How to finally overcome procrastination.

Alrighty, so let's talk about procrastination.

Next week. Let's do it next week because honestly, that's just going to be better for my schedule. I'm a little bit busy right now. Things are super crazy and like what's it with everybody always being on time with things like oh, I gotta pay rent every month. I gotta listen to my wife when she asked me a question, you know..

You guys don't do those things right for the past couple weeks. I've been procrastinating making this video instead of doing the thing that I knew I should be doing. I played video games hunted around my house for snacks and scrub. My floor is spotless, I guess because if I'm not going to be productive at the very least the back of my refrigerator is going to be clean. Now. I always tend to find a silver lining when I go through a slump like this and it's not just the fact that my bathrooms are clean for the first time in two months don't judge me. It's 2020 but this time around.

It's gotten me to look a little bit deeper and identify the problems. Why am I struggling? Why am I having such a difficult time getting to work? This video wasn't even going to be about procrastination. But the longer I sat in those feelings the longer I was going through this the more it got me to think about ways to overcome procrastination how to push through it and the true reasons why we procrastinate to begin with this video is brought to you by story blocks a great website that I use for sourcing high quality video clips from my videos, but more on them..

Later, I think the thing I hate most about procrastinating isn't the fact that I get behind with my work or that I eventually have to cram last minute before a deadline. It's the fact that it blankets, otherwise enjoyable downtime with the thin layer of guilt while I aimlessly browse online. There's this quiet voice nagging in the back of my mind. You should be working right now. This isn't the best use of your time you're totally screwed. So a lot of you know me as someone who is super productive a guy who generally has his shit together and while for the most part.

Like to think that that's true, I do have my days. I have my weeks and sometimes I even have my months where I just can't get to work. I struggled to do even the things that I find most fulfilling in life. So two weeks ago. I put one task on my to-do list make YouTube video but each day I kept pushing it back and back and back. I kept finding other things to distract myself with I kept telling myself that I'd get to it later, but then 9:00 a.m. Would turn into 12 p.m. And then before I knew it it was past 5:00 p.m. And.

Damn it. I'm not the kind of person that starts working past 5:00 p.m. This cycle went on for days. I kept coming up with all of these sneaky reasons or let's call them what they actually are excuses for why I didn't need to do the thing that I actually do really needed to do and I'm sure that this is something that you've experienced yourself first and whether it's a school paper or it's a project for work. We put off the things that are most important even though we know that's going to lead to so much pain down the road and as I started to think about it I started to wonder what's the reason what why.

We actually do this. It sounds so counterproductive and so counterintuitive to how we should be acting and then I remembered an interview. I did last year with Steven kotler. He's an expert in the flow state. If you missed that video, there's a link in the description but essentially flow is a state of Optimal Performance where your brain locks in on the task at hand and everything else in the world seems to fade away. It's what allows extreme athletes to perform gravity-defying tricks and it's also what gets you to do your best work whether you're an.

Lenore a filmmaker. So in order to get into a flow state in order to take advantage of what we're wired to do. We need to overcome procrastination. And so I thought there would be no better person to ask this question and Steven kotler. Why do we procrastinate flow follows Focus only shows up when all of our attention the right here right now, right? So that's what all the triggers do. They're always driving our attention in the present moment challenge skills balances the best of those ways and it says we pay the most attention to the task at hand..

When the challenge of the task slightly exceeds your skill set. So you want to stretch but not snap. It's outside your comfort zone but just outside. So if I were to explain an emotionally, I would say it's it's this challenge skills balance the balance points. It's not on very near the midpoint between boredom not enough stimulation aren't paying no attention and anxiety. Whoa way too much and Bank too much attention in between is the switch, but they call it the flow Channel Across the Nation 95% of the time..

I'm this one or two things either. The challenge is too hard. It's making you anxious. So you're putting it off and putting it off and putting it off or just as common challenges to freaking boring. The challenge was too boring even though I didn't realize it at the time that's exactly how I felt about that one task that I added to my to do list make YouTube video. It wasn't that I find making videos boring. It's at the challenge of making one video..

So in one week just wasn't very ambitious for me. Now. If you've never made a YouTube video or a video in your life, then this is going to be a really difficult challenge. There are hundreds of different skills and steps that you need to take in order to start making a video and then to finish a video but I'd proven to myself time and time again that I can do this. I've made hundreds of videos in my life both long and short and I knew that I could do this within just a couple of days if I need it too. So the problem really wasn't with the.

Ask itself because I love the task of making videos. It was really how do I motivate myself to get started and to push myself into the Flow State because once I'm there, I'm truly loving it. I'm enjoying the process and it's difficult to pull me away from my work. I just had to find that inner motivation to get me there. And so I asked myself. How could I light a fire under my ass, and I realized that I just wasn't being ambitious enough with my time one video just wasn't challenging enough for me. So I added a few more..

Tasks to my to-do list that I needed to get done after finishing this video all the sudden there was a sense of urgency to get me started. Stephen told me about another creative work around he used as a journalist that had nothing to do with moving deadlines. I especially those coming up as a writer and as a journalist, I mean man, I would take any store you gave me right like I do I'll write about whatever some of those stories were less than interesting to me. So because I didn't want to put it off till the night before.

For all the obvious reasons I would do things like okay, how would Charles Dickens write this story held Hemingway work. So I try to write the story in the voice of hemenway because I've turned the challenge level knob I'm a month out, but I've been suddenly I'm interested. So think about whatever task it is you're working on right now that you're procrastinating by watching this YouTube video and ask yourself if you're avoiding the task because it's too simple. If so, how could you dial it up to make it a little bit more difficult a little bit more challenging or.

Yourself now, of course the difficulty with this strategy is finding balance. Now if you take on too much work, if you overwhelm yourself, then you're going to burn out and you're going to get stressed out. You may actually like Steven kotler suggested get too anxious to wear. These projects would be overwhelming to even begin in the first place. And then also though in the flip side. I definitely find it to be true that it when I do too little when it's not exciting or ambitious enough then I'm not going to be motivated to get started..

And and so finding that balance making sure that of course you're not burning out but also making sure that you're creating and doing work that is really inspiring and motivating you to take action. Okay. So let's for a moment dig into the other reason that we procrastinate When Things become overwhelming or a project is just too much for us to wrap our heads around and if we can look at the same example, I've been using throughout this video make YouTube video if that's what's on your to-do list, and you've never made a video in your life..

This is going to be a truly daunting experience. And so you might want to split it up into a few smaller tasks. You might create a to-do list with the items Right video film video edit video. Now again, this could still be too overwhelming so you could continue to break that down even further and create a dozen or more different tasks as a part of the bigger hole. Now. This is something that I continue to do with really big projects and something that you absolutely have to do because.

I couldn't just put make feature-length documentary on my to do list. If I did I would have to keep putting on my to-do list every day for about three years over the course of the project. Now. What I really need to do is break that up into much more manageable bits of information goals and Milestones along the way are there to help push you forward towards that Big Goal, but you have these small tasks you need to do every day that continue to push the needle forward the best part of overcoming procrastination and checking all.

Is items off your to-do list is that you can now enjoy a much deserved break completely guilt free. Now. The only thing left to procrastinate is cleaning your house..

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So if I were to leave you guys with anything, I like to always end these videos with a little bit more of a relaxed less high-strung version of Matt where I can just chill we can just hang it. We can kick it. I'm not cool. I am like becoming a dad even though we are very far away from having kids of our own. I know a lot of people ask that question and I aren't having kids anytime soon. It definitely not during covid. But you know when it comes to procrastination and when it comes to motivation and getting the work done and Chase.

Goals, and I truly believe that sometimes we get so caught up in the chase that we lose sight of what is truly important. And so whether you're trying to overcome procrastination whether you're working towards your goals, I really really want you guys to make sure that you always keep in check the reason why you're doing and you always make sure that you're not doing something just because you have to and you're doing it because you want to because you love what you're doing and you truly love the craft. Sometimes it's really difficult to understand the.

Difference because when you're facing procrastination when you're facing, you know, the prospect of sitting down playing video games all day or doing work that's truly difficult. You can feel like oh man, I'd rather just do this easy thing. I actually don't want to do the hard work, but you have to be able to overcome that you have to be able to push through that to really identify whether this is something worth doing or it's something throwing off to the side and trying something different instead. And so continue to be honest with yourself continue to be true..

Keep asking those questions and keep doing the hard work. Thanks for watching and I'll see you guys next time..