Stop Thinking, Start Doing: A Man's Guide to Overcoming Procrastination

Stop Thinking, Start Doing: A Man's Guide to Overcoming Procrastination

D Brent Dowlen: [00:00:00] Where the rubber meets the road, that's, that's where most people hit the brakes. Why? Because talking about doing, or even planning is a lot less scary than doing. In 2008, worked right up where I live after being out of work for several months, there was a call for help in my field in Salt Lake City, Utah, which is about a 13 hour drive from me.

So me and three other friends or coworkers, whatever you want to call them. There were people I worked with multiple jobs, I was in the trades and. We all decided, Hey, we had no work here and we need the money. So we decided we're going to get our traveling papers from the union and we got ready to go.

The day we left, it was me and my best friend who wasn't my best friend at the time, but bonding experiences, you know, everyone else backed out of the trip. Entirely our union rep, even though it was there to see us off. And she was like, I, yeah, I don't know. Everybody just. Jumped on us. I'm pretty sure you've had [00:01:00] similar experiences, but that's just the fact.

A lot of people are a lot of talk, but they're not a lot of go people get caught on the way to doing by over planning, fantasizing about doing, but not really thinking about the reality of it. Procrastinating disguised as preparation and perfectionism. But the simple truth is preparing to do a thing.

Isn't doing a thing scheduling in time for a thing. Isn't doing the thing. Making a to do list for a thing. Isn't. Doing the thing telling people who you're telling people you're going to do the thing isn't doing the thing Messaging friends about doing the thing isn't doing the thing tweeting about doing anything isn't doing the thing hating on yourself for not doing it Isn't doing the thing hating on other people who are doing the things you want to do, isn't doing the thing, hating the obstacles that you see is in your way, isn't doing the thing.[00:02:00]

Fantasizing about it. Isn't doing the thing. Watching other people do it on YouTube is not the same thing as doing the thing. Following people on social media who do the things that you want to do is not the same thing as doing the thing. Reading about it. Isn't doing the thing and reading about other people who do it.

The thing isn't the thing. Did I exhaust that? Did I go a little too far with that? Did I make my point? Now that all that's clear, I understand that a lot of people do this. Like a lot of people really just back out of things and procrastinate and don't ever actually do the thing really. In fact. Most people do this.

This is far more common than people who actually take action. I wouldn't have done a whole show about it today. If I didn't think so, we want to feel safe. We want to feel prepared. Taking a chance has risk. There's repercussions if we're [00:03:00] wrong. So we do things that feel like progress. Oh, we're actually doing the thing we make endless to do lists.

I know a lot of people who are into to do lists. We schedule the task over and over again, then put it off and put it off because something comes up. We talk about these goals. We tell our friends, we're going to do these goals and these grand plans we have, but we don't do the thing. We compare ourselves to others who do the things, or we wait for that perfect moment.

However, it's not really. Doing whatever thing it is we're wanting to do or thinking we should do, by the way, welcome to the valuable man podcast, where we dive into everything about being a better man, husband, and father. So why do we get stuck in planning, dreaming, and fantasizing [00:04:00] about doing the thing instead of actually taking action?

The fact is it is a lot safer. It's a lot less scary and it really is just plain simpler, easier. And that's enough for most people to just not do the thing to think about it, to dream about, to want to do it. But to never actually do it, but let's go a little deeper because that's not generally what stops people like you who really want to pursue their goals from doing the thing there's there's deeper causes, right?

So here's five psychological reasons. Yes, I did my homework for the show because I'm not a psychologist, obviously. So I spent a lot of time researching this. And here are five psychological reasons that people get hung up on the process of heading towards doing the thing instead of doing the thing.

Number one, it's a fear of failure or perfectionism. [00:05:00] One of the biggest reasons we get stuck is fear. Fear of failing, fear of not being good enough, or fear of judgment from other people. Perfectionism disguises itself as no pursuit really, but it really is just fear in a fancy outfit. We think if I can't do it perfectly, why bother doing it at all?

I've made that excuse. Haven't you? What's happened here is we blow up this task in our head and we make it more than it actually is. You know, we're, we're like, Oh, instead of writing that blog post or instead of writing that response on Facebook, because I really have an opinion on this. We're like, I'm writing the next great American novel.

And it's gotta be incredible. And we blow it up to this huge thing when really we, we need to write a paragraph or something. And that's what we do with all of these ideas [00:06:00] in our head. Instead of working out for 10 minutes, we think we need to go crush a 90 minute grind session in the gym. Like we see on YouTube, this stops us before we ever begin.

So if, if this is your hangup, because I know this is a hangup for a lot of people. Try this instead, reframe perfectionism instead of aiming for perfect. Just aim for done, check it off that list progress, no matter how small, it's always better than staying stuck in the rut. The second thing that holds people back is decision fatigue and overwhelm.

Another reason people get stuck is this idea of decision fatigue, which you may not be familiar with that term. That's not something that gets thrown around all the time, unless you spend a lot of time in psychological circles. But in today's world, we're bombarded with a ton of choices. And the truth is we only have so many good choices in us in a day, by the time we get to the thing we want to do, our mental energy is already depleted.[00:07:00]

That's why you hear crazy sounding stories about guys like Mark Zuckelberg, right? CEO, we all know who he is. I don't like the guy, but there's this great story about the fact that he only owns one shirt and one pair of pants for most of his normal days. Now, of course, he's got outfits like suits and stuff for, you know, perfect for standing in front of Congress, but, and he does have more than one.

He just has like 20 copies of the same shirt and 20 copies of the same pair of pants. So, but he has essentially one shirt, one pants, and that's what he wears every day. Unless it's a special occasion. CEOs understand that your ability to make good decisions taper through the day. And so some of them go to extremes like Zuck did.

Because they don't want to waste them on small time stuff. Most of the time, when we look at a big goal, it can feel so overwhelming that we don't know where to start. And it's easier to scroll past on social media, clean the house or do [00:08:00] anything else that makes us feel better than do tackle it because we're just mentally exhausted now, this is me, maybe it's YouTube, but this is my particular psychological issue with it is just brain fatigue.

So try this, everything you can do to mitigate non important decisions like Zuck does. Do I recommend just having one shirt? You know, I've honestly thought about it. If I had the money to throw out and just have a new war robe, I actually think I would probably try this because it just takes the load off.

I know it seems silly, but for me, that's a thing. Lay out your schedule for the next day. The night before list, your to dos the night before are in the middle of your day, when you're going through your day, make that part of it is here's my list for tomorrow, right? So you know exactly what you're doing when you get up and you're not.

Tackling and wrestling with these decisions of what am I going to get done today or what needs to get done or what's important, [00:09:00] you can just get to work on the task you've prioritized for the day. Front load your biggest decisions for earlier in the day, and you'll find you don't suffer from decision fatigue as easy.

I know I've started doing this. This is the way I've started organizing my task and my day. And it really does make it, there's less of a strain on your mind by the end of the night. Number three, the dopamine hit of planning. Planning feels really good. It's why so many people get stuck in the prep phase.

We can make to do lists. We can watch YouTube videos or research. We can read about other people crushing it. We can read books. We can read blog posts. There is so much we can do to learn about what it is we want to do. So we're ready to do it. And it actually trickles a little bit of dopamine every time you do one of those things.

And so we just keep hitting that dopamine button over and over again. And it feels good. Cause we [00:10:00] feel like we're busy doing something to get ready for this task. When in reality, we're just not doing the task, the problem. Well. If we think we accomplished something, why would we take real action? Right? So if this is you try this, put a hard limit on your planning time.

If it's a smaller task, give yourself 10 or 15 minutes to prep. Be reasonable. Of course, if it's a large task or a bigger long term project or. Long term goal, you know, it might be a day or a week, whatever's reasonable, but give yourself a hard deadline. Say I'm going to spend this week learning about this and making a plan and getting everything together and prepped.

And then I'm going to go and commit to immediate action when that time clock runs out and be less reasonable about that time clock guys. If you think it's going to take you two weeks to get ready for it, give yourself a week and a half, it will force you to have [00:11:00] some urgency. And there's the principle where whatever you do tends to expand to take the time you've allotted for it.

I've heard this from a lot of CEOs. So if you, and I've interviewed a lot of CEOs, so if you think something is going to be a year long goal, give yourself six months, you may come a little bit short, but you're going to be a lot closer than you would be. Um, If you had actually taken the whole year, it's weird how it works, but there's a whole bunch of science and psychology behind it.

I've talked to a lot of guys about that and it's kind of crazy. Number four is waiting for the perfect moment. Have you often thought, Hey, I'll start Sunday. Sunday would be good to start. That's the beginning of the week or Monday would be good to start. That's the beginning of the week. It's Thursday now, or it's Friday.

Now I'll do it Sunday. Well, you know, Then it's, uh, you know, the ever popular new year, new me. I'll wait till [00:12:00] January and I'll jump on that goal. Spoiler alert, guys, the perfect moment doesn't exist. You can tomorrow, next week, next month or next year for the rest of your life and never actually start. And that's what most people do.

Motivation is something you wait for. It's something you generate by taking action. So give this a try instead. Instead of waiting, set a timer or give yourself a five minute start for something bigger, put it on the calendar as a non negotiable launch date. Often taking that first step creates momentum and that's what gets you going.

The fifth one is comparison by paralysis, or sorry, comparison paralysis, not by paralysis. Finally, That's, that's the one that gets a lot of people is we think, Oh, look at those people doing that. And there's no way I'm ever going to be the rock. I can't work out two hours a day and have a body like that.

So why should I even [00:13:00] try? I'm never going to be a Goggins. I can't run a hundred miles. So why try? Right. We get discouraged because we look at our heroes and we compare ourselves to people's best moments instead of when they started. So stop comparing yourself and getting stuck there. You're comparing your behind the scenes, struggled.

Someone else's highlight reel. That's their journey. It's not yours. And a lot of people let themselves get talked out of it because they just don't think they can measure up to somebody that they'll never relate to. Anyways. So try this get off social media, which seems really counterintuitive since I'm a podcaster, but get off social media, stop watching other people live the lives and do the things that you want to do, get off YouTube, get off social media.

Focus on [00:14:00] you doing you and get in your own lane and stop comparing yourself to everybody else. That's not the problem. You're not them. They're not you. So guys, it's okay to feel afraid or overwhelmed when you're starting something new, but that's normal. The key is just to recognize what's in your way and take small intentional steps to push through that.

And start going. Now we're going to roll our sponsors. So when we come back, we're going to talk about five actual steps to overcome these barriers barriers we've been talking about and take confident action today. So check it out.

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D Brent Dowlen: guys.

Welcome back. I sleep on my pillow. I sleep on my pillow. It gives the sheets. I love my, my pillow, body pillow. I can't sleep without a body pillow. I have my pillow towels and my pillow kitchen towels. My wife wears my pillow slippers. I wouldn't recommend a company I don't use. And we're definitely in my pillow family.

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Thanks, Michael Lindell and MyPillow for that partnership. Let's get back into the show. Now gentlemen, we already talked about the five major psychological factors that generally cover everybody. These are the five predominant reasons. People self sabotage from taking action and doing the things they want to do.

And this part of the show, I want to dive into five steps, take confident action today. It's a five step process. If you work through these five stages or feed these five steps, it will give you the ability to move forward with confidence and start taking action. Number one, gents connect the task to a deeper [00:17:00] purpose or goal.

Clarify that why if you are new here, then you're at least likely to have heard of the international bestseller by Simon Sinek start with why I talked about why a lot, but. Like I said, if you're new, at least you're probably familiar with that title, whether you've read it or not. The short version of that book is having a deep seated, why is critical for any goal if you want to succeed.

And I mean, it has to go past superficial levels. For me, my why was for going to that trip to Salt Lake city was very simple. If I didn't start earning again, I was going to lose everything I'd worked for material wise, our house, our car, everything. My wife and I had spent years building up and establishing ourselves with was on the line.

And so for me, that why was very simple. I was protecting the life we had built together so far. And so [00:18:00] that was enough motivation to get me in that car. And what ended up in almost a four month trip, there was no work for me where I was without a major change in my career. And if even if I had changed my career, there wasn't work here at the time that would have paid enough for me to work here.

So that was a really, really powerful deep sea to why, because protecting my life, what I worked for my wife's life. That was important, right? That was easy for me. So find something real and powerful about why you want to do those things. Why do you want to chase that goal? Why do you want to start doing this thing?

Right? We're talking about doing the thing. That thing might be starting your diet. That thing might be trying a new restaurant. I don't know, but find the why that motivates you. That actually is really behind this desire to do the thing and really. [00:19:00] Get clear on that. You may find out it's superficial and you don't actually really want to do the thing.

And that's why you keep making excuses, or you may find exactly what you need to give you the courage and the determination drive to actually pursue that thing. Number two is to start small and specific, break the task into small actionable steps. Now, for those of you who maybe don't have a background in project management, like I do, This is project management 101, take the really big goal and break it down into the smallest possible pieces within reason, arrange them in the necessary order, because right, you have things that are going to be reliant on each other and then do the thing.

It's really that simple. That's project management 101, big idea, break it down into the smaller pieces that make that [00:20:00] big idea happen. And knock those pieces out until that big idea becomes a reality. Really simple. Y'all thought project management was complicated. It's not getting healthy. That's a really big goal.

A small piece of that might be not buying that trash. You know, you shouldn't buy or eat when you're at the grocery store buying groceries. For me, that's always a big help. Is if I don't have the junk food in the house, I'm like a hundred times less likely to eat it. So that's a small little piece towards a bigger goal of being healthy.

Right? That's straightforward. If your goal is to maybe move from the trades to the IT sector, well, maybe that starts by learning how to type, because you're going to do a lot of that in the IT sector, right? That's an obtainable goal towards a bigger goal. [00:21:00] It's really, really, really straightforward. Big idea, break it down into manageable pieces.

Sometimes you can lump a couple of those pieces together. If you can do more than two or three at once, you broke it down probably a little too far. Other than that. Straight and simple guys. Number three, set a non negotiable timetable. Now this is really important to get it on your calendar. If you missed my episode with Dave, the common man, OCR, but Carter about achieving long term goals, I'll link that in the show notes.

It's the next show for you guys to check out. You can follow up on this episode with that one. One of the things that he shared was getting things on the calendar and living by your calendar. Is critical for achieving long term goals. So put an action on the calendar. Now, we got to break that down just a hair farther.

If it's a one and done, [00:22:00] then just put it on the calendar instead of time. If it's something that's a bigger goal or a bigger want to do, that's going to take some building up to, then put the action days and times on the calendar. If it's a process that's going to take. Maybe it's that getting healthier.

Right. We talked about in the last step, right? Getting healthy, big goal. Now that takes time. You can start by not buying that thing in the grocery store, but it takes time and effort. So put the gym times on your calendar. I can tell you my good friend, Dave is, uh, not only incredibly fun to hang out with, but he is a white collar it professional.

He is a engineer for a major it company. And his workouts are on his calendar. That's how he has pursued his health goals over a decade. It's literally on his calendar because he shares the calendar with me. [00:23:00] And I can tell you they're there all the workouts like clockwork. And he treats those as non negotiable thing.

Now, on top of that, put the in goal time. On the calendar as well. Okay. Give yourself that reasonable achievement day on the calendar and the scoot that data a little bit closer as we talked about earlier, right? Shorten that timeframe because things will expand to fill the time you give them, but put a reasonable achievement goal.

So if that's getting healthy, that might be a year. If that's changing careers, that might be six months or a year. It depends on what you're doing, right? We'll put a reasonable achieved by date on your calendar, as well as the action days in the process. Number four, ditch perfectionism. I almost hate to say it because people will use it as cop out, but embrace the idea of done is better than perfect.[00:24:00]

That doesn't mean you put in subpar work. That means you do your best to get it done. And if it's not quite perfect, that's okay. It's still done. One of my favorite old cartoons. Was a picture of a skeleton sitting on a park bench in a nice spring dress with a big bonnet type, old school lady hat on. And it was simply captioned still waiting for Mr.

Perfect. It makes a point. So start making mistakes and learn, but get it done. You're going to make mistakes along the way. That's part of the process with everything. I've been doing this for five years and I'm still making incredibly large mistakes. So. It's okay to make mistakes as long as you're learning from them, but get it done.

Taking action, putting in the [00:25:00] reps, doing it is better than being not getting it done at all. I'm totally just, sorry, meandering on that. Done is better than perfect guys. You're never going to hit perfect. So put in the reps and eventually not only will it be done, it will be a whole lot prettier. Number five, celebrate the small wins.

Recognize the effort you're putting in, not just the outcome. This is going to be really critical for those bigger things that you're wanting to do. This was an important topic in my conversation with Dave as well. If the thing air quotes that you're going to do this action that you're wanting to take and you haven't moved on, it's going to take more than a one off.

Then you're going to have to celebrate the small wins along the way. Are you will burn out. But here's someone mumble some crap one time about learning to [00:26:00] love the process and you'll never be unmotivated. Well, you know, that sounds really fantastic, but a lot of us, we're not ever going to learn to love the process, uh, because the process is not always fun.

And so instead of, Trying to tell yourself, I'm going to learn to love this, learn to celebrate the small wins. And that will keep you moving forward. Maybe along the way, you'll have a moment of enlightenment and you will learn to love the struggle process of whatever you're trying to do, but until then, for sure, celebrate the small wins.

They'll keep you moving forward and keep you taking action because you are recognizing that you're moving forward. This is a good thing. Now, this is a five step process and it really is that simple. I kind of beat his death, but we all like to overcomplicate things. I beat it [00:27:00] death for a reason. Uh, and if Dave, I know you're listening to this, uh, he likes the bullet point versions of this.

So I'm sure I just, you know, crush the spirit. Sorry about that. But that's part of the procrastination by overplanning is the overcomplicating things. We make it harder because then it's easier to not take action. If we make it hard, right? What I say, we blow it up. And instead of writing a paragraph, we think we have to write the American novel.

Guess what? That's exactly what it is when we try and make things harder. So stop trying to make it harder. This five step process is stupidly simple. It works for me. If I got it, it should certainly work for you. And as I tell my friend on the obstacle course. All right. I used to, I'd have to tell him more and more because now he's a BA and better at this than I am, but I used to tell him when we first started out, just put one step in front of the other, [00:28:00] just worry about the next step.

Don't think about the next mile, the next optical obstacle. Just take the next step because that action is exactly that it's forward movement. It's momentum. Whatever your reason for not doing it's time to make a change. Stop watching the world. Goodbye. Stop watching. Other people do those stuff. You wish you would do and follow the simple outline about starting and doing.

Now here's a challenge for you guys. Identify one thing you've been avoiding. And commit to doing the smallest step of that today, whether you're in the car, whether you're listening to this home, take that thing that you have been avoiding doing, because those are usually the things we need to do anyway.

But take that one thing, commit to start and take the smallest step first today. Just do it, bite the bullet, go hard. And you're going to get it. [00:29:00] I promise once you start, it's easier to keep going. As you win, go to this YouTube video and comment on it. Let us celebrate your wins with you. I can't wait to see the comment section lit up on my YouTube channel.

I know you might be listening to this on your phone, but go to my YouTube channel and put it on the video and celebrate the wins in the comments and let us celebrate with you. All of you listening to this, you can also send me a message on most platforms. There's a link in the show notes. Tell me about it.

I would love to hear about your wins and celebrate your wins with you. So call and leave me a message. I think it's a voicemail. Or a text message. I don't know, but it goes straight to me. There's a link down the show notes. Gents, as we land this plane, realize taking action is the thing that counts. A road doesn't get built because an engineer drew it.

It's a lot of hardworking people. Who build [00:30:00] it long after it's planned, blood, sweat, tears, build it. Not the guy who thought it up. Not the guy who planned it. Not even the guy who drew it. It's a bunch of blood, sweat and tears from people working their asses off. Those guys may have helped plan it, but we all know who actually built it.

So do the thing. Stop procrastinating. Stop putting off and do the thing and get started today. Be sure to check out my episode with Common Man OCR next. If you're working on goals. And taking action for an in depth look at what it takes to pursue goals over the course of a decade, long term goals. We had a great conversation about it.

There will be a link in the show notes. Then join us next Friday for my birthday edition of the show, where we're going to dive into 45 cheat codes. That I know at 45 that I wish I knew at 25. Uh, that's going to be a fun show for you guys until then be better Mara, because what you do today, we'll see on the next one.

David McCarter: This has been the fellow woman podcast, [00:31:00] your home for everything, man, husband and father, be sure to subscribe. So you don't miss a show head over to www. thefallibleman. com for more content and get your own fallible man gear.

Mike Lindell: I ain't waiting for you to check it out, but I'll take

it.