4 Strategies to Overcome Procrastination That Have Nothing to Do With Willpower or Better Planning [ep. #281]
You've tried the productivity hacks, the better to-do lists, the habit stacking and none of it has helped you overcome procrastination for longer than a week, right?
That's because procrastination is not a discipline problem. It's a self sabotage behaviour being run by your subconscious beliefs about who you are.
So in today's episode, I'm going to talk about why "I'm a procrastinator" is one of the most damaging limiting beliefs you can carry in your business and what actually happens in your brain when you make procrastination part of your identity. I'm giving you four procrastination tips that go beyond surface level strategies because they work with your subconscious, not against it.
If you've been wondering how to stop procrastinating and everything you have tried isn't working, this is the identity work that changes everything. Plus, I'm sharing a mind blowing stat about what happens every time you break your focus and how long it takes you to fully recover the depth of focus you had before.
Topics covered on Overcoming Procrastination:
Why "I am a procrastinator" is a limiting belief disguised as a personality trait
The difference between being a procrastinator and doing procrastination and why that one distinction is the start of all identity work
What your subconscious beliefs are doing behind the scenes every time you drift away from a task
Why willpower, habit stacking and better planners will never out-discipline a self sabotage behaviour that's running on autopilot
The mind blowing stat about broken focus that will make you rethink every procrastination habit you've normalised
Learning how to stop procrastinating starts with becoming the observer of your own behaviour, not fighting it
4 procrastination tips that work with your subconscious instead of against it
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Quote:
“There is a huge, if not massive difference between being a procrastinator and doing procrastination. One is identity and one is behaviour.“ - Rebecca Haydon
Transcription:
Our AI tried its best, but expect a few quirky typos in the transcript. Embrace the imperfections and enjoy the read!
[00:00:00] Think about the one thing that has been sitting on your to-do list the longest. I'm calling you out today. I want you to think about the thing that you keep moving to tomorrow, the thing that you have planned to do approximately 47,000 times and you've never done it. That thing that if you did it would probably genuinely start moving your business forward.
[00:00:24] Have you got it? Good. And if you haven't, pause and find it because by the end of this episode, you are going to understand exactly what is happening when you avoid the thing. And you'll understand why every single tool and strategy you've tried to overcome procrastination has worked for a week and then you've reverted back.
[00:00:49] I'm going to give you specific tools today that will shift your procrastination. I would stick around for this one. We're not looking at productivity. We're going to change the way you see yourself in relation to procrastination. Are you ready? Welcome back, my love. I cannot wait to get in.
[00:01:13] So the first thing that I want to start with, this is one of my all-time favourite messages to deliver. And I've loved delivering it for a very long time because there is a very important distinction that I come across when we look at this sort of thing. And I say this having spent years going deep into subconscious programming, in being a neurolinguistic programming trainer, the identity work.
[00:01:49] This one truly lands every single time. It landed with my hypnotherapy clients back in the day when I used to stop smoking, weight loss, travelling, et cetera. And I know it's going to land for you today.
One Word Change That Shifts Procrastination from Identity to Behaviour
There is a huge, if not massive, difference between being a procrastinator and doing procrastination.
[00:02:15] And if we look at it exactly from the language that I'm using, being a procrastinator and doing procrastination, one is identity and one is behaviour. Now, quite frankly, that question alone can shift a client and how they view themselves. One is identity, one is behaviour. You can use it for everything. If you're feeling anxious and you go, "Whoo, I'm anxious," ask yourself, "How do I know that I'm anxious?"
[00:02:52] You become the observer straightaway. And I know it sounds like a really small distinction, but I want to just explain what is happening in your brain when you operate from each one because they give you two very different results. When you understand the neuroscience behind it, I honestly think that you will never look at procrastination the same way again.
How Your Subconscious Turns Procrastination into a Self Sabotage Behaviour
[00:03:16] So when you decide that you are a procrastinator, like "I'm a procrastinator, it's who I am, it's what I do, it is me," your subconscious will file that away as fact. Your subconscious, yes, is storing memories and running quietly in the background, but it is actively directing your behaviour and it is doing that through your experiences.
[00:03:52] It's filtering your decisions. It's steering you towards the actions or the lack of actions that confirm the identity that it holds as true in you right now, 24 hours a day, whether you're aware of it or not. So the moment that you stick "I am" onto anything, and I know right now we're looking at procrastinators, but the moment that you make anything identity level that doesn't serve you, this self sabotage behaviour runs on autopilot. This works the opposite way too.
[00:04:22] So if you want to bring in things that do serve you on an identity level, start using the words "I'm joyful, I'm happy, I'm successful," et cetera. But when you start building this identity around "I'm a procrastinator," your subconscious will do exactly its job. It will start finding the evidence everywhere.
[00:04:47] So every time you avoid a task, every time you drift onto your phone without even knowing that you've done it, every time you end up anywhere except the thing that you were doing or that you were supposed to be doing, your brain goes, "Ah, confirmation. She is a procrastinator. Look at her go." The more confirmation you give it, the stronger the identity gets.
[00:05:14] And quite frankly, the stronger the identity, the more automatic your behaviour will become. And therefore, the gap between you and the needle-moving tasks in your business will get wider and wider and wider every time. This is why, from a conscious perspective, willpower, habit stacking, making a better to-do list, a nicer pen to write your to-do list with, all of those things, they will never out-discipline subconscious beliefs that have probably been running the show for years.
[00:05:50] Your subconscious, as we've said, is doing exactly what it's designed to do, and that is protecting the most dominant identity it holds. That is why identity work is the biggest and most rewarding change in what I do with my clients.
The Neuroscience Behind Why You Lose Control During Procrastination
[00:06:22] So from a neuroscience perspective, when you are in this kind of deep procrastination spiral, whatever your procrastination destination is, you can insert here. Scrolling on TikTok, going into avoidance, going to watch Netflix, drifting from task to task, going back to message your clients for the 17th time today. Any of those things where you know that you're in procrastination, and I know you know that you know.
[00:06:44] The prefrontal cortex, which is the part of your brain responsible for rational thought, for conscious decision-making, self-regulation, when you go into the procrastination spiral, that kind of goes quiet.
[00:07:04] And what happens is this more automatic, reactive part of your brain takes over. Now, in that state, you genuinely don't have full access to your own agency. You are running a programme. You are running a programme, and that programme is procrastination. So the moment that you name it out loud, and this is the first thing that you can do, you go, "I am doing procrastination right now."
[00:07:37] Even like I said, that question when I say to my clients, "How do you know you're doing procrastination?" Even that question makes them become the observer and they go, "Oh, how do I know I'm doing procrastination?" Something will shift within you, because that sentence and that question will activate the prefrontal cortex.
[00:07:57] It brings the rational brain back online. And whilst it's doing that, it does something equally powerful, which is that it separates you from the behaviour. So asking yourself that question, "How do I know that I'm doing procrastination," or saying, "I am doing procrastination right now," what you then do is you go from being inside procrastination where it feels frustrating and avoidant and horrible to watching it.
[00:08:33] You literally become the observer. And watching it and becoming the observer, which is one of the strongest tools in my tool belt for my business and what I teach my clients, that is where everything changes.
How the Words You Use About Yourself Create Limiting Beliefs
Your language is shaping everything. The words that you use and how you use them will have an impact on your subconscious.
[00:08:58] The words you use about yourself will literally create the neurological pathways and get them stronger every time they're activated. I call my clients out on this all the time. If they keep saying a certain phrase to me that they no longer want to be or they no longer want to have, I will call them out and make them change it.
[00:09:19] Because every time you say, "I'm just a procrastinator, that's it, it's who I am," and I know you believe it quite deeply right now from an identity level because you've said it so many times, you are deepening the pathway that makes the avoidance feel automatic. The limiting beliefs you repeat about yourself become the instructions your subconscious follows.
When you start to say, "I'm doing procrastination right now," you build a completely different pathway where you're the observer rather than the evidence. Because when you say, "I'm a procrastinator," your subconscious goes, "Yes, you are. There's the evidence. Here we are," rather than letting you step back and observe.
[00:09:53] Now, over time, your brain learns best from repetition, repetition, repetition. The observer pathway, if you can keep flexing that muscle and keep becoming the observer in many different places as well as procrastination, that will become the dominant one.
[00:10:14] That's where I naturally go. If I'm spiralling, or if something's happening, or if my body is going into a state that feels like it's not serving me, I become the observer, because I've done it so many times that it starts running automatically. So from the observer position, procrastination is something that you notice, it's something that you name, and then you have the choice.
[00:10:41] And look, if you want to carry on procrastinating, by all means, do it. But at least you've chosen to procrastinate. You've made the choice, or you've made the choice not to. So from an identity perspective, changing who you've decided to be does take time. I will be very honest with you about that.
[00:11:04] Identity work is not an overnight thing. Trust me. Anyone who tells you otherwise is selling you a lie, literally selling you a lie. However, during certain periods of our day and of our life, we can look at changing the behaviour because that's available to you right now without having to step into a one-to-one container with me, for example.
[00:11:28] And you can literally do this today in the next 10 minutes. Now, before I get into the tools, I just want to give you a stat that I heard the other day, because quite frankly, I thought, "I have to tell my audience this because this stat alone might just call you out."
Now, there's been a study that has found that every time your focus breaks, so every single distraction, every pivot away from the task that you're doing, it takes your brain over 23 minutes to fully return to the depth of focus that you had before.
[00:12:20] 23 minutes. Now, if we have a look at your day, about half of all your distractions are self-inflicted, aren't they? I know sometimes something random pops up and you have a parcel or the dog starts barking, whatever that is, right? But most of them, I would hazard a guess, you are inflicting on yourself.
[00:12:43] So yes, we're being interrupted sometimes by the world, but you are actively breaking your own focus, and then you're wondering why you can't get anything done. Then you're wondering why you get to the end of the day and you're like, "What have I done today?"
So every time you pick up your phone to scroll, to avoid, every time you go into your inbox instead, or every time your subconscious steers you towards something safer than the needle-moving activity that you're currently doing, 23 minutes you're adding on.
[00:13:18] Could you afford to keep adding 23 minutes to your workday every single time procrastination kicks in? Literally do the maths. I'm not going to do it for you, but do the maths, and then let's talk about what you want to be doing. It blew my mind, and I couldn't wait to tell you. So now, in your head, as well as going, "Ooh, I'm doing procrastination," you can also say, "I'm adding 23 minutes back onto my day."
[00:13:46] And quite frankly, if you're anything like me, you have a very short amount of time to be intentional with your business.
How to Stop Procrastinating with 4 Tools
So I've got some practical tools because you know me. I like to give you the substance, but I also like to give you the forward. I love to give you what we do and how to stop procrastinating by taking the action towards it.
Procrastination Tool 1: Name It Out Loud to Break the Autopilot
[00:14:05] The first thing that I want you to do is literally name it out loud, like the way that I've spoken about in this whole podcast. That is the simplest tool. And sometimes this alone will change everything. This could be the only tool that you use. It's very, very easy. Do not skip this one. Do not skip this one.
[00:14:26] So the moment that you've noticed that you've drifted, like we said, and you will have a particular procrastination destination, as I've said. So if you find yourself in your emails when you shouldn't be, or you're scrolling when you shouldn't be, or you've been watching stories for 12 minutes. It's so funny and not naming any names, but when I put a story up and someone sees my story within a second of it being up, I'm like, "What are you on Instagram for?"
[00:14:55] And it's the same people who see it within a second of it being up. I'm like, "You're on a procrastination scroll right now." I know I could be wrong, but I do look at these things. Now everyone's going to be like, "Oh my God, I can't even watch her stories without her looking at my behaviours."
But side note, when you are doing something that you know doesn't need doing, if you're reorganising something that did not need to be reorganised, just stop and say out loud, "I am doing procrastination right now."
[00:15:29] I want you to say it out loud if you can. Keep it in your head if there's other people in the house, but saying it out loud does something that thinking can't because it externalises the behaviour. It makes it real. It makes it observable rather than this concept that you're just kind of half aware of and you're like, "Oh yeah, I remember Becky told me to do this from the podcast."
[00:15:53] No, that is not how we work around here. I want you to fire up that prefrontal cortex, and we can do that in a way that the internal thoughts sometimes don't do as effectively. So with that, what you're doing is you are pulling yourself from the passenger seat and boom, you're back in the driver's seat in literally one sentence.
[00:16:14] And like I said, from the driver's seat you then have a choice, which you didn't have a minute ago when you were running on autopilot. So your first intervention within procrastination every single time is to literally name it out loud before you do anything else.
[00:16:36] And from there you can then decide, "Do I carry on procrastinating?" And fine, that's your choice, carry on. Or are you going to choose something different?
Procrastination Tool 2: 60 Seconds Is Enough to Break the Procrastination Habit
[00:16:57] The next thing that you can do, and this kind of work in tandem with each other or you can do them separately, is this 60-second start. So once you've named it, I just want you to set a timer on your phone without going onto anything else. And I want you to do the smallest possible version of the thing that you've been avoiding. So if it's opening it up, or one sentence of the email, or one line of the content, whatever it is, just give yourself 60 seconds.
[00:17:22] Now, the neuroscience behind why this works is because your subconscious right now is avoiding the task because it's threatening in some way. Something that you're doing is tied into visibility or rejection or getting it wrong or being found out or being successful or whatever that is, right?
[00:17:49] Whatever cocktail it is for you, your subconscious has decided that this task carries a bit of a risk. That's why you're being steered away from it. So the 60-second start just gets a tiny piece of evidence that you are not going to die or be eaten by a lion, a tiger, a bear, oh my, if you were to do this task.
[00:18:20] It just gives your brain this evidence that you've started and nothing catastrophic happened. Evidence is the only language that your subconscious beliefs genuinely respond to. Remember all the evidence that you've been giving it that you are a procrastinator.
[00:18:39] Now, most of the time, not always, but most of the time, you will not stop for 60 seconds, obviously, right? We all know that starting is usually the hardest part. That's where the resistance lives. It's in the gap between the not doing versus the doing. So once you're in the doing, my clients say this all the time, their subconscious relaxes, the threat goes away, and you can keep going.
[00:19:03] So fine, even if you stop for 60 seconds, you've still done something important. You've shown your subconscious that the task is something you can survive. Every time you do that, the task will become a little less threatening and the procrastination habit will start to shift. So tool number two, 60 seconds, set the timer.
Procrastination Tool 3: Identify Your Signature Procrastination Habits Before They Cost You Hours
[00:19:26] Tool number three is separate from this kind of in-the-moment intervention. It's about your procrastination destination, your signature pattern. This requires a bit of self-awareness, but every woman that I work with on procrastination will have a specific set of behaviours that she goes to when she's avoiding.
[00:19:51] And I think sometimes, and I am aware that a lot of my audience are very aware, but sometimes you can be so deep inside the pattern that you don't genuinely notice that it's happening until you're 45 minutes in, right?
So your procrastination destination, whatever that might look like, it might be tidying the kitchen, it might be going onto Instagram to just post and coming out having watched 700 reels. It's quite scary sometimes when you scroll back to find a reel that you wanted to look at again and you're like, "Oh my God, is this how many reels I've scrolled through?" I have done that before. It's quite scary.
[00:20:35] But whatever your procrastination destination is, understand it. So think about yours right now. It might have come to your head already. What's the specific thing you reach for when you are avoiding something important?
For me, it was going in to message my clients. It was this huge thing that I used to do back in the day that I had to put the biggest boundaries around, because I could spend all day messaging my clients. All day.
[00:20:57] And that's fine if that's how I choose to run my business, but quite [00:21:00] frankly, I was getting nothing done within my own business, and that's not what the container was for.
So know your procrastination destination. The moment you notice yourself doing the behaviour, and it'll be a signature behaviour, that becomes the signal. That's when you go, "Ooh, okay, I'm doing procrastination." Just use it as information. "Ooh, okay, I'm making another coffee.
Something important must be waiting for me upstairs." Just catch yourself earlier in the pattern.
[00:21:40] Knowing your procrastination habits helps you lose less time, fewer 23-minute recoveries, and a shorter gap between drifting and doing.
Procrastination Tool 4: How Visualising the Other Side of the Task Dissolves Resistance
And then the last one that I really want to talk about, which blows my clients' minds and helps them so much, is this 15-minutes-after technique. It's a kind of future-self consultation. This is such a practical tool and I get so many people saying how powerful it is in the moment.
[00:22:08] So when you're sitting with a task that you've been avoiding, I want you to close your eyes and I want you to imagine yourself, the version of you 15 minutes after you have done it. So she's posted the content or she's had the conversation or she's sent the email. She's on the other side of it. I used to do this while running all the time.
[00:22:29] I'm pretty sure I have spoken about this on the podcast before, but you imagine yourself successfully achieving it 15 minutes after completing and really tap into how does she feel? What is different? What can she see from where she's standing that you can't see from where you are right now? What does she want you to know about what you're avoiding?
[00:22:56] This exercise is a direct line of communication to the part of your brain that processes the future outcome. And when we make the future vivid and positive and like we've done it before, which is exactly what this technique does, it shows your brain, "Oh, wow, I've done that before." Okay, then I can do it again because your subconscious doesn't know the difference between what's real and what's not.
[00:23:22] It starts to move towards it rather than perceive the threat because it believes it's already done it. This is why I always used to do it when I was running. I would literally imagine myself taking a picture and sharing it to Instagram and being like, "I've just completed 5K," and the pride of doing that used to carry me through that run.
[00:23:41] You are essentially showing your subconscious a little trailer of what's on the other side, of how good that feels, and it feels good, right? You want to make that trailer compelling enough. I always use pride. Pride is a really big feeling for me, so when I've got a big task ahead of me, I will go 15 minutes after I've completed it and tap into that pride and then I'll let the pride run through the task.
[00:24:12] You can really start to see the cost-benefit that your brain is running on completing the task. So every time you find yourself stuck, use that with procrastination or in other things as well, speaking gigs, podcast interviews, whatever it is that feels daunting. Imagine 15 minutes after you've completed the task and how you feel.
Procrastination Tips to Build Evidence for the Identity You Actually Want
[00:24:38] So there were quite a lot of tools today and hopefully quite a lot of reframe moments for you. Remember, you are not a procrastinator. You're not. Stop saying that you are. You are someone who has been doing procrastination and those two things are genuinely not the same. If you stick with "I am a procrastinator," that's a life-sentence identity. Carry on, you do you, boo, right?
[00:25:08] The second one is a behaviour, and now you have four very practical procrastination tips to work with. I'm very excited for you to pick one of these tools. If you're using all of them, if you've used one, let me know. I would love to hear it. But build the evidence and let your subconscious catch up with who you are becoming.
[00:25:29] Let's go get it.
More about The Subconscious Expert:
Welcome to The Subconscious Expert, the podcast where your subconscious becomes your one-way ticket to the mind-blowing results you desire in your life and business! I’m your host, Rebecca Haydon, The Subconscious Expert who went from being stuck in victim mode to a multi 6 figure business owner. Each week, I will be giving you the subconscious tools and techniques so you can become the woman who is living out her vision with a life and business that she is truly OBSESSED with. I have said it before, and I will say it 100 times again: "Your business can't outgrow your mindset, and if you want to grow your business, it always starts with growing your subconscious." So let's dive into the subconscious breakthrough you so deeply deserve!