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Art + Audience
Ep. 12: The Tillage Village Talk: Harnessing the Power of Positive Procrastination
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In this special episode, Stacie joins Shirlee Fisher for a presentation within The Tillage Village Membership. In her talk, Stacie delves deep into the intricacies of procrastination, exploring how to turn it from a foe into a powerful ally. She...
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Hey friend, Are you ready to pitch your artwork for art licensing? Then I have the thing for you. Presenting my brand new art licensing Pitch Playbook. This free email course gives you everything you need to start pitching your artwork for licensing while leveraging your already awesome work into the next level of profitability and possibility. I'm going to teach you the five biggest mistakes that keep artists from crafting irresistible pitch emails, reaching out to their dream partners, pitching their work with confidence, gaining experience with collaborations, and building an art business that they love to run. So if you're ready to kickstart your art licensing business, visit artlicensingplaybook.com and I will send you my free 5 day email mini course. I can't wait for you to try it out. Bye. It's a tendency of creatives. You have a deadline, you're going to push things all the way to the deadline. And in fact, that's not a bad thing if you know yourself and how you work. So what I do give myself permission to do with positive procrastination is give myself permission to think while doing something else. Wouldn't it be nice if your art business loved you back? Hi, I'm Stacy Bloomfield. After years of trial and error and late night doodling, I went from being a coffee shop manager to running a vibrant seven figure art business that I love. And now I'm on a mission to help more artists create an art business that they love too. So I invite you to find a cozy spot, pull out your favorite sketchbook and listen in. It's never too late to chase your creative dreams. Welcome to the Art plus Audience podcast. Hi. So good to see everybody here. Thanks for coming. Really excited you're here. Stacy's going to be talking all about procrastination, which I did yesterday pulling weeds in my yard when I should be working on Christmas card designs. So I'll give it up to you. Awesome. Well, Shirley, I'm so happy that I'm here and I'm happy to see the fruit of the stream that you've had for a while. I remember when you first talked to me in the group about this idea of creating this amazing small group where you could talk about mindset and mentor people and I knew there was a need for it and that you were so passionate about it. And I never seen you light up more than when you were talking about creating this. It's also just a treat to be on this side of it, coming into the world that you've created and hopefully share a little bit about mindset procrastination and productive procrastination. Positive procrastination. And, you know, how it can actually help us to do better, to achieve our goals more, and just to be happier. I don't know about you, but I love to procrastinate. I actually think, though, that most of us who procrastinate, we're coming from one of two places. We're coming from avoidance. And then there's the idea of how we harness the tendency to procrastinate to actually help us to be happier and to achieve the right things at the right time. Because I'm a huge believer that sometimes we can set an intention or a goal for something. We have all the right reasons why to do it. But if the timing isn't right, we're going to always spin our wheels because, like, there is something important about doing things at the right time. So I'll start with a little story. I've been talking about launching a podcast for a million years. I've had a wait list on my website since 2021. Same podcast coming soon. And then I got some fire under my bottom in December, and my team was like, let's do this. Let's launch the podcast. And my team is full of a lot of structured people, and I hover between structure and chaos. It's a little bit of my creativity in play. And we got so structured and so set in the timeline that I felt myself completely crippled. I cannot record the podcast. I would sit down and try to record, and it would sound really, really not great. I was feeling this immense pressure. Ultimately, I kept pushing and pushing until the deadline was so tight that I was feeling like, oh, my gosh, I'm not going to meet the deadline. So I did something bold and I changed the deadline. I just told my team, I said, I am not doing great here because I have just been suspending my wheels for weeks and weeks, and I was afraid to change my mind. But I told my team I was like, I need to take pressure off. And as soon as I took the pressure off, and we were like, okay, you don't have to do this right now. Guess what I started doing. Recording my podcast. So now I'm using my time to productively procrastinate on other things so that the big thing that has to happen can get done in the time that is right in a way that doesn't feel pressured. And I feel like now I'm actually living what we're going to talk about here, which is positive procrastination. Fifteen years ago, I started this business specifically, it's been this slow growth process. In fact, my oldest daughter's 15 right now, and she said, mom, did you always know that you'd be successful? And I was like, I don't know if I thought I'd always be successful, but I knew that I'd had to find something that I really cared about to do with my life. And she's at that stage where she's trying to find herself, and she's like, what if I'm never successful, Mom? And so then I got to talk to her about my story. Well, I didn't start out doing this, honey. I started out as coffee shop manager, and it unfolded from there. And I really don't think I could have done this if I hadn't learned to work with my own tendencies. Which is why we're going to talk about productive procrastination. Because I'm a woman who gets a lot done, but I got to do it in a way that serves me and works for me. Otherwise, I will accomplish nothing on my to do list. Why we're procrastinating is the big thing here. So we've got two types of procrastination, negative and positive. Negative, which is what we probably mostly think about. It involves unnecessary delay. The delay generally leads to predictable negative outcomes in terms of factors like your performance and wellbeing. The delay is often been always unintentional, meaning that it occurs despite the procrastinator's intent to do things on time. So it involves an intention action gap. This can be linked to depression, ADHD, and trauma. And I actually find myself negatively procrastinating whenever I am in a depressive episode or whenever I haven't been taking as good care of myself. I will procrastinate on hard conversations that I need to have. And the more I wait to have that conversation, the worse it gets. Maybe you've noticed this too. Whenever you procrastinate on something, sometimes you know that something's off and you're avoiding something because you are afraid, like, I'm going to have to deal with this hard thing in order to get through this. And we don't want to deal with a hard thing because there's so many negative emotions. And then there's positive procrastination, which is the act of postponing tasks that aren't immediately urgent to focus on more enjoyable and personally fulfilling activities. So this is structured procrastination, getting a lot done by not doing other things. So I think that it's a tendency of creatives to if you have a deadline, you're going to push things all the way to the deadline. And in fact, that's not a bad thing if you know yourself and how you work. Sometimes when I have a new idea or something I've committed to and I have a long Runway, yeah, it could start right away. But I have to look at this thing all the way around to fully understand the thing that I'm doing. And I will start midway through my deadline to get the thing done because I know if I start too early, I will spin my wheels. So what I do give myself permission to do with positive procrastination is give myself permission to think while doing something else. Sometimes I think that we get our best ideas by not jumping into the first iteration of something. It's learning how to organize the urgent with the important. So according to Dr. John Perry, he is this fancy emeritus professor in the department of philosophy at Stanford University, he says procrastinators are doers. I bet that you all get a ton done when you're procrastinating. But when structured procrastinators realize how much they get done by putting off other more important tasks, a number of things happen. They feel less guilt and shame. Their self esteem increases. They prioritize their tasks better. They get even more done. So for me, when I go to bed at night, I brain dump. I brain dump all the things that are still in my open tabs, listed in my brain. And then the next day when I wake up, I look at what I brain dump and I say what are the things that are the most urgent for me to get done today? And the things that I only have the bandwidth to do today based off of my kids schedule, based off of a number of things. And those are the days where I have set my day intentionally so that even though there's other things in that list that I cannot do yet, I am still getting stuff done and feeling good about that. And the reason that works is because I annual plan and I do know when my deadlines are. But whenever I am intentional and instead of avoidance, I am more like putting things in their place. I'm so much happier. So procrastination will boost productivity in many ways. So it's not about delaying tasks indefinitely. It's understanding ourselves enough to put off tasks intentionally to the future in order to skyrocket our productivity. Something about me, if you've ever learned with me, is I'll tell you, I don't draw every single day. And it actually drives some people crazy. I think because there is a huge part of daily practice that is really important to grow in your skill. But because I know myself and know how I work, what I like to do instead is create little pockets in my schedule for creative time, creative diversions. And usually it's like a stretch of time where I've taken everything else off my plate. And that's when I do my creative work. That's when I draw. That's whenever I am outlining a course or a program. Like right now we have something we want to launch in the summer for education, I have a tab open on my computer. But instead of it being like the previous issue where I'm avoiding it all the time, whenever inspiration strikes, I write on it and I'm working on my outline and I'm tweaking and making it better and better. And that's like the best feeling possible is because I have this space set aside where whenever ideas strike, I can go right. And with art, I have to have set dedicated times where I can get into that flow. I think for creatives, if we are not in a state of flow when we need to create meaning, our mindset isn't right. Like we're going to do crappy work. There's nothing wrong with crappy work. There's nothing wrong with the draft in the messy middle. But like, I know for me, I love being in that flow state. So procrastination can work well for us. If we allow ourselves time to ponder, to daydream, and engage in activities unrelated to our task, we create mental space for new ideas to emerge. And that's why we know that like walking in nature and getting grounded and letting sunlight hit us and doing things that are not just taskmaster tasks are so important because we have to have time for things to marinate. And that's not a bad thing if we're doing it with the right intention. So according to a study on procrastination, participants generated more creative ideas in the moderate rather than in the lower, high procrastination conditions. In addition, research shows that our first ideas are usually quite obvious. So the creative low hanging fruit might be generic and unoriginal. So it's actually better to wait and incubate an idea. And that's what's happening to me right now. The more time I give myself to cook this idea for this new course, this new program, the more aha moments I'm having and the more I'm like, yes, I'm so glad I just didn't crank this out for the sake of time. And just create something that was half baked just to get it done. I'm so glad I'm giving myself space to make it the most impactful possible. The key to positive procrastination as Arthur C. Brooks puts it, putting things off can improve your performance if you do it right. The crucial thing about positive procrastination is to put the first thing first. So we should identify things that are important and urgent and prioritize them. So there's this golden middle Starting to work on a task around the middle of its timeline. Not right away, but not just before the deadline either. Seems to bring the best results according to research. The team probably knows me best now to know that if you give me a deadline it will get done in time. But if you check in with me too early, there is nothing to show for it yet because I'm still thinking so. One of my tasks this year has been to coordinate a lot of social media content, video content. And I've known for a long time I had to do it. I just had to give myself space to think. I'll tell you the interesting thing is the minute I made the intention of like, all right, I'm going to up level social media post videos for this launch. I don't know how. I have no inspiration yet. The minute I said it out loud, the universe brought me the people and the trainings and the coincidences to teach me exactly what I needed to do. So I went on a retreat in February and wouldn't you know it, a woman who's now a new friend did a presentation on the best way she thought right now to produce this content quickly and authentically and make it fun and even showed me like structure. And I came back from that. And even though my tab with my Google Doc for planning had been open and half baked for a while, I came back there and in the middle, but not too close to the deadline, I was like, all right, I can churn this out, I can do this. And we have to give ourselves permission to know what's ahead of us, set the goal. I also think, you know a big believer in speaking out loud, what we need. And I do believe the universe is kind and on our side and will give us what we need when we need it. And I see it so many times and it only happens to me whenever I don't let myself become an anxious mess about oh gosh, what if I don't get it done? The more I think about what if I don't get it done? The more likely I am to not get the thing done. I'm sure you feel that way too. There's a big difference in waiting to do something you know you should do but don't like doing and waiting to do something because now is not the optimal time. Like my example about my podcast. It was not the optimal time waiting because you don't feel like it is. Classic procrastination and it's a cause of a mediocre life. Waiting because you're deciding to procrastinate on purpose can be considered a synonym for patience. I love that point of view. People who have reached an ultra high sense of success master it subconsciously. And I think that's something that I can truly say when I look at it through that lens, is what I'm developing. Because, like, I'm a quick start. I'm sure a lot of you are. You want to get things done. Like when you have an idea, you want to get it out there. I'm very much a quick start. There are some things that when the time is right and the idea strikes, I can turn that out quickly and do beautiful work. But there are other things that I'm learning from myself to listen to, and that's the patience of learning to know myself. My work style in learning the world has all these ebbs and flows. I have kids that I'm taking care of, my husband. I'm having to be patient about some things. But I really believe that I'm doing better work and have a high level of success because I am learning to master this idea of positive procrastination. So when can procrastination be a good thing? It can help with compulsive email checking, giving critical feedback, acting impulsively, losing your temper, questionable deals like saying yes to something before you've had a chance to think it through. It can also be really helpful when you're scaling your business or choosing a life partner. So learning to have positive procrastination in these areas forces me to slow down, be patient, to really check in with myself. So what if we are negative procrastinators? And I don't think you're ever all positive or all negative. I think there's something in the middle there. But I think we want to learn how to become positive procrastinators. So how do we overcome that icky kind of procrastination, like where we feel trapped and backed and to a corner? I've learned about setting smarter goals. It's an acronym. And I've also learned about planning my time and my schedule A lot of creatives, we don't want too much structure. Maybe I'm stereotyping here, but I'm talking about myself. I like structure, but if I have too much structure, I feel like I'm trapped. But I also need to have things on my calendar so that I'm not just flying willy nilly by the seat of my pants. And y'all, when you build a team for your business, we can't just do things when we feel like it all the time. We do need a plan. We need an action plan. And we need to implement that plan to make sure that we are growing. And then we want to make sure that we're reflecting on our progress and celebrating that along the way. So in order to overcome negative procrastination, we have to find a way to make plans and goals for ourselves that truly work with us. Because remember, when we are procrastinating on something, we are impacting someone else. I think that was the biggest aha moment for me is very rarely when I'm procrastinating is it just about me and how I feel. And whenever I'm a cog in the machine for someone, that makes me feel even worse. And then I'm going to do worse work in the end. So learning to get out of this cycle has helped me to be a better teammate, a leader, and a partner. So remember, we have to break tasks into manageable steps because again, we can't go from 0 to 100 instantly. I think that's a really good way to break up negative procrastination. We need to commit to a tiny step first, give ourselves permission to make mistakes, change deadlines when you can. I think communication is the most important thing there. I'm creating rituals for myself all year. One of the things I've been doing and I've been challenged by a coach I work with is to have a ritual. And I've not done it perfectly, but I am feeling so much more grounded since I started doing this. So I did my morning pages. I'm a little bit self disclosing here. I'm diagnosed with obsessive compulsive disorder. And I don't say that with shame. I say that with now I understand myself better. I write down my same goals every single day. And you know what? I think it really helps me to not get distracted by all the other amazing ideas. I'm an idea factory and I want to do so many things, but right now my focus has to be on a few things. Some things that people are depending on me for and their goals and they're right in front of me. And the last thing I do is I'm making sure I eat breakfast because I'm really a go getter and I'll stop and not eat at all. I love to reward myself when I get things done. These are the things that are incredibly important to shift the perspective of negative procrastination into positive. Last thing I want to share is that there is this great book. It's a really weird title book. It's called Psycho Cybernetics. It is by Maxwell Maltz. It was written like in the 1960s and it's so relevant that it keeps getting released over and over again. It's not by a self help person. It's not written by someone who's trying to make you do better in business. It's actually written by a plastic surgeon. There's a reason why some people are able to accomplish some things more than others, right? So people often ask me, Stacey, how do you get so much done? Well, of course they're shifting this vision of procrastination, right? Like going from negative to positive. But there's also this part of self image and self worth that you have to have. And so this person who wrote this book started out with the hypothesis, why is this? That two people can have the exact same procedure done and the outcome for one person leads to like changes in how they live their life and what they accomplish. And for other people, they stay trapped. And it's because some people, when they have the transformation, their internal self image changes as well. Their brain has seen the change, has internalized and says, I am changed and I am different. Other people, because they have not transformed their internal view of self and they're stuck there, they don't actually move on to whatever the next thing is. What's important is for any of us to transition from negative to positive procrastination is we actually have to change our sense of self. And yeah, plastic surgery is a way to be like, oh yeah, that's so obvious because there's a physical change. But for a lot of us it's not a physical change that we need. It's an internal change. Internal change in the way we view ourselves and giving ourselves all these positive reinforcements of why we can be that thing. So this book talks about then how a positive experience is what you have to hold onto to become that person that you want to be, to change your self image. These little memories are the things that have to be our building blocks to transform into change. And so Many of us are clinging to that one negative thing, you know, and that's what we have to work to overcome and reprogram our brains and our hearts to believe that we are the person capable of doing the thing we want to do. And I truly think, for me, in times when I have procrastinated about things, there tend to be deeply rooted in something that's been in my past, something that hurt me. And I have this little voice in my head that's holding me back. So how do we become the people who can accomplish our goals and slay our dragons and let those bad things fall behind us? The next thing that he said, and this is what I thought was really cool, so how do you wake up every single day and become the person who can chip away at those things that you need to get done and transform into that person? And he says, you can't do it from a place of franticness, from stress. If you wake up and you look at your to do list and you're like, there's no way I can get it done. Who am I to think I'm this person? You will fail. So then he goes, if you will just get quiet for 30 minutes every morning before you start any of your tasks, you are so much more likely to succeed. So I just want to challenge everybody here today with your own version of procrastination. It's not just how do I go from negative to positive, but how do I allow myself to not only believe I'm the type of person who can work the way I am, still be who I am, but transform into this next level of me, the person who can accomplish my goals, the person who can have love and peace in my life. Life is hard, and there's struggles, and yet we still keep growing. So how do we transform internally so that the things that we dream of being become real? And how are we the type of person that can look in the mirror? I do this every day, and I get a little emotional. I look in the mirror now and I say, I love you, Stacy. You're doing a really good job, and I'm proud of you. And I say it every day because I mean it. And I challenge that for you, too. Become that person. Well, I think that's it. Thank you all for having me. I really enjoyed it. Thank you so much, Stacy, for being here and just being really vulnerable. There was just so much valuable content that you gave. Thank you so much for inviting me and having me talk to you later. Bye. Thanks so much for tuning in. Hey, could you do me a favor? Could you subscribe to this podcast and then share it with one of your best art friends? I'd really appreciate it. And then head on over to Instagram and follow me at the Leverage your art account and you can keep up with all of our future episodes. Thank you so much for your support. It means everything to have you here listening and learning. Bye.