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Welcome to It's a Good Life with Brian Buffini, founder of America's largest business coaching company. Here's a short classic cut from one of our all time favorite episodes.

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Top of the morning to you and welcome. Excited to bring a presentation to you today on how to beat procrastination. Now as the head of the largest business coaching company in North America, I can tell you this, that when we get people to beat procrastination, we get people to beat their goals. When we help people beat procrastination and get past it, ultimately it's where they enter into this next level of success for themselves. More than 30% of adults consider themselves to be chronic procrastinators. It's a behavior that's actually twice as prevalent among self employed people. One of the reasons for it is, is we're our own accountability. Oftentimes that's why I love coaching. It takes the self out of self help or self employed. So as small business owners we're especially susceptible to procrastination. Now the basic definition of procrastination is to be slow or late about doing something that should be done. We tend to put off the things that are the most important for our health, the most important for our finances, the most important for our business. And there's reasons why we put it off and we're going to talk about that. Procrastination expert Dr. Joseph Ferrari says procrastination is not waiting, it is more than delaying. It is a decision not to act. That's what procrastination is. There are many psychological and emotional factors behind us and we're going to delve in today. It's ultimately a very serious self defeating pattern. Today I'm going to break down the different causes of procrastination and help you get to the root cause of the problem. There's the psychology of it, there's the impacts of it. And then we're going to talk about how to beat procrastination. Research from medium.com says procrastination is a complex interplay between cognitive, emotional and behavioral factors. Cognitive in the mind, emotional in the heart and spirit. And then behavioral. That's kind of our habits and what we do. And we're going to dive into those three. So on the cognitive side, sometimes we overestimate our time, underestimate the effort and resources required to do something and that lends itself to like a distorted thinking pattern. The second dynamic of procrastination, which is really the deeper touch on this subject is that procrastination is Much more close to the emotion of fear than anything else. Author Caroline Miss said, perfectionism is the fear of being criticized. So many people, they put off doing something because it's just not right. It's just not good enough. It's just not what it needs to be. And really what it is, it's a terrifying scream of I'm afraid of being judged. And that is the case. It's packaged as perfectionism because quality is a reasonable excuse. You know, the people who do best with our system is the people who just send out the marketing materials, send out the notes, trust that there's a bit of research going on behind it. And then they do the action steps and they make the calls, and the next thing you know, they're getting the results. And yet we have people who perfect and perfect and perfect, but it's really not that. It's fear. The other piece of the emotional aspect of procrastination is, what if I do it and I'm no good? When people come to our events in the last 30 years, they see and they'll hear all these amazing stories of people who quadruple their income and quintuple their income and change their life. And the average person's making 450 grand five weeks off and all these things. But in the heart of heart, sometimes you'll hear these conversations. One on one, they'll talk to a coach and or one of our staff and they go, what's the failure rate? What's the failure rate? How many people actually fail? Because what's the fear is I'm going to be the one, the system makes sense. I'm pretty sure if I did that, it would work. I'm pretty sure if I got a coach to hold me accountable and meet with me every couple weeks and coach me up and help me break through these projects and break them down and get them done, I know I'd do it. I know I'd be more successful. The fear is, what if I do it and I'm no good? So there's a huge emotional piece there. With procrastination. It starts in the mind cognitively, but it goes deep down into the heart. I'm afraid of being judged. And then lastly is the behavioral part. The one thing I can tell you with procrastinators is they don't have solid daily habits and routines. The reason being is habits and routines, when done ritualistically, your conscious mind sits in the back seat instead of the front seat. So what happens is you're doing the routine and for an example of this is when you brush your teeth. When you brush your teeth, 90% of the time, you brush your teeth exactly the same way every time. Because it's a habit. And the more things we habitualize in our life, the more proactive we become, the less you have to think about it. When we have to take it from the cognitive mind and then try to, you know, how do we get it into the unconscious that we just do it? Well, that's true repetition of routine and habit. 80% of our actions come out of our unconscious mind. When things become habitualized, routinized, you just do it on autopilot. And when you're doing the good stuff on autopilot, you're winning. So we're going to get to that solution side. We've got to understand that there's an emotional side to procrastination. There's a behavioral side and then there's a cognitive side. And so procrastination, it is the enemy of your success, it's the enemy of your potential. We need to stamp it out. We need to know it's in the mind, it's in the heart, and it's in the habits. The second dynamic here is the impacts of procrastination. What happens? What happens when we do it? So, okay, Brian, what if I do give in to the fear? What if I am concerned about judgment? What if I don't have the routines? Well, the first thing is productivity plummets. Then what we know is our well being suffers. And then what happens is, you know, that thing we all hope for, that success, it just falters. When you procrastinate, you can never truly reach your full potential. No chance. I mean, there isn't anybody in the world who has a book, procrastinate your way to success. There's. Nobody would believe in it. So it's an enemy. We got to attack it as an enemy. Lastly, how do you beat procrastination? Well, believe it or not, the way to start is to develop a growth mindset. You go, hang on a second here. How does a growth mindset become the antidote for procrastination? Because procrastination is a minimalistic behavior pattern. If you adopt a growth mindset, and we began here with it's a cognitive thing. What are you reading? What are you watching? What are you listening to? My old mentor, Lou Holtz used to say, if you're not growing, you're dying. How can you work on yourself? What are the areas you need to go work on? And what routines can you put into place for 30 days? And if you'll do for 30 days, you. You can get into a new habitual routine that can help you. I just think morning is the way to go. For me, it's about the morning, and if I win the morning, if I win the first hour and a half of the day, I usually win the day. If I lose the first hour and a half of the day, I most likely will lose the day. It becomes a hell of a struggle. It's like hitting the first two balls out of bounds on the first tee in golf. It's like going down two touchdowns in the first five minutes of a football game. It's just harder. Carol Dweck, brilliant author, said, love challenges, be intrigued by mistakes, enjoy effort, and keep on learning. So you want to be procrastination first, develop that growth mindset second, you want to make it automatic. And that's what I keep saying. Our actions come out of our unconscious mind. We've got to put the habits in place to make them automatic. James Clear said, habits will form you whether you form them or not. Whatever you repeat, you reinforce. That's nothing new. Norman Vincent peale in the 50s, who wrote the Power of Positive Thinking, said, repetition of the same thought or physical action develops into a habit which, repeated frequently enough, becomes an automatic reflex. And that's what we want. And the last thing is to embrace this concept of do it now. Do it now. The now stands for no other way. No other way. You do it now. If you're listening to this podcast and you're out for a walk or you're in your car, whatever it is, please honor your investment in listening to it. Honor our investment as an entire team of putting this thing on by making a commitment. By the time this episode ends, you're going to commit to one new routine or you're going to get back on the wagon of one routine. That was a good health habit, a good mental habit, a good emotional habit, a good financial habit, whatever it is, good spiritual habit. What's the one thing you're going to focus on? That's what Do it now is all about. There's no other way. Sometimes people will listen to a podcast and say, there it is. I've done the work for the day. Okay? The only time it really works is if you apply something you learned. We talked about the psychology of procrastination. We talked about the impacts of procrastination, and we talked about how to beat procrastination. Well, hopefully this has been helpful for you. Hopefully there's something you can take from this. Hopefully you can get into your routines. And when you do your routines, if you'll do it for 30 days, guess what? It becomes that habit. And then the habits pull you instead of you having to push it.