How to Rewire Your Brain to Hate Procrastination

0:00Have you ever planned something big and then done nothing about it? It actually turns out you're not lazy. You're stuck in a neurological loop that this episode is going to break for you and me. Today, the idea is we're diving into the simplest way to kill your procrastination and reprogram your brain to achieve things. So you're gonna walk away with three extremely valuable things, all backed by neuroscience and behavioral science that led me to make my millions and build the life I want, and I want you to do the same thing. Three things today. One, the equation that explains why you don't start.

0:30Two, the four traps that hide the equation from you in real time. And finally, the three-move protocol you can run today to break out of it. I'm Cody Sanchez. This is The Big Deal Pod. And today, we're killing procrastination loops. Let's go. Okay, so before we jump in, if this channel is useful to you, do me a favor, hit the subscribe button. I make this show for ambitious people who are tired of business and life advice that doesn't actually change anything. So every subscriber we get, you, gets episodes like this in front of more people who need them. So thank you. Okay, I want to start here today, the equation.

1:05So there's this psychologist named Piers Steele. He spent two decades reviewing every major piece of research on procrastination. Then he compressed it all into a formula. He calls it the procrastination equation. That's a mouthful, but it's actually fascinating. It's the closest thing the field has to a unified theory, and almost nobody outside of academic psychology has heard of it. So here it is. Your motivation to do a task equals the expectancy times value divided by impulsiveness times delay. I know this is a lot, but like take a second to look at this and take it in. So the translation to this is basically, if you're like me and not a psychologist, you don't start when you don't believe you'll succeed.

1:50That's expectancy is low. The task doesn't feel meaningful. That means the value is low, your environment is full of dopamine cheaper alternatives, impulsiveness is high, or the payoff is months or years away. The delay is too high. So most ambitious people have all four problems running at once and they don't realize it. So what does this actually look like? You want to build a coaching business, but you don't really believe you'll get clients. Low expectation. Asking for money still feels weird. Low value. Your phone is six inches away from your hand and face at all times. So the risk of impulsiveness is high.

2:26And your first paying client is at least six months away. Delay is huge. Just like that, the equation eats you alive. So again, you don't have a willpower problem. You're not lazy. You have an equation problem. Willpower is really hard to scale. Equations though, they can be solved. But the only way that you do that, which we're going to talk about now, is like, how do you change your inputs? That's what the rest of this episode is going to break down. I want to take a step back and look at the hardware you and I are running in our brains. So in 2019, researchers ran an fMRI study that scans the brains of high procrastinators while they worked through really high-pressure tasks, and they found measurably reduced activity in two regions, the anterior cingulate cortex, which handles error monitoring and correction, and the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex.

3:17I mean, very big mouthful, but that basically means your executive control. So if we talk in plain English, not like a crazy scientist, the parts of your brain that say, wait, this matters, keep going, they're firing way less. The hardware is actually biased for you to avoid things. Like, say it with me. Do you feel that? Because I certainly did when I read this. So every time you say, I'll start tomorrow, you're not just losing a day, you're actually training that neurological pattern deeper. So the reduced activity becomes your default and the avoidance actually becomes the automatic. So you wake up one morning and the business you were going to start 10 years ago, it still doesn't exist.

3:56The book is still three paragraphs in a Google Doc. I do not think this is because you were lazy. It's because you spent a decade running the wrong program and now the roads and grooves are so deep you don't know how to get out of them. So the good news here is that the same brain is actually plastic. So we can rewire the inputs and your activity can change. But before we get to how to do that, you need to know what you're actually fighting. Trab one, planning theater. Like you're not avoiding the launch, you're building the plan. If you're like me, a content calendar, maybe you've got a brand Bible, totally worthless, those things I think, and some tagline.

4:31But you haven't made a single dollar because you're confusing planning that feels like progress because it just produces these artifacts, these things. But the artifacts are not customers. The test is actually stupid simple. If you spent more than two weeks planning without doing one thing that touches a real human with a real ask that is uncomfortable, you're building an idea instead of a business. And like, this isn't just me saying this. Let's go to like Phil Knight, one of my favorite huge inspirations. He started Nike, right? He didn't have a 40 page plan for Nike. He had a day job as a CPA at Price Waterhouse and a station wagon full of these crazy Japanese running shoes that he flew all the way to Japan on the way.

5:13on got credit to import them. He sold those shoes out of his trunk at a high school track meet in Oregon again and again and again. And the first year he sold 8K worth of shoes. You know, that like beautiful Nike swoosh, the company name, all of that, that came after. He got the sales and the company followed. So get the fucking sales, get the first dollar. You know, similarly, I didn't have a plan for contrarian thinking, our company. I opened a Substack account for a newsletter and I had a chip on my shoulder. I wrote the first post on a laptop on my couch without any plan. And I hit publish before I think the show ended.

5:50One day later, the first subscriber came through. I remember screenshotting it and showing Chris. He was like, cool. That was the launch. So the newsletter, the podcast, the book, the brand, the team, all of that came after. I got the subscriber, then I got the first dollars, then the company followed. So you don't need a plan. You need the dollar. Trap two, research mode. you're going to start right after you finish the course you promise right after you read one more book i swear right after you watch the podcast right this like information consumption it feels like you're progressing because it has the same texture as work you know you're you're learning you're taking notes but sadly and this is crazy but neuroscience shows you're burning the exact dopamine your brain needs for execution.

6:37It can't tell the difference. So by the time you finish the mental masturbation, is what I call it, you're not ready to do the real thing. Never going to make a baby by yourself, right? And so you feed the want and actually starved the do. Naval Ravikant, we have an incredible episode on that. Actually, you should go back and listen to it with Eric Jorgensen. Naval Ravikant said he'd rather read the same hundred great books over and over than chase a thousand new ones. And that like bottleneck on building anything worth having is not input, it's reps. So if you've been researching the same topic, then you're actually hiding.

7:12So I want you to stop. I mean, I spent six months researching before I bought my first laundromat, six months of like reading a bunch of stuff. I had been in finance already for a better part of a decade. And, you know, I would be on YouTube feeding me case studies at 2 a.m. You know what I had at the end of six months? A folder full of PDFs and zero businesses bought. The day I actually bought one, I did less research than I'd done on a normal Tuesday. I just like, I literally drove to a laundromat that I thought looked interesting. I sat in the parking lot. I watched you walked in for an hour.

7:47Then I walked inside and asked the owner one question, which is, hey, do you own the place? And if so, would you ever think about selling it? Like that's the research. The best research is when you collide with humanity. And so everything else was kind of this costume I was wearing so I didn't have to do the scary thing. You know what I'm talking about? Trap three, waiting to feel ready. So this is maybe the most spiritual sounding of the four, which is exactly why it works so well. It's like you're not avoiding, you're not researching, you're just waiting for the right moment. Oh my gosh, I hear this so often, it makes we want to die on the inside.

8:18Like when the kids are older, when you have more energy, when this isn't done, when you feel better, like motivation is not a prerequisite for action. Motivation is a byproduct of action. You don't ever feel like going to the gym. You just go to the gym because you got to go to the fucking gym if you don't want to be fat. So the brain only releases the dopamine of momentum once you move. The brain's like, you don't get this before you do the thing. So if you're waiting for the feeling to show up before you begin, that's biologically impossible. It's like, hey, I'm sitting in a car. Why isn't this thing driving?

8:52I don't know if you know this, if I've told you this before, but I went down to the border to report for the Associated Press a million years ago. And I know you're like me. You're like a hard charger. So I was a hard charging college student. But I had never been a real journalist. Like my Spanish wasn't that great. I didn't have a fixer to write these intense stories. I had like a notebook. I might have I had a recorder because I don't even know if there were iPhones back then. And I had a tip on a story everyone around me said was a terrible idea to do. And I went anyway. I stood at the border, I remember, to cross over the Rio Grande where there was barbed wire everywhere, barking dogs, a bunch of Border Patrol agents.

9:31And I remember thinking, if I turn around right now, no one will ever know I almost did this. And then I walked across. And actually, kind of wild story. The first thing I saw was a man getting stabbed right next to me. So that was actually incredibly traumatizing, but I kept going. And that day, I found one of the most incredible stories ever in my career about how the number of bodies getting counted in the desert wasn't right. And that story ran to really big headlines. And it led to the next one, and the next one, and the next one. And all of those eventual pivots led to contrarian thinking.

10:02And none of that happens if I sit waiting to feel ready. So you don't wait for the feeling, you walk across the bridge. Trap four, the future self-illusion. So this is probably the deepest one. You believe that Monday you, January you, or after this quarter you will be different, right? Like you'll be more disciplined, you'll be more focused, you'll be less tired. I hate to tell you that person does not exist. Like there's a behavioral economist at UCLA, name is Hal Hirshfield. He ran a study where he showed participants age-progressed renderings of their own future selves. The participants who emotionally connected with the older version made dramatically better long-term decisions.

10:43They saved more for retirement. They exercised more. They were less impulsive. The ones who couldn't connect treated their future self like a stranger. They didn't know anything to that person. So when you start to say, you know, I'll start Monday, you're actually passing the responsibility to a stranger. And that stranger doesn't want to do it anymore today than you do. So this pattern just repeats. The version of you who builds the business is not future you. It's today you doing one small thing for five minutes. Future you only exists if you make them. And I lived this one. I had the idea that became contrarian thinking for years before I did anything.

11:19And, you know, every day, every month, whatever it would be, well, I'll start it then. And I remember having four notebooks full of ideas. Like, have you ever had that? Like, used to call it my someday maybe list. And I hadn't actually done anything because future Cody was going to do the work. Present Cody, well, she wasn't ready to become her. And so the only way that that happened was opening that laptop on a random Tuesday and writing the worst version of a newsletter anyone had ever read. And that bad newsletter is the only reason any of this exists. So here's the fix, or what we call the protocol.

11:55Shrink, specify, stack. You shrink the action until your brain stops fighting it. The avoidance reflex fires when the task looks too big. It kind of threatens your identity. So you shrink it until your brain doesn't really feel like it needs to defend against anything. You don't say, I'm going to write a book. You're like, I'm just going to write a sentence. You don't launch the business, you buy the domain. You don't make 20 cold calls, you write one cold email. So this actually comes from that famous B.J. Fogg study at the Stanford Behavior Design Lab. His model is simple, but like, oh, so brilliant.

12:30He said behavior equals motivation times ability times prompt. So like you can't reliably crank motivation, right? You can crank ability though by making the task smaller and smaller. So if you do it in under two minutes, it turns out you have continuation rates many times higher than tasks framed at their full scope. And I know you know this too, because you're like me, But how many times have you had a six hour problem that you need to solve? And when you go to do it, you're like, oh, that took about 20 minutes. So here's the trick. Most days, once you do the five minute version, you keep going.

13:08Like you can go the 20 minutes or six hours. The avoidance only really happens because you haven't started. So if you get past that threshold, it kind of disappears. But even if you do only the five minutes, you win. Like, OK, that's a receipt. That's a new rewiring of your brain. Move two, specify the move with surgical precision. I think a lot of people fail here because they say, okay, I'll work on the business this week. That's not a plan. So what does neuroscience tell us? Behavioral psychologist Peter Galwitzer, he spent 30 years studying something he calls implementation intentions. Also, I don't know why all of these are such mouthfuls, but it must be a psychology thing.

13:47He basically did this meta-analysis combining 94 independent studies. across 8 ,000 people. People who pre-design exactly when, where, and how they'll decide to do something, well then they complete tasks at roughly two to three times the rate of people who are like, I'm going to at some point do something. And this is across like nearly everybody measured. So if you say, I'll work on the business this week, no bueno. Instead, you're going to say, I will spend 25 minutes on the customer outreach list at 7 a.m. tomorrow on the kitchen table with my phone in the other room. That specificness is the entire mechanism.

14:26So kind of hands future you a finished decision so you don't have to argue about it in the morning. And there's like something called the if-then format that works even better. So if it's 7 a.m. and I'm at the kitchen table, then I open the laptop and start the outreach list. So you're not asking yourself to feel motivated, right? The next move, move three, stack it onto something you already do. I think the reason most new habits die is they have no anchor, right? Like you have to remember to do that. And that remembering is the tax and that actually breaks your habit eventually. So if you anchor the new behavior to an existing one, like after I pour my cup of coffee, I open the laptop.

15:06After I drop the kids off, I open the dock. After my morning run, I write one sentence. The trigger is the old habit and the new habit gets to ride along as passenger. I like to think about can my habits right along with me. And this is probably one of the most underrated levers in behavioral science. Like you're not even adding a habit. You're just extending one that you already got. So three moves, shrink, specify, stack. Here's what that looks like in practice. So, you know, I had been saying for three years that I was going to write a book about buying businesses. I had a Google doc. I had like three, I think, chapter outlines, a folder of research, but I'd written nothing.

15:42I remember one morning I was pouring coffee in the kitchen. and sun's not really up. I can't sleep. My little dog goes at my feet and the thought arrives. I should work on the book today. I've chest kind of tightened at it. Like my hand was like, ah, there's probably other things. And so move one shrink. I was like, well, I'm not going to write the book today. I am writing one sentence. And that one sentence I wrote. Move to specify. I sat at the kitchen table at like, I don't know, 5, 15, 6, 15 a.m. And I set a five minute timer to write one sentence. As crazy as 40 minutes later, I had, you know, a couple pages.

16:19I didn't plan on that. But the rest of the work comes because the door is staying open. Move three, stack. So before I closed the laptop that day, I wrote the next move on a post-it and I stuck it on the expression machine. After tomorrow's coffee, at this table, I will write one sentence. The coffee, I already want that every morning, like an addiction. So the writing just rides along. And you know what? that book became Main Street Millionaire. It didn't start as a book, but it became a New York Times bestseller. It started with a cup of coffee. And so I guess my question for you is like, what's your move one through three?

16:56Tell me in the comments, wherever you're listening to the podcast, like you did not launch a business, right? You moved one inch, you collected one receipt, but six months of inch moving or receipt collecting, that's how a business gets built. And one thing that's actually really important to say is you're going to miss days. Everybody does, including me. Here's the rule to put into practice. Don't try to make up the mess day with a bigger action. Have you ever done that? You're like, I missed my walk today, so I won't do 10 ,000 steps. I'll do 20 ,000 steps. And you're like, well, that's ludicrous.

17:31I don't have time. We don't want to do that because it actually triggers the avoidance reflex harder. Because now the task is, oh, it's bigger. It's grown. And so when you don't, you know, succeed at that and you fail the next time, it feels worse. So I just want you to run the protocol again the next day at the smallest possible scale. Five minutes, one sentence, that's it. In fact, like James Dyson, who's like such an underrated entrepreneur to study, he built 5 ,127 prototypes of his vacuum cleaner before he had one that works. He literally failed, I think, for 15 years. And, you know, he built prototype, you know, whatever one morning, then the next one the next morning.

18:14And he finally sold the company that made him a billionaire and one of the richest men in the world. and you know I remember like when I was trying to buy a business I cold called business owners before I bought my first one I think I cold called 50 and I got so used to no's some people hung up you know if you told me I was too young one said his wife would kill him if he sold you know and one of them asked me out well but you know I ended up buying number 51 and it wasn't that I just stacked more and more calls I just made the next call every morning The business I ended up buying wasn't the smartest deal I'd ever seen.

18:51It was just the one I got because I didn't stay stopped. So you don't need a perfect streak. You need a refusal to stay stopped. And that's the secret. The version of you who finishes things is just you. The only difference is you learned the equation. Now you can recognize the traps and you built a protocol that runs even when you're not motivated. And so every time you let that avoidance win, you cast a vote for who you're going to become and you're not going to like that person. So let's break the habit together. So if you're like me and you've been waiting years to do the thing, to buy the business in particular, well, then your next move, I got you.

19:28I know how to skip to the front of the line and avoid all the procrastination. I want you to get your ticket here for Main Street Millionaire Live. It's a virtual event where my entire team and I walk you through the business buying game from the inside. You learn how to find real deals, how to evaluate them, how to get money for them, and how to own their upside. So we're going to cover deal sourcing, creative financing, how to read a deal like an investor, how to figure out how to negotiate just to own part of a business, maybe with your sweat equity. We're going to break down real deals live with actual numbers.

19:58So if you have been saying, I know that I want to own part of a business. I know I want a laundromat. I know I want to do this long term. You just don't know where to start. This is the start. So let's shrink the action, grab the ticket in three days. I'll help you do more than most people do in three years. go to msm.live. You can get your ticket there. Tell me if this episode was helpful for you. Then if you know somebody that's struggling right now, do them the biggest solid you can of all time. Send them this episode and say, I believe in you. I want you to do that thing. This is Big Deal Podcast.

20:30We'll see you next week.