← The Carey Nieuwhof Leadership Podcast
The Carey Nieuwhof Leadership Podcast
CNLP 798 |Finally Beat Sermon Deadline Procrastination: Jon Acuff on Procrastination, Building an Audience, and AI-Proofing Your Impact
01:19:32
Loading summary
Transcript124 lines
- [00:01]
A
The Art of Leadership Network, they've studied that up and down, and it's just not true. Like, nobody works best last second. So if you're a pastor, the reality is, if you gave yourself the breathing room, the time you look at it a third time, like two days later, it's going to be better.
- [00:23]
B
Welcome to the Carrie Newhoff Leadership Podcast. I'm so glad you joined us today, because if you have ever struggled with procrastination, which I have, particularly when I was younger, today's gonna be a great episode. Jon Acuff is in the house. It's something that's haunted him his whole life, and yet he has become one of Inc's top 100 leadership speakers. He delivers keynotes regularly to companies like Lexus, Microsoft, Walmart, Range Rover, Comedy Central. He's host of the popular podcast All It Takes is a Goal. And one of the most driven, disciplined leaders I know. Why? Because he's not disciplined. Okay. So John and I are also really good friends. We talk every month and we take you behind the scenes to catch up on some of the things that he's been changing in his leadership. So if you follow John or if he's new to you, I think you're really going to enjoy this. I want to welcome all of you who are new listeners. Really glad that you're here and that you're joining us, and to longtime listeners, thank you. You make this podcast what it is. I'm going to be on the road a lot this spring, so if you're in Silicon Valley, I'll be in California, in Dallas and different cities. I'd love to see you just come up out after I give a talk and say, hey, I listen to the podcast. I've been here since episode one. Or I just discovered it. That's one of the highlights to me of being on the road. So with all that said, let's get into my conversation today with John Acuff. John is never boring to hang out. Welcome back.
- [01:43]
A
Yeah, thanks for having me again. It's fun to. Fun to see you again, whether it's virtually in Franklin. I don't make it up to your neck of the woods that often because it's still winter. But yeah, for me, this is true
- [01:55]
B
Whenever the episode airs. That's what people think about Canada. It's still winter, right? It's July.
- [01:59]
A
You can still win that. I can say that. Unless I hit your one warm weekend when you're on the boat. This episode is Evergreen.
- [02:08]
B
Exactly. Exactly. Well, I do spend more time in Franklin than You spend near Toronto, so that's 100%. That is true. But man, I'll tell you, one of the things I love is you and I usually check in at least once a month. We're like just a phone call, a good old fashioned analog phone call where we catch up on what's going on in each other's lives. And I can't believe the transformation you've made over the last year. Because for years you're like, yeah, I'm an author, I'm a speaker, this is what I'm doing. And then all of a sudden you're like, I'm gonna build a team, I'm gonna get a VP and Acuff Ideas is now a company and everything like that. Talk to us about the pivot.
- [02:52]
A
Yeah, so, I mean, it felt like the next evolution. I feel like to grow, you have to keep doing things like that. The people I look forward to and admire are constantly iterating. It's not that they figured out something when they were 40 and then they just photocopied that for the next 20 years. They were really deliberate about going, okay, we got to this level. In order to stay sharp, we need to climb to the next level. In order to stay sharp, we need to climb to the next level. So I think that great leaders are always kind of pursuing things that way. And so for me, I felt like I had really dialed in speaking, I dialed in writing. I still love those. It's still the bulk of what I do, but I thought, I can do this on a bigger level with even greater excellence if I actually focus on the business side of things and say, okay, what does it look like for me to not only be a speaker, but teach speaking or to have an amazing post event fall follow up sequence? Like, there's all these Carrie, there's all these things you learn as you start to grow it as a business that you go, oh, where was I? Getting by on talent and kind of personality that I need to systemize. And so I, you know, for some of your listeners, I'd say it's like the, the pastor who's an amazing communicator that realizes they need some other tools in their toolkit. And I think a lot of people come to you for that exact thing where you, you figure out you want to get to the next level. So I, you know, I'm, I'm kind of like an active dog. Like if I'm left home for 10 hours without some stuff to do, I destroy the house and I end up on the Top of the fridge. And so for me, every time I level up, I go, what does it look like to steward these gifts? Even better. Like, I did this thing, now what do I do the next thing? And how do I do the next thing? And I think that keeps life really fun and keeps me really sharp.
- [04:40]
B
Well, it's a good, it's a good observation and I'm not going to disagree with you. But like, I remember you and I had multiple conversations where it's like you kind of have it locked in as a speaker and an author. Right? There's very few people who are as successful as you are in the speaking world. And your books always do really well. It would be really easy to lock in and load for the rest of your life. So I want you to talk for a minute to people listening who are like, no, I've got my system down. Took me years to find my system. I got my system. Please don't mess with my system. What would you say to them?
- [05:18]
A
Well, I would just say, like, you have to understand your own level of boredom and your own comfort zone. So for me, I came to a spot where it was like, okay, I think I need to be stretched. Like, I don't know what that looks like and I'm not exactly sure, but it's at least a multi year experiment to try some new things to be deliberate about it. And then the other thing is doing all this is going to make my core things better. I'm already a better leadership talk speaker having led. So now when I go into a spot, it's not, oh, imagine what leadership would be like. I can say, hey, here's a mistake I made with my team, like just the other day. This is one, like saying the thing that you want in the wrong way. So my team was bringing me lots of stuff to review. Like, hey, we need your approval, we need your approval. And I didn't need to see some of the stuff. So I found myself saying, I don't care, just do it. I don't need to see it. I don't care. Wow. If you want to deflate a team, tell somebody who's worked hard on a project, I don't care, I don't care. And it ruins the situation. What I was trying to say is, I trust you to make the decision. You're an expert. I hired you because you're an expert. I trust you. You can go make that decision. You are empowered for that decision. So the result was the same. They went off and made the decision. But the reality was so Different. So I didn't know that until I had people to lead. And now when I go speak to Range Rover about a leadership thing, I'm not hypothetically saying this is what it could be like. I'm saying, oh, I've been in a similar spot with a small team, or I've been in a similar spot. So for me, that's what I'd say is like, it keeps you sharp. And then the other thing is, I had so many people say, I'm 50 now. They're like, why are you trying something new? Like, why don't you just do the thing you've always done? And I'm kind of. And they're like, why are you working so hard? I'm kind of like, well, ask a bird why it flies. Because it's a bird. Like, this is. I could say the same thing to you, carrie. Okay, you're 60, you're on the tail end or whatever. And I guarantee what she'd say back to me is, I'm just getting started. Like, I just feel like I have enough wisdom to really help people, like, to really lean in. And so I think you as a leader have to know your personal gauge and go, like, I'm not going to create chaos for chaos's sake. I'm not doing drama, I'm not doing. I got to try things. Also, I'm not doing it for ego where it's like, oh, I haven't accomplished enough and my, the hole is not fed. I need to go do bigger stuff. That's a completely different conversation. It's more like, I know I'm capable of more. I preach that to everyone else. What if I did a multi year experiment to see if, if that was the case and be open that at, you know, a year, in two years, in three years, and you pivot and change it too. It's not like I've, you know, signed up for the Marines and I'm going, I'm going to be enlisted for the next 10 years. Like, it's overlapping with what I'm good at. But I just think as leaders, you have to be honest about. I'm so comfortable, I'm rusting versus, like, I'm comfortable and at rest in a good way. Like, I'm renewing myself, but I'm being challenged. My goal carry is to be exhausted but elated. Like, I've exhausted everything I'm capable of. But man, I feel full. And I think when you plug into things you're good at, that's the feeling you get.
- [08:37]
B
That's a great way to see it, you know, but it's an adjustment. So I want you in the year or two that you've been doing this reboot, so to speak, what's the hardest part of? Cause you used to work out of home. You basically had a couple of virtual people, like an assistant. Maybe somebody helped you with social media, but that was about it. Now you've got like a real company and you're going to the office every day and you know, that kind of thing. What's been the hardest part of I do everything or everything goes through me to now actually having a team that you trust to do the work?
- [09:08]
A
Well, the hardest part has been realizing I'm the cause of the chaos. Like, the main source of the chaos or complexity is me. So owning that and admitting that and going, how do I simplify? How do I simplify? How do I simplify? And realizing when you're a leader, you can't brainstorm the same way you used to brainstorm, meaning unless I'm hyper clear, I can't sit down with some people that work for me and go, what if we did these seven things and then not tell them which ones are really important. So, like, I've learned that over and over and over. I have this meeting, I go, these are seven things we should think about. And they rightfully so go work on them. And then they come back and they go, we did thing 2, 5, and 6. Were those the right ones? I go, no, I actually wanted 1, 4, and 8, but I didn't have the courage to decide. So I'm realizing as a leader, you have to have tremendous courage to decide and hold to the decision and not get distracted. So, you know, when it was just me, I could make stuff up if it didn't work, no big deal. Like, I'm a distracted guy, who cares? But if I have real budgets and real people working on real projects, and then I change my mind because I talked to somebody at the airport or I heard another cool idea on a podcast. Now we're off the deep end. So I would just say it's been about me trying to learn how to set clear intentions, how to stay detailed. I've had to up my detail game tremendously. And then as far as letting stuff go, it's figuring out which things can you let go, which things can't you let go and you learn it's a give and take. Like, there's some things I go, I don't need to be involved in that. And then I have to pull it back and realize, oh no, there's still a lot of, like, I'm still a lot of the magic for that thing. I do need to be involved. But this other thing, I thought I need to be. I. I don't need to do that. Like, I don't need to be involved in workbooks. I'm not good at creating workbooks. Like, that's not how I think. But I have people on my team who are amazing at workbooks. So if I write this 50 page talk and they turn it into a workbook, I take a cursory look at that, but I'm not going in there and going on page 19 of the workbook. You have a fill in the blank that I just don't agree with. Like, that's not a good use of my time. And it also deflates them.
- [11:18]
B
You've been at this for a while, writing books. We're going to talk about procrastination proof because I think it's a topic that really impacts people. What book is this number?
- [11:27]
A
This is book 11.
- [11:28]
B
11, dude, I'm on six right now. So just kudos, kudos, kudos. And I'm loving it. Forgot how much I love writing. But what has changed the most since you first went out on your own over a decade ago? And you try to cut through the noise, you try to get your book out there, you try to get your message out there. Social media, you've had a big following for a long time. What has changed the most in terms of getting a message out there?
- [11:56]
A
Well, I mean, it's really, really, really, really, really crowded. I've said to you before, my first kind of thing that hit the scene was I wrote a satire blog called Stuff Christians like. And it was a satire of face. It couldn't do what it did now if I released it because there's 10,000 other people writing about Christian satire. At the time, I didn't have to compete with that many people. There were still people doing it. I didn't invent that, of course, but the market is really crowded, I would say. And then the way people connect with your content, like just the other day I realized it's been a long time since I followed somebody new on Instagram. I believe the way Instagram works now is people trust the algorithm to show them that thing they like again. So you're kind of gambling, like, because they change the feed. The feed used to be, these are the people I follow and I only see people I follow. And now they jammed in so many different ads and so many Different. What about this guy? What about this guy? People no longer trust their feed. I think what they trust is they go to the Explore page and they go, oh, if I watch this clip, you'll probably show me this guy again. And maybe the 15th time I see him, I. I'll watch them. But that's all right. Same with YouTube. I don't think people are subscribing the same way. So that makes it hard to, quote, unquote, grow a following. Because I think people are digesting content in a very different way.
- [13:15]
B
Yeah, I think that's really true. You know, I've started following a few people that I haven't followed, but generally, I think we've all resigned to the fact that no matter how hard we fight the algorithm, the algorithm's just going to determine what we see.
- [13:27]
A
Oh, yeah. No, you have to remember, all of these things we're talking about are advertisements that also show us things, things we like, but they're advertisements. Like, Instagram's goal isn't that I get to connect with my friends. Their goal is to monetize my attention in as many ways as possible. And occasionally they have to show me a friend, but they'd really rather monetize. Like, that's not their goal. And so I. Yeah, so I just think that's changed in the last. Since you and I have been doing this for 15 years or so, that's changed a lot. And then I think there's a lot of things that haven't changed. I think relationship matters more than ever. I think. I think to your point about your, you know, I. We've talked about, I think being real in a world that is progressively getting harder and harder to discern what is real digitally. Like, that matters. Being, you know, connected to real people matters. So I think there's a lot of things that have changed, but there's a lot of things that have stayed the same, too.
- [14:23]
B
So. So how do you keep building an audience, then? Because you keep growing your audience. Like, what are you finding to be the most effective channels?
- [14:32]
A
Well, I mean, for me, like, I'm really starting to, like, lean into LinkedIn. I've kind of neglected link LinkedIn, to be honest with you. And as somebody who's a corporate business speaker, that is insanity. So I'm like, oh, wait a second. Like, I speak to a big company and then they're all on LinkedIn and they follow me, and then I have no plan for that, or I don't follow an event planner who booked me. And thankfully, like, I'm like, oh, so I think there's, as a communicator or somebody who's trying to grow a platform, you have to go where your people are. And you have to. You also have to be really smart about data. Like, that's the thing. And thank goodness for AI. But I was just thinking the other day, I've never once pulled a report from Instagram on how many links to my speaking request page people have clicked on. Like, that would be an amazing stat to know. Meaning I speak somewhere and I go, hey, and if you want to book me too, here's the link. I've never once gone and said, wow, Instagram drove. Drove a thousand people there, or they drove two. Like, wow. It's an expensive use of my marketing budget to not drive any speaking. I should figure that out. So I think figuring out the data is how I continue to kind of pivot and then creating enough content that you give some of it a chance to blow up or some of it a chance to go good. But even in that, Carrie, say, I'll have a video go viral. Like, 300,000 people view it. It'll get like, 50 follows. Like, so it's because people don't follow the same way. So 300,000 people saw it and 50 were like, I will follow. So also changing, you know, what you expect, the kind of what you're measuring and what you're interested in. I just think there's so many different ways to measure it. And I think as a leader, you have to get really deliberate about, oh, no, this matters. Like, the end of the day, Carrie, I have 60 clients a year, meaning I have 60 events that book me to speak. That's not 6 million. So how do I super serve those 60 people? How do I super serve those moments? And so if I get distracted too much by social, I miss the like, oh, no, I don't. My business isn't endless. Like, I have 60 clients. What's the follow up? How do I lean in? How do I start relationships? How do I start conversations? That's completely different from I have to do the whole world.
- [16:48]
B
This episode is brought to you by LifeStone Ministries. If you lead a church, you know how challenging it is to find adult Sunday school curriculum that your teachers will actually use week after week, year after year. So I want to tell you about something that's been serving churches for over a century, 120 years. It's the Legacy Bible Curriculum from LifeStone Ministries and LifeStateMinistries.org the flagship product is called Adult Bible Class. It's a verse by verse, theologically sound resource that that gives your teachers everything they need to lead with confidence every single week. And if your congregation includes readers who benefit from larger text, well, it's available in large print too. For teachers who want to go even deeper, there's also adult Bible teacher packed with exposition, discussion questions and practical lesson preparation helps. These aren't trendy resources that disappear in a year. Their trusted, proven curriculum that more than 10,000 churches rely on every single quarter. So visit lifestoneministries.org to learn more or to order. That's lifestoneministries.org this episode is brought to you by the Church Network. So the church Network Conference 2026 is where Ministry leaders go to strengthen the systems that strengthen the church. You can join hundreds of executive pastors, church administrators, operations directors, and next gen leaders in West Palm beach this July for four days of practical learning, future focused conversations and Christ centered community. So this goes from finance to HR to technology facilities and leadership development. And there you're going to learn from trusted experts and walk away with tools you can use immediately. Plus, you'll connect with peers who understand the weight that you carry and and the many hats you wear. You don't have to lead alone. Build a healthier future ready church starting now. Learn more and Register today at TheChurchNetwork.com conference. That's TheChurchNetwork.com conference. Yeah, if you think about it, you've got multiple platforms, you got social media, you got your email list, you've got books, you've got your public speaking. If you had to say, this is an artificial exercise, but I've got to get rid of it all and I can only do one thing.
- [19:15]
A
Yeah, public speaking. Public speaking. Now I would say, like, I want to be able to teach it too, because I think there's lessons that took me 15 years to learn that I think I could save somebody five years. And I think I could actually, like, here's a lesson. This is just a free one. It took me years to learn that when I'm at an event and it goes well and a client or whoever in the crowd goes, hey, we'd love to have you come to ours. And that happens whether you're a pastor speaking at a church, whatever. Somebody goes, hey, we'd love you to speak at ours. Do you have a card? There's still people that go, do you have a card? I don't give my card to anybody. I used to, but then I realized I'm giving them a task every time I give you that card. You just got a job that I hope you do later. But the reality is you're going to lose that card by the time you get to their hotel room. You're not going to follow up. I'd rather own the task. So that's a small little thing where you go, if I'm at an event, I get their cell phone number, I get their email, because that's my job, not yours. And I don't think speakers think that way often. And so little things like that where you're like, oh, no, that's the, that's the way to grow. I should have a goal of five new people in my conversation every event I do. Because then if I do 50 events, I have 250 warm leads who just saw me do the thing I'm best at. And like, you just audition for 50 minutes. Like, there should be some other stuff. Carrie, last year, 40% of my speaking events were repeat clients. And in our business, that is wild.
- [20:48]
B
Dude, that is crazy.
- [20:50]
A
So, like, But I've dialed that in. So, like, if you said to me there's only one thing I'd go like, I've written 12 books. I want to keep writing, obviously, but man, like, that, like, doing that as a career and then teaching people how to do that, that's my jam.
- [21:03]
B
Well, on that note, when we were texting about, what do you want to talk about? You know, because I had a list of questions I wanted to ask you about. You're like, oh, I'm doing a couple of live, like web, like, not webinars, but like in person sessions. Can you tell us a little bit about that and tell us why you're moving into that? Because you did a live event last year. We're doing live events now in our company. I love them. I mean, two or three day events. So why are you pivoting there and what do you think the advantage is by doing in person events in a world that's so digital?
- [21:35]
A
Well, I think it's one of the few things that are AI proof. Like, even Covid couldn't kill live events if it was ever going to die. If the medium of live events was going to die, when it became illegal would have been the death. Like when states, like there were states in America where it was like, it's illegal to gather. And we still came back. 2022 was my biggest year of public speaking. 2023 was really big because we're built for live settings, we're built for community. So one reason I'm Doing this is, I believe it's AI proof. I can be like, the events can be enhanced by AI, but it's not. That's. It's not. I'll never outright AI. Like a year from now maybe, we're doing this podcast and I'm, I'm telling you, Carrie, 90% of my videos aren't even me. Like the other day my team made a 30 second audio clip of me saying something encouraging. It wasn't my voice, I hadn't recorded it. They just. And I sent it to my mom and my dad and they both thought it was me. They go, that's so great, John. Thanks for that. And they're my parents and they couldn't tell. So live events are AI proof. The reason I'm still doing. I've got our second event. We did kind of a big one. The reason I want to do these speaking intensive and a writer's intensive. So we're going to do two is it's the things I'm best at and I believe they're the best job in the world. I really do. Like, it's the thing I have the most passion for. And for 15 years, people have come up to me and said, I want to do what you do. How do I do what you do? What's the path? How do I do it? How do I climb from being a $2,500 speaker to 20,000? Because there's a ladder. There are some deliberate steps that I did to get to that spot. How do I get a publisher? Like, how do I go from the 50 proposals they have on their desk, the acquisition editor, to the one they look at, what does that process look like? How do you sell books? How do you. I have all that knowledge and I want to show people how fun that can be. And so the hard, like the hard thing is going to be just doing it in a single day, which is we'll probably have a mastermind on the back half. Because there's so many different ways you can go, even just pricing yourself. So many people underprice themselves and they don't know how to say like, no. Like simple, simple example speakers don't understand that when you speak at a company, like they have budget for this, like, they have, like, you might not think about the money that way, but they think of that as a budget item and they have a preset budget. So you can. There's money there that you can talk to them about. But so sometimes I have people go, well, I'll just. Whatever they have. Like, I know they pro. And like, I don't wanna. I don't want to push on price mindset. Yeah, exactly. So for me, that's why I want to do it. I think it's the best job in the world. I've dialed it in. The way I say public speaking is you get to go speak in beautiful places, encouraging people, doing something you love and get paid for it. It's one of. And writing a book. They're peanut butter and jelly. So for me, it just makes a lot of sense.
- [24:35]
B
So you've got these two live workshops coming up, which is great. People do want more work and they find out about.
- [24:42]
A
Yeah. So if you go to jonacoff.com stage, that's where you find out about the event.
- [24:49]
B
Okay, I gotta. Oh, yeah. One more thing I want to talk to you about before I talk about procrastination. In 2023, you started tracking every hour. This is like, I know two people now, Jim Collins and you, who track every hour. Tell us a little bit about that. Like, why did you do that? What are you learning? Because you're always like. And I know a lot of you guys have followed John for a long time, but the funnest thing about being a friend of John Acuff is every single time, there's something new. Every single time it's like, oh, I'm trying this new thing. Or we just did this or we just did that. It's so fun. So for two years now, two and a half years, you've been tracking every hour, what's up?
- [25:27]
A
Yeah, so for me, I just realized it's the most valuable resource, which we've always said, everybody says that, but it's also the most vulnerable. And the world is getting really good at taking your hours. And I wanted to get better at keeping my hours. And so there's, you know, there's a lot of money being spent to get my hours. Why don't I put some effort into keeping my hours and investing my hours and understanding where they're going and why they're going there? So for me, it keeps me dialed into my life. There's been seasons of my life, Carrie, where I felt like a tourist, not a local, meaning I was kind of like, ah, whatever happens, whatever. Like, I wasn't taking personal responsibility. And so part of being deliberate about my time was like, no, I think if I take personal responsibility, I'm going to discover some amazing things revealed in this experiment. I'm going to learn some things about myself. I'm going to like one of you. You Always say, like, what's the new thing you're trying? Like, last year, I kept an owner's manual. So for a solid year, every month, every day, I would write down things that made me perform my best. Because none of us are born with a how to be carry owner's manual or how to be John Acuff. So I just started paying attention. And Carrie, it was small things. It was big things. It was insignificant things. But in essence, it creates this, like, hey, remember, like, and then I can feed it into AI and go make this situational. And so then I have a year worth of. Here's how you function best at an airport. Little things, dude. Like, hey, the far left line at TSA is where the employees enter and they get to cut. You don't go to that one. You keep going to that one. And every time you do, you're like, What? There's like, 19 Emirates flight attendants that just roll through here like fashion models. And I'm waiting, like, little things like that.
- [27:13]
B
You're right. This is the far left line.
- [27:14]
A
Yep. Yeah. To big things like Carrie. I realized the other day somebody asked me how my marriage is going, I go, my marriage goes amazing. When I don't add you idiot to the end of sentences. Jenny has said to me, when I as a husband, when she goes, hey, do you remember an umbrella? And I add, you idiot, or because you always forget umbrellas. My reaction is like, I'm the king of umbrellas. What are you even talking about? I make umbrellas. Like, and all of a sudden, I overreact in anger because I've added words Jenny didn't say. So I put that in my owner's manual. So, like, for me, I think you should be wildly curious about yourself because you're the one you spend the most time with. You also have the most impact over yourself. Like, I want to be like, I put it in procrastination proof. I'm the best John Acuff salesman in the world. Like, that's one of my jobs. I'm selling my future to my present. And so I'm going, what do I want the future to look like? How do I get there? So, dude, that's to me, that's what the hours was. That's what you know. And owner's manual is. Every year I'm trying something new to go. How do I invest in self awareness? How do I fix a problem that I get to share with a lot of people? How do I stay connected? Like, I, you know, I'm not going to. I Don't want to be an 80 year old whose life progressively got grumpier or progressively got harder. Like I feel like we get to move from glory to glory to glory to glory. And I want to be active in that process.
- [28:41]
B
I think that's such a good note to self and I think that goes back to what we talked about earlier. It's easier to find, it's easy to find a pattern of success, set it and forget it and you kind of cruise into the sunset and you just get worse. Every year air just slowly leaks from the tires.
- [28:59]
A
Well then look at all the people we know that's happened. Like you and I could have a whole episode where it was like leaders who fell and the things that like none of them started there. None of them were like, I want to blow it all up. I want it to like it was small little decisions, it was small little gray areas or small little moments. And so I don't want to do that. Like I don't want to. So part of it hours exercise is like dialing it in to go like, here's the best way I perform and, and I learn a lot about my mistakes and there's, there's a ton of stuff I do wrong but I'm like, how do I be present to who I am and how I perform so that I can continue? I don't want to learn the same lesson 400 times. I've done that. It's annoying. I want to learn it a couple times and I'm 50 so I have the patience to look at it and review it and be deliberate about it. Like the 20 year old me wouldn't have done any of this, but the 50 year old me, like I always say, I wish I had the, I wish the 20 year old me's metabolism had the 50 year old me's work ethic. Like that I would have been unstoppable, dude. Like I would have been in the gym and reading books and talking to mentors and being humble and all this stuff. But like that's just not how it worked. And now that I'm 50 I don't want to waste a second.
- [30:15]
B
No. And the thing that I like, like thinking back, there are people who blow up their lives at a certain stage because they just let it all to chance. But then there's also, and this is what I saw when I was like 30 getting into ministry, I saw people your age and my age who basically just started phoning it in. Like at some point there's this slow leak of air from Their tires.
- [30:35]
A
What do you think? What encouraged them to phone it in?
- [30:38]
B
I don't know. I wonder if they just got bored, whether it was like, they found their pattern, set it, and forget it. This works. This is enough. But it terrified me, like, when I was 30, I'm like, Whoa. And that's one of the reasons I tapped out as a lead pastor at 50. It's like, how does this happen? Well, I made it through my 50s, and I don't think I'm quite. Quite tapping out on all fronts, so that's good. But what I see in a lot of my friends who are at your stage, I have a lot of friends who are a few years younger, is you reach that point in your 40s or 50s where you're like, all right, I'm stepping on the gas. Not because you've got some boyhood wound. You've done all that hard work. I know John well enough. But just because it's like, life is exciting. We have a gift to steward. Do it.
- [31:26]
A
Yeah. And that's what I'm measuring. That's the like. And I did do that stuff, like, in my 30s and 40s, I could go back and go, oh, that was because you needed people to know. Like, you like to be a writer at some point. Because I like telling people I was a writer. That was for the airplane conversation. We go, oh, what do I do? I write books. And now I'm like, oh, yeah, yeah, we did that. We don't have to do that anymore. Like, that's great. We can start full. The day can start full. Like, who you are and what you. Like, you're already full. Like, we don't need to go, so let's try something else. But, yeah, I don't know. I just. I. I feel like it's really exciting. It's really challenging. And I. I like a challenge. I want to be challenged. And, you know, I always say, like, the only reason people ever leave their comfort zone is that something outside it is worth being uncomfortable for. So I think sometimes people get stuck because they don't have a thing outside it where they go, oh, I could make that amount of money, or I could help that amount of people, or I could build that or try that or scale that. And no one. The challenge is no one as an adult, will make you do hard things except yourself. That's the reality is, like, you have to kind of be the one that goes. Like, in a marriage, a spouse might go, I see something in you. I'd love to bring it out and work Might challenge you a little bit, but those real heart go all in adventures. Like, that's where it's a you versus you conversation. And I don't, you know, I don't want to be looking back at 60 and go, Man, I really squandered the 10 years. Like I do, I do sense that, like I don't have like 70 left of these. Like, I don't, like I have an X amount of. So I want to be deliberate about how I spend them and with the people I spend them with. Like, I'm honored I get to talk to you once a month. Like, that relationship's been so fantastic and I, I learned so much. And you're so generous with your time and like, I want lots of that. And then I want to pass that to somebody else that didn't. Yeah, like, here's a lesson I learned the other day. Carrie, just off topic. So I do this morning workout that I'm in love with called F3. And F3 is a free men's workout. It's 5:30 in the morning, rain or shine, held outside, cold or hot. And it's peer led. It's all volunteers. And there's probably 1500 locations around the country and, and a neighbor invited me and what I learned recently. So, like we're all working and if you have like an exercise where it's like, we gotta do 100 pushups, 200 sit ups, 300 air squats, whoever finishes first, like the strongest people finish first. The people in the best shape, they come and help the people who haven't yet. So what'll happen is a guy will come over to you and go, hey, I'm all done with my set. Can I give you 20 pushups? And then you get to be humble enough to accept them. And what I learned in that moment is the strongest have the most need to be generous. If you are strong, you have to be generous. And then if you're not there yet, you have to be brave enough to need that. And so for me, man, what a lesson for a man's heart to be willing to have another stranger go like, hey, I did my push ups faster than you. Can I do 10 more for you? And you're like, for you to accept that. And so that's what's fun to me. Like at 50, I'm like, oh man, I didn't even know that. Where am I strong that I need to share with other people, like speaking or writing or whatever. Like, how can I pass that to somebody else? I didn't know that lesson that clearly until one morning somebody who's in better shape than me said hey, I got 30 sit ups for you. And I received them and was able to like that stuff is just so fun to me.
- [34:58]
B
This episode is brought to you by the Art of Leadership Live. There is something AI cannot do. Guess what? It can't replace the experience and the power of being in a room with the right people. Sure, you can tap AI on the shoulder at work when you need to get something done today, but make sure you're intentional about spending time with actual people who can push you and can help you grow spiritually, emotionally and as a leader. You know that church is more powerful in person with others. Community groups work really well when they're tight knit and conferences become invaluable when they focus on connecting you not just with content, but with other like minded leaders. So on that note, I want to invite you to join me in Nashville, Tennessee this September for three days of deep growth, trusted guidance, and fresh vision for what's next. It's all happening at the Art of Leadership Live. It's not another conference where you sit and listen for eight hours a day to a talking head. This is interactive, it's practical. We cap the attendance and it's built around the kind of conversations that actually move leaders forward. In fact, my favorite part of last year was how amazing the leaders in the room were. We had great conversations and it was actually a very deep emotional connection. And that's why I'm very excited about this year. We're going to spend three days digging together into what's next for your leadership, for your church, and for the future of ministry. We're going to deep dive into a project I've been working on for two years about AI and the future Church. I got a book coming out about it that releases one week before the event. We're going to go deep on AI and the future Church, how it's going to disrupt and impact everything. Space is limited and it's your very last chance today to save early with Early Bird pricing. It ends April 30, so don't delay. Head on over to theartofleadershiplive.com or click the link in the description of this episode to secure your spot. And the best pricing before April 30th. That's theartofleadershiplive.com I'd love to see you there. Okay, so let's talk about procrastination because I think a lot of people are gonna be tuning in to learn about Procrastination. So one of the things just as confession time for me and then I wanna hear your confession is you look at, you know, John acuff. It's like 11 books and speaks all over the world and speaks to Lexus and Range Rover, you know, the same year. It's amazing. People always say to me, you are so disciplined. And I'm like, you have no idea how undisciplined I am. Like, everything in my life is a workaround to deal with my fundamental laziness. And I don't think I turned a single undergrad paper in on time. I was always looking for extensions, and that was because of procrastination. And, you know, so I've dealt with it and I've mastered it in my work, but like, workouts still continue to be my nemesis. It's like, yeah, I'm going to do three or four this week. You know, all those things that. It still chases me. So that's the natural carry. What is the natural John?
- [38:08]
A
Yeah, the natural John is super pessimistic, super cynical, pretty anxious, definitely, like not, not naturally bent toward this. The reason I've written 11 books kind of that are, you know, about mindset and go goals is that I have a lot of things that I'm working on. Like, I didn't write them, I'm not writing them because I'm naturally good at them. I had to develop these tools because I needed these tools. I'm a procrastinator by nature. So I had to go, okay, well, can I figure out procrastination? And can I figure out it in a way that I'm able to actually execute as many times as I want on the things I want? Great. Now do other people have that problem? Oh, they do. Can I frame it in a way that's sticky and easy and encouraging? So the procrastination proof book has 71 chapters because they're short chapters. Because if you write a 400 page book about procrastination, you're not a procrastinator, you're a monster. If you have a 90 page of notes at the back of your procrastination book, you're killing us. That's Jane Goodall writing about monkeys. I'm a monkey writing about monkeys. So, like, I'm in the same trench as you are. And I think that makes it easier for people to go, oh, I'll trust that that's true. It also makes it true. It's not hypothetical. It's like, hey, it took me 34 years to write my first book. But then when I dialed in procrastination, I wrote 11 more. Here's how I look at procrastination. Here's how you can too. You can actually get way more done than you think, even if you're naturally a procrastinator.
- [39:48]
B
Yeah. So you talk about responsible me and procrastination. Me, procrastinating me a little bit in the book. What are the two johns? What is that like?
- [39:57]
A
Well, so the big one, the first one I realized was Night John and day John. So night John would stay up late and like make bad food decisions. And then morning John would have a really hard day and morning John would be like, you screwed me again. Night John. And now their relationship is way better. So night John is a great decider. So at the end of the day, at night, I'll decide what I'm doing tomorrow and I'll lay it out and I'll put it in my calendar and here's what we're doing. Morning John is a great doer. If I wake up Kerry on a Monday morning at 8am Without a plan, overwhelming, the phone's already ringing, email's already coming, people already texting me, oh my gosh, I don't have a plan. But if I wake up with a plan, I'll run through a wall. Like Morning John will run through a wall if he knows which wall. So once I saw that relationship, like, oh, I'm really good at planning at 5pm when no one's kind of bothered me. And Night John's a good decider, Morning John's a good doer. Then I just started to expand it out and it was like, oh, how can Monday me hook up Friday me? Like, those are connected. So like, what can I do on Monday that makes Friday easier? So then my whole view of planning became how do I make tomorrow easy today? That's my soundtrack. How do I make tomorrow easy today? And that's a great definition of discipline too. Like, I want to be like you and I are similar in that I want to be a 70 year old who can still run and is limber and doesn't have a hard time putting a suitcase over his head on a plane, whatever. So what are the things I need to do? That's a long future range, but hopefully that person exists. Like, what do I need to do today to send that gift to that person? That to me is procrastination as a nutshell. You are stealing from future you. Every time you wait, you are stealing something very real. Doesn't Feel real there right now. You're stealing something real from the future you. And I am constantly trying to hook up future me. I'm constantly trying to think about that person and go, ooh, your summer is going to be awesome because of the things I did in the spring. You're like, I know you're going on vacation soon. I won't, like, I won't date it too much. But you are doing things that are going to make that vacation peaceful today. Like, you are clearing work out of the way today. You're hooking up future you. That's, to me, what procrastination is.
- [42:14]
B
Yeah. Why do you think, like, are most people, like, you always study this stuff pretty in detail? Are most people. Do most of us have like a procrastinating side? Are some people just built or you, like, it's kind of like, hey, welcome to the fallen world. Here we all are.
- [42:28]
A
Yeah. I mean, I think some don't have the option that they have to be responsible. Like, I have a friend whose parents died when he was. I think he was 12 when they died. And he had to kind of raise his brother, foster homes, all. Like, he didn't have the option of delaying things. He had to become an adult right away and do hard things. So I think some people lose the luxury of procrastination, like, where they don't, you know, they don't have it. But I think most people would say, if you ask most people, do you procrastinate on things? Do you finish everything you start? I don't know. Anybody go, yeah, I'm constantly. I'm 100 for 100 everything I do. So I think it's a problem. And then again, back to Instagram. You have to understand the procrastination is the only mindset issue that's well funded. So Instagram doesn't fund perfectionism. Netflix doesn't fund inner critic. But they all fund procrastination. It's the most well funded mindset issue in the world. And so if you ever go, I just feel like I'm having a hard time doing the thing. Like, give yourself some grace.
- [43:36]
B
Everything is conspiring against you.
- [43:38]
A
Everything is against you. And so I'm like, hey, I think there's a way to kind of even the odds. Here's the way to do that. Even in a world that's really busy, even a world that's really distracting, you don't have to let procrastination win every time.
- [43:52]
B
So you described some traps like, we all fall in. We have a proclivity to a particular kind of procrastination. Can you just. So we all see ourselves in the mirror. I mean, I've gotten a lot better. Our team works so far ahead. I was on a leadership team meeting and I just joked with our team that I'm pretty sure our podcast is done until August of 2028. I'm pretty sure we work that far ahead.
- [44:14]
A
My hair will be so much grayer by the time this one actually comes out. I'll just be like, oh my gosh, they're insane.
- [44:21]
B
And I have used back in the day when this thing that I'm doing now was a blog, when it was a hobby and I was still a lead pastor. I love the adrenaline of a last minute deadline. Like Monday, Wednesday, Friday were my writing days. I would get up at 5:00 in the morning, 4:45. And then before my day job being a pastor, I would go and write whatever was on my mind. I would publish it before breakfast and sometimes fix the typos at lunch. It was kind of that real time. But that adrenaline really drove me. And I'm saying that because we got a lot of pastors who are still in that pattern. It's like, it's Thursday, the message isn't done. But wait, here comes Friday. Wait, it's Saturday. And then I really believe that ruins your whole team because nobody's resting well on the inside if the message isn't done until Saturday night. And then you're like, hey, we need new screens, we need this. We got to change a worship song and all that. So I got out of that at church. I was working ahead for years before I stepped out of the lead pastor role. But there was a part of me that was really like loving the last minute stuff. And then when we did what you did, turn this into a team, team's like, you can't be writing your posts like at 5 o' clock in the morning and publishing them. We gotta go ahead, we gotta get them proofed. And so now I'm writing months in advance, but I just talk about that tension. Do you see it? And then what are the traps? I guess there's four of them. Right?
- [45:48]
A
Well, let's pause on that tension specifically. So there's a common belief that I work best at the last minute. That's a common kind of broken soundtrack.
- [45:58]
B
That's my superpower, right?
- [46:00]
A
Yeah, they've studied that up and down and it's just not true. Like nobody, nobody works best last second. What you're really saying there is this is the best solution. I know, like, it's not the best. It's not. You're at your best. No one would honestly say, if I have time to look at it a third time, I never find a mistake. No, you do. We all find mistakes. Or if I look at it again, I never have a new idea that makes it even better. You do. Like, your creativity is still there. It's not that you expended it. So if you're a pastor, the reality is, if you gave yourself the breathing room, the time you look at it a third time, like two days later, it's going to be better. You're going to find something. You go, I wouldn't say it that way. Now that I've rooming on it, like, thought about it a little while, here's how I'd say it. So it's not. There's nobody who does their absolute finished product best work at the last second. Because everyone's work gets better with an iteration. It doesn't matter what it is. Your work is better with an iteration. The traps are actually based on the solution. So the solution, like the framework we teach in the book, is dream, plan, do review if you want to accomplish anything. If you want to jump in and beat procrastination, you have to dream, you have to plan, you have to do, and then you have to review. And it's this really simple success loop. But the problem is, then real life gets involved. So dreamers get stuck dreaming. They have a thousand ideas and zero actions because there's no natural conclusion to your imagination. Like, dreaming will never tell you when it's done. It'll never go like, hey, that's enough. Let's wrap it up the second one. So planning perfectionists get stuck. Planning perfectionists are going to change the world just as soon as the plan is perfect. And in a world like AI they are screwed. Carrie, I realize with my team, AI was amazing, but we are getting into a document war where we would go off with our own little eyes and come back with 25 pages of like, well, here's what I said we should do. And I'm like, well, here's my 30 pages. And we are in this document arms race. Because AI can never. It'll never stop. It'll ask one more question, one more question, one more question. And so perfectionists get stuck in planning. Hustlers get stuck doing a Hustler hates a review. They hate a plan. Sales teams are this way all the time. They'll go. They'll go, I don't have Time for this. The bureaucracy. Like, I worked with a sales team and they told me their soundtrack was if it didn't happen in Salesforce, it didn't happen. Meaning if you didn't fill out the form, we're not counting that sale. Because the sales team would crush the sale. The thing they're good at, they're doing. They're hustling. They're hustling. They'd come back and the leaders would go, hey, would you fill out this form? And they'd go, I don't have time for all this paperwork. And the leader would go, it's three fields. We need to know the name of the person you sold the thing to. Like, we can't follow up. And. And so that's where hustlers get stuck. And I'm that way. So what, what that looks like in my life and on my team is we have a dream. We immediately skip planning and start doing. And we're running, Carrie, we're moving fast, right off a cliff often, but we're going, we're doing it. Like, look at us. And then the last one, analysts get stuck reviewing. And they're great at reviewing. They just tend to review mistakes from the past and predict failure in the future. They say things like, that's not how we do things here. Or worse is, we tried that before and it didn't work. And if you pull the thread on that one and go, hey, when? When did we try that? The answer is usually 7 years ago 1 time. So they go, we tried Facebook. It doesn't work for our church. Doesn't work for our church. And go, yeah, when did we. I tried ChatGPT.
- [49:33]
B
It doesn't work. It hallucinates.
- [49:34]
A
Yeah. Is it possible it's changed since then? Is it possible our one day test wasn't enough of a sample set for us to decide social media doesn't work for our church or our team. And so, yeah, those are the four different traps. Dreamers, perfectionists, hustlers, and analysts.
- [49:51]
B
Which are you naturally?
- [49:54]
A
I would say I'm naturally a hustler. Like, I'm ready to go. Like, I'm ready to jump in. And I would say the gift to me of AI is the planning side of it. AI has asked me a lot of questions that have made me stop before I run. So it'll go, hey, how many of those leads came in from that page, do you know? And I'm like, I don't know. That's a great question. And I go find out and go, oh, I didn't okay, that's good for me to know. I should have known that. So, yeah, I would say I'm naturally a hustler. And we actually created an assessment for it. If your listeners go to jonacuff.com kerry so I'm assuming they know how to spell Carrie. I hope so. It's a simple 35 question kind of analysis that tells you like, here's who you are, here's where you're going to struggle leading other people. So if you're a hustler, here's why it's hard for you with analysts, or if you're a planner, here's why you have a really hard time nailing down a dreamer. Because in a team context, it gets really messy really quick.
- [50:53]
B
Yeah, you know, I just want to say one of the best things, and today's a good day. I have a couple of podcast interviews and then I'm working through sections of the book. And it's funny because I have one of the best editors. Like, I don't know whether you know him or not, Eric Stanford. He's just unbelievable. And I'm going through this. This is my fifth review and I'm like finding small things and I'm like, oh, I wonder if Eric saw this or not. And I'm just changing a word or changing the context. And I'm like, man, I could do this. Like, well, I'm not going to do it forever, but like, if I had a whole week just to reread the manuscript, it's better and better and I want to take that same level. Well, I do try to take that same level of prep and review into the rest of my work. My keynote talks at conferences, my public speaking, my rolling out like church trends used to be something I just wrote between Christmas and New Year's when it started. Now it's like a two month research project with like a final grade and everything like that. Like, it's, it's just changed. So what's changed you most as you've, like, when you think about your work when you were still procrastinating and the work that you do now, what is the biggest payoff that you see?
- [52:04]
A
Well, I'll definitely answer that. I'm curious, of the four, which would you say you are, are you dreamer, perfectionist, hustler, analyst, Hustler?
- [52:14]
B
Just do, just in the moment, man, I know how to do this keynote. I can do it without notes. I can just intuit my way. People always said when I was leading the church, they said, you're a very Intuitive leader. And you lead by vision. I just know in my gut this is the way to go. And most of the times it turned out to be relatively accurate. So I'm grateful for that. But what I lost was thorough preparation. What I lost was the kind of review and then getting to know some mutual friends, like Andy Stanley, Jeff Henderson, who really taught me the power of planning, who taught me the power of review and having people speak into it. Now, I, like, thrive on feedback. How do you make this better? I was asking you about subtitles today for the book, right? It's like, oh, maybe we'll test those. Those are great. Like, the old me would have just been like, here's the title, here's the subtitle, here's the manuscript. We're done. That book is dead to me. It's now shipped.
- [53:16]
A
Well, I mean, I totally get that. And I think we have that in common. What's changed for me when it comes to procrastination and my ability to get things done, I would say the biggest thing probably is that sense of planning. So there's two things. One is getting really present to the dream, and the other is getting really good at planning. And so the dream being, I'm willing to do a lot of hard things because I focus on the reason I'm doing them. The dream. The dream stays so close to me where, like, I, you know, with public speaking, nobody likes overnight, you know, unexpected stay in Chicago. Like three weeks ago. Yeah, I just had one. I had a flight canceled in o'. Hare. And they did the thing where they go, it's leaving at 7:30pm, 8:30pm, 9:30pm and they just kept dragging. And then at 11:45, they canceled. It quite clear.
- [54:09]
B
Timed out. Sorry. Yeah.
- [54:11]
A
And so nobody likes that. But I love being on stage. I love helping clients. So what's helped me not procrastinate is an obsession about the reason I'm doing it, the goal, the dream. And then the second thing is getting ahead of the planning. Like, people say, the early bird gets the worm. I say the early bird gets everything. The earlier you're planning, the earlier, like, invested in the idea. The better all of it goes, the better. Like, the more you learn and the more you've got set up and the less chaos and drama. That was the thing I should have said with the pastor who waits till the last second. I'm all, I'm okay with you getting adrenaline, dopamine, whatever. Just go get it somewhere else because it's too expensive for your team. Like, your personal Addiction to that feeling shouldn't impact your team. Go find a sport, go find a hard. Go have a hard conversation, go exercise, go whatever. Go find the adrenaline. I'm not opposed to that at all. There's a lot of things I do because, man, that made me feel alive. I can feel that rush, but it can't be something that lowers my quality and impacts my team in a negative way, because if you stopped and said, but I love that feeling, you would never go. And so, yeah, my team's gonna have to be pressed. They're gonna have to work on their off day. It doesn't matter. My feeling matters the most. I need my adrenaline. And I think that's part of maturity is going, you know, am I addicted to this feeling? And where do I want to get it instead that actually supports the life I want? And like, dude, is anyone surprised Craig Groeschel does jiu jitsu? Like, is anyone? Like, I don't see that. He seemed like cross stitch to me. Of course not. He's a good enough leader to know I like high intensity ideas. I need to get those in smart ways that serve my long term needs as a long term leader and my whole team. Because I guarantee he, you know, like, there's ways he could get it, you know, on the backs of life church, but he doesn't do that. He goes, no, this is for that thing. This is where I go. And that's, that's what I think I respect the most.
- [56:16]
B
That is extremely accurate about Craig, by the way. I think he said something similar on this podcast and knowing him as a friend. Yeah. Because if you inflict all that energy and intensity on your co workers, like, there's certain people who just bring more energy and more fuel to the fire. And not everybody can burn at that rate. They just can't. And so you're going to cripple the organization. And so he is wise. And then he ends up with a balanced life. Like, he goes home and he goes and does jiu jitsu and then he has more time for his wife and his kids and all that stuff. He's present.
- [56:54]
A
Yeah. So there's ways to do it. There's definitely ways to do it.
- [56:58]
B
I'm not a brain researcher, but I can tell you when you were saying, go get your dopamine somewhere else, I used to get the thrill from last minute stuff. And then particularly in my preaching, which I had to change, gosh, 20 years ago. It was a long time ago. I went to, I'm not doing this to the team anymore. I get and got increasing joy out of like, oh, I'm done a month early. And that gave me the hit that being late used to give me.
- [57:29]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [57:31]
B
Do you get that too? Do you find your dopamine comes in like, oh, like, when this book is done or, you know, when a video is done, it's like, all right, I got this done, and now that's not out for two more months, but, like, that is off my chest and it feels great.
- [57:44]
A
Yeah, yeah. I mean, I get it that way. And then there's. I think you're just as you pay attention to yourself, you find better ways to get it. Like, for me, I realized years ago I was using anxiety for that kick, so I would. Worst case scenario for the joy of when it didn't happen. So I was. So what I would do is I'd go, man, if this happens and this happens, this happens. And I'm feeling this tension. I'm feeling this kind of, like, electricity. And then when it doesn't happen, I go, so it wasn't as bad as I thought. And that was me stuck in this anxiety, adrenaline loop. That was the run. Like, and again, people around me. That's hard to live with. Like, it's hard to be married to somebody who's mainlining anxiety as a way to feel excited. Like, that doesn't. That doesn't help anybody. So I really had to examine that and go, oh, I just got a hit out of that. I don't want to get that hit anymore. That's not how I want to live life. I want to find the hit somewhere else. And, yeah, whether it's like, I finish the thing early, I get a. I get a great sense of accomplishment every time a foreign edition of a book comes to my house. Like, it gives me such a. Like, oh, my gosh. Like, there's people in Poland that are reading this book. Like, I got to help them. Like, I don't know them. I've never been to Poland, but, like, I put an idea in a bottle and I threw it out of my house and it landed on somebody else's shore. Like, that's a really. Like, I feel that sense of accomplishment, and that's a good one that I. That I enjoy versus, like, I'm mainlining it in other ways that aren't helpful and do end up burning me out.
- [59:15]
B
So there are pastors who are listening right now and church leaders who have realized, yeah, caught in this, and I've got a whole system now. We re released the Art of preaching in 20, 25. And one of the top questions was, you know, how do I get ahead in my preaching? So I've got, like a complete system to get a month ahead. It's basically what I've done. And I mean, people can check that out in the art of preaching if they want, but at the end of the day, people listening in real time are like, okay, guilty as charged. John, what's the best first step they can take to delivering their team from the Saturday night specials or the Friday minute, last minute scramble? Like, if they're like, I want to make a change, what's the best first thing they can do?
- [60:00]
A
I mean, I think part of it is, like, a little bit of writing and it might be answering the question, why do I do this? And maybe it is because I'm overwhelmed with everything else. And the answer is, I need to honestly say I can't do good sermon prep based on the current responsibilities I have. I need to give some of them away. I need to. I mean, like, even Moses had to be like, hey, dude, it's too much like, you're Moses. It's too much. So, like, why am I doing this? Is it because I am addicted to that feeling and I need to admit that and change that? Is it because I'm legitimately overwhelmed? Because what happens? Let's just talk pastors. My dad's a pastor. I love pastors. The challenge is if you're good at delivering a sermon, the rest of the week crowds it out and you're able to get it done to a degree that most people can't. So most people can't do what you do. So then stuff just gets added, added, added, added. And your time to prepare gets naturally shortened. I had a friend say one of his triggers is if he finds himself saying the sentence, I can make it work, he's in a bad spot. So if you are saying to yourself, okay, I used to. When I was young, I used to be able to do the sermon prep on Monday, but, man, budget meetings on Monday and now Tuesday and Wednesday and Thursday. And the thing you're best at, we tend to phone in, which is ironic, but we can kind of do it. Like, I can kind of pull it off like. And so it gets shorter and shorter and shorter. And if you find yourself saying, I can make it work, I can make it work, I can make it work. Maybe the first step is I got to clear some stuff off. I think a really easy step, too, is to make an appointment with yourself and keep it. Like, the problem with goals. Carrie Is that a goal is never just a goal. A goal is a promise. It's a promise you made to yourself. And every time you break it, it gets easier to break the next one. So if it were me, I do the Sunday thing on Sunday, I would plan how do I hook up Monday me and Monday me might need an hour blocked on the calendar where that is sermon prep. And it doesn't get to. Or half an hour, 15 minutes, whatever is your time frame. Make an appointment with yourself. And then the second step is keep it and get into that habit where like you're not on Monday, you're not deciding, you've already decided once. I try to make as many decisions on Sunday as I can so I don't get to argue and negotiate with myself all week. Like this morning I ran at 6am it was dark. Like I didn't particularly want to do it, but it didn't matter. The negotiation had already happened. Like the decision was over. Monday morning, me's a doer, you know, your job, get doing. And so like if you can, as a pastor, go. Can I carve out 30 minutes? And here's the thing, I'd say go somewhere. One of my favorite soundtracks is Do Heart. Do. Do Hard Things in Beautiful Places. Do Hard Things in Beautiful Places. So if you know there's no world where you don't get interrupted in that 30 minutes. Go to a coffee shop for an hour. Like your favorite coffee shop. Bring one thing, maybe just a notebook. Like start. Like don't bring your whole office, but like go or go for a walk and take notes in your audio with your phone. Like go do it somewhere that's beautiful. Because I think that makes it a lot easier too.
- [63:02]
B
Yeah, I love that idea. I was remembering that this week, you know Greg McKeown, his second book, lesser known, I forget the title right now. What's it called? Effortless. Effortless. But I had this editing to do and I have a number of other things. I'm not on a writing retreat, so I'm like, well, how do I make this enjoyable? You have permission. And I'm like, you're an adult, you can do what you want. So I put on some of my favorite soundtracks on my speakers on my desk and I'm like, I'm just gonna listen to music. And it sounds really very 10 year old, but it's like, oh no, I get to make the rules and I do better if I have some nice background music. So I'm just gonna play that and nobody can tell me not to. So Whatever you need. And when it came to preaching just to give people a hack, it's like, use your green zone. Do what you're best at when you're at your best, which for me is the morning hours. And I would rather disappoint one person by saying, sorry, I'm not available until after 11am than disappoint 500 or 1500 people on the weekend with a bad half mangled message.
- [64:05]
A
Yeah. And you're not going to say to them, but I had a coffee and the coffee went well. I had somebody come in for a 10am meeting and I crushed that. I know, I'm terrible at this, but you should call Jill and Mark. We had a great finance meeting, so. I know. And this is your first and last time at church. Sorry, it's usually good. Not today, because I had that.
- [64:25]
B
You would never had that meeting Monday. That screwed up everything.
- [64:28]
A
Yeah, but to me, Kerry, what you just said is you had a bigger dream. You didn't try to become disciplined. You let the size of the dream drive your discipline. That's what people get twist it all the time. They think they have to be disciplined in order to dream. And I think you have to dream in order to be disciplined. The dream gives you the discipline. I didn't change my life in my mid-30s by getting up earlier, by watching less TV, by being more deliberate. What happened was I wrote a blog and all of a sudden I was like, wait a second, there's a whole world out here. Wait a second, I like this. And then I stopped watching as much TV because TV gave me nothing. The blog was a fire and every hour was a log I was throwing into it. I couldn't make the blaze big enough. The dream created the discipline, not I had to become disciplined. So in your example, what I just heard was my dream is to really super serve 500 people on Sunday. And I can see that and that's tangible. And I look at that so it's easier to say no to the person on Monday because you can see the dream. And you know what it costs to say yes to that person. You've got the dream clear enough that you see it. I think most people, especially pastors, haven't reconnected with that dream in a long time because of the busyness of the thousands things they have to do, like they have to be leaders and CFOs and HR and all the stuff that they're carrying and they lose touch with, like, oh, no, this is the thing.
- [65:53]
B
Well, it leads us into the territory. I Wasn't planning on talking about this, but you and I, I know you well enough to know that there. In light of everything you're doing and everything you're focused on, there's gotta be a lot of no's. No, I can't meet. Coffee? No, I'm sorry. You can't pick my brain. No, I can't do this event, et cetera. My joke with my staff is I pay some of them just to say no all day long so that can focus on what I really need, what I feel called to focus on. If somebody's like, how do you. How have you learned to say no again and again? And how do you do it without alienating everybody who's asking you for something?
- [66:31]
A
Well, it's not easy. I'm a people person. I love.
- [66:33]
B
It never gets easy.
- [66:35]
A
I like to please people, and that can be a great strength and a great weakness. And so I try to work on the weakness side of it. Some of it, like you said, it is about your team. Like, I have an amazing assistant that I've worked with for 10 years. And so she and I have a really good rhythm on. Say yes to this. Say no to this. The second thing is every Sunday, I've got a map of my. Really from 5:30am to 5:00pm that I've mapped out on my calendar. Calendar. Now, there's some kind of spots where it's like, miscellaneous. Let's see what comes up. Like, nobody has a life where every hour goes exactly the way you think it'd go. But I'm really deliberate about the time that I have to invest. And then I started to do stuff like Carrie realizing some things are definitely a no, but some things are a phone call in the car. So there's times where I'll go, okay, this isn't a go meet somebody at a coffee shop for this. That's pretty investor. This is a. I'm driving to the airport. I've got 15 minutes. Can I encourage this person? Okay, yeah, let me schedule that. Like, let me. So then, like, now I'm. I'm kind of redeeming some of that time. So I got really good at seeing what I had to play with. And then I. The older I get, the more I'm trying to do less of less things that I'm bad at. So if somebody goes like, hey, I want to do this thing. And, like, the ego side of me wants to be like, I'm amazing at everything. Yes, I'll do that. But now I'm like, no, I wouldn't I'm actually really not good at that. You know, I used to feel really guilty when people would DM me long questions about, like, their career. And then I remembered I wrote a whole book called do over about career. So it's one thing if you email me and go, I read Do Over. Here's the three questions I have. That's different. But if you go, like, I won't serve you in that dm, there's no DM I'm going to be able to write that's better than the book. So sometimes it's about, like, pointing people to the right resources. But you and I are maniacs on time management. Like, the green is true. Like, putting stuff in that matters where it matters. I would say what I've gotten better at is allowing some breathing room in my schedule too, because that's the tension. It's really scheduled. But it's like one of my soundtracks for saying no. And time management is plan like an engineer, live like an artist, Plan like an engineer, live like an artist. Because the plan is going to change. And you need the flexibility of an artist and the spontaneity to have a rich life. But you also need the plan like an engineer to go, if I want these things to happen. If, like, here's like, you're not. You didn't casually do your vacation with your extended family that didn't come together via accident. You had to plan that. Now I know not every day is planned to the minute. There's going to be family spontaneity. You'll probably tell me when we talk next time. And you know what was the best part? It was crazy. It wasn't something we planned. We just had this dinner that came together with some locals and it was wild. Like, so that's the tension. So for me, it's like, how do I plan like an engineer? How do I live like an artist in the actual moment?
- [69:33]
B
Yeah. Even with my green zone, you know, it's just a block. Like our mutual friend Frank Bueller, he will minuscule schedule every single hour of his day. I'm like, more power to you, man. I love you. For Frank, mine is just like, I want to wander around and make myself a cup of coffee or tea or I want to stare out the window for a little while because I find great ideas take time to develop. They really do for me. So, okay.
- [69:58]
A
Oh, yeah. So, Carrie, I would say if I'm over scheduled, I don't have that space and my ideas suffer.
- [70:05]
B
So I realize recently I'm not a Good thinker.
- [70:08]
A
One of my favorite things to do is to listen to music and drive, and I get ideas in that. And, like, there was a time I went through a season where I was only listening to podcasts and audiobooks because I was, like, constant learning, constant learning. And I missed that, and I had to go back to that, where I was like, oh, wait a second. No, I like to go drive and listen to music. And it's on, like, a huge playlist, so I don't know what song's coming next. And, like, and then a great idea will pop in. Like, a great idea will make a cameo when I'm not looking directly at it. A lot of my best ideas are on the periphery of my life life. Like, I'm looking at something else, and it sneaks in. It's like, hey. And I have to be cognizant enough to go, oh, I see you. Like, I'll. I'll write that down.
- [70:46]
B
I'll.
- [70:46]
A
I'll follow that up. That's kind of how I think.
- [70:49]
B
Yeah. Okay, so now I gotta go to at least one more issue around procrastination. And that, John, is great. We've dealt with the listener who's like, yeah, I'm guilty. Thank you for the help. What about the team member who's like, I would pay a large amount of money to get my senior pastor, my CEO, my leader to listen to this because they're the procrastinator. They're the one who are always texting me last minute, going, hey, can you make a change? Because this was supposed to be done by now, but it's not done by now. So when you think about team dynamics and you lead a team now, John, I'd love to know, what do you do when you're not the procrastinator, but the people around you, and particularly the people above you or the person above you is.
- [71:30]
A
Well, and the person above you. I mean, now you're talking about managing up. And managing up, to me, is just a different form of sales. So I'm trying to sell that leader what I believe is the better way. So if you think about it like, sales, you go, okay, what are their pain points? What are the challenges they have? What's the solution? I want to guide them toward. Like, I think this is the thing. I need to frame it in a way they'll understand and go along with it. So, like, for me, I would go if I was going to sell a different way, like a more detailed way or less procrastination, or we're Planning ahead of time, how would I sell it to that person? Because I wouldn't sell it as you're doing it wrong. Like no sales conversation goes well if you start with you're doing it the wrong way and you don't even own the right stuff. And I'm here to fix that because it's really dumb. No, you'd go, hey, I know that, like, I know you really care about family time and I think if we tweak a couple things, we can add 10% more family time to your week. Like, would that, like, would that be something you'd be willing to go with me on? Or I know you care about, like, you really care about the stage time and how this, like, no leader likes to be embarrassed on stage when something happens they weren't expecting or they were unprepared. So I want to eliminate that. So how do we, you know, like, I would sell them on that. When it's co workers and it's more of a peer relationship, that's where you get into things. Like, what are the boundaries you set? What are the, like what, you know, what are the kind of not rules but like, what are the expectations you set? Like, the reason people will bold a date in an email is they want to call attention to like, I need this back by this date. Like, I'm trying to make it easy for you to know this is what I need. Same with like, back to AI. Every document I create, I'm trying to create a one page version too because AI will be like, here's a 27 page document you can throw at your, your throw at your co worker. They're going to procrastinate on that. I want to set them up for success. So the best way to do that, when it's something I care about a lot that I want them to invest in too, is here's a one page summary. There's plenty more to look at, but here's the one page summary. You want to come along a little on this other thing, you know, and so like I'm even there. You're trying again. It's a sales process.
- [73:48]
B
Yeah.
- [73:49]
A
And you try and you know, inside a team, there's politics and there's bureaucracy and there's all this stuff. But your ability to kind of set some clear boundaries and expectations, they might still miss them. But now you're getting into like, we've got it. Like, I've been clear on my end. There's no confusion. Own what you can control. You can't control that other person. If you don't like how they're performing, own your performance even more and you'll start to at least create, like, oh, this is something that's really happening that I need to fix. Or, wow, they procrastinated because I didn't tell them when I needed it. That's not procrastination. Like, when somebody said that to me the other day, like, I'm going to butcher how they said it was my buddy William, but he said, basically, my unspoken unmet expectations are not a broken promise. My unspet unmet expectations are not a broken promise. And when you as a co worker or a leader goes, go, can't believe they did that. And you go, well, did you ask them to do it a different way? Clearly, with a time frame and deliverables and measurables? And you go, no, but they should just know that.
- [74:55]
B
That's what they should know.
- [74:56]
A
They should know. So, like, yeah, my unspoken unmet expectations are not your broken promise.
- [75:04]
B
So you're doing probably a lot of conversations on podcasts about procrastination right now. What is one thing that you don't think is talked about enough? What is sort of the hidden gem? Or, gosh, I wish everybody asked me this, but nobody ever does.
- [75:22]
A
I think the main thing is that it's all fixable. The fun thing to me about procrastination, imposter syndrome, inner critic perfectionism, all of those are just mindset issues. They're not physical things. They're not real. We treat them like they are. They're not. I always laugh. Like, in the seventh grade, there was a bully named Donnie who used to bully me because that's what bullies do. And, like, we would be on the bus and he would show me his knuckles and they were covered in scars, and he would say, I got these scars from punching kids with braces like you. And then when we get off the bus, he would throw my book bag under the back tires of the bus, and the bus would run over my books every day. Like, he. I think he invented throwing somebody under the bus. Donnie was real. Like, dude, Donnie was real. I had a real physical issue I had to deal with. Procrastination is just mindset, and so it's so solvable.
- [76:15]
B
And.
- [76:15]
A
And when you solve it just a little bit, dude, like, when you change just a little, like, it's the kind of thing that you can solve and people notice. Like, it's the kind of thing where a spouse would be like, hey, did you. Did you do that thing that we talked about? For, like, nine years. You're like, yeah, I did that. It just felt time. I just did that thing. And they're gonna be like, what? Your boss is gonna notice your Nate. Like, people will drive down the street and be like, good job. So I would just say I think we forget how solvable all these things are, and you have the power to solve it, and it can actually be really fun and funny, and you don't have to get your book bag driven over by a bus. It's a mindset issue. And those are solvable. Yeah.
- [77:01]
B
Donnie. I had the blue kid, man, third grade. If we saw the blue kid walking down a street, we took another street.
- [77:08]
A
Oh, yeah, yeah. No, I, I, I still, like, it's. I know his last name still, but I'm like, he's probably, like, doing, like, doing something great with his life now. I don't want to. I don't want to throw him under the bus. No.
- [77:20]
B
I don't even know who the blue kid was. It was just like, he wore a blue jacket. It was like, oh, it's a blue kid. Get out of here.
- [77:25]
A
That's all you need to know. That's all you need to know.
- [77:27]
B
That's all you need to know. It's a blue kid, man. Yeah. But you know what? And it's what I taught my boys growing up. I always said, if you do what you said you're going to do when you said you're to do it, you're ahead of 98% of the planet. And I think that is still true. I teach that to team members. We try to deliver as a team. We don't miss deadlines. And you can't control other companies, other organizations. My team's always telling me, oh, we're chasing so and so for details or we're trying to get more clarity on this. I'm like, good. Just don't be late. Don't be late. Like, we, we can control what we have. And I would say, you know, much reform from my college days when everybody. Paper in undergrad was handed in late.
- [78:05]
A
I love it. Feels better. Like, winning feels better. Like it's enjoyable. And.
- [78:10]
B
And the price always gave it to me. And I did real. I had straight A's. So it was like, why am I motivated to change? But now I have a more sophisticated understanding. John, this is great. Tell us. It's jonacuff.com, carrie. People can do.
- [78:26]
A
So you can go for that, for the assessment. And then the book's available everywhere. Books are sold. I read the audiobook and there's a ton of bonus content in the audiobook.
- [78:36]
B
You do audiobook so well, man. It's so fun.
- [78:39]
A
It's fun. And then depending on when it comes out, if it comes out before the book launch, you can go to jonacoff.com go. And there's a bunch of pre order bonuses.
- [78:49]
B
Oh, cool.
- [78:50]
A
So you actually get the whole audiobook for free if you pre order the paper book or the digital.
- [78:57]
B
Yeah, yeah. That's really, really cool that you were able to do that.
- [79:00]
A
So we'll link to it. Thank goodness. The publisher is like, go for it. Yeah. The publisher. Kudos to them.
- [79:05]
B
Yeah. John, as always, it's such a fun time to get together. Thank you so much for today. I think you helped a lot of people and maybe took some of the tension out of people's lives and people's teams.
- [79:17]
A
Well, I can't wait to see you again in Franklin. I'll be the first to welcome you when you finally move here.
- [79:22]
B
Yes, exactly.
- [79:23]
A
We can have.
- [79:24]
B
It's a rumor was. We have moved there, but not yet. We just.
- [79:26]
A
Yeah, I'm starting it. I start that rumor every time we talk. Every time I'm on this podcast. Yeah.
- [79:31]
B
By the way, congrats on the best cover. Do you have the proof just for people watching on YouTube.
- [79:37]
A
Hey, yeah, look at that.
- [79:39]
B
I remember we were talking about COVID art and I'm like, dude, you got to go with the turtle in the rock. And when I saw that you were
- [79:45]
A
one of the early people that were like, hey, you can. Cause I was like, I don't know. Like, and now. And we did a survey with our people and it crushed every other option.
- [79:55]
B
That is one of my favorite cover arts. It gives me cover art envy. When you said, like, I don't know, I think we could. Because what were the other metaphors? They weren't even close. I don't know.
- [80:04]
A
They were terrible, dude. It was like jumbled letters. And I was like, the rest of the other options would give you a panic attack if you looked at them visually. Like, they were like, so you know how it is. Like coming up with a cover or a title. Like, we're doing that writer's intensive. I was thinking about this. Like, the job of the title isn't to tell you the whole book. It's to get you to read the subtitle. The job of the subtitles. It gets you to read the back cover. Back cover's job is to get you read the inside flap. Inside flap is to get you to read the first page. But authors go, I gotta have my whole book expressed in the titles. Like, no, you don't. Nobody. Like, that's not his job or your subtitle. Like, you're working on a subtitle. I was like, hey, I think you could simplify it this way. So, like, yeah, it's fun to. As a communicator, you and I are nerds that way. Where, whether it's in a speech or in a book, it's not accidental. Like, you're like, last thing I'll say. Carrie. I realize this is so dorky. I have this joke about how work is hard now because you have to convince people to come to the office. And 20 years ago, nobody had to do that. Like, leaders just said, this is our building. This is where work happens. Monday through Friday, 9 to 5, be here. And now they have to do a marketing campaign. They're like, oh, we have coffee. Come like, oh, on Fridays, you get to ride Shetland ponies between meetings. It's Pony Friday, and I realized Shetland pony was funnier than Friesian, because Friesian, nobody knows what that horse is. Like Shetland, everybody has a small pony in their head. And it was funnier than just regular pony. I love that, you and I, if people could listen to some of our conversations, they're that nerdy, where we're like, is this the right word? What does that word mean to you? How is this going to communicate? Is this going to confuse people? And, like, to have a brother that I get to do that with is a real joy to me.
- [81:52]
B
Well, it's absolutely mutual. And like a turtle with a rocket strapped to his back, that's one for the ages. Like, way to go, man.
- [82:00]
A
I appreciate it, dude.
- [82:01]
B
Nobody will forget it. Anyway, John, as always, such a gift. Thank you.
- [82:06]
A
Thanks for having me, Carrie. I can't wait to do it again.
- [82:09]
B
There was a lot of good stuff in that episode, and if you want more, you can find it in the show notes. And the place to find the show notes is the place that 20,000 leaders now look on a regular basis. It's my Art of Leadership Academy. We opened it up last year, May. It hasn't been even open a year. And 20,000 leaders have jumped in. They've gone from the crowd to the core in the Academy. I have personal conversations with a lot of leaders on a daily basis. Would love to see you in there. You'll find the show notes, some really good, thoughtful conversation around podcast episodes. So just go to theartofleadershipacademy.com, set up your free account today or click the link in the description of this episode to get more. Well, coming up, next episode, we've got Todd Wilson. We talk about the history of the church growth movement. Also coming up, Christine Cain, Chelsea Smith, Preston Sprinkle, and a whole lot more on the podcast. If you hit follow or subscribe wherever you're watching or listening, you will never miss an episode. And if this meant a lot to you, maybe you can text the link to a friend. It means the world to me when you rate this podcast, when you review it, when you share it with a friend. Because when you do that, the podcast grows. When the podcast grows, we get the best leaders in the world that we can bring to you. And I hope I kind of brought you behind the the scenes. You know, John and I talk all the time and now you've had one of those conversations with him. I try to bring the questions you would want to ask him if you had lunch, dinner or coffee with Johnny. So we'll catch you next time. In the meantime, I hope our conversation today has helped you identify and break a growth barrier you're facing.