Overcome Procrastination and take control of your time, focus, and results. In this episode, Robin J. Emdon shares powerful productivity tips and time management strategies to help you stop procrastinating and finally build momentum in your business and daily life.

Join Kirsten Graham and Jeanne Willson as they explore business productivity, accountability coaching, and practical personal development tips that drive real success. This conversation breaks down why procrastination happens and how you can shift into action with simple, effective strategies.

If you are ready to step into success, this episode connects mindset and action through six-figure business coaching, six-figure business mastery, and The Marketing VA Advantage so you can grow your business with clarity and consistency.

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What if building momentum in your business was.

Less about discipline and actually more about having the right structure.

We have a wonderful guest today.

His name is Robin.

J. M Dong.

His company is Get Zoology, which is the science of getting stuff done.

So I'm excited to hear more about that, but welcome to the program, Robin.

We're so excited to have you.

Thank you very much.

I'm excited to be here.

I'm not sure what I've let myself in for, but let's do it.

Robin, I always like to ask, what brought you to this journey of helping

people with structure and systems?

What was your passion behind helping people with this?

I wouldn't say it was my passion, but what brought me here was procrastination.

Mm-hmm.

In a nutshell is I trained in 2001 in the States with Tony Robbins as a life

coach, but as you can tell, I'm British.

I live here in Britain, so I didn't end up working for him.

His plans changed and my plans changed.

A long story short, cut forward to 2019, I'd been a single father for many years.

I'd part the coaching in the past, and I was bragging to my older brother.

I got my degree.

We were over a coffee someplace and I was really pleased with that.

And he was bored and I said, oh, I've gotta do something to change his pattern.

So I said, oh, I know, trust me to take 10 years to do something

I should have done in six.

And he laughed and I laughed and.

I said, because he thought, oh, that's good, isn't it?

And I said, and he said, yeah, why was that?

And I thought, oh yeah, the caffeine's kicked in now.

And I said, oh, we procrastination.

And I laughed more and he laughed more.

And then me chase a soldier and then driving home, I was thinking about

it, thinking, hang on a minute, Robin, you were trained life coach.

I only ever talked to myself.

I'm the most cleverest person I know.

He says, modestly.

And I said, what the heck?

How dare you procrastinate?

You are a trained coach.

How dare.

So I thought, oh, I'll just take that tablet that you take

that cures procrastination.

And then I thought, what tablet?

What is it?

And I couldn't quite put, I knew it was on the tip of my tongue, but I

couldn't quite put my finger on it.

Anyway, cut a long story short, it led to a journey and it led to me

writing a book about it and realizing that procrastination is a much bigger

topic than you might, than I realized.

It isn't a straightforward to overcome it.

I've also realized, and what brought me here was how much it had cost me.

The cost of it was enormous.

Relationships health.

I was 60 pounds heavier when I started this journey of discovering

what it was all about because of all the comfort eating, which is a

procrastinating behavior, the finances, career, everything was affected by it.

And I thought, I gotta get a handle on this.

I bet that's not just me.

I bet there are other people out there.

So I started writing it down, putting it into a book, and then I thought,

okay, I could actually reboot my coaching business on the back of

that because the momentum part of procrastination as in getting over it,

is generated heavily by accountability.

And that was something that my former clients used to get a great deal out of,

and that's where they got 80% of their results from about 20% accountability.

So I do that as well.

Awesome, awesome.

On the subject of procrastination.

You feel like structure's important?

So can you explain, it's not motivation.

You always say it's structure.

What does that mean?

I talk about the mal in the book.

The book alludes to them.

It took the M cube, I call it one that we all hear about is motivation,

which you've just mentioned.

You gotta get motivated to get, overcome your procrastination.

Yeah, but I've got a cupboard.

Literally the cupboard behind me that you can see on my camera is full of

journals and planners and schedulers that I've used over the years to create.

Momentum.

There's a reason they're in the cupboard.

It isn't because it's close to hand.

It's 'cause they've migrated there because they stopped.

They stopped working eventually, and then I went out and got another

one and that went to the cupboard.

Then I got another one.

They might have worked for a few months, but the motivation ran out.

So then it became, I realized when I was doing the research into procrastination.

By the way, I had only researched the research in one 10 year period.

In the early two thousands, over 900 papers were written on

procrastination and productivity, so I didn't need to do the research,

but I did need to bring it together.

My degree was in arts and humanities.

I have no capacity to understand science for more than five seconds.

I got 9% in my last biology exam at school.

And that was because I spelled my name right.

No, I'm not making that up.

That's what the teacher told me.

And I know it's true.

'cause I didn't write anything on the paper except my name.

So how I got 9%?

I dunno.

But the point was that momentum was what the research kept talking about.

It's all right, you can get motivated for a while, but what happens when

a motivation runs out, you've gotta find a way of getting it going again.

So you need momentum.

And the third M is mastery.

And that's mastery of your own yourself, your own skill sets.

Understanding why you're procrastinating.

My book is split into three sections, understand strategies, motivation, and

momentum, and to mastery of yourself, of your own strategies that work for you.

Because I guarantee you, there are almost a limitless supply as why my Goal

Busters podcast is up to 200 episodes.

Now, you'll be amazed at how many different ways people come up with

generating their own motivation to keep productive and keep

going, but without the momentum.

It all grinds to a halt again.

And the passion projects, the things that really matter to you, the things

that may not be client related, 'cause nobody wants to let their clients

down, but they're important to you.

They're about the taking your business to the next level.

The things that you really wanna do, they don't happen without

the momentum to make them happen.

Is there a for momentum?

Do you have a structure to help people?

Get into momentum.

Yeah.

On a daily basis, in my book, I cover many strategies.

'cause there's, here's the kicker, there's, I know people that have said to

me, my one brother is one of these people.

What is it?

Come on, what's that tablet?

What is it?

Tell me now.

And I'm like, there isn't a one size fits all.

If there was a go to the chemist and buy it.

Momentum is driven by whatever strategy works for you.

And accountability.

External accountability is a big one, but it's not the only one.

In fact, in my book is 95% about self-help, self mastery.

External momentum is like, well, us Brit's called the belt and braces approach.

When you want to be absolutely certain, guaranteed you're gonna

nail it, you're gonna get it done.

But momentum comes from having more structure in your day.

And having micro deadlines.

I'm not a great believer in goals.

I, I talk about goals in my book and one of the things I was researching, 'cause

I've never, I've always instinctively kicked against goals, no pun intended,

in that I've often thought goals.

Although a lot of people out there are very successful, they've

never set a goal in their life.

And when I was coaching people, we talk about goals, I thought, you know what?

I don't like goals.

And I realized when I was looking at the research, the research actually says that

goals set up a feeling of obligation.

When you've got a feeling of obligation, you feel stressed, and when you feel

stressed, your go-to instinctive natural behavior is to procrastinate and it

it, it kicks against the idea that you're gonna achieve the goal because

what you're actually doing is you are creating a situation where you feel

too stressed about going for the goal.

And so micro deadlines are things that we talk about, but you need

to have a much clearer idea.

In the book I talk about it, your personal life vision.

Where are you going with your life?

Who do you see yourself becoming in 3, 5, 10, even 15 years from now?

And I talk in the book about becoming an oncologist.

'cause I would never be one of those, that's impossible.

It's science and I'm too old now, but it would take seven or

eight years to become a doctor.

It takes another seven or eight years.

I'm told to become a specialist, like an oncologist.

But if you have a clear idea today, that is where you, I

want to be 15 years from now.

That will get you into having, not a goal, but a vision, a passion,

something that you really want to do.

And then when you're procrastinating about doing the dishes, ah,

who cares about the dishes?

I don't, do you?

I just buy paper plates and throw them away.

It's easier.

But what if the dishes are on the kitchen island or the table where you put out

your study materials to become a doctor?

Then all of a sudden it's, oh, hang on.

If I don't do the dishes today, that's a threat to my personal life.

Fishing and it becomes a threat to your personal life.

Fishing.

Take that dishes be gone, AOL dishes.

Gotta do some work today.

I love that.

I love that.

You've talked, mentioned your book a few times.

Tell us what the name of your book is, please.

Yes, the book, it's a picture behind me and it's here.

There we go.

A little plug for my book.

I plug it shamelessly, and there's a reason for that, which I will

come to you via a few seconds.

It's called Get Results Ology.

It's the science of getting stuff done.

It's broken into three parts.

Understand procrastination, because as I often say, if you don't

understand it, look at it this way.

Suppose as you get to the end of the next 12 months of your life and you

don't have enough money in your bank.

It can always make more money.

Governments print it.

We can't do that without going to jail, but governments do.

And some would say they need to go to jail as well.

But the point is you can always make more money somehow.

But what if you get to the end of the year and you realize, like I did

with my epiphany, my baseball moment, about my 20 years of procrastinating,

including 10 years to do something I should have done in six with my degree?

I can't get that time back.

It's gone.

I spent it and it is non-refundable.

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I've got time in front of me, but I dunno how much, it could be moments,

it could be years, I don't know.

But all I do know is I can't get back the time that I've spent, so the time to

crash procrastination is not tomorrow, which is the procrastinator's mantra.

I'll do it tomorrow.

The time to get it back is when you are doing it.

Oh, I'm procrastinating.

And so you really need to understand why.

So it's a big section in the book on understanding it to catch yourself.

That's the only objective, really catch it.

Second section is on strategy.

It's where the motivation comes in.

Whatever works for you.

And I have a selection of strategies 'cause no one size fits all.

The third section is on momentum.

Strategies again, where are they are geared towards augmented

one of one big strategy.

The belt and braces approach.

Accountability, external accountability.

Internal accountability works for some people, but they don't tend to be people

that procrastinate in the first place.

So external accountability.

I work in a home based situation.

I got a nice home.

I got a nice coffee machine.

I've got a nice view from the window.

I can work whatever hours I wanna work, but I can't recreate a boss.

I mean, I like looking in the mirror in the morning and the

boss is looking back at me.

He's a lunatic, but he's my lunatic.

But I don't feel accountable to him in the same way.

I'd feel accountable to say Gene or Kirsten when I'm like,

oh, I don't let them down.

I promised I'd get this done.

I promised I'd turn up today.

I'm accountable if I didn't turn up today.

Right.

The reason that I'm happy to brag on boast about the book is 'cause I give it away.

It's my valuable free resource, as I call it on my Gold Pastors podcast when I ask

other people if they've got something.

I don't give away the physical copy.

I've not made money.

Goodness me.

You can buy it if you want the physical copy on Amazon,

and God bless you if you do.

I'd love you if you did that, but if you want it from me, you can get

it from me as a full unabridged PDF.

That's very generous.

Generous of you.

I love that time to get procrastination won back is now.

I love that.

To stop procrastinate about procrastinating, my website says

the main thing on the website.

Stop procrastinating and kick stop.

Skyrocket your productivity and kick procrastination to the curb.

Just telling somebody to stop procrastinating is not going to stop them.

Yeah.

They need to understand what's going on.

They need to understand.

It's an in the book, I go into great detail.

It's an internal job.

We're hardwired to procrastinate since forever.

The old, the best analogy I can give you to make it clear is in the

days when we all lived in caves, our ancestors, not us personally.

Perhaps you did.

I've got a cave near where I live.

I never lived in it.

But, and there's a bear outside that wants you for lunch, and you're there

with your loved one and your children, and you're like, if I go out and fight

the bear, I could get eaten for lunch.

On the other hand, if I stay in here, I can starve.

So what do you do?

Well, no, I'll procrastinate for a couple more days.

It's nature.

It's a survival mechanism.

It's a pretty obvious survival mechanism.

Unfortunately, there are no bears that threaten us to date, not

necessarily living in the country.

In America somewhere, there's a few man eating bears, but they're quite rare.

But what there are that come through your on in your e-mail

boxes are bills, bailiffs, landlords that want their rent paying.

Health issues of yourself and your loved ones.

Stuff that trigger the survival instinct.

We feel threatened and when we feel threatened, we close

down and we stop working.

And that's all hardwired.

And you have to work out how the heck do I overcome that?

And that's what the book teaches you to do, to master it.

I love that.

So we talked a little bit about structure and setting micro deadlines,

and I'm sure, like you said, this is covered in depth in the book, but

what's next is emotional regulation.

So.

When you have mastery over yourself, which it comes and goes because

with these modalities of your mind, I call them in the book threat

modality and reward modality.

When you're in threat modality, your emotions are all over the place.

You are literally like not thinking it's you.

You can't think if there's a lion chasing you, you haven't

got time to stop and think.

When someone shouts round and you go.

Okay.

Which ways do you think we should run this way or that way?

You're dead The lion's fast, right?

You might put your trainers on because the way you can't outrun a lion, you

can outrun the friend next to you.

So that's probably worth doing.

Apart from that threat modality shuts you down.

In the book, I talk about your inner productivity team, which

enhances your reward modality.

That's when you go up to your prefrontal cortex, which is the

opposite of the limbic system, which is your survival mechanism,

and you actually think you plan.

You work out what you need to do today, and you understand

why it's important to you.

You plan five minutes, five days, five years, 15 years into the

future, and you plan it all out in the inner productivity team.

Triggers all the internal neurotransmitters that you need to

get yourself into a productive state.

And I, they're all in the book.

I will tell you they're called the conductor, the scholar,

and the fun sized warrior.

But I, sadly, I don't have time to tell you about 'em today.

They are in the book and you get for free.

By the way, I'm not trying to sell you the book.

You can get it for free.

You can find out you love it.

There's a little science in there.

You said there's no science.

There's a little science in there.

No, I said I don't understand the science for very long.

There's a lot of science.

It's called the science of getting stuff Done.

It's got an ology in the title get Result ology.

That's a science, but it's actually, it's with two reasons.

One, because I went to the science to find out what the solutions are, and

then the second is I turned it into a simple, straightforward method.

You do this and you will overcome it, but you have to keep doing it.

You need to build that momentum.

You have to keep it up because it's always there.

It's constant.

It is your survival mechanism.

You're not battling with your survivor mechanism, but you are trying to

understand it, which is where the emotional regulation comes in.

Yeah, and I love how you talk about momentum because I think that when

you're trying to get somewhere, you know if, even if little achievements,

we have to make sure that we appreciate those and we say right now we did that.

We should be proud of ourselves.

Let's keep going.

Let's keep getting that good feeling.

Absolutely.

In the book we talk about rewards.

And I was talking to a friend of mine and she said, what are you doing these days?

And I said, A few years ago.

And I said, oh, I'm writing this book about procrastination, productivity.

And she said, oh yeah, do people do that?

And I said, yeah, I know.

I know you don't.

And she's a very successful businesswoman.

It wouldn't occur to her.

And I said, tell me more, because success leaves clues, right?

And she said, oh, I just say, oh, I can't have that nice, treat that

nice thing until I've done it, done this X, Y, z. I go, oh great.

That doesn't work for me.

She said, why not?

And I said, 'cause I'm a rebel.

They say, the nice thing is a nice slice of cake.

So you will sit there and you'll go, oh, I can have this nice slice of cake when

I've done my chores for the morning.

Yes, exactly.

I go, I'm a rebel.

I will go.

No one's telling me I can't have my slice of cake.

I want it ow.

And I'll eat my slice of cake and I'll sell myself and then I'll do the work.

Never happens, of course.

It never happens.

I eat the cake.

Right?

And they're like, oh, I'm bit full now.

I wish I had that now.

Oh dude, I feel sick.

Oh no, I shouldn't have had cake.

I should have had fruit.

Oh no, but it's too late and I've, and I'll just procrastinate the day away.

That used to be what I would do, so that didn't work for me.

Her strategy worked for her because she was, she, that's what she had in her mind.

It didn't work for me.

And so if you are, if you like her, you don't need my book.

If you like me, you probably do.

Yeah.

I think we're a little bit more like you to be honest.

I think a lot of people are, and that's what I'm trying to help

with and trying to support people with and get them in out of that,

because those feelings never go away.

As I say, you are hardwired.

It's hard.

You can't, you don't.

Suddenly your brain only has two jobs, survival and procreation.

That's it.

Doesn't have any other interests in the world.

You're interested in painting, you're interested in cooking, you're interested

in whatever you are interested in.

Things are that you do with your life, but it all comes down to survival.

Procreation and the rest is just icing on the cake.

Sorry to keep going on about cake.

I gonna say, you having me at cake?

Yes.

So after, after the next steps, you talk about systems.

Yeah, systems is all part of going on all.

See, one of the things that cre, that triggers procrastination, triggers

behaviors that shut us down is overwhelm.

And you have to fun come up with clever ways of getting out of overwhelm and

systems is a brilliant way of doing it.

'cause you can do them on autopilot.

I'll give you an example.

It's not in the book, but it suddenly occurs to me.

Do you even have to think about what, how you get dressed in the morning.

You might think about what you wouldn't wear that day, but you

don't think about how do you do this sip, how do you do that button?

Where does, which one do I put on first?

Do I put my underwear on first or do I put my clothes on and then my underwear?

You don't think about it anymore.

You have a system.

It's, it is almost instinctive when you drive a car.

When you first learn to drive a car.

It's very difficult.

Without help, you could easily crash it.

You become more fluid with it as you become more systematic and

unconsciously competent with doing it.

So systems systemizing, things that you do with your day, systemizing,

things that you do in your business.

Having clear systems is a, I think of it in terms of, I,

I'm, I still procrastinate.

Oh, I'm procrastinating right now.

Oh no, I'll do that X, y, Z thing in my business.

'cause it's easy.

I don't have to think about it.

And then when I've been doing it for 10, 20 minutes, I'm like,

okay, I'm in the groove now.

I've got my inner productivity going.

Now I'll go onto the stuff that's a bit more challenging.

Without panic.

There's your momentum.

Exactly.

I love that you talk about overwhelm because I, I could totally relate to that.

Sometimes when I feel like things are just piling on top of each

other, I can't focus on anything.

Like I'm just, overwhelm is just another word for fear, and fear is about survival.

And when you're in survival, when you're in threat mode, you can't get

anything done, so you may as well do something that's underwhelming, like.

Whatever that is for you.

Watch the tv, do some knitting.

Go for a walk, make some food, anything that's easy and you don't have to

think about, 'cause it's systemized 'cause you've done it a million times.

Comfort Eating.

It's familiar.

The key, the critical thing, and I do mention this in late for my book,

I rarely talk about it off screen, on screen, but it is in my book.

Everything that we do as human beings, every kind of behavior that we indulge in.

We do it because it fulfills our needs in that moment.

Even the behaviors that seem irrational and are not self-serving,

they are, they satisfy us.

You get a dopamine hit from them.

Dopamine is one of the neurotransmitters that you need, but it's also one of

the neurotransmitters that you seek when you can't get it any other way,

and you seek it from familiar things.

Ah, this is so good.

This is so inspiring too because it, it helps you understand

that you have control.

You can take control and make things happen for yourself.

Yes.

Once you understand it, as I say, I had someone that Right go at me.

Why don't you just gimme the tablet?

And I said, because part of the tablet is, you have to understand it.

I don't wanna understand it.

There's no tablet then.

That's great, Robin.

Tell people where they can get your book.

'cause right now they're going, I need to know, actually I'm gonna double my

offer on my book 'cause and I'm not gonna change my mind about it just yet.

So what I, what, here's what I'm gonna say.

If they want the book, they can get that really easily.

You can get it from really useful tips.com.

That's really as in, I really mean it, but I will change my mind at some point.

So get it while you can.

Useful as in I hope you find it useful and it's full of tips you@usefultips.com.

But, but also if you go to my website, get results allergy.com, you'll see

straight away that I've also put the book in a video for, because not

everybody's got time to read a book.

They might procrastinate about it.

You think so?

I've turned it into a five day free challenge as well.

And not everything's in the challenge is in the book.

That's in the challenge, but there's enough to get you going.

So I also encourage people to do the five day free challenge.

You can get that on get results ology.com.

Can't remember that long word.

Skyrocket your productivity challenge.com.

We'll get you there as well.

Same page.

Casey's exam in the same place.

Excellent.

That's also free by the way.

Free book, free resources.

I love that.

We'll put all those links in the show notes below.

So I also think, Robin, there are gonna be people listening saying,

wow, how can I get ahold of him?

Or What's the best way for me to reach out to him?

First of all, if you get the book, there's an email address in the book

at the end of the first chapter where I invite you to pledge your Your Self to.

I am committed to doing the work, the work in this book,

'cause it's a workbook as well.

So you can email me.

I always reply to emails.

I don't have a a, I don't pay someone to do that.

I think that's rude.

I always reply to personal emails.

But the other way is simple.

With LinkedIn.

I'm on LinkedIn, that's why I hang out.

Just look me up Robin j Emden on LinkedIn and find me and send me a message.

And again, I always reply.

I might be a bit slow.

'cause guess what?

I've got schedules and structures and doing answering messages.

I don't work to other people's agendas.

I work to my agenda unless the other person's agenda is a client, of course.

And then even then, they know they've got appointments.

Yes.

That's fantastic.

I feel like I've learned so much.

I'm excited to get the book and do the challenge.

And for any of you out there listening, you know, well, there

are free resources available.

Obviously, it puts you on his list.

Just like when you sign up for one of our lead magnets.

It puts you on our list.

But you have these opportunity to take advantage of free resources.

And then if you wanna go further, then you can reach out to Robin and figure out how,

what it would look like to work with him.

But if you are procrastinating, then now you have an opportunity to figure out

why, and then put steps in place to stop.

So you've got that big life vision and we wanna see you make it happen.

And so we're so grateful you were here with us today.

If you'd like to check out our pre masterclass, your finances are a mess.

You need to get those in order.

You can go to less math more money.com and we'll see all of you in the next episode.

Thanks for listening to the six Figure Business Mastery Podcast.

If you enjoyed listening to this episode and you are ready to leverage video

marketing on all online platforms, or maybe even start your own video

podcast, then you need to check out the Done for You and Done with You program

at the marketing va advantage.com and take your business to the next level.