6 Habits to Help You Overcome Procrastination and Maximize Your Year | Lewis Howes

0:00We don't like to accept the things that we know are inside of us at times. And when we have been procrastinating on something, we've been resisting making a change. We've been resisting shifting our habits. We've been resisting overcoming something that helps us feel safe, feel comfortable, and feel good. Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, a former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin.

0:42Welcome back to another inspiring episode. This is all about the six habits to help you overcome procrastination and maximize your year and really your life. It's that time of year right now where there's this collective energy of people who want to make a change. You know, people get so ramped up and so excited. Everyone's a little more open to looking at their life and seeing how it is that they can improve it. A fresh start, a new day, a new opportunity, a new opportunity to become something greater and overcome something that's been holding you back. And the last few months have been about reflection, about thinking about the past, about thinking about what's been working, what's not working, relationships, career, business, all these different things.

1:31And if you're really in alignment with who you want to be, that's what it's been about. And I'm a big fan of reflection because how can you move forward if you don't take the steps to look back? It's an important aspect in the process of becoming greater, becoming the highest version of ourselves. But at a certain point, reflection becomes a comfort, and it also becomes a massive excuse. I have been there many times before. This excuse can lead to the enemy of self-improvement. And that enemy is called, dun-dun-dun, procrastination. Oh, man, don't we all love and hate that word at the same time, procrastination?

2:14One, we love to feel comfortable. We love to think about things and not actually do the hard work to put ourselves out there, to risk feeling shamed or embarrassed or not looking good enough. Ooh, we love comfort. We hate that word because we don't like to accept the things that we know are inside of us at times. And when we have been procrastinating on something, when we've been talking about the thing we want to work on for years and not doing it, We don't enjoy that word because we know something in us has been resisting something. We've been resisting making a change. We've been resisting shifting our habits.

2:55We've been resisting overcoming something that helps us feel safe, feel comfortable, and feel good. But at the same time, that comfortability doesn't make us feel good in the long run. We end up resenting ourselves. We end up getting frustrated. and one of the reasons why procrastination, I think, shows up for people and it frustrates them is because they know they have a purpose and they're allowing their procrastination to hold them back. And there's two sides of the coin, this procrastination and purpose. And they've been talking about their purpose, thinking about their purpose, dreaming about their purpose, yet they have been procrastinating on it for a number of different reasons.

3:41And some of us are more familiar with this enemy than others. And this had me thinking, how can we keep the momentum of a new year going? And how can we learn to overcome procrastination? What are the habits that will actually help us become the better version of ourselves this year? We've had so many guests on the show who have shared their expertise, their tips, their tricks, their tools, and their science for positive habit building. And I want to talk about six habits today that will hopefully strike at the core of overcoming procrastination for yourself to really making 2024 the best year for you.

4:22And if you have the decision to make this a great year for you, now's your chance. Now's your opportunity. You don't need to master all six of these, Although if you start applying all six of these and improving upon them, I guarantee you will start to see changes not only now that benefit you, but your future self will really be thanking you and saying, you know what, the year of 2024 was the year that you decided to step up in different ways. You weren't perfect everywhere. You fell back at times, but that's okay because you kept moving forward on these six habits. And let me tell you right now, I'm going to tell you right now that the last four years, we're coming up on four years since there was shutdown happened, since COVID, since the world started to change.

5:11It's almost a four-year anniversary of that. Can you believe how fast that four years has gone? Yes, it felt like a long time during it, but looking back now, boom, it's over those four years. That's like your whole college experience in the last four years done. And you have to reflect and think about how did you show up when things got tough, when there was adversity, when there was stress, when there was challenge, when there was overwhelm and uncertainty and fear and chaos and all the different tragedies that happened over the last four years, how did you show up? And the Navy SEALs talk about this.

5:53You don't rise to the level of your kind of hopes and dreams and your visions. You fall to the level of the standards, the things that you set for yourself consistently. You're never going to rise to these best expectations. Well, when adversity strikes, I'm going to be make sure I do all these habits. No, if you're not doing these habits consistently, on the regular on the normal, when things hit the fan, you're going to fall back into old ways of being old comfort zones. And that's why I want to talk about these six things today. And before I jump into the first one, I want to prepare you, I want to ground you.

6:34Because this is a year that hopefully goes amazing for you. And I hope a lot of great things happen in the world. I hope there's peace. I hope there's community. I hope there's a lot of health. I hope people collaborate and support one another. And there's not a lot of pain and suffering and war and chaos and friction. However, this is an election year. We're in the middle of wars happening still. And for whatever reason, we don't know where the economy is going to be at this year also. There's a lot of uncertainties, and I want you to be prepared. It could be this year, later in the year, it could be a few years.

7:19There is going to be a time where life happens again in the world, where emotions get high, where tensions are high with family members, where careers are uncertain, economy is uncertain, politics are uncertain. And I want you to be prepared. I want you to be set up so that when there is chaos around you, you have the habits within you that you've been consistent with. So you can have that standard still set high when everything around you feels like it's crumbling. And I remember when 2024 hit, I remember saying, I'm ready. I'm ready because I've been preparing for this since 2008. Since I went through my injury, lost my dream of playing professional football, had to have a surgery, was on my sister's couch for a year and a half making no money, I remember saying to myself, if this ever happens again in the world where there's some economic crisis, something happening, I will be ready.

8:22I will be prepared. That doesn't mean I'm going to be perfect. That doesn't mean I'm not going to make mistakes, but I will be ready because I started to build habits to prepare me for 2020. And I want these six habits to prepare you for 2024 and beyond. Wherever you're at in your life right now, you have an opportunity to set yourself up for success. And the number one thing that I want to talk about this number one habit is to use the 1 % rule. That is habit number one, use the 1 % rule. Feel free to write this down, put it in your phone notes, whatever it might be, but use the 1 % rule. Now, as you set off to create goals, try to accomplish goals, be in the process of pursuing them, one of the biggest battles that you will face against is procrastination.

9:17Now, perfectionism can equal procrastination. So don't use perfectionism as an excuse. And I've been coaching people in their online businesses, in their lives, in their relationships, off and on for the last 15 years in some capacity. And so many people put off launching their idea, their book, their show, their course, their program, their event, their whatever it might be. They put it off for years because of the excuse of perfectionism. And that perfectionism equals procrastination, where they just keep putting it off because they want it to be perfect before they let it out into the world, before people can see it.

10:04And Brene Brown, when I had her on the show, she's talked about this. And she says, quote, perfectionism is something we don't understand very well. We think it's being our best selves. Perfectionism is actually a defense mechanism that says to us, hey, if you look perfect, do perfect, and accomplish perfect, you can avoid or minimize shame and judgment and blame. So, perfectionism is not about striving for excellence or being our best selves. It's how we use self-protection. Ooh, man, how many of us have tried to protect ourselves from judgment and shame and criticism and what people are going to think and say about us.

10:49How many of us, I have been to blame. I raise my hand in so many different areas of my life, been afraid of what people are going to think and say about me. But I've always said good and done is better than perfect and never done. Because so many of us try to be perfect and we never get anything done. So good and done is better than perfect and never done. So what this is saying is that to be productive, we have to be willing to put ourselves out there, risk, be vulnerable enough to put ourselves out there, to take the pen off the paper and stop planning and start doing. So many times we just plan and dream and talk about the things we're going to do as opposed to just taking the actions on them.

11:37This is 11 years of the School of Greatness podcast. This month, it is our 11-year anniversary. And if I waited until I felt like it was perfect, this podcast would not be here. I was so sloppy in the first few months. I just used my iPhone. I just recorded it. I put it on the table. I had bad audio. I had no video. I had very little quality. but I had passion and excitement and I was creating and I was putting it out there. And all I thought about was really the 1 % rule. How can I make it 1 % better every episode? What can I do? How can I become a better researcher, interviewer? How can I get better quality audio, video, all these different things?

12:23What is the 1 % thing that I can do to get a little bit better every time. And that helped me overcome my fears because I knew I was progressing every week as opposed to waiting until I was perfect. And if you can focus on the process of progress, I'm telling you, it will support you in overcoming procrastination and the need to being perfect. Focus on the process and progress every single week. And I like how productivity expert Thomas Frank said on this show, he said, quote, my favorite thing about overcoming perfectionism is the 1 % rule. Basically, the 1 % involves setting a schedule to create, learn, grow, or move.

13:13And then each time you act, determine to get just 1 % better, just like I talked about with this podcast. He said the 1 % rule acknowledges that you won't be perfect out the gate. but you get 1 % better. So many of us get intimidated by greatness, but we forget that greatness is not always loud. It's not shiny saying, look at me. Greatness is what you do when no one else is looking. The tiny details in your life that no one will notice but you. greatness is built in the one percent man isn't that true you think about these great athletes or great artists or musicians or writers and you hear their backstory if you read their biographies or watch a documentary on them you hear them talk about man i spent so many nights practicing by myself when no one is watching.

14:14I spent so many hours in pain physically from the workouts. You know, a guitarist saying my fingers were cramping and bleeding because I was just plucking the strings so often. You think about these moments that are not glorious. Greatness is not always glory every moment. It is the 1 % thing that you try to do every day just to get a little bit better. Now, here's how that might look for your life personally. If you are trying to exercise right now and get in better shape, just strive for 1 % better form during a push-up or a pull-up or some type of activity that you're doing. 1 % better form during your jog, your run.

14:57Don't try to be like, I'm going to break a five-minute mile right now on the first day. It's like, give your best, and then how can you be 1 % better the next day? If you're a musician, aim for 1 % better control of the note of the tone and just saying, how can I do 1 % better? Not how can I be perfect right now? That's just not going to work out. You're going to fail and you're going to be frustrated when you fail because you're going to feel like I'm never going to be a perfect. Just aim for 1 % better control of the note. If you're in business, how can you write a 1 % better customer service email or 1 % better social media posts?

15:35Like whatever it might be? How can you be 1 % better? In writing, draft a 1 % stronger sentence in a paragraph, just a sentence, not a whole chapter, not a whole book, just a sentence. In your relationships, how can you get 1 % better at making eye contact in conversation? Again, don't have to be perfect and stare at someone all day long in their eyes. But during that conversation, can I be 1 % more present. This is a really simple way to give yourself some grace while continuing to move the needle toward getting better. And I talk more about this concept in the book, The Greatness Mindset that came out last year.

16:15If you don't have your copy yet, make sure to get your copy of The Greatness Mindset. This is number one, use the 1 % rule. Number two is to ask for help. who how many of us struggle resist uh just do not want to ask for help from anyone i have been known to over give give give give give and never ask and just try to do everything on my own and that got me certain results but it left me feeling burned out at times exhausted at times resentful at times because I've never asked for help. And I would just think that, oh, because I'm always giving to someone that they would think like me and they just want to give in return.

17:07But not everyone thinks like you. Not everyone's going to always just automatically give to you and say, hey, what do you need right now? That's something I like to do with a lot of people and say, hey, what's your biggest challenge and how can I support you? But not everyone is going to think and act the same way you do. And that's okay. But you've got to be willing to ask for help. Many of us feel like we have to do everything on our own. And if that's you, if you're guilty of that, just go ahead and nod right now and just smile and say, okay, yeah, that's me. I try to do everything on my own.

17:37And in result, this leaves us with overwhelm. And that overwhelmed leads to procrastination or some type of burnout frustration. And it's never really good to create from a space of burnout, frustration, and things like that. Getting in the habit of asking for help will save you so much precious time and energy. And they are our biggest resource after all. We've got people in our lives. We've got friends. We've got colleagues. We've got family members. We've got acquaintances. We've got connections on social media. Reach out and ask for help. Now, just because you asked for help doesn't mean people have to help you.

18:19They might be going through something. They may not be able to help you in this moment. And that's okay, too. So you can't let the risk of asking for help and being shot down hold you back from asking for help. And I'm sure some of you have done that before. You've asked for help, and people didn't help you, or they abandoned you, or they said they would, and they didn't follow up. And you said, ah, screw this. I'm going to do it on my own. And that's going to happen, but it doesn't mean you should stop asking for support. It doesn't make you weak asking for help. It makes you wise. Another thing that you can do is asking for help builds your leadership muscle as well.

18:58Instead of learning to take on everything yourself and be this unrealistic hero of mastering everything in your life, You learn to dedicate tasks that will help 10x your productivity as a leader in your own personal life, in your home, in your business, in your school, on a sports team, any area of your life. Again, you doing all the work at home, if you've got kids, and never empowering them to take responsibility is not you being a hero. It's actually you empowering bad habits in your kids or your family members. And you're just saying, I'm going to do it all. I'm going to take it all on. take all the responsibility, that doesn't empower you.

19:37Asking for help from your family, from your friends to support you is key. Now, again, it doesn't mean you have to get mad at people if they don't help you. They may not be able to and accept that within them as well. But another habit, number two, is to ask for help and support. And some of these things might be investing in support. You know, I've got a great, you know, my best friend goes to the gym with me and he holds me accountable. I hold him accountable working out. But I also invest in coaching to give meal plan and workout plans and things like that to save myself time. I invest in different people to coach me, a therapist, coaching, business coaches, things like that.

20:25I ask for help from mentors that are willing to give me time and energy and support for free because they care about me. But I also invest in help. I invest in support. And that supports me in knowing that I'm going to have someone that I can rely on because I'm spending money on it and investing in it. And you also don't want to just ask everyone to do everything for you for free all the time. That's not the best way to do it. People will start to feel taken advantage of after a while. But I think you can have both in your life, ask for support and help, but also invest in it to support you in saving time.

21:02Number three habit that I want you to take on this year. Oh, this is a big one for me. This has been something that I've been doing over the last few months as I started to reflect on what I needed more in my life. And this is the habit of saying no. Now that might be counterintuitive to what you'd think I would say here on the School of greatness about saying yes to life and saying yes to every opportunity. And there was a season and a place for that. You might be in the season of needing to say yes to lots of different things. But I did that for, I don't know, 15 years. I said yes to every event, every interview, every speaking gig I could do, all these cool opportunities that came my way, etc.

21:48I said yes. and in a lot of ways that has served and helped me get to where I'm at. But as I reflect back, there's also many things that just took unnecessary time and energy away from more of the core main thing that I'm focusing on. And in the book, The Greatest Mindset, we talk about developing your meaningful mission. When you create and get clear on what your meaningful mission is for this season of life, not forever, but for this season of your life, it will serve you to say no to the things that aren't fully in alignment to helping you maximize your meaningful mission right now. I recently had Ali Abdal on the show, and he is a master at providing tools for people to overcome procrastination and become more productive in their lives.

22:40One of my favorite tools he has shared is actually a word and this concept of saying no. This isn't anything revolutionary, but it gets harder and harder to do now because of opportunities, because of growth, because of success, all these different things. It gets harder and harder. There is an immense pressure to say yes to everything. The possibilities that can come out of saying yes to go to that dinner, to take that meeting, to take on a new project, these all could lead to great opportunities. But on the other hand, saying no to going to that dinner and staying up all night and lose your routines the next morning, you may not feel great.

23:21You may not feel focused. You may get off track that way. So saying no conserves your energy to focus on what needs to get done. We can say yes to all of these cool things, and that's another form of procrastination. That's another form of not doing what you said you were going to do for yourself, for your own goals and your own mission, by saying yes to everyone else's. Again, saying no is also setting boundaries to protect your peace and focus. Procrastination is the result of a disturbance in peace and focus. I'm going to say that one more time. procrastination is the result of a disturbance and peace and in focus so i want you to start saying yes to the things that align to your meaningful mission to the habits that support you and start saying no to the shiny objects that allow you to spend time and energy away from the things that you're supposed to be doing, the meaningful mission, the goals that you have set out, the things that are hard work to do.

24:32The shiny objects are fun. They're easy. They're exciting. Ah, what can I create from this? But it's just another way to procrastinate and pull you out of what you are meant to do today. Again, go back to that 1%. How can I be 1 % better at saying no. And this is hard. I mean, I've got so many different relationships in my life, so many different people that I've met over the years, different connections, different colleagues, different friends, different people that I would like to get to know better, people that I've interviewed on this show that have become closer in my life. And there's so many different people gathering and evening events and all these cool activities.

25:15I live in Los Angeles, there's an activity, you turn around the corner and there's some cool event happening, right? There's always an opportunity to do something. But I've got to ask myself, am I going to overeat? Am I going to stay up late? You know, and if I do this one, two, three, four nights a week, where, what is my life going to look like? You know, am I going to be creating the things I want to create? And you've just got to ask yourself, what season of life are you in? Are you in a season of life where you should be saying yes to everything? Or are you in a season of life where saying yes is just a story you tell yourself and it's making you procrastinate from everything that you should be doing.

25:55So take on habit number three and say no. Habit number four to overcome procrastination, write it down. Write it down. This is, you know, goal setting 101. Have a game plan and write it down. Think of this as a real-time manifestation. When you see the images and words, this will prime your brain to take on the task you need to get done. I'm going to give an example of this from neuroscientists that we had on, but this is something that I've been doing since I was in high school, high school athletics, football. We used to have our schedule written down. When we'd walk into the locker room, we'd have the schedule of the activities we were doing for the next two and a half hours of practice.

26:45Every 10 minutes was accounted for. We would write it down. We had our goals written on a chalkboard. I don't know if anyone uses chalkboards anymore. It's more like the whiteboards today. But back in the late 90s, it was a chalkboard in the locker room with our goals written down. We would look at them every single day. We had a game plan every single day of practice on what actions we were going to take to accomplish the goals written down. It was like this visual manifestation that was happening every single day. And then we would move into action. We wouldn't procrastinate and say, yeah, let's just take five days off this week and try to play a game with no practice.

27:27We took practice every single day and then showed up for the game. And then we reflected on it. Then we showed up with a better game plan for next week. We had Dr. Tara Swart-Bieber on the show. She's an amazing neuroscientist. And she talked about mentally rehearsing what you desire. You can also think of this like running. Let's say you signed up for your first 5k or a half marathon. on, seeing three miles or 13.1 mile runs on your training plan seems like it could be a lot. Seems like, man, I can barely run a mile right now. How am I going to run three? How am I going to run 13? But seeing it seems impossible.

28:09But as you break it down into chunks, it is not as overwhelming. You feel like, okay, I'm just going to do this half mile and I'm going to do it at a slower pace. And I'm going to try to get 1 % better every day at this training, right? If you break it down in chalice, it's not as overwhelming. And you can go to the track, and you don't have to think about, I want to run 13 miles today. You're just thinking about running the first lap. And this is where it gets so daunting for people, especially when they want to write a book or do something. They're like, oh my God, how am I going to write this full book in a day?

28:39You're trying to get it all done in one day or one week or one month. It's just not realistic. You've got to be thinking about, how can I write a page today, a paragraph today, just being consistent. Again, guys, this is 11 years of the School of Greatness. 11 years. It was not perfect overnight. I'm still not where I want to be. But every week, I just try to get a little bit better. And that's what I think you need to think about as well. The same goes for writing down your tasks, your goals, or the things you have to get done. Mentally break down these different tasks and chunks. The best way you can do this is just schedule it.

29:20You know, when I'm writing my book, I'm working on my next book right now, I will spend Monday for a couple hours and Friday for a couple hours writing and researching and reviewing. I do interviews on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays for the show to get ahead. So Mondays and Fridays are when I'm spending time right now for writing, for researching, for going over it with my editor. And I just schedule it in, and then I show up for the time. I do the work. I'm not always motivated to do it. Sometimes there's other things going on. I don't always feel like I'm giving my best. I don't always feel like I'm in the flow.