Tina Tower [00:00:00]:
Hello and welcome to her Empire Builder show, where we are talking Today about the 10 Ways to Stop procrastinating and get it done. Now, I know that a lot of people have a dirty little secret that they do too much procrastinating, that they spend too much time overthinking, too much time not doing the things that you know are going to get you the big results. And so today, you can listen to this in the privacy of your, your own home, your car, while you're running, while you're walking, wherever you are listening to this. And I'm going to share with you 10 techniques to be able to overcome procrastination. Because I really do think that when people ask me, what is the secret to your success? I think I take more action. Like, I think that is really what it comes down to. And although that can sound really simplistic, I do think that taking action, some of the time it works, some of the time it doesn't. But even if one out of five times the actions that I take don't work, usually, I'm still four times ahead of other people that are still sitting on the sidelines thinking about it.

Main Episode

Tina Tower [00:01:14]:
And so that is what we're talking about today. Now, I will say that if you're procrastinating, you're definitely not lazy, you're definitely not broken. It's usually that you haven't found your flow or you haven't found that intrinsic motivation to actually get things done. And so that's what this is all about, is how do we have 10 practical strategies to get out of your head and to get into action so that you can actually finish, complete the things that matter? Because we don't want to be in the situation where month after month you're like, I'm going to do that. And then you're continually feeling like you're breaking the promise to yourself. And often we can say, well, we didn't have time, we didn't have energy, we didn't have, like, all of these different things. But if it is important and if we make the time to be able to do it, and we stay when we make those commitments to ourself, we honor those commitments to ourself, it gets easier and easier because, you know, you're the person that doesn't let yourself down. You're the person that when you make a promise to yourself, you get it done.

Tina Tower [00:02:18]:
And then your mood doesn't actually matter because you will get it done no matter what. And so let's get into the 10 things. Number one, is to break the big things into the little bite sized chunks. Now things can seem really overwhelming. You take things in our industry like start a new course, build my new website, run a conference, all of these things that could just be like one line items on the list of things that we have to do. And if you look at that when you start thinking about it, you can just be like, holy guacamole. There's so many things involved in that. And when we look at something and in our mind it gets really, really big, that has one result and that is overwhel are overwhelmed.

Tina Tower [00:03:06]:
That usually is a surefire way that it's going to stop us from taking action because we get too much in our head, we feel defeated. I know I still, I'm not immune to it. I still get into that level of overwhelm and then I have to take a beat and use some of these strategies that I'm talking about today to be able to go, all right, let's take that big thing, let's put it into those bite sized chunks so that the project no longer feels heavy. And then we can break it into the micro steps. And so I look at all of those micro steps so, so that we can put that into project management software so that I can go, all right, I'm going to spend some time breaking it up and then I'm going to work out when I'm going to be able to do each of those things. I'm going to put the due date on there and then I'm simply not going to look at the big project. I'm just going to start at the top of the list and I'm just going to do one thing at a time. When you're doing it like that, you'll find your confidence building as you go because you get to tick that off.

Tina Tower [00:04:01]:
We all love ticking something off. You get to mark it as done. I use Monday.com and when I use that spurts confetti when you're done. And so I'm able to do that. It's like yay. And I'm like yay. And then you get more confidence to go on to the next thing. The second is using a Pomodoro timer.

Tina Tower [00:04:20]:
Now you can go, I've linked it in the show notes for the Pomodoro timer. For you there's a really simple free software that you can put on your computer screen that will do different countdown timers. So I usually use the 25 minute timer and then a five minute break. That is the general one. That I will use. I have seen there's some beautiful, beautiful aesthetic ones on Amazon that you can get that are like physical clocks for the Pomodoro timers, which I crush on. I see them sometimes. Like Instagram will send me the ads and I'm like, oh, yeah, I need to get one of those.

Tina Tower [00:04:51]:
But, you know, I'm a tight ass. So I just use the desktop browser on there. And what that does is it locks you into a very manageable time. So I will shut down all other apps and I will go, all right, I have to work on this one thing. And I'm just gonna work on it until the timer runs out. Which means it's pure, pure focused work. It tricks your brain into be able to focusing for that length of time. And it can be hard.

Tina Tower [00:05:19]:
You'll notice if you've got. If you've gotten really good at procrastinating, you'll notice how difficult it is because you'll be trying to go off to many things. But if you get used to using it, it will make it a lot easier. Now, I was diagnosed with ADHD in my early 20s, and so these sort of techniques are gold if you have attention deficit because your mind will automatically wander to 50,000 other things. And so a lot of that is habit training in just saying, not yet, not yet, we're focusing on this. Not yet, we're focusing on this. I will also have a piece of paper, like old school next to me all the time, so that when I'm partway through a focused task and I naturally always want to go off on many, many side quests and magical missions that I'll have an idea for and go, ooh, this is more exciting. And I' want to go off into that.

Tina Tower [00:06:11]:
I will jot it down on my piece of paper and I will stay committed to finishing my one thing just until my timer runs out. And then I'm allowed to go on my side quests. So a lot of it is setting rules for yourself to actually give yourself the training and the discipline to be able to get things done. And it makes it easier because I know that rest is coming. I know that in 25 minutes I can give my brain that little bit of a break. I can scroll on Instagram guilt free. I can look at my emails and do that. I can go for a walk, I can pat my dogs, I can do whatever I want.

Tina Tower [00:06:41]:
But for this time, I'm staying committed to getting it done. Okay, so next one is blocking distractions. If you are someone who does get Easily distracted. There's a couple of applications that I love. One is called Opal and one is called Freedom. I will link them in the notes below as well. Opal I have only used so Freedom I've been using for a couple years. Opal I've only started using about two months ago when on the podcast I interviewed my old coach, Barrett Brooks, and he was talking about Opal and I'd never heard of it up until that stage and I put it on my phone and my desktop after that.

Tina Tower [00:07:19]:
So now I have no social media. Voxer, email, messenger, WhatsApp, Slack, all of the distractions between 7pm and 7am every day they are blocked. And they're blocked from 7pm on a Thursday until 7am on a Monday. And just having that has changed my life in terms of having some time off now. It doesn't mean I can't go in there. So there's different levels of like blocking that you can do. So I've got the block on not strict, which means I can override it. You can do it so that no matter what, you can't override it.

Tina Tower [00:07:58]:
But for me, I like to still post Instagram stories sometimes. And so I can go in, you have to wait 10 seconds while the screen goes. Take a breath in, take a breath out. And I'm like, okay, okay, I'm ready now. And then you've got to specify the maximum you can do is a 15 minute break. And so you've got to take that 15 minute break and then you can post your Instagram story or check whatever you need and then it locks again. So really, really great if you have those distractions. And now I've started doing it in the workday too, so I'll do like a two hour block if I've got a lot of shit I gotta get done and stuff that I don't love.

Tina Tower [00:08:32]:
Like there is, you know, people will say, only do work you love. I'm like, as a business owner, let's be real, there is about 80% of work that we love and 20% of work that is horrible. Who loves doing accounts and sending overdue invoices and admin and team management. There is a lot of things there that I would love never to do. However, because I'm a business owner, you have to wear all the hats in your business, which means you have to do things you don't want to do. This is where procrastination comes in. If there's something that we don't want to do, we'll procrastinate over it. When I have those blocks, I will use the Opal app, lock myself out of everything for two hours and just focus on my admin boring list so I can get that done and then move on to my more exciting things that I love.

Tina Tower [00:09:22]:
The Next one number four is to use something like Monday.com to stay organized. So I love Monday.com my entire life and business runs on Monday.com it is a project management software. Very similar. Other programs that are similar are things like Asana, ClickUp, Trello. I advise everyone to have one and use the one that is right for your brain. So I like Monday because it's filled with automations. I use a lot of the different automations. It's also very customizable and color coded.

Tina Tower [00:09:56]:
I am partial to color coding so I love it. I did start off with Asana of which I liked. When you completed a task, a unicorn flew across the screen. But asana you can't color code. And so I moved to Monday and I love it. Love it. I've been using it now for about six years and it runs every single project in our business. It's a really good thing to go the repeatable tasks that are in your business and never missing any of those, whether they're daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, annually.

Tina Tower [00:10:26]:
Things that you can systemize so that you don't have to think about that. It's also a really good place to brain dump your tasks. I have a list like Tina's to do list, which is my playground area that I have things that I actually need to do with dates at the top and then I should really change the name. But then underneath that there's a list called Where Dreams Go to Die, which is all of the ideas that I have that I know they're great ideas but I don't have time to do them right now. But I feel like I need to put them somewhere. I don't want to just let them fly off into the nether region. So I put them on that list to put them there to go. Maybe one day like they'll come surface.

Tina Tower [00:11:06]:
And the thing is, sometimes I've had things on there for about three years and then I'll go, this is the next thing that we need to do. I'm like, oh my gosh, I've got the research from that like three years ago that we're bringing in now. So I say dreams go to die, but sometimes they get there, sometimes they get resurrected. It also will help you prioritize. So a lot of procrastination and overwhelm can come when we have more things to do than time and energy available. So if I was sitting in front of you right now, I would be like high fiving you, going, like, right, all of us, all of us have more things that we want to do than time and energy available to do it. That is like, no one is alone in that situation. I have yet to meet an ambitious entrepreneurial person that says, I got nothing to do.

Tina Tower [00:11:55]:
Nothing. Everything I wanted to do, I have done, completed, finished. Never in the history of my 20 years in business have I ever heard someone say that. And so what having project management software allows you to do is going, all right, out of all of the things that you do want to do, Spending time, like every Friday, going through all of that list and triaging it, going, okay, what is important, important? And when you're looking at important, like, I put them through three different layers, I go, what am I going to enjoy doing? What is going to enhance the customer experience and what is going to make us money? So those three things are what I look at. And I will look at all my tasks and go, if they don't do at least two of those things, then it's not worth getting onto my list. It's just a distraction or a procrastination away from something that's actually going to help my customers, that's going to bring me joy, that is going to make the business money. And so looking at that and then putting them into order of importance to go, all right, these are the things that I have to do to reach that goal that I have. And so I'm going to focus on those.

Tina Tower [00:12:57]:
And then every now and then, you could give yourself a delicious task like my, you know, if I want to do something, I'll play on Canva. So that's what my feel good task is. So I'll give myself like an hour to just play on Canva and create something to make myself feel good in there. But you've got to get the things done that you have to do. So seeing everything laid out when I am in that period of overwhelm, when I spend that time and I triage my list and I put it all in order, that anxiety just dissipates. I can look at it and go, okay, I can now see it's achievable. Yes, there's still things that are on the list going down a mile long, but I've looked at it with my pragmatic, realistic eyes rather than my emotional state, and gone, okay, this is how long I know these things are going to take me, this is when I'm going to do them. And then I know I just can't get to the rest.

Tina Tower [00:13:48]:
You know, I am a wonderful woman, but I am but one woman. And so sometimes we have to look at it and go, let's be realistic. What can we do? When can we do it? And then cut yourself a break in doing that. Because when you are being really hard on yourself and constantly having unrealistic expectations on you, that is when the procrastination actually gets worse because your overwhelm is so there, because you can't get done everything that you had. And that is probably one of the biggest things that I have worked on through business is my toxic trait is unrealistic expectations. It's constantly wanting to do more than time and energy that I have available. And so this is why I do it weekly, going, all right, we bit off more than we can chew. What needs to wait and what can I do? Okay, number five is to set clear work windows.

Tina Tower [00:14:39]:
So time block it. As a business owner, we can feel like we're never actually off because especially when you're running a digital online business, there's no office hours, there's no open, there's no close. There's people that are buying your services around the clock. There's people that are. You know, you can have people all around the globe, so they're awake at all different times. So it can make those boundaries really, really difficult, which can SAP your energy, which can then lead to overwhelm, which can then lead to procrastination, and then nothing gets done. So limitless time does create that, that procrastination, whereas when you've got that. That window, it will create that sense of urgency which will create that momentum.

Tina Tower [00:15:22]:
It's like, I know I am the most productive when I have time off coming up because I'm like, I've got this time off coming up. Oh, my gosh. Like, I've got all these things to do and I have to do them before I go because I don't want to sacrifice my freedom while I'm away. So I'm like working like a bullet gate now. I don't think it's sustainable to have that level of energy output constantly, but it often goes to show me that when I have an abundance of time, I can take longer to do things. But when I have a short amount of time, then I get it done in that time. It's worth playing with time to go. All right, if you had to and this is why I like the Pomodoro timer as well.

Tina Tower [00:16:00]:
If you had to sprint with that and go, okay, so this thing that say it's creating your social media for the month, say you usually allow yourself two days a month to create your social media. What would it look like if you only had one day? If you had to do it in eight hours, set it into those blocks, set that timer and race it like, see if you can race, play the game for it. And I will often race the clock and race my Pomodoro timer. And yes, that is like people will often say to me like that is stressful. And this is why I'm saying this is not sustainable to do all the time. It's why you do it in bursts and then you have your rests and then you do bursts and then you have your rest. So you're not going from 8 o' clock in the morning till 6 o' clock at night, racing the whole day, you'll burn out really quickly. But if you can go say three hours of focused work and you don't do any procrastination and you're just focusing on the things that are most important, most of the time you're getting more done than someone that's sitting there at their desk stuffing around for eight hours.

Tina Tower [00:16:59]:
So you want to have clear work windows and give yourself the least amount of time possible that's realistic to get the job done. So instead of going like I'll work on this today, give yourself a window of I'm going to do my sales page between 10 and 12 and by 12 o' clock, whatever I've done, it's going and give yourself that time limit to be finished by. It'll always work well. Okay, number six is if there's something that you are reluctant to start because it feels hard, tell yourself you're just going to start with 10 minutes. So saying I'm just going to do 10 minutes. What that does. So unpopular opinion here is a lot of people will say that you need to be motivated in order to do the things that you want to do. For a lot of people, if you wait for the mood to be in the mood to do the thing you want to do, you're not going to be able to do it.

Tina Tower [00:17:56]:
Action precedes motivation and mood every single time. You have to be willing to take action regardless of the mood that you are in. Because if you are waiting always to be inspired and to be in a good mood and to be enthusiastic, you will find that you're not on all the time. And as business owners, we've got stuff to do, we've got to do the thing. And so if you are in that situation, you can just start with 10 minutes. Say, you know what, I'm not feeling it today, but I'm just going to start for 10 minutes and then I'm going to see how I go. Because what happens is because like I said, action precedes the motivation. When you start, you then start to get into it.

Tina Tower [00:18:40]:
You're like, okay, I can feel it revving up, like I'm getting there. And you get into the mood as you're going. And so I think a lot of people will find, like believe that it should be the other way around. But if you can override your mood, if you can tell yourself I'm the person that regardless of my mood, I get the things done that my future self is going to thank me for, then you'll find yourself in the mood a lot more often. So tell yourself, I only have to do this for 10 minutes because once you start, chances are you'll get on a roll, you'll find your flow and you'll keep going. Number seven is to give yourself a reward. Now, when I wrote my book Million Dollar Micro Business, I find the writing process like the focus of that really difficult. What I did was every thousand words I would give myself a Maltese.

Tina Tower [00:19:30]:
I had a bowl of Maltesers in front of me and I would type. And when I was like at 800 words and I was going, oh, do I have to keep typing more? I mean like 200 more words and I get to pop one of those Maltesers in my mouth like a well trained monkey. But giving myself the reward works all the time. It's like at the end of a big project, like filming a course, I will take my husband and I out to dinner. When I do a conference, I will then go to my favorite massage place and go to the day spa and get myself a nice massage. Like I always tie a reward at the end because one, I want to nurture my nervous system and two, I want to be, I want to be on my own team. I don't want to be fighting my own self. Like what I said with the previous point of action precedes motivation.

Tina Tower [00:20:20]:
I want to go like we helped ourself rather than there. And I'm like, I want to do it, but I don't want to do it and fighting myself. What I want to do is be on my own team. I want to go, you know what, we can do this. I know you don't want to do it, but we can do it. And when we do it, we're going to give ourselves a present, we're going to give ourselves a reward and then we do that. And it's like high fiving yourself and going, see what you did? You did the thing that was hard. And when you constantly are showing yourself that you can do the hard thing, you're the person that keeps appointments with yourself, you're the person that keeps the commitments to yourself, then that becomes self fulfilling and it can, it gets easier and easier as that goes on to know that you're the one that gets that done and you'll get to do harder and harder things.

Tina Tower [00:21:04]:
Sometimes it's a thing like, I know when I have big coaching days, I'll get to the end and I'll have a sauna, or I'll get to the end and I'll go for a walk, I'll get to a certain part and I'll make myself a hot chocolate. Like there's different things that I will always put those rewards in the future to go, like dangle the carrot and I will go for that carrot. So try with rewards. That way work is feeling satisfying and it's not feeling punishing. And so whatever. I do think that a lot of the tricks to getting us to do the things that we don't necessarily want to do in order to get the thing that we want, a lot of that comes down to learning how to motivate ourselves intrinsically, learning how to get ourselves to take the action even when we feel like that action's not perfect and even when we feel like we don't want to do it. So that leads me into number eight, done is better than perfect. Now when I say this, I don't mean crappy.

Tina Tower [00:22:03]:
So sometimes people will misconstrue that and go, but I want good quality. I am someone that has a super high level of excellence. I have a high standard that I hold myself to. I have a high standard that I hold everyone in my life to, which I'm sure is a joy for them. But I do think done is better than perfect. And often you can get something to that 80, 90% and it is good to ship. Whereas trying to get that final 10% is a waste of time because the market is moving so quick, people aren't caring about the things that you're hung up on there. So perfectionism is a very sneaky form of procrastination.

Tina Tower [00:22:44]:
And sometimes you can, I think going for a High level of excellence and high attention to detail is absolutely something that we should all hold as business owners. But where you want to be conscious of it is if you are going for an unrealistic expectation of perfection that will never actually come. And this is for the people that you haven't put that sales page out because you just want to wait until it's that one more thing, or you haven't got your photo shoot because you just want to wait until you're a certain size, or you haven't launched that course because you just want to wait until you've got a little bit more market research. Whatever those things are, action's gonna win every single time. So you don't need the perfect slides. You just need clear, concise things that, like, if you stay focused on the end result and going, what am I doing this for? We're doing this so that people can get a transformation result. We're doing this so that we can serve people. So when we're looking at that, do everything in your power to deliver that result and then send it.

Tina Tower [00:23:45]:
Don't mess about on trying to go for this end result of perfection. The other thing that I tell myself is if I'm not quite happy with it and I like the challenge I have is if I see something that I know it can make it better, but I don't need to make it better. It's already exceptional. But if I see a way I can make it better, I can't unsee that. And so the way that I progress is I will put it on my list to come back and revise it later. So then I send it. I have my ways to make it better, and I can come and improve it later. And of course, you very rarely come back and improve it later because you know what you've done was exceptional.

Tina Tower [00:24:22]:
What you've done was good enough to go need to be perfect. Number nine is to visualize it finished. So when we're talking about big projects, when we're talking about things that we procrastinate on that we don't want to do, what you can do is visualize completion, because that will lower your overwhelm, which will spur you into action. So one of the things that I do is if I have something big that I am working on that I'm feeling overwhelmed about, I will close my eyes and I will visualize it done. I will imagine, like, say, I'm working on at the moment, while at the time of recording this. Our conference is happening next week. So what I do is I sit there and I. When I'm making the slides, when I'm making my speech, that I do, my keynote session, that I do.

Tina Tower [00:25:10]:
When I'm thinking of how people are going to walk into the room, like, I will close my eyes and I will imagine everybody arriving, everybody walking into the room. Room. What are they going to see on their right? What are they going to see on their left? What music is going to be playing? How do I want people to feel? I'm going to imagine that all done and completed, and then instead of being overwhelmed about the conference, I'm just bringing that visualization I had into life so I can then just write all that down and just start at the top and get it done. Imagining that it's done really does trick your brain because your brain often doesn't know the difference between reality and visualization. So if you start visualizing all of it done, it becomes inevitable. You're like, well, I don't know what I'm procrastinating about, because I can already see it. I can already see it there. I've just got to do the thing.

Tina Tower [00:25:56]:
So let's do the thing so we can actually have it in reality. So you can. Once I find that I've got it visualized, I can already feel proud of that because I can see it there. I can see what it looks like. And I'm like, that looks amazing. Like, that is so good. And then that gives me the freedom in knowing what's going to happen, which allows me that freedom to create and gives me that little bit of relief as well. Number 10 is to celebrate your small wins.

Tina Tower [00:26:23]:
So one of the things I obviously work with a lot of entrepreneurs, and one of the things that we do inside her Empire Builder is every Friday, I put a post in the Facebook group asking people to celebrate their weekly wins. And one of the things that makes me sad is when people say, I know it's a really small thing, but I launched my new website, but I launched my podcast, but I did this. And I go, it is a big thing. When we have done something that we have dreamed of for so long, when we have done something that started from nothing but a tiny seed of an idea in our mind, and we made something from nothing. That is a big thing. So I think that when we start celebrating the small wins, what gets celebrated gets repeated. When you start celebrating your small wins, you then build your confidence in yourself and go, gosh, like, I'm someone that takes action. I'm making it rain, baby.

Tina Tower [00:27:27]:
Like, I am making this work. When you are that person, you will start doing more things because we become addicted to that dopamine rush of celebrating when we can achieve something. So if you finish writing the email that you didn't want to send, give yourself a high five. Celebrate. If you record one module, celebrate. If you post that first piece of content on social media, your first video, whatever that is, if that is significant to you, celebrate it. Even if you don't celebrate it publicly. But you sit down with yourself and you take the moment to recognize how far you've come.

Tina Tower [00:28:05]:
You take the moment to go, gosh, if may have like Yesterday, last year, 10 years ago, could see me now, she would be going, look at you. Go look at what you're doing. Get that celebration. You want to recognize your own efforts so that you can keep that fire burning, so that you can keep that going. Okay, so to wrap it up, I want you to know that you are capable. Even on hard days, even when the mood isn't there. If you can inspire yourself to take action, you will get there and you will win every single time. Try one of these strategies today, or try all of them.

Tina Tower [00:28:45]:
Let me know in the comments, because underneath the podcast you can always put comments. So let me know in the comments which strategy is going to be most helpful for you or which one that you do already that you find helpful, that you can inspire other people to try that as well and get out of the procrastination, get into action, because the world needs what you've got and you need to be able to build the business and life of your dreams. Have the best day.