Thoughts Unlocked – Rethinking Procrastination

* Website

Timestamps:
01:13 Introduction to Procrastination and Its Misdiagnosis
05:34 When Progress Becomes Invisible
07:40 Understanding the Friction: Work, Will, and Weight
12:12 Reframing Procrastination: Questions Over Labels

Skot Waldron (00:05.00)
I’m Skot Waldron, and when I’m not hosting Unlocked, I’m speaking at events all over the globe, helping leaders and teams communicate better, build trust faster, and actually enjoy working together. I know, who would have thought? I’ve spoken for companies like The Home Depot, I’ve spoken at national architectural firms, at their sales trainings, off sites for major pharmaceutical companies, and industry associations.

A thousand of attendees who have read my sessions. With 99% of them saying they found the sessions valuable. 97% saying they’d actually attend again. I’ve had caterers come up to me afterwards and thank me because they actually got something they could use when they went home or when they went back to their own jobs. I mean, if every keynote delivered those types of numbers, nobody would secretly be refreshing their email under the table. And let’s be honest, that’s a little bit of my nightmare, maybe a little bit of yours. Yeah, something that keeps me up at night.

If you’re an event planner, looking for a speaker who’s easy to work with and delivers actual value that people can take away and use on Monday. Let’s make your event unforgettable.

Hello, welcome to another episode of Thoughts Unlocked and I want to talk to you today about a special topic that I think we throw around a lot. This word, this label that we use oftentimes to diagnose any type of delay that we ever see. In fact, this word is so profound. Jon Acuff, if you’re familiar with Jon Acuff, he’s a writer and a speaker and really great at what he does. I follow him everywhere. I do all the things because he’s awesome.

He actually wrote a book, and it just released recently. It’s called Procrastination Proof. So, if you want to attack that, go for it. Jon’s writing is fantastic, and I’m sure you will get something out of it. But Jon’s angle is “hey, you’re procrastinating. Let’s figure out what to do instead. How to get beyond that.”

My whole thing that I want to talk about is, is it actually even procrastination in the first place? So, that’s the question I want to ask and I want to talk to you about procrastination, not because I’ve conquered it, quite the opposite. I’ve spent a lot of time being fascinated by it and how we use this label to diagnose delay all the time. Partly because, yes, I have been called a procrastinator in my life, or some other variation of that: lazy, unmotivated, fence sitter, whatever you want to say. Maybe you have too.

What’s funny is that whenever somebody calls you a procrastinator, they say it like they’ve solved a mystery of some kind. “That’s the problem, right? Thanks for clarifying that for me. I really appreciate it.” No, we don’t say that. And yes, they think they’ve solved a mystery because it has been a mystery to them. It’s a story loop in their brain, and they want to close that story loop and so they just throw out the label of procrastination because it closes the loop, it creates finality. They don’t have to ask any questions. They just go, “you’re procrastinating, which is clearly the case and that’s clearly the problem. So now I don’t have to ask you about what’s really going on.” So, after you’ve noticed that that’s not really an explanation, that it’s just a label. It’s kind of like walking into a doctor’s office, seriously all, and saying, “hey, my arm hurts.” And the doctor says, “Yes, you have arm pain.” “Yes, thank you, doctor.” No, that’s kind of what it’s like.

I remember being in school and actually watching some people start projects immediately and the teacher would assign something and then somehow these people already had all their tabs open, and they were color-coded and they’re writing things in their journal about how they’re going to get started and their agenda. Is that what it is? Their planner. That’s the word, planner. And half the project was done before I could even start writing anything at all. I hated those people, but I hated them for being so good at doing the thing but that’s actually not true. I just wanted to be those people. I didn’t hate them. I just wanted to be them. And I think that that’s different.

And one of these ideas that sparked my book was realizing that most of us kind of want the strengths of other people whose work style actually annoys us. All of you, what I call adaptive thinkers, those out-of-the-box, pushing envelopes, do really great work under pressure, like to incubate and process things, adaptive thinkers, you crave that structure. I know you do. I’ve met with enough of you, I’ve coached enough of you to know that.

And then also you structured thinkers out there, you do love the process and the color coding and the getting things done a week ahead of time to prove to everybody it can be done. But really, you envy a little bit that out-of-the-box thinking, the creative ideas, the pushing envelopes, the whatever comes out of those fascinating brainstorm sessions. Like, how do people come up with that stuff? There is a little bit of that in you. I know there is.

Here’s what I’ve been noticing. When progress becomes invisible, people start telling stories. So, a manager looks at some kind of employee of theirs and says, “nothing appears to be happening.” And the story becomes, “they’re procrastinating.” An employee looks at a manager checking in on them multiple times, and the story becomes, “they’re micromanaging me”. And what’s fascinating is that both people think they’re accurately describing what’s happening, but they’re actually describing their interpretation of that thing. And it’s not reality.

And one of the core ideas of my new book that I’m working on, and it’s going to come out later. I’m starting on it now, and have been doing a lot of research and thinking, which is why I’m talking about this. Most workplace conflict doesn’t begin with bad intent. It begins with the bad diagnosis. Let me say that again. Most workplace conflict doesn’t begin with bad intentions. It begins with the bad diagnosis.

Procrastination might be the greatest example of that, which is why I hone in on it, which is why I started with this whole thing. Because what if the delay isn’t procrastination at all? What if it’s just friction? Because that’s what business is. It’s friction. It’s how do we solve the problem. Which is removing friction. Let’s say you have a project sitting in front of you right now. You know, the one, the thing you’ve been meaning to start maybe. The thing you’ve been thinking about getting a move on. The thing you’ve talked about starting so much that if talking counted as progress, you would probably be finished right now but talking does not count as progress. So why haven’t you started?

Most people just throw out the label for themselves or others and just say, “I’m just procrastinating”. Okay. Like, are you though? Really? And why? But why are you procrastinating? I don’t want to just tell you your arm hurts because you tell me your arm’s hurting. Like, why are you procrastinating?

What I’ve started using instead are three words to diagnose this thing. Is it the work? Is it the will? Or is it the weight? Is it the work, the will, or the weight? Now, weight is not W-A-I-T, it’s W-E-I-G-H-T. The weight, the feeling, the heaviness.

Sometimes the friction, it lives in the work. Okay. This is what that looks like. Your task could be unclear. Your expectations are a little bit fuzzy. Maybe you don’t know where to start. You’re not procrastinating. You’re confused. And those are not the same thing. You see, when I label it this way, and one way I’m saying procrastination says, “you’re unmotivated. You must not be committed. You must be lazy. You must be all these things because you haven’t started yet or you must be incompetent or slow or whatever because you haven’t started these things.”

When in reality, what we’re doing is we’re trying to fix the person. What we should be trying to do is fix the friction. So, if the friction is the task is unclear because I didn’t explain it well enough. I need to explain the task better to this person. Or maybe the expectations are too fuzzy. I didn’t set clear expectations. Or maybe you don’t know where to start because I never really labeled a first step for you. Or maybe there’s too many steps and the whole thing’s convoluted. This is task friction. This is the work friction I’m talking about. It exists in the work.

And sometimes the friction, here’s the next one, is the will. You don’t actually want to do it. Y’all know what I’m talking about. Maybe the work matters to somebody else, but you’ve lost connection to why it matters to you. Maybe you’re afraid. Fear disguises itself in really creative ways, and sometimes it looks like laziness and sometimes it’s just a fear of wearing some fake mustache, right? It’s something that’s out there that’s not making sense. So that’s the will. You don’t understand that you don’t have autonomy. There’s no connection to the value of the thing. Maybe somebody else thinks it’s important. You don’t think it’s important. So, the purpose, the thing’s gone. It’s the will. Okay, the work or the will.

Now let’s talk about the weight. This one gets missed a lot and I actually, when I was doing my research, I actually missed this first and it took me having a really big discussion with my mom about why she was delaying a certain decision. And my dad, her husband, had passed away four weeks prior. And she was carrying a lot of that weight. This one gets missed a lot, y’all, because nobody sees it. You might be carrying a lot of stress, some burnout, some anxiety, the death of a loved one, sickness of a parent, maybe there’s some financial pressures, a struggling marriage, something that’s happening. And meanwhile, somebody else is looking at all of your delayed projects, wondering why you’re not trying harder. Doesn’t that sound stupid when I say it out loud? It sure does. They’re looking at the output and they’re looking at the visible work because that’s what we reward in our culture and society is visible work. And they can’t see the weight, the weight you’re carrying right now. So, the work, the will, and the weight.

One of my favorite concepts from this book that I’m writing is called invisible progress because some people, they think on paper and some people think before the paper. And some people generate clarity by incubating. I call it incubation. And from the outside, incubation often looks like procrastination or lack of commitment or laziness or unmotivated, until all the work finally pops up, finally, and everybody says, “wow, where did that come from?” Now, sometimes they’re a little more angry when they’re saying it, or they’re just plain surprised.

It comes from three weeks of thinking that nobody could actually see. And there’s a lot of research that’s actually done on what’s happening in the unconscious mind when you just let it sit and do its thing. You know the term “sleep on it?” There’s actual science behind “when you sleep on it, your brain is still working on the problem, and you can come up with some pretty brilliant ideas”. So, use it sometime.

Here’s what I want you to try this week. The next time you catch yourself saying, “I’m such a procrastinator”, or “Judy’s procrastinating”, or “what’s going on with this? Why are they procrastinating this process? I want you to just pause and ask a question. Because labels are lazy, let’s stop using easy labels for everything and start asking questions. “Where’s the friction? Is it the work? Is it the will, or is it the weight?” Because those are different problems. Those are outward things that we can do something about.

Let’s fix the friction. And those require different solutions. And maybe that’s the biggest idea out of all this. Maybe procrastination isn’t the problem. Maybe misdiagnosis is actually the problem. Because once you diagnose correctly, the path forward gets a whole lot clearer.

Thank you for listening to another episode of Thoughts Unlocked. If you know somebody that’s a “chronic procrastinator”, or you know somebody who likes to throw around that label of “procrastinator” then send them this episode. There might be some aha! moments that come out of it, and maybe, just maybe, you might diagnose correctly next time. Because that would be great, right? That would be great. Thanks everybody for being here.

If you want to find out more information about me or check out the show notes where there’s going to be more information and links to the things referenced in this episode, visit skotwaldron.com. And lastly, I’m asking for a little bit of love, just a little bit. So please take a moment, follow, rate the show. The algorithm is like that; it helps me get the word out. I really appreciate it.

Thank you. And until next time, stay Unlocked.