is meditation.

Starting point is 00:08:32 And if the past few years have taught us anything, it's how important mental health is to our overall state of wellbeing. Let me tell you, meditation has made me more calm, happier, and brought more joy to my life. Headspace helps you improve your mental health through guided meditations, mindfulness practices, breathing and calming exercises, and so much more. These tools can help reduce anxiety, boost your mood, and help you get better

Starting point is 00:08:54 sleep. Headspace combines scientifically proven benefits of meditation and mindfulness with modern practices through their experienced meditation teachers with customized personalized approaches to help you navigate through all of life's moments, big and small. The wide range of teachers with diverse backgrounds and areas of expertise ensure that there's a teacher and content to help you, whether you're a first timer or you've been practicing for years. And when you only have a few minutes to get in the right headspace, there are programs to do on the go when pressed for time. Headspace has the world's largest library of content with over 1000 hours of clinically proven mental health exercises. And some of the ones that I like the most are the ones that are short to the point where I can just use them really quickly in between meetings. Headspace

Starting point is 00:09:33 has helped me and more than 100 million people worldwide, and they can help you too. Listen up, you don't want to miss this. I've arranged something special for a limited time. All of you can try Headspace for free for 30 days by going to headspace.com slash dial 30 day. You won't find this offer anywhere else. You must use my link. That's H-E-A-D-S-P-A-C-E.com slash dial 30 day to unlock all of Headspace free for 30 days. This is not something they do normally. Headspace.com slash dial 30 day. The third thing that you want to do is you want to find your why, right? If you care about your goals, that's good. But the way to

Starting point is 00:10:10 care about your goals more is to find the why behind the goals, to find out really truly why you want to do it. I always love to use this example and I've given it many times. I'm giving a speech as I say, hey, you know, I'll be in a room with 200 people and I'll say, out of this room, how many of you will make a million dollars? How many of you think it's possible for you to make a million dollars legally this year? I'm just going to ask you, think about this to yourself. What's the percentage chance of you making a million dollars legally this year? And usually it's like 0%, 0%, 1%, 2%, 3%, 0%, 0, 0, 0. And it's all of these zeros, all of these ones, everything, almost everybody in the room is under 5%. And they say, okay, what's the percentage chance of you making a million dollars legally this year?

Starting point is 00:10:57 And if you don't, everyone that you love dies. Everyone's like 100%, 100%, 1000%, a million percent. There's no way on earth I won't hit that goal of making a million dollars legally this year. And I say, that's really interesting because the goal didn't change. The timeframe didn't change. The only thing that changed was your why behind the goal. So if your why is strong enough, my very first coach used to always say this to me, when your why is strong enough, your how will reveal itself. When you know why you want to do something, you will get very resourceful as to how you're going to get there, right? It's 100% possible for everyone listening to this podcast to figure out a way to make a million dollars legally this year. Maybe that's not your goal. Maybe it is,

Starting point is 00:11:41 but just as an example, it's 100% possible, but you just don't care enough in order to hit it. You just don't care. And that's very simple. You have to make yourself care more. So when you look at your goals, when you look at what it is that you want to do, and you're trying to stop procrastinating, trying to stop with your laziness, what do you do? You start to look at them and say, why do I want to hit this?

Starting point is 00:12:01 And I've told this story many times before on the podcast, but my favorite story on this was I had a coach years ago, one of my very first one-on-one clients. And this was eight-ish years ago, I would say, nine-ish years ago. And I said, hey, how much do you want to make this year? And he said, I want to make $100,000. And I said, okay, why do you want to make $100,000? I want to make $100,000 this year because I have never made that before. Okay. Why do you want to make it though? Like, tell me why? Well, I want to make it because I feel like it would make, you know, my life better. Okay. Why? Why would it make your life better? Well, it'd make my life better because I can, you know, provide for my family better. Okay. Tell me more about that. And we went deeper and went deeper and went deeper. And why, why, why, why, why, why, why? And eventually it went from

Starting point is 00:12:38 he wanted to make a hundred thousand dollars this year to the real reason why he wanted to make a hundred thousand dollars was because he had recently gotten divorced. He had lost custody of his children. His ex-wife had the children and she lived in a really bad part of town. And his main worry, I'll just tell you flat out what he actually told me, was that his main worry with his young children, they were both under the age of seven, his main worry was that his daughter would get pregnant before she turned 18 years old and his son might be killed in a drive-by. And he wanted to make $100,000 so that he could buy a house, afford to be able to put the down payment down, go back to the judge, say, I have a safe place for them to live and I want them to live with me and I want them to have

Starting point is 00:13:22 a better education. Now, which one of those two goals, it's still the same goal, but which one of those whys do you think is stronger for him? I want to make $100,000 because I've never done it before, or I want to make $100,000 because of all of the stuff and the ways that it would change his children's life. Yeah, the children is much stronger. Why? He, at that point in time, found a version of himself that didn't exist because he got really clear on why he wanted to take action. So you've got to find your why. That's number three. Number four, get really good at removing distractions. A lot of times I've found that it's not that you're lazy, or let's say that's an identity statement. It's not that you have

Starting point is 00:14:00 laziness or lazy tendencies. It's not that you procrastinate often. It's that you actually have too many distractions in your life. And so one of the biggest things, everybody knows, one of our biggest distractions is our phone. And so if you're really trying to be productive, is there a way that when you have your absolute productivity time of, I need to be productive right now, you take your phone, you put it somewhere else. You know, if you work in an office and you need to make your 20 phone calls today, leave your phone in the drawer or, you know, go ahead and give it to your boss and say, hey, I can't get this back until I get my 20 phone calls done or leave it inside of your car, whatever it is that you need to do. If you work from home, the thing that I do when I work from home is I end up just taking my phone and I put it inside. I work in my office,

Starting point is 00:14:41 in my house, is I put it inside of the drawer in the kitchen. And it's literally probably takes me 15 seconds to walk and get it if I really want to. But that little bit of resistance of it being further away from me allows me to be way more productive. So how can you move your distractions? You know, there's your phone, there's TV, there's your, you know, completely cluttered desk that you work on and you can't find anything in there. How can you remove the distractions of other people? Sometimes other people want to come in and they want to talk to you, right? Can you figure out a way to do that? Can you put on headphones so that no one comes and bothers you? Or can you put a sign on your office so that

Starting point is 00:15:18 no one comes in and actually knocks or anything? Hey, if it's an emergency, come in. If not, you can talk to me after 3 p.m. Send me an email, whatever it might be. Turn off all of the notifications on your computer so that while you're sitting down and working and getting that deep work done, there's no way for any notifications to get your focus, right? Let everyone know. No distractions. Put your headphones on. Turn the computer notifications off. Put your phone in another room. How can you get really good at removing distractions so that therefore you can move the needle on the things that are most important for you? So that's number four. Number five, my favorite technique for being productive is the Pomodoro technique. I don't know how many times I've talked about the Pomodoro technique on this

Starting point is 00:15:59 podcast, but it's many. What it means is you do one task and one task only for 25 minutes. You can do anything for 25 minutes. You can do anything for 25 minutes. And so if you just say, all right, you know, I'm not worried about this huge goal that I have. I just want to take the right steps in the right direction for the next 25 minutes. And you give yourself one task and one task only, no distractions. You set an alarm, like I literally have an alarm, not my phone, but an old school alarm that is on my desk that I can set for 25 minutes. And I give myself 25 minutes of dedicated, deep work at working at this thing. You do it for 25 minutes, you take five minutes off. And the key is when you take those five minutes off, you don't look at your phone, you don't do any of that stuff. What you do is you

Starting point is 00:16:39 go outside, you go for a walk, you just, you know, you could close your eyes and just do some deep breathing. But the point is you want to be focused for 25 minutes and then five minutes of being unfocused. When you're looking at your phone or you're doing something else or talking to you, that is still focused work. And so it's the same thing as like when you're working out. You can work out really hard and then you rest for a minute. And you work really hard, you rest for a minute.

Starting point is 00:17:04 And you work really hard, you rest for a minute. And you work really hard, you rest for a minute. Same thing with your brain. 25 minutes of dedicated work, give yourself five minutes off. Close your eyes, do some deep breathing, go outside, go for a walk, sit on a park bench and just look at the scenery, the landscape around you. A lot of times I'll go out on my porch and we have a few acres around us. So I'll just stare at trees. And I'm just like, I'm just going to relax for a little bit. I'm going to let my brain just kind of chill for a little bit and do what it wants to do.

Starting point is 00:17:32 And you use the Pomodoro technique and you start noticing that it is a little hard at first. It's a little bit hard if you're not used to just being focused on just one thing, but your brain, you train yourself. You're like a dog, right? Dog might poop in the house the first week, two weeks, three weeks it lives with you. And then over time, you start training it and it starts going outside. Same thing, your brain might be unfocused, unfocused, unfocused, unfocused, unfocused. Then you start to work at this and it becomes better at being focused and getting things done. And so that right there is five ways to stop your procrastinating, to get things done, to stop your laziness, and to actually start to move the needle in your life.

Starting point is 00:18:09 So that's what I got for you for today's episode. If you love this episode, please do me a favor. Share it on your Instagram stories right now. Take a screenshot or a picture of you listening to it or a video of where you are, if you're on a walk, on a treadmill, whatever it is. Put it on your Instagram stories and tag me in it, RobDialJr, R-O-B-D-I-A-L-J-R. That helps us grow and allows people to be able to see this podcast and start listening to it that might have never known it even existed. And that's just a great way for you to help us pay it forward. So if you do that, I greatly, greatly appreciate it. And I'm going to leave it the same way I leave you every single episode. Make it your mission to make somebody else's day better.

Starting point is 00:18:42 I appreciate you and I hope that you have an amazing day.

The Mindset Mentor - 5 Keys To Stop Procrastinating

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.