Ep# 046: From Procrastination to Focus
I battled it daily
Feeling completely unfocused and I operated at next level procrastination.
Sometimes it sucks. It's hard!... but it's fixable.
So, no matter what your personality type is, what you've been through in your life, however you're used to operating. If you have big dreams, BIG GOALS, it's time to stop procrastinating and start stepping into a place of focus. And that starts now!
So, I'm walking you through how I'm doing it and how you can too.
I can’t control how I go out…but I can control whether I go all in
A few years back, my husband Michael and I took our son Jack out to California. He was about one and a half at the time. I was pregnant with our daughter, Marie, and we decided we were gonna take this five-week vacation, just fly out to California, rent a car, and just drive. Oh my gosh. Why did I fly out to California Rent-A-Car and just drive with no end in sight. So, we drove over 3000 miles and one of our stops was Yosemite national park
And I'm one of the days when we were at Yosemite, we were going on these little hikes. You know, I was pregnant, and we had our little boy, but I was always just admiring the beauty of El Capitan, the peak that only the elite can climb.
On one particular day when we were there, we noticed that there was a med flight helicopter hovering right above the peak. And what we realized was it was trying to rescue a climber, a climber who was stuck at the top of the mountain and it was a really windy day, really cloudy, overcast and you can see attempt after failed attempt of this helicopter trying to rescue this person that was trapped at the top of the mountain. People were watching this happen, not really knowing what was going on up top. And eventually after probably a couple hours and many attempts of getting this person, we saw the helicopter take off from El Capitan and there was this giant rope hanging from it. And there was a guy, a rescue at the end of the rope holding on for dear life to a bodyboard (to one of those spinal boards).
We saw that helicopter take off and land in a nearby field where this person could get medical attention. And I didn't want to be an ambulance chaser. So we didn't go over there to see who it was. And I don't know what happened. It could've just been a broken leg (you can't climb down that mountain when you get a broken leg) or even a terribly sprained ankle.
But it could have been something a lot worse. And I just remember this nagging feeling as we made it through the rest of our trip in California… I can't control how I go out of this world, but I can control whether or not I go all in, whether or not I go all in on my life, on my vision for my life, on my dreams and that purpose that God placed on my heart!
It’s about living up to your potential
I feel like that story is the perfect segue into today's topic, that concept of procrastination and lack of focus and the inability to bring forth what you're called to do with your gifts in the world.
Sometimes it's about building and scaling a business… sometimes it's about living up to your potential in all different areas of your life. And I went through this phase in my life in my mid to late twenties kind of for several years where I was seeking out doctor after doctor just praying something was wrong with me that they could identify because I felt like I couldn't (for the life of me) focus!
I would stare at my computer and I would open a thousand different tabs and I would start answering one email and I'd be halfway through, not even halfway through a sentence, halfway through writing a word, I would stop because it would remind me of something else and I'd start writing about something else in another email and I was all over the place! When it came to bigger projects or things that I knew I had to complete, I was always pushing them off, especially when it came to my business.
I had so many goals that I was setting for myself, but I was never really advancing towards them and I always had a million irons in the fire, so none of them were being fully completed- none of them were being brought to fruition! None of them were put out into the world where they could actually make their impact on both the people I was looking to serve and on me and my business.
You’re not broken, this is fixable
There are different reasons why we might procrastinate. There are different ways we might procrastinate and if you think that you're alone in it, you're so not. This is one of the most common struggles I see even in high performers and high achievers that I work with. It doesn't matter what level they're at, this is a struggle for people. You're not broken!
This is fixable and there are strategies that you can implement to help you move the needle from procrastinator to someone who's focused, driven, and producing! And it feels good to be in that zone of genius where you are producing. You're bringing your gifts into the world in a really impactful way!
One of the things I identified with myself was that I kind of liked the high of doing things last minute. I was going through this exercise of kind of thinking back, “Okay, can I identify when this started?” And I couldn't pinpoint exactly when I started procrastinating. I don't know if I've done it my whole life or not, but I do know, I can think of specifics, but I do know I can think of specific circumstances throughout school where I would be doing a paper last minute or I'd be cramming for a test on the way to school. I mean, I was never ahead of the game and I looked at my classmates who were able to prioritize their work and know that they had a test coming up in two weeks and do a little bit each day to learn what they needed to learn, to do well on that test without having to just be so stressed at the very end. And I was always so envious.
And in college I don't think there was a single paper I wrote that didn't happen in the middle of the night, the day before it was due. So, part of me thought, “Okay, maybe you like this rush of knowing that you have to get it done?!”
And then of course with the help of the mentors in my life, therapists, people who have guided me through the tough circumstances in life, there was something more to it. And maybe this is something that you can identify for you too.
I was motivated by fear
It wasn't that I was just motivated by the high of the last minute approach. I was actually motivated by fear. Are you ever motivated by fear? So what do I mean by that? This was a big one for me and a revelation that made my brain explode because when I became more self-aware of habits I formed in childhood, I was able to identify those triggers and start to change them… start to change my behaviors.
Growing up, most of my achievement was rooted in fear. I've always been a high-performer. I've always had high ambition, but that had been motivated by fear, so a deadline or a negative consequence if I didn't do it, but I never learned the concept of incremental discipline and I know you guys aren't going to like this answer (at least some people won't!)
I'm sure some people tuning in are saying, “Oh good, she's going to give us a magic strategy on how to be more focused and procrastinate less!” and then this will really piss you off.