Thanks to Shopify for supporting the productivity show. Shopify is a platform designed for anyone to sell anywhere, giving entrepreneurs like ourselves the resources once reserved just for big business. Sign up for your $1 per month trial period at shopify.com/tps. And we'd also like to thank Select Quote for supporting the productivity show. Get the right life insurance for you, for less, and save more than 50% at selectquote.com/tps. Welcome to the productivity show podcast where we believe that people like you can get the important things done without sacrificing your health, family, and things that matter to you. If it's your first time listening, welcome to the show. I'm TanFam, founder of Asian Efficiency, where we help people become more productive at work in a life. And I do this podcast together with my co-host, Brooks Duncan, all the way from Vancouver, Canada. How are you today, Brooks? I'm feeling a little attacked because it just so happens there's an email sitting in my inbox that I'm kind of procrastinating dealing with. And then I was like, oh, and I have to come on here and talk about procrastination. So it's a good reminder of what we always say on the podcast that we are fellow travelers in productivity. We have to deal with the same things that everyone else does. What does a good coach always say? Do as I say, not as I do, right? So you eliminate all sorts of accountability and you can get away with murder. That's the idea, right? Yep. So the way I'm going to approach it is this is the strategy I'm going to put in place to deal with that email. So today we're going to be talking about procrastination and all the ways you can save yourself from the angst and the anxiety of not getting stuff done. And there's actually four levers that you can pull to increase your productivity. So we'll be talking about that today. Now, if you're new to the show, again, my name is Tan and I do this podcast together with Brooks Duncan. We've been doing this podcast since 2015. So it's been a long time. And we're basically known for three philosophies around productivity. One is happy people are productive people. Two, one tweak a week is all takes to make massive productivity gains over time. And then three, we want everything to be simple and actionable and that includes today's episode as well. So if you ever want to get in touch with us, feel free to reach out to us via email at
[email protected]. And we always like to kick off our episodes with our top three favorite resources. So Brooks, what are they today? All right. The first one is a book. It's called the procrastination equation by pure steel. Now we aren't going to be diving into the equation itself. But it was kind of the inspiration for this episode. So I thought it was fair enough that we give that one the first slot in the top three resources. The second one is also a book. It's called the code book by Simon Singh. Now, Tan, you gave this as one of your recommendations on the podcast a long time ago. And I just had the opportunity to listen to the audiobook. And I just want to echo delayed echo everything you said about the book at the time. It is so interesting about the history of cryptography and codes and how it applies to our day to day life. And you know, kind of where it's heading. And it's such an interesting book. I was I was really into it the whole time. So the code book by Simon Singh. And then the third one, as I know, sometimes I like to go off off the rails with my recommendations. And this is no exception. I have a Vitamix. My wife and I have had it for probably, I don't know, 20 years now. And it's just started leaking. And I thought to myself, am I going to have to buy a new jug or something like that? And it turns out you probably don't need to buy a new jug. And the correct thing to do is probably to buy the official Vitamix replacement parts. However, that's not what I did. I went to Amazon and there's a million Chinese brands that I'm sure all come from the same factory. It's called the wet blade replacement. And some of them come with a really helpful tool to making the change. So that's what I did. So if you have a Vitamix and it starts acting up, you probably don't need to go and buy a whole new thing. Just go and check out replacement parts. At least for me so far, the off brand ones have worked really well. But probably the correct thing to do is get the official ones. I just didn't do that. Some cheap. So that's it. All these resources will be linked to in the show notes that you can view it right in your podcast player. And if you want to get in touch, you can email us anytime at
[email protected]. Awesome. So Brooks, let's talk about procrastination because it's a hot topic. We've been doing this podcast for a while and I think this is always one of those topics that one people resonate with because we all procrastinate to we all procrastinate for different reasons. And then also three procrastination solutions are kind of personal. There's not one size fits all solution for everybody. And something that I've noticed from just coaching people over the years is that you know one tactic or tool or tip might work for one person, but doesn't necessarily mean that it will work for the next person. And oftentimes the reason for that is is that the underlying reason or the root cause of procrastination is different per person. And so for that reason, you might require a different solution. So to give an example, you might procrastinate because you're not sleeping well or you just don't have a lot of energy. And so certain tactics won't work for you versus if you're procrastinating because you get easily distracted or you're doing work that's really own fulfilling. And so there's different solutions for those root causes. And I think that's why when it comes to procrastination, when you read like a blog post or an article about it, it's nice to read about because it's one thing to learn about the different strategies and tips and levers that you can pull to get yourself out of procrastination. But I think the more fundamental idea that's key to all of this is actually understanding what is a root cause of my procrastination because once you kind of see what that is, it's much easier to then pick and choose which tactic tip or tool you want to use to then move yourself forward. Yeah, I think the problem with procrastination too is so many of us, we almost identify with it. And we start almost feeling bad about it. Like you hear that all the time, people say, oh, I'm just so lazy or I'm a procrastinator. It almost becomes an identity and I think you're right. I think we're going to be going through the four levers to deal with procrastination. But I think, like you said, step one is to kind of take a step back, look at ourselves from outside ourselves and see what the deal and what is going on because then you can kind of apply those solutions. I mean, the fact of the matter is at the current time, kind of like the benefit to you of not doing it is higher than the benefit you see of doing it, otherwise you would be doing it. So it's a matter of going, okay, is there something I really want to do? And if it is, then be what's holding me back and then start putting this into practice. I think it's figuring out what needs to change and then applying the right thing to change it because I think applying the wrong thing to change it really can have a negative effect. You're going to do it, but maybe not in a good way. You're going to do it, but maybe you never want to do it again. Whereas if you took a different approach, maybe it would be a different story. Yeah, like a really simple example is I think most of us are, and I include myself here too, we're not great at estimating how long a task might take. And so if you think that it might take about five hours, eight hours to do, guess what, you give yourself a lot of wiggle room to then procrastinate on it. And so a tactic that might work really well for you is to set artificial deadlines or breaking it down to small pieces so that you can create more urgency to then force yourself to do stuff. So I'm, for example, somebody who works really well under deadlines and also works with a sense of urgency and accountability. Like it's one of the reasons why I have a personal trainer because if I leave it up to my own schedule to work out, I might have a hit rate of about 40, 50% or 60% on a good week. But if I have accountability, whether it's a personal trainer or I have to show up for somebody or like there's another person being affected by my inaction at some points, my hit rate is almost like 100%. Because I hate the idea of like letting people down. And the fact that you know, you and I are recording this podcast together is helpful because it forces me to be accountable to show up on time, prepare for the show notes, research and do all the work that needs to be done versus if I did this on my own, I would have been so easy to go, oh my gosh, Thursday at two o'clock. Like, like I would rather do something else and I'll do it later that day and then guess what later never comes right classic procrastination. So this is going back to one of the big ideas where I was talking about is self awareness is ultimate productivity act to more you understand how you work best. The better strategies and tips and tools you can then use and leverage for yourself. Now we have four ways today we're going to share with you of how you can identify different levers that you can pull to get yourself out of the rut and also push yourself forward. And so one of the first levers is increasing expectancy. So not a way of saying this is how can you increase your confidence or your outlook on your ability to get this task done. And a classic example for myself is if I proceed
a task to be really difficult, Brooks. My tendency is to procrastinate on it. Whereas if a task is easy to do, in my mind, I feel very confident. I go, "Okay, yeah, I can definitely do that." You know, and this level of confidence can come from different things. One is if we've done a task before, oftentimes we have more confidence to then do it. But if it's a task that we've never done before and we perceive it to be difficult or complex, the thing that always works best for me is to break it down into smaller things. That's the go-to move that I always do is that if I want to increase my level of confidence or ability to say, "Hey, yeah, I think I can do this." It's to actually break it down into something else. So for example, if I have a difficult task such as, "Hey, I need to do my taxes," I might perceive that as a lot of work, very difficult, a lot of data points, a lot of sources, a lot of logins, a lot of things I got to do. But if I break it down into small pieces and say, "Hey, let me just gather all my receipts from my Gmail accounts." And that's one task. Let's gather receipts from all my credit cards or even just one credit card. Let's start with that as another task. Once you start breaking it down one by one, even if you don't know all the tasks, but you just start to break it down by a few pieces that you can know you can do and you have high confidence in it, then oftentimes that momentum that I built with it is a lot easier to then carry forward to go, "Hey, okay, I got my receipts from my Gmail. I got my receipt from this credit card. Tomorrow I can get receipts from this other card and then you start to figure out your own plan and your next steps moving forward." And that's been something that I've been doing for, I don't know, for so long, but I find that very helpful to kind of like increase my own confidence. The thing about starting something new is you don't know what you don't know, so it's just an endless stream of new tasks that keep popping up. Something we know a lot about because building the AE Online business and the podcast has had no shortage of to-do lists to manage. Finding the right tool that not only helps you out, but simplifies everything can be such a game changer. And for millions of businesses, that tool is Shopify. Shopify is the commerce platform behind millions of businesses around the world and 10% of all e-commerce in the US from household names like Jim Shark to brands just getting started. You can get started with your own design studio. With hundreds of ready-to-use templates, Shopify helps you build a beautiful online store that matches your brand's style. Get the word out like you have a marketing team behind you. Easily create email and social media campaigns wherever your customers are strolling or scrolling. 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And what I was thinking about when we were talking about confidence is example we've given on the podcast recently before, which is comes from the book How to Change by Katie Milkman. And it's the idea that or the example she gave was that she was always kind of interested in becoming a, you know, going plant-based diet, right? But it just seemed so weird and she didn't want to be a granola. She thought it'd be really hard and she'd go to restaurants and would be like sitting there eating pieces of lettuce or something like that. And so she didn't have the confidence that that was a change that she could make. But then she just happened to be in this situation where she was around other people who were leading a plant-based lifestyle. And she saw they ate really well. It was no problem with them. They were fit and she realized, wait a second, this is something very doable by people similar to me. So they're really, you know, maybe there's other reasons why I couldn't do it. But it's the confidence was there. And I think that is a great way to go as well. If there is something you want to do is to, first of all, think about times in the past that you have done this thing successfully. And that's number one. And number two, look for others to see if others examples of success and then see what you can learn from them. I think both of those things can really increase your confidence as well. Oh yeah, also when you see other people do a particular task, then that gives you confidence as well. So for example, I was doing a session with Mary and I was showing her how to use Claude to update a website programmatically. And so I showed her like, hey, if you give it the login details or your SFTP details to your website, which what we did for Asian efficiency, I showed her step by step of how you could update a whole website with links in a matter of minutes versus doing it yourself. And so even though I gave her the task, because hey, could you update the website with all these links and there's, you know, we've like a thousand articles or something and trying to find particular keywords that you want to change and do stuff is is a little daunting, right? And she felt that too. And I said, hey, let me show you how you can do this faster, better programmatically with Claude. And even though she never had done that before, I've done it a hundred times. So I've walked her through on screen step by step how I did it, kind of like holding her hand, walking her through it. And then we've recorded the whole session. And I showed her and I said, Hey, here's here's how I did it. You saw it and I you saw my reasoning and I explained it to you. Now go do this yourself. And she was able to do it on her own doing exactly what I showed her. And so there's something really powerful about seeing someone else do something that you don't know how to do. But when you see someone else do it and you feel like, Oh, I can replicate that. That gives you a high level of confidence, even though you've actually never done it. And so when I see for example, YouTube videos where I see people doing amazing things, whether it's stuff inside their home to, you know, something technical on the computer, if you have some form of form of affinity with that person, you kind of understand or can relate to them somehow, it gives you a high level of confidence. And that's something I've kind of noticed as being on the other side too, where when you're the one presenting or speaking or teaching a workshop or whatever, you know, one of the most important things you have to do is able to relate to people. Like you never want to seem like you're just the expert because when you're just the expert, people don't relate to you. They might look up to you in that sense, but they don't relate to you. And it's hard to then give them confidence or hope or like inspiration to say, Hey, I can do this, which is one of the most important things you can do as an instructor is to give people that level of confidence. And so this is something as you were saying is something I always try to think of too is like when I'm teaching a workshop or showing a demo or teaching somebody one-on-one, it's one thing to just show here's how you do it. It's another thing to give them the confidence to go, Hey, if I did it, you can as well. Another thing I think that kind of goes hand in hand with confidence and you were talking about the concept of breaking it down. I think another thing too is if we think of procrastination, it's not doing the task we *POP*
procrastinate on it's starting the task. That is really the thing that trips us up. And I've been in this situation a million times. And one thing I like to do and kind of related to breaking it down, but even to a more infinite scale is I call it the I'll just strategy. I've talked about it in the podcast before, but it's something I use all the time. It's if I find myself procrastinating on something, it's like what is like the most ridiculously small and minimal thing that I can do to get started. So it could be like just, I'm just gonna create a Google doc and give it a name. Or I'm just going to like in your example, I'm going to like fire up Claude and see if I have a connection. Or you know, what is the like craziest, simplest, smallest step that I can take to get started on this thing? And I'm only mentally committing myself to taking that small step. But you know, more often than not what happens when you take this small step, you're in a much stronger position to then go on to the next step and the next step. So don't sleep on this I'll just strategy. It sounds ridiculous, but at least for me, who is a fellow traveler in the world of procrastination, it works really well for me. Right, so if the first lever was to increase confidence, I think another lever that we can pull to allow us to be more productive and reduce procrastination as much as possible is to increase the value or the meaning behind a task. Because the reality is it's really easy for us to procrastinate on task that don't really matter to us or don't matter right now. So there's a level of urgency sometimes that helps us increase the value of a task or what it means to us. And so oftentimes when you look at a task and you say, hey, this is not that important, guess what, you're probably gonna skip it and try to focus on something else. And that task might actually be very important, but maybe it doesn't matter in this moment because it might be more valuable in a week or two, right? And sometimes that is kind of a false trap because we might have to work on something today so that we set ourselves up for success down the line. For example, if you have to fill out an application form and you have to submit a bison deadline, we all know that stress of doing it the night before or two nights before versus doing it a week beforehand or two weeks prior, right? And that is all avoidable if we were strategic enough to say, hey, this application that I have to fill out that does not do until two or three weeks right now, but if I start today, I eliminate the stress and anxiety that I might get in the last 24 hours. And that delayed kind of like effect is something that I think is really difficult to perceive sometimes. And I really sympathize with people on this because when we're so busy and we have so much going on and we're back to back meetings, sometimes we're just so underwater that we're just happy to make it through today. And I don't really care about what's happening tomorrow or the week after or two weeks from now. And sometimes I'm in that groove and moment as well. I'm just like, I just want to get through today. That's all I want to do. And then tomorrow is another day and I'll figure it out then. And we all want to get to a place where we're not being reactive in that sense, but it's start to become more proactive because when we start to become proactive, that's where I think does lever becomes really valuable because once we have the bandwidth and we can kind of look further ahead and look two, three days for maybe a week or two weeks ahead of time, then we can strategically say, hey, what are the tasks that are important right now? Did I can mentally say, hey, let me increase the importance of this in my mind or all my to-do lists so I can schedule it to be done a little bit earlier. And I think this is more of a high level strategy rather than a tactical thing. Yeah, and I think figuring out that purpose kind of goes back to the, what's your why? I always kind of struggle with talking about the kind of like bigger picture idea purpose and why because I'm not generally somebody, this is me personally, generally somebody who connects to that idea that much. I'm more of just like, if I have to do something, do it. I don't really worry too much about the why, but I think it really does come into play when you do have to make these hard choices about how you spend your time and you do have to make these choices about prioritization is figuring out like why is it that this thing on my to-do list is more important than that thing that didn't make it today. And I think that is when you can start connecting back to like what are you trying to do with this project? What are you trying to do in your work? Like what are you trying to do in your life? You know, that's anything. I think sometimes you do need to explore these things to make those decisions about what makes it onto your to-do list in that day. And I think one good way to figure that out if you're somebody who isn't naturally a quote unquote why person is to explain it to somebody else. If you have to explain the task to somebody else, chances are that's when you're gonna explore, you know, why it is that's important to you. And just this opportunity to explain something to somebody else can really help you crystallize these things which might be challenging to do on your own. - Yeah, I think being able to explain yourself will oftentimes reveal if something actually matters to you or not. And I think that's a really helpful strategy and I think kind of correlates with the idea of accountability as well because when you have to explain yourself to somebody else, that's oftentimes a much bigger pain point that you have to deal with if you're not doing a good job of it which, you know, we all want to avoid the embarrassment of looking dumb. And so that kind of helps you with increasing value in that sense too because if you have to explain a particular task to somebody or the outcome of it, and you're the one who's supposed to be doing it, if you cannot explain it, that's like the first rat flag you want to pay attention to and say, hey, I cannot explain this or reason behind this task. And so that would be actually good reflection to then go, hey, I need some clarification on what is the definition of done for this particular task or hey, I don't actually have the power or the resources or the budget to actually do this. 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It's free to sign up and posting a job is super easy. Visit Upwork.com right now and post your job for free. That's Upwork.com to connect with top talent ready to help your business grow. That's UPWORK.com. Upwork.com. - And so as you're hearing all this, like there's a lot of ways and different strategies where it's kind of going through now and what I don't recommend that people do is like mentally create like a checklist of like, "Oh, let me think about all the five different ways "we can increase value." I think the bigger idea here is like, hey, if you know that you can increase your level of confidence behind a task and increase the value behind a task, you'll both start to see in both cases is that it just makes it easier for you to get started and just there's different ways you can approach this because the third step here is kind of related which is all about reducing delay or how far the payoff is in that sense. That is kind of related in a sense that if we have to delay gratification for a really long time, it's so much easier to procrastinate on it versus when we can get it sooner. So there is pros and cons to each because when we know there's a sense of urgency behind something we're more likely to do it faster. However, if there's no sense of urgency, then it's so easy to just postpone it and put it off for next week. And this is one of the reasons why I think a 12-week year or 90-day goal is so powerful because there's a sense of urgency because there's a limited time window of one quarter or 90 days to do something versus a whole year. And that is one of the reasons why I think a lot of people love this goal setting methodology or this approach to projects instead of doing an annual plan for a whole year is because you have that sense of urgency and the delay is not that far away. So there's a lot of levers that we can use for any task to figure out, hey, if this is due in three weeks or now, what can I do now to increase the sense of urgency or reducing the delay or the payoff that I can get today? So for example, if I have to do my taxes every year on April 15th, you can wait until the last day. However, something I've done in the past, I didn't do it this year, but something I've done in the past is I would book a trip before April.
And then I would set myself a goal to do my taxes before that trip so that when I go on this trip, the whole month of April, I don't worry about my taxes. And such a strategic, funny way of thinking about it, but it was just giving me more sense of urgency to do this. And also just reducing the delay effect of, okay, let's just wait until April 15. And then sometimes, you know, we might file an extension and then you're just making it worse because then you're just delaying it even for real until October. And that's kind of like a downward spiral that at least I want to avoid as much as possible. That's actually one big difference I noticed when I first joined the Asian efficiency team because I was completely solo before that. And, you know, I had my own task management methodology and project management and everything was, you know, it was fine. Like I was shipping things, doing things, getting stuff done, that type of thing. But that's one thing I noticed when I joined AE and the team did use scrum, so there'd be sprints and stuff like that. And I noticed that my personal velocity just went like way out because there was this idea of having, we did two weeks at the time, these two week sprints where it's like, we say what we're going to do. We have structure around like checking in, making sure things are moving. And then we really want to get it done by the end of that sprint. And it's not like the world would have like exploded if things didn't get done at the end of the sprint. But because you've committed to this like higher velocity idea and there it is this deadline that you're committing to, you just move a lot faster. And I think that is a great way to reduce procrastination is to have some sort of methodology like, I'm not saying you need to implement all of scrum, especially if you're a solo, but this idea of working in sprints or having these milestones breaking things down in conjunction with what you said earlier, is super, super effective. Yeah, I think that's why weekly meetings funny enough are so powerful because if you have an action item on your Monday meeting and you know it's due next week, guess what? All of us including ourselves, we're going to wait until Thursday, Friday or Monday morning before the meeting go, hey, I know this is going to be brought up on the meeting. I should probably do something about this, right? And when you have that sense of accountability and that sense of urgency to go, hey, I know this is due next week. Great. Like if we don't have that routine in place, then it's really easy to just punt it and delay it and wait until that next meeting gets scheduled to then start working on that particular task, right? And that's why I think routines in life, but also teams and businesses are so powerful because it's a form of one increasing the sense of urgency or another way of saying this reducing the delay as well, but also to having accountability, which I think, you know, we just keep parping on on how important that is. And you know, I think there's art to setting fake deadlines because I think they are powerful and it's not a tactic I recommend for most people because it's really easy to abuse it. Right. And I mean, I'm somebody who can do okay with it. I like to use artificial deadlines as much as possible because it gives me a sense of urgency and I know that's how I work well. But if I know that I can trick myself, sometimes I will also outsmart myself. And so I try to use it sparingly whenever I can and usually tying it to a real events like a trip or a milestone or like an artificial timeline of like I have to get the zombie end of the month. Like those kind of like timelines are always helpful in my mind to increase the urgency to do all this stuff. So again, this is the third level that you can pull, you know, increasing the sense of urgency behind every task that you do. Now, the fourth level that you can pull is to reduce the impulsiveness. And this is really about environmental design, something we keep talking about on the podcast. And I think we did a whole episode on environmental design works if I'm correct. But the basic idea is that I think most of us underestimate how much our environment affects our productivity. The way we design our office, the way we design our space, the way we set things up. Classic example is if you have a cluttered desk, whether you realize it or not, you're going to be less focused versus when your desk is absolutely pristine and clean. And so what can you do to design your environment in such a way so that it helps you and aids you being more productive? And it's not just like the physical space that you're in, but it's also, for example, the tools that you use, the notifications, the distractions you might get from that, the people that you surround yourself with, the office space that you're in, the time of day when you're working on stuff and when you're not working. Like these are all environmental design choices that we get to make that allow us to either be more productive or not. Yeah, sometimes there's something I know I was going to start and I had planned to start it. And then I find myself not starting it and going to do something else, like checking Slack or teams or whatever. I realize part of the reason is because I have like five browser windows open with like 20 tabs on each and finder windows and tabs all over the place. And I realize that is part of my problem is I don't have what I need to do like right in front of me. And I think you're right. Environment is so key to like just getting crystal clear on what needs to be done next. Even if you had just received a notification reminder of your task like 15 minutes ago, I think just having things all over the place is really is really damaging to productivity. So having having intentional ways that you set up your browser tabs, your bookmarks, your maybe have use like setups and stuff like that to have your use maybe a window manager to make your have your window setup the way that you like it. You know, all these little really intentional things don't seem like a big idea. Don't seem like a big deal in the moment, but they definitely add up and can make it crystal clear what needs to be done next. Yeah, for me, impulsiveness is also about, you know, how easily do we get distracted? And how can we think about sending up our environment in a way to help us not get distracted? So the classic examples like as you were talking, one of the first thoughts that went through my mind is like, Oh, yeah, I need to check something on my phone. I guess what my phone as we're recording is not within arm's length. So even if I wanted to grab my phone, I couldn't because I have to go to the other room to grab it. So that is a design choice that I made in my environment is hey, anytime I start working on an important task, I put my phone away so that when I do have moments of temptation and go, Hey, oh, yeah, I did check this thing real quick. I literally can't until I, you know, step away from my desk and do the things and as we're recording this, I can't. Right. And so the idea of adding friction to something that we don't do, I think is also such a cool thing that we get to play with. Because it reduces the impulsiveness again around procrastination. And so the harder we make it ourselves to get distracted, the more likely we are to follow through. And so I'm always thinking about how do I make it better and easier for myself to just stay focused on task? And that's one of the reasons why when I finish a task, I close all my apps and browsers. Because when I then sit down again and start working on something, I start with a fresh slate and can just focus on the task and tabs that I have to have open to do to work. Right. And whenever I say this to people, especially when it's in person, and they show me their browsers and there's like 30 tabs open, their argument is always but, Tan, I need all these tabs. Like these are important things that I have in there that I need to have, which I totally get. But guess what? If you really need them, they're so afraid that they lose them. Right. When they close it, why wouldn't you just save those tabs in the file and go, hey, here are all the URLs, save them in there. And then off you go, like you have the piece of my knowing that you can always go back to it and that it's there. And then you open up a browser and then you can just focus on things that need to be done. Right. And there's full on Chrome extensions built just for this where you can just download all the tabs that are open, put them and save them somewhere so that you know you can go back to them. And to me, it's just funny when I see browser features like grouped tabs or something like that, we're like grouping 10 different tabs together and go, I mean, theoretically that's a nice idea, but realistically most of us really don't need more than five eight tabs at most, I think. This software company I worked at. We did an acquisition and ended up taking over this task and the, you know, not to like bash my, the person I took it over from, but, but like just the way it was set up, like the files that were needed were I'm not even exaggerating in like six different folders. And there was like four or five different websites you needed to do in the process of doing this task. And I think this stuff can be, you don't, it's not like you need to totally change or refactor everything all at once. I think it can be a, it can be a journey, right? You can take like one tweak a week, like we said. So at my first when I was doing it, I had this situation where there was like tabs and browser windows and finder windows all over the place. And then so quickly I'm like, okay, well, this isn't going to work. So then, you know, me being me, I made this automation so that when I needed to do that, first of all, it was always closed. But when I needed to do this task, I would have it
so that one finder window would open up with those six tabs and then one browser window would open up with those four tabs and I wouldn't have to spend all this time digging around. It would all open up the way it was. And so that was my step one. So at least things were cleaner. At least I wasn't clicking around a million places. And then step two is refactoring and solving that problem. But you don't have to go from problem to no problem all in one step. If that is something that is disruptive for you, you can kind of like improve it a bit every time and eventually in a surprisingly short amount of time, you'll get to your end and more designed environment step. It's just that one tweak a week is a good way to do it if you are in a situation. Yeah. So if you made it all the way to the end of this episode, you know what to expect now. We always like to end things with an action item, something that you can do right away. So you've learned about the four different levers that you can pull to increase your productivity when it comes to procrastination. Right. So first thing is you're able to increase your level of confidence because that allows you to follow through more. You can increase the value or increase the meeting behind a task. That's the second one. The third one is you can increase the sense of urgency behind the task. And then the fourth one is you can decrease the number of distractions around whenever you're working. And so most people just need one lever that they can pull consistently to get the task done. So I want you to inspect and reflect on this moment. What is one particular task right now that you're procrastinating on? And once you know what that is or maybe you have a few, what is it that you can do? Which lever can you pull out of the four that I just mentioned that allows you to move your task forward? And I think if you start to approach it from that way, you start to see that procrastination is actually relatively easy to overcome. You just have to figure out what's the lever that you want to use to overcome this. And I think if you do that again one tweak a week is all it takes. I mean massive productivity gains over time. This is going to be your one tweak this week. All right. So thank you for listening to the productivity show. I really appreciate you. Leave us a review on Apple podcasts or Spotify. Help source grow to show. And we'll see you again. Next week.
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