Never do today what you can put off until tomorrow — the motto of all procrastinators. In today’s episode, Kim and Cara talk about how to both overcome and embrace (yes, embrace) the tendency to procrastinate.

Welcome to The Business Animal podcast. Saddle up for a

gallop to the top of the animal industry, where you'll learn how

to tame your wild business beast with tips, techniques, and tools

that will take overwhelm to obedience school and have you

wagging your tail with joy. And now your hosts Kim Beer and Cara

Taylor Swift

Hey there business animals It's Kim with

Be More Business

and Cara

with Fast Horse photography. I was thinking maybe we should

just postpone this episode for a little while I've got some

emails I need to get done. I was

thinking of an equally interesting way of

stating that we're going to be talking about procrastination

today. Oh my goodness. Oh, never do today what you could put off

till tomorrow. That's the motto of all procrastinators. And I do

believe that we did procrastinate the recording of

this because otherwise I wouldn't have drunk all my audio

equipment to Casper, Wyoming so I could record

it. We should have recorded this episode

before you left before while me. So yes, we procrastinated

getting this done. And here we are talking about

procrastination, and I personally feel attacked today.

But I do want to note that in the procrastination

of putting off this episode for recording, we do have fantastic

internet I have fantastic internet at this motel and Cara

is you're never leaving that motel for recording again. No,

you're

gonna have to move to Casper Wyoming and

record from the lucky to end. So plug for La Quinta best bet for

recording a podcast we've experienced personally.

So in that case, the point that I want to make is

that procrastination paid off. Yeah, you just got lucky up

procrastination. Yeah, procrastination paying off. I'll

take a boat. So procrastination is something I think we all feel

victimized by the cultural perception of, I am not going to

tell you procrastination is a bad thing. One thing that I have

learned in my 56 years is that procrastination is something

that our culture and that people like to use to judge you. And

frankly, it has been one of the best things in my life. And I

know I'm a weirdo for saying that. And I know Cara is looking

at me like Kim, you have lost your mind. She's giving me that

Cara blink like, Oh, God,

I don't have a blank. That's Oh,

you have a blank that I can't believe you're

saying?

Well, the truth is, is that yes, sure, you

can be like him and think procrastination is an art form.

And that there are some beauty to it. And I'm not going to say

that it's 100% that you can't enjoy some procrastination every

now and then. But the truth of the matter is, is when you find

that this is something that is stifling your forward momentum

on a project or in your life or on your job, that you really

have to set some boundaries around your procrastination

actions. So there are some signs that you might be

procrastinating Are you okay? If I go down my list right now, or

I don't procrastinate it don't put it

off another minute, a.

So first of all, when I was going through

this, I was feeling personally attacked. I am a bit of a

procrastinator, apparently, according to my list that I have

here. So if you tend to get bogged down every day with lower

priority tasks, this is sitting down at the computer with your

list of to do items and then realizing you have like 500

other little things that you can just knock out real quick, I

find myself doing that a lot, you find that you're waiting

until the last minute to do something over and over and over

again. And then you're stressing and you're rushing to get it

done. And maybe that makes you late for the next thing that you

need to be at if you keep pushing items every day, to the

next day. So you've got your to do list. You've got those big

items that you need to get done. And then you just kind of bumped

them to the next day. And you're doing this over and over and

over and over again thinking that there's going to be a

better day to get it done. People do this even with

important things. Maybe your workspace is really messy and

unorganized. I'm going to be honest with you this was on the

list that I found and part of the I found several lists and I

really kind of went through and cherry picked and I found this

to be a little bit of an attack. I don't know what this has to do

with anything like what Kim Why do you think having a messy desk

is a sign that you might be a procrastinator. I think

that some people might think that I don't

personally think it but I think that it shows that partisan

people that you are not organized and people will dump

organizational skills in the same line with procrastination.

So I think this has to do with a cultural perception of what

procrastination is. And honestly like I said at the beginning it

kind of flies in the face of what I believe procrastination

really is. So I don't know as though a messy and run organized

desk has anything to do with determining If you're a

procrastinator or not, it just probably means that you have a

different way of thinking than the people who make the rules.

Okay, so we're going to take the positive

spin on that one, and we're just going to throw that one

completely out. So to anyone out there that thinks that you're a

procrastinator because you have a messy desk like Screw you,

we're not procrastinators, because we have a messy

workspace. We like it this way. That's right. Another sign that

you might be procrastinating, you find that you aren't

finishing projects, you start or you're just not reaching your

goals that you set for yourself. I mean, that's a big one. And it

also takes a big hit, sometimes emotionally, when you're not

finishing things and you're not reaching your goals. If you

avoid making decisions about emails or text messages, direct

messages that you really need to respond to, you just kind of

keep putting those off, putting them off putting them off. Um,

another sign you might be procrastinating is if you let

yourself get distracted easily by social media, snack breaks,

right in the middle of a big task. I can't tell you how many

times I'm right in the middle of a big task, and I'm like, oh,

you know what, I'm gonna go refill my drink, or I just need

to walk around, do a little inflation jogging, I need a

snack that happens all the time. You might be procrastinating if

you find yourself waiting to complete tasks until you're in a

better mood, or in the right mood for the project. Yeah, so

those are some of the things that when I was doing my

research for this that popped up, they made me feel a little

personally attacked. But I know you have some comments on them

cam. So what do you think about this, so I'm

gonna get into most of my comments about this

when we get into our big three. But I wanted to mention one

other thing that is a big identifier for our expectation

of what procrastination is. And that is something called

structured procrastination. And there's a wonderful, very short

book. So you don't have to put off reading it about this very

topic. And the author's name is escaping me at the moment, but

it is called structured procrastination. And this is

another key that maybe you need to look at some of the things

that are going on in your life, if you find yourself doing tasks

that have nothing to do with what you really need to be

doing. For example, if you're the type of person who says I

really need to build a website for my business, and then you

spend the next six weeks learning how to use WordPress,

and researching all the various different hosting plans that are

out there to build a website on. And then you find you want to do

some better graphics. And now you have to go learn how to do

Photoshop. And in the end, you never end up with a website, but

you end up with a whole lot of education and on this whole

crazy journey. That is what structure procrastination is.

And there are some interesting concepts around structure

procrastination, and how they work in our lives and in our

minds. And I think this is a great time to bring into the

play our big three for this episode, do you want to run

those now,

the first of the Big Three is get to the real

reason you're putting off a task, Kim's gonna talk a lot

about this, I'm sure. The second is find a system that works for

you. So thinking about how to deal with procrastination and

get the stuff done that you need to get done. And then the third

of our big three is embrace your procrastination as part of your

creative process. So we'll talk a little bit more about that. I

think Kim was kind of diving into it a little bit already. So

let's get rolling. I'm gonna make you start by talking about

number one. Yes. So

this is to get to the real reason why you're

putting off a task. Procrastination is not a

disease, it's a symptom in so much of our culture, pinpoints

it is that there's something wrong with you because you're

procrastinating and that you're defective in some way that

there's something intrinsically not correct with you. And the

first thing I think we've got to understand is that some of these

things that are signs that you're a procrastinator,

according to our culture, are things that have to do with your

temperament or typology. So I've done a lot of education, I went

through a certification program it Gestalt, as you guys know,

through touched by a horse and through with mentor, Melissa

peers. And one of the things that Melissa was very good at

teaching us about from day one through that certification

program was to understand yourself and to understand those

around you. Our culture is set up to be a very responsible,

organized world. And if you are not meeting those checkpoints,

chances are you're not that type of a person. So your temperament

is different. It's the temperament that says, I enjoy

the journey, not the destination. So our culture is

set up to enjoy the destination. There are those of us out here

and were designated as a type p in the Keirsey Bates or Myers

Briggs typology. were completing a poll object is not the best

part of that project for us. And it's this thing that we have to

fight against in our own temperament to meet those

expectations of that completion. So I want you to understand that

knowing yourself is the very first step to understanding why

you procrastinate. And if you don't know your temperament, or

you don't know your type, or you haven't taken some of these

assessments like Keirsey, Bates, Myers Briggs, you haven't dove

into the Enneagram, or the disc, or the strict Clifton Strengths

finders, you always feel like you're being judged poorly. And

the truth of the matter is, is that you just need to set up a

different work environment, and you need to understand your own

temperament and start flexing that part of your temperament

that will make your business successful. At the end of the

day, when we're on this particular podcast, we're

talking about your business and how you show up for that. And

procrastinating things in your business can be detrimental. I

don't care what type you are. So I do agree with Cara on that I

just think procrastination always has a big reason behind

it. And I think for a lot of us understanding ourselves is the

very first step into understanding why we are not

fitting into what we need to be fitting into. And we feel very

judged and attacked by being called a procrastinator. And

honestly, I think for a lot of these things on this list that

we talked about that are signs you may be procrastinating, that

has to do with your temperament and take that first step. But it

actually goes in my opinion beyond that procrastination is a

strategy for some of us. It's a way that we have dealt with

trauma in the past, there's maybe some type of a limiting

belief or something that happened with us in our

childhood, or even more recently. And it can be where it

doesn't even feel like that should be the reason why, like

you can look at it logically and go, I don't get it. But until

you suss it out and take a really deep look into why you've

built up that strategy. Why are you putting off that task? stop

and ask yourself those questions. Why am I putting this

off? Is there something that is scary about it? Do I have a

limiting belief around it? Do I feel like I'm going to be

judged? If I put it out there into the world? Is it something

that maybe I was judged for in the past or that there was some

type of a trauma response around it? I personally think that's

why I don't like to clean my house.

So I procrastinate cleaning like crazy. And honestly, I think

it's a trauma response. Okay. And I know that sounds really

weird. But there were some weird things around cleaning in my

family home. And for me, it truly may be a trauma response

for you. There may be some trauma back there. And it

doesn't have to be some what you feel is like some monumentally

life changing thing. It could be something really simple that

when you delve down and take a look at it, that's what US

Gestalt lists are very good at helping you do. When you dive

down and take a look at it, you can figure out why is this a

problem? I work with a lot of people who struggle with

procrastinating their marketing. So that's always been my

specialty in business and working with those folks. And

when I stopped just saying you need to do this and started

asking the questions about like, why are you struggling with

this, it's a lot more progress when you try to find out the

reason back behind those things. The final thing I want to

mention here with procrastination is sometimes

procrastination is really attached to overwhelm. In other

words, you just simply have way too much to do. And when you

look at it, it feels so overwhelming, that you have

developed a strategy and maybe your strategy in overwhelm is to

do little tiny things that make you feel good, because you're

able to finish them and lessen the overwhelm. So overwhelm is

another thing that you need to dive into and figure out okay,

if I'm living in overwhelm all of the time, there's something

here that needs to be further looked at to take that symptom

and say we're going to suss out what is the root cause of that?

And then we need to eliminate the root cause because treating

the symptom doesn't cure the problem. It just simply band

aids over the top of it. Does that make sense? Cara? Imagine

being overwhelmed with your day to day

and then also having the pressure of knowing you have to

grow your business. But knowing if you take the steps to grow

your business, you're going need to bring in more work, which is

going to make your overwhelm even more. So I could see people

doing a lot of procrastination around marketing around just

been working on a website overhaul. So getting the pieces

and everything done. And some of that comes down to Am I ready to

take on the work that could come from the new marketing? You

don't I mean, I could see procrastination around that

100%. But you may not necessarily associated with

that. And then on top of that it's being compounded with the

guilt, I should be doing more, I need to get my business going.

Well, I see other people pulling in clients, why aren't I pulling

on? Well, because I'm procrastinating and not getting

these tasks done, when really, you're just trying to get by

with your day to day. So that all completely makes sense. To

me, one of

the best ways for you to get out of overwhelm is

something that you care are exceptionally good at. And that

is our number two in this episode, which is find a system

that works for you. Because when you create a system, you have a

framework for which to carry yourself out of overwhelm. And

if you create that system where it works with your temperament

or type, and you understand your well self well enough to know

what in that system is going to work for you and what isn't,

then you can start to eliminate two of those big things that are

at the root of why you are procrastinating. So I'm gonna

let you take this part away. I'm really good at developing

systems, I'm not always so good at following them. I'd love to

hear your advice on this. Sure, I've

got several tips that have helped me that

I'd love to share. The first one is to make a list of the things

that you've got to get done day today. And that simple act of

starting your day. And putting your list together or ending

your day with a list for the next day just takes away some of

the stress and worry and you kind of have an idea of what

needs to get done. What happens though, and what I have

experienced in the past is I'll make a list and it will say

something I'm going to put a monumental task on here's

something like write my book. Well, obviously putting that on

the daily to do list is something that's going to get

pushed to every single the next day, the next day the next day.

So what I have learned is that a little trick is that if I take

the big task and break it down into little bite sized chunks,

and put that on the list, instead, it really makes it more

manageable. And instead of pushing that big thing to the

next day to the next day or to that when I have time or when

I'm in the mood or when I'm in a space where I can do that I'm

moving forward with the goal by knocking off the little tiny

pieces one step at a time, it gets me closer to reaching the

goal, it helps soothe my procrastination fears. And it

helps with the guilt factor that comes into not moving forward,

the next little thing that I would do is I like to commit to

an item on the list or commit to a series of items. So I've got

my to do list. But there are some things that absolutely have

to get done. And I will tell myself, if I don't do anything

else today, these are the things that are getting done. So I

really make myself focus on reeling myself back in not

getting distracted, not losing focus, until I at least get

these key things done that I said I was going to get done.

And that is a battle. So I will be working on something and my

cell phone will ping or I realized my drink cup is empty,

or I haven't had breakfast yet or the dog comes over and is

begging to go out for a walk. Like those are things that

happen and I have to recommit to that over and over and over and

over again, I'm not a singular focus person, like my husband,

he's somebody that can sit down to a task, and the world falls

away. I could be calling him his secretary could stand in the

doorway and be talking to him and he will just flat out not

hear it. He's so singularly focused. It's an amazing talent.

But I can't do that I'm easily distracted, giving myself a

little reward. So I'll say okay, when I finish this task, then

I'm going to go walk the dog and walk the neighborhood. Or then

I'm going to go refill my drink. So I make sure that I set some

boundaries around that. The other thing that's essential for

me is reducing the distractions. I have to turn my cell phone

over and put it on silent. I have found myself Wow, I really

committed and worked through a for a significant amount of time

without distractions. And a lot of times when I think about what

was different, I had realized I left my cell phone upstairs, it

was totally in another room. Because the cell phone is so

distracting to me, my family, the group texts that come in

every day. It's like a constant battle to like not pick it up

and just look at it and then your mind shifts and you're not

focused anymore. I recommend for your work from a desktop or a

laptop, close out those social media Windows on your computer

so that they're not bringing with updates and alerts

constantly and that you're not tempted to just click over

easily. You have to actually take Take the extra steps of

going to those websites, so that they're just not alerting you

and then turn off your TV as someone who spends a lot of time

at a desk, I oftentimes will have junk TV on in the

background, or I'll have the news going. But sometimes those

are the same going in the background. And just because I

like the noise, but sometimes you really have to just kind of

shut all of those distractions off so that the colors and the

sounds aren't pulling your eye away from your desk. There are

some amazing apps out there for keeping you on task. So you can

set timers, you can set uninterrupted time, like

dedicated time to really work on your tasks and projects, just

simply go into your app store. And Google time management task

completion apps, there's so many that popped up, I was just

shocked at actually how many there are. And then the last

piece of this pulls back for me anyway pulls back to what Kim

was talking about the underlying reasons for procrastination. And

for me, sometimes that is just a sense of overwhelm. There's too

many things that have to get done. And I need help and

outsource. There's nothing wrong with outsourcing someone to help

you do some of the things so that you can work on your list,

hire a virtual assistant, have someone else design your website

for you, there are so many things that you can pay other

people to do for you that they can do it quickly. They could do

it more efficiently. You don't have to do all the research to

learn about WordPress in order to build your website, hire

someone that knows WordPress already and can build your

website so that you're not spending all that time that you

could be working on your business in other ways. So

that's my list cam, do you have anything you want to add to that

or any comments because you know, me as a taskmaster over

here,

I do. And I love your lists. And I love your

sense of organization. And I know that it works for you. And

I know that for a lot of you out there listening to this, you're

going to go oh, those things don't great, I'm going to try

every single one of them, then you're going to kick yourself

because you are going to fail at them. Because you don't live in

that type of a temperament where having the very structured

stuff, or you're you just aren't that structured, which is me,

I'm just not that structured. So one of the things that I've been

working on recently, even with some clients that have come to

me wanting to build out businesses and building out a

business does require some organizational skills, it

requires you to get tasks done. And it requires you to put some

focus into things you can't be chasing butterflies, as my

mother always accused me of. You chase too many butterflies, you

can't always be chasing butterflies, you have to be able

to sit down and get tasks accomplished. And one of the

things that I found works for me in being a person who rebels

against structure, so one of my top values is freedom. And if I

get pushed against against freedom, and am I one of my move

away values is restriction. If it feels restrictive, I will not

do it. So I've started doing what I call time blocking. So I

set aside a list of things I need to get done in a day. And

the first thing I need to accomplish on the list is to get

myself up and get myself mentally prepared for work. And

that is perfectly fine. There's no set end or beginning to that

except for when I have to show up for the meeting. So I have to

be mentally prepared, then the next block that I work in, and I

guess I shouldn't say time, I don't want to associate this

with time. But the next block I work in is production, right?

It's a productive period of time. And in part of my getting

prepared for that I come up with the three things I need to get

accomplished for that day. And my first focus is to get that

done. So I get one or more of those things checked off of that

list. I pick three, that if I get those three things done, by

the end of the day, say this was a good day, I got a lot done

today. And honestly, people, when you're looking at this,

sometimes I will tell you that one of my three things is just

getting up and getting dressed. And I've dealt with a lot of

depression in my life. And that's another thing that you

can find to remember I mentioned the trauma piece being as the

why behind why you procrastinate. Depression is

another thing that shows up in your life that feels like you're

doing something wrong, but it's not wrong. You're not defective,

because you are working through a depression. And in those

moments, some of the three things on your list might be get

up and get dressed and make yourself a good breakfast that

may be your first productive block. And then take a rest

block then add another productive block then add

another rest block or a replenishing block or

rejuvenating block whatever you want to call it. But work your

way through the things that you need to get done on your list.

And then I have bonus tasks by get the first the top three done

then I can go on to the rest of the to do's on the list. But

that keeps me focused on getting the really important stuff done.

And then going back and coming up and picking up the rest of

it. And I do believe I personally subscribe to the eat

the frog system is where you do the tasks that you least like

first and get it out of the way. So eating that frog, it's a book

that you can read. So I think it's Eat That Frog, or something

along those lines, Google Eat That Frog, I'm pretty sure that

book will come up for you. But it's another way of looking at

get the things that you don't want to do out of the way first,

and then concentrate on the things that you do love to do,

because those will come easier for you. So those are a couple

of random system hacks that I have come up with to help with

my personal temperament, which is an NFP, which is a I have to

have the big picture. I can't do things in a super structured

way, because I'm going to rebel against it every single time and

want to move away from it.

Well, there you have it, I think there's a

little something out there for everyone. And I just feel like

this is something that probably most people to some extent deal

with, I can probably count maybe two people that I personally

know that I wouldn't consider procrastinators of any kinds,

like they really knock things out. They're super organized,

they can focus one is my husband. The other is a

photographer friend of mine, but that's probably it. I mean, most

of us, I think struggle with this in some regard. And

sometimes it's just because the daily tasks at hand are boring.

And we'd rather do exciting stuff on our to do list. I mean,

that's what it comes down to sometimes. So whatever the

reasoning is for you, we hope that some of these tips that

we've given you will help

Yeah, and life happens which is down to our

number three, or which is embrace your procrastination as

part of the creative process and or divine timing. This, I think

was the biggest freedom for me as a life long labeled

procrastinator is that I finally embraced the procrastination as

part of my creative process. And also divine timing. I found when

the times when I was accused of being the worst procrastinator,

and especially those times when I went against what my intuition

was the moment said, put this off, don't do this right now.

And I was like, No, I have to do it right now society says this

must be done at this minute, and I need to do it. And I did it, I

got the task done, I completed it. But it wasn't to the level

that it needed to be, or that it could have been if I would have

just allowed the procrastination a little bit. Now, I cannot tell

you that there's a free check out there for you to just create

your own divine timing and live by it. That's not what I'm

saying here. But what I am saying is that there are times

that procrastination is not a bad thing. There are times that

that procrastination is necessary for you to get to all

of the places that you need to be in a project to get the best

result out of that project. And or if you believe in divine

timing, sometimes procrastination is your

intuition telling you to just wait a minute, to stop, to

breathe, to look around you to allow those distractions in

because maybe one of those distractions is very important.

Or maybe just the process of waiting a couple of minutes

opens up a better opportunity for you. Procrastination is a

process. And I think when you stop and go back to that very

first thing I said and ask yourself why and dig down into

it. And if you can't find a really solid reason why you're

procrastinating something, then come to this one and say divine

timing or creative process may really be at play here. And that

may be the why as to why you're not getting things done quite on

the level that you want to get them done out or on the

timescale that other people are expecting. And as a creative as

somebody who has to use my creativity on a daily basis for

other people. There are times now when I am super honest, I

used to make horrible excuses about not getting things done.

But now sometimes I have to just say, You know what, my muse is

being a bee right now. And I just can't get in touch with

this at this moment. And I need to just allow that time for me

to process it. If you could be patient for another day or two.

I'd really appreciate that because I need that time in

order to give you the best result I can give you so if you

are working in a serve disoriented businesses like I

do, then you can say that to people, you can let them know

and be upfront and honest. And yes, there are some people that

are gonna go, Well, that just doesn't work for me. And I found

those people in my business, they're not a good fit for me.

And so it's best that they go find another designer. And this

is mostly in my design career consulting is a little

different. But the design part I always felt better if they moved

on to another designer that fit them. In the beginning of my

career, I felt all kinds of guilt because I let a customer

go as I've gotten older, I'm thinking bless and release. You

belong with someone else. And that opens the door for me to

have a better customer fit for me that's embracing it and Kara

you know what, this is so important to me. I wrote a poem.

Oh, gosh,

that's right. I forgot you had the poem. I

totally forgot about the poem. Okay, here you guys go. This is

your this is your daily moment of sin to end this episode.

Enjoy.

Okay, so the poem is called be a better

procrastinator. Make it a practice to wander, amble,

saunter, doddle, meander, roam and drift at every opportunity

take time to digress revel in getting sidetracked, stray from

the appointed, deviate from the common mosey away from

structure. Allow yourself to veer into passion road towards

jubilation prowl after pleasure swerve around happiness and

straw with delight. And don't you ever feel guilty in your

bliss Glee, euphoria, Felicity elation, rapture, or joy of

procrastinating?

Well, that's awesome. I hope people got

whatever they needed from this episode. Whether it was tips to

help them with their procrastination, or if it was a

feel good moment to feel better about their procrastination,

whatever that is, we hope that you got what you need out of it.

And at a minimum, you had your moment of Zen with Kim's poem.

So Kim, I forget Do you have your poetry online? Because I

always love your posts to tell people where they can find your

poetry online. As a side, let

me make sure the websites still up. It was at

Kimberlybeer.com. I had all my creative stuff there at one

point. Yep, it's still there. You can go read I haven't posted

there for a while but my poetry some of my short stories, some

of my non horse and horse photography. Are there be warned

there skulls with flowers? I get a little weird if you're easily

offended, you know, may want to stay away.

Yes. One of the things I love about

chemistry how creative she is. And so yeah, this poll was

pretty perfect for us today's episode. So we hope you guys

have enjoyed that you've left with us that you've gotten some

a little piece tidbit out of this episode. And at a minimum,

maybe you procrastinated a task and listened to us instead. So

we love you guys. Thank you for hanging with us. We're 80 Plus

episodes in and if this is your first time joining us, thank

you, we appreciate it. If this is your 80th time joining us it

means the world to us. So thank you guys so much. And just like

always, we'll be back next Tuesday.

Thanks for listening to this episode of The Business

Animal. Be sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode. And

if you learned something today, leave us a review. To learn

more. Find us at thebusinessanimal.com We'd love

to hear from you. Until next time, keep your business well