Note: I’m taking the weekend off, so today’s email is one of my favorites that I sent you a few months ago. It’s all about procrastination and where it comes from.
“Procrastination is rooted in perfectionism”
Last night I posted a little video to my Instagram about how I was procrastinating on a project this past week.
I had about 20 pages worth of writing to do…
An audio to record…
And a video to make…
Yet, I kept putting all of it off.
I was 2-3 weeks behind already on this stuff.
Finally I thought about it, and tried to figure out why I was procrastinating.
And a few things things came up for me…
One of which was…
“I have to make sure it’s perfect so people like it”
This is a pretty common thought for me when I’m procrastinating.
My procrastination is always rooted in feeling vulnerable about what people are going to think about my work…
And also feeling like I don’t know what I’m doing.
So the procrastination is really a defense mechanism.
It overcompensates for what I’m feeling…
So I start to think the project has to be perfect…
And that everyone has to like it.
Well that ain’t possible.
No matter how good something is, it’s never going to be perfect.
And not everyone is gonna like it.
That’s just reality.
And with that in mind, I simply push myself to start small on stuff Im procrastinating on.
So with the 20 pages I had to write, I found the easiest 2-page section and just wrote that.
It took me like 30 minutes.
And once I was rolling on that…
I found another 3-page section that I wrote in about an hour.
Once I was writing, I felt like doing more writing.
So simply getting started is key.
But the key is starting small.
Find an easy win.
Something you can knock-out quickly.
That helps get the ball rolling.
Hope this helps…
– Justin