In this episode, we examine why even the greatest minds—think Leonardo da Vinci—struggled to finish what they started, and why uncompleted work is less about laziness and more about well-disguised avoidance. We’re joined by John Acuff, bestselling author of Procrastination Proof, who offers a smart, actionable reframe for tackling procrastination head-on.

We explore the hidden complexity behind why we put things off, dissecting how procrastination isn’t a matter of willpower, but a short-term solution to discomfort, uncertainty, or fear. John challenges the idea that more discipline is the answer, and instead introduces a permission-based system to get meaningful work done. Together, we investigate how “night you” and “morning you” can work in tandem rather than at odds, and why the digital world may be the most formidable funder of our distraction.

If you want to stop deferring the big—and small—projects that matter, this episode gives you the reminder and strategy you need to make real progress.

Five Key Learnings

1. Procrastination Is a Solution, Not a Root Problem: We typically procrastinate as a way to temporarily solve discomfort, fear, or uncertainty; solving for the root emotion is more effective than simply muscling through with discipline [00:02:22].
2. Willpower Isn’t Enough: Tackling procrastination with willpower or discipline alone is like trying to fix a broken arm by brushing your teeth—it’s the wrong tool for the job. Permission, rather than willpower, is a better starting point [00:05:05].
3. Make Tomorrow Easy Today: Aligning the “night you” (the planner) with the “morning you” (the doer) creates momentum and reduces self-sabotage. Set yourself up for success by treating your future self with generosity [00:08:20].
4. Manage Your Attention Environmentally: Distraction is intentionally funded and engineered by tech giants to capture your attention on demand. Simple changes—like leaving your phone in another room at bedtime—reduce friction for focus when it matters [00:17:19], [00:19:19].
5. Dream, Plan, Do, Review: The sequence for beating procrastination begins with permission to dream, plan, take action, and honestly review your progress. Most people skip review, but regular, data-driven reflection is critical for meaningful improvement [00:12:25], [00:14:05].

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Mentioned in this episode:

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In 1481, the Augustinian monks of San Donato Ascapetto in Florence commissioned a young painter to create an altarpiece, an Adoration of the Magi. It was a prestigious commission, a guaranteed audience, and the kind of project that most artists would kill for. The painter accepted. He sketched obsessively. He drafted composition after composition. The early studies were brilliant. Everyone expected a masterpiece. Then he got an offer from the Duke of Milan and left town.

The painting sat unfinished. The monks waited and waited, and eventually they gave the commission to someone else. The painter was Leonardo da Vinci. And if you're thinking, well, that was just one painting, well, no, it wasn't. It was actually a pattern. Leonardo left behind fewer than 20 completed paintings in his entire career. The Madonna of the Rocks was commissioned in the early 1480s and not delivered until 1508, roughly 25 years later. He carried the Mona Lisa around with him for years, tweaking it until the day he died.

His reputation for not finishing was so well known that the Duke of Milan tried to make him sign contracts with strict deadlines. Pope Leo X, after hiring Leonardo in 1514, reportedly threw up his hands and said the man would never accomplish anything, because he starts by thinking about the end of the work before the beginning. Here's the thing. Leonardo wasn't lazy. He was one of the most productive minds in human history, filling thousands of pages with anatomical drawings, engineering designs, observations about flight and water and light. He was always working. He just wasn't always working on the thing he'd committed to. And if that doesn't sound like every creative professional you've ever met, including the ones staring back at you in the mirror, I don't know what does.

Now, if you've read my book diemd, you know that I believe that one of the most valuable places on the planet is the graveyard. This was something I heard someone say once upon a time, quoting the late Miles Monroe, they said the most valuable land in the world is the graveyard, because that's where you'll find unwritten novels, unlaunched businesses, unspoken conversations, all the things people intended to do sometime but never got around to. And according to his biographer Vasari, Leonardo himself died lamenting that he had offended God and mankind by not having worked at his art as he should have done.

Done.

Even Leonardo felt the weight of the work he'd left undone. What I've come to understand is that the thief isn't usually laziness. It's not a lack of talent or ambition. The thief is the quiet, rational sounding voice that says not yet. That is procrastination. And it doesn't look like what you think it looks like. It doesn't look like sitting on the couch eating chips. It looks like being very, very busy with things that feel productive but aren't the thing.

It looks like doing more research, starting another side project, saying, I just need a little more clarity before I jump in. Does that sound familiar? Well, today's guest has written one of the most practical and honest books I've read on this subject in a long time. His name is John Acuff. He's a multiple New York Times bestselling author. You may know him from books like Soundtracks or Finish. His new book is called Procrastination Proof. And in it he makes an argument that I think is going to reframe this whole issue. For a lot of us, procrastination isn't a problem, it's a solution.

It's the solution we reach when the real work feels too exposed, too uncertain, too costly. And like any short term fix, it charges interest. John and I are going to get into why willpower is the wrong tool for this fight. How to get night you and morning you working together instead of against each other. And why procrastination might be the most well funded fear in human history. This is Daily Creative. Since 2005, we've served up weekly tips to help you be brave, focused and brilliant every day. My name is Todd Henry.

Welcome to the show.

We use it as an alternative to doing the thing we're afraid of doing.

That's John Acuff, author of Procrastination Proof, talking about procrastination.

So we say, okay, I don't want to have this difficult convers conversation with my mom. I don't want to tell her I'm not coming for Thanksgiving so I'll procrastinate. Or I don't want to try to write my book and find out maybe I don't have what it takes yet. So I'll use procrastination to avoid that. So we actually use it to solve a lot of problems. It's just not a good long term solution. If you talk to anybody who's an alcoholic, they go, yeah, alcohol was a solution at first and then it became a problem. And that's my argument with procrastination.

I think it does help people avoid some things, but in the long run it costs more than it gives. And so I just think it's not a laziness problem. And when we try to fix it with willpower or discipline, it doesn't work any more than fixing a broken arm by brushing your teeth doesn't work. So it's just, you need a different solution. And when you have a different solution, then procrastination is easy to avoid.

I think so many of us, especially as leaders, like, we want to avoid tension, right? Like, tension makes us feel like something is wrong, but tension is just a natural reality of doing hard things. Right. And so to your point about it being a solution, it makes us feel better in the short term, but all we're doing is prolonging that tension.

Oh, you're making it worse. We know you're making it worse. Like, I. I have a new talk I'm doing right now because you and I overlap on so many events. That's what's fun. Before we started recording, we're like, oh, we're going to see each other at this next one. The. The new talk I'm doing is about the mindset of AI Because I wrote this book called Soundtracks about your mindset.

And I keep hearing broken soundtracks about AI and one of the really common ones from Leaders is if I talk about it, my people will panic. And that's understandable. Like, you'd much rather put that off. But it's not that they're not talking about it. You're not their only source of information. Like, they're writing their own story about it. And it's not a good one when you don't address it. And the flip side of that is, when I talk about it, my people can plan.

If I don't procrastinate this, we can actually have plans. We can actually work on this together. If you procrastinate it only. Yeah. It doesn't improve itself, that situation.

Yeah. Talk about the tug of war between responsible me and procrastinating me. These two forces that play out inside of us. How did that shape your understanding of this whole dynamic?

Yeah, so I think everybody has tug of wars in their life. That's one for me about responsible me versus procrastinating me. And responsible me in moments of clarity would go, hey, here's what we can do. We could really try this. Here's what we could. And procrastinating me would really fight that and go, no, I don't think we should try that yet. Or, I need more information. That's the thing with procrastination.

It's very subtle. Often it looks like being intentional. You go, I just don't have enough information to make a decision yet. And you go, and there's no line there's no end to information or I want to. I see people go, I have too many dreams. I don't know which one to do, so I won't do any. And you go, then too many dreams isn't a good thing. It's actually holding you back and you're procrastinating.

So where it really came to a head, Todd was I realized that Morning me wanted to get after it, but it was hard because Night me had screwed him. So, like, Night Me the night before had gone to bed late, had brought his phone to bed and stayed up watching dumb videos or whatever. And then Morning me was like, I just don't have the energy to do the things I want to do. And it was like they were the tug of war. So when I got them in alignment, it opened up everything. So basically I realized, like, if I can have them work together, I take one more step toward being unstoppable. So what happened was I realized Morning me is an amazing doer. Nightme's an amazing planner.

So I have a hard time planning in the morning at 8am If I start a Monday at 8am with no plan, the phone's already ringing, there's emails coming in, I feel overwhelmed. I don't know what to start on. But NightMe's good at planning at 6pm At 7pm, when nobody's bothering him, spend 15 minutes ago, hey, tomorrow, here's what we're gonna do. Like, I mapped out the day. Morning me's an amazing doer. He'll run through the wall if you pick out the wall first. And so once I got that kind of. Oh, that taught me this principle of how do I hook up future me? Essentially, my definition of discipline is make tomorrow easy today.

Make tomorrow easy today. So then I just expanded. It was like, what can Monday me do to hook up Friday me? I don't want to have a stressful Friday afternoon. So what are the things I can do on Tuesday to send that gift to the future? And then I just started going further out. Now I'm at the point where it's like, I want to be in shape at 70. Like, I want to have good knees at 70. I want to be able to wrestle with my kids. Like, I do this morning workout called F3.

And there's a 65 year old there. Like, I want to like, how do I send gifts to that person with my decisions today? And that reduces procrastination too, because I'm like, the person who has to do it later is also me. That's One of the soundtracks I use, the person who has to do it later is also me. There's not a magical person I'm screwing next month me. If I put off this thing that has to get done so that getting responsible me and procrastinating me on the same page. And the night me and morning me, and then Monday me and Friday me, and then 50 year old me and 60 year old me and 70 year old me. That. That becomes really fun because then you have an incentive to change.

That always makes me think of that line from the Simpsons. Oh, that's a problem for future Homer. Right where he's getting drunk.

Yeah, I. Yeah, it's so funny how many lines you can pull from the sentence where, like, they said something deep and true in the midst of a cartoon. Alcoholic.

Exactly. All right, so this isn't. We're talking about planning. We're talking about night you versus morning you and all of that. But this is. This also applies to, like, the big. You could say that the big decisions are sort of a culmination of a lot of little decisions. But for you specifically, this played out in a way with a big decision that you're procrastinating on at some point in your life.

Talk about how you learned about this, not just in the small ways, but also with the big decisions, how procrastination plays out.

Yeah, I think the big decisions. One of the lies that trips us up is I don't know where to start. And that's a broken soundtrack, because what you're saying is, there's a perfect place to start, and as soon as I find it, you better watch out. There's one thread in this tangle of a knot that if I find that one. And so people say, I just don't know where to start. And a big decision doesn't have obvious finish lines. A big decision feels a long way away. And it can be writing a book, it can be starting a business, it can be getting in shape.

It feels so overwhelming at the start that you say, I don't know where to start. And so then you push it off for a day, push it off for. For a week or a month. And so that's, to me, where with procrastination, you can look up. Like, again, I. Today we say our age. At the end of this workout, we do. And I'm 50.

And a lot of the guys there are 31. And there's nobody that goes, yeah, I should be 50. I knew I'd be fit. Like, you all go, like, how I told my Wife. When I got home, I was like, how did that happen? There was a dude there today that's celebrating his fourth wedding anniversary. And I was like, we're on our 25th and if you. It feels like it's been fast. And so that's the real danger.

Like one of the lines in the book is that procrastination cost you your life because it costs you time. And what else is life made of but time? And so that's why I was excited to write about it. Whether it's big decisions or small decisions. I think what I know everyone who reads this book will say is, I wish I had started sooner. And I want to prevent that. I want to. I don't want you. Everyone I've ever met who wrote a book, who did a thing that they didn't know they were capable of, ran a 5K, whatever, had a great family, they go, I wish I'd started sooner.

I wish I had. And that's just a human feeling. And I want to reduce that because there's a lot of things I wish I had started sooner. And I'm like, you don't have to pay the 10 year cost. You don't have to pay a 20 year cost. Like, you can start right now.

Yeah, it is crazy. To your point, it's crazy how fast life goes. And that's one message I consistently send to people in their 20s as well, is I'm 52. We're celebrating our 25th anniversary. We have three adult kids, one of whom is out. I know you're in a similar place, right, where you're almost like empty nester kind of thing. And this man, it feels like yesterday I was holding my firstborn in my arms and it just boom. And we think, we tend to think we have all the time in the world.

It just doesn't happen. But then one of the mistakes you call out that people make when they say, okay, now I'm going to do something, is they try to rely on willpower. And you argue that's not the way to fight procrastination. So what is the way to fight procrastination?

No. So the system I teach is really simple. It starts with one word, permission. I think everybody's waiting for permission. They're waiting for permission to do the things they know they're capable of. And the four permissions that matter the most, which are the ones I taught at Global Leadership Summit last time we were together, are the permission to dream, the permission to plan, the permission to do, and the permission to review in that order. If you do those four things consistently, it's almost hard to not be successful if you're deliberate about, okay, figuring out what the dream is. And you have to have the dream.

Part of the problem with willpower is nobody changes their life just because I've helped more than a million people with goals. I've still never met somebody who's like, yeah, today I just decided to have willpower. I woke up today and decided to have grit. And that's never how it works. What always happens is one of two things. Desire or disappointment. One of those gets big enough desire or disappointment. Because nobody willingly leaves the comfort zone.

And they shouldn't. The first name is comfort. Like, the only reason people leave the comfort zone is there's something outside it worth being uncomfortable for. So you've got to have the dream. And then where people get stuck with planning is. Dreaming runs on optimism. Planning runs on realism. And it creates this tension.

You said the word tension earlier. Like, dreaming is all. Anything's possible. And planning, it gets pretty real. And people have a hard time with that. And then the doing is the dream. The plan's not enough. You actually have to do it.

You've written books, like, and I guarantee people come up to you and say the same thing. They say to me, oh, I've always wanted to write a book. I've always. And you want to say, you can. Like, no one, like, in this country, especially if you want to publish a book, like, you can do it this weekend. Like, it's wide open. They never get to the doing part of it. And then review is challenging because it's the easiest to do and the easiest to avoid.

People hate review. Like, people say this, they'll go, I didn't want to find out I was sick, so I didn't go to the doctor. Which meant they got sicker. They'd rather die than do the review of being like, oh, so that's an issue. We should address that, bro. And I, the first time I saw this, that people hate data was at a restaurant. And they. It was the first time they'd ever added the calories to a menu.

And people were furious. People open it up and they're like, oh. And every order changed to a grilled chicken salad with dressing on the side. Like, not the side of the plate, the side of the restaurant. I'll just look at it longingly from the corner. And so that's what a review tells you. But the line there that I use is, data kills denial, which prevents disaster. It kills the denial which prevents disaster.

And especially creatives, they're great doers, but man, they don't pause enough to go, am I heading the right direct? I'm making a. I feel like I'm doing a ton. Am I headed in the right direction? If you are a creative or manage creatives or run a small creative business, you've seen a lot of momentum, not turn real results. Where you go, hey, we worked really hard on that. How many customers did it add? And you go, four. Four. Like we had it. And go for that was a huge initiative.

And it felt so exciting. You're like, yeah, we didn't review it until the very end. And then we were shocked to find out it generated four people. And you go, that was an expensive act of doing. So that's the kind of four things in a row, dream plan, do review.

That's so good. To your point about writing a book, one of the things that people often, as you say, people come up to you and say, hey, I would love to write a book. I always tell them, your problem is you're trying to write a book. Like, nobody writes a book. Like, John Acuff doesn't write books. You sit down and you write 500 words at a time, right? Or maybe you write a couple of sentences and I try to reframe it for people and say, listen, stop trying to write a book and instead just start trying to write 500 meaningful words or just 500 words, period, and just do that like a sequence of days in a row. And pretty soon you're going to be like, oh, I've got a book. Who knew? But that reframe right to your point.

That's why people procrastinate, because it feels so big. It's like, how do you write a book? You don't. You just write several sentences in a row and then the next day you do the same thing, and the next day you do the same thing.

And then you look up and all of a sudden. And that's how life works, too. It's always days stacked on days like nobody. You could apply that same theory. Like nobody. Parents like you every day you're parenting. It's not like I raised my kids. It's no every.

And if you have kids that are. We have kids similar age. It's harder on this side. Nobody told me that. Nobody told me adult kids are harder than young kids because. And David Ashcraft, our mutual friend, finally told me, because I asked him and he said, the stakes are higher and you have less control, and that's A difficult set of conditions. Like he said, if your 8th grader gets cut from volleyball, that's sad. If your 28 year old gets a divorce, that's tragic and you have less control over that.

And so yeah, there's that tension. So I'm not, I didn't, I'm not raising kids every day. I'm working on being a parent.

Yeah. I want to ask you one more question because you talk about the, some of the motives for this. You talk about how procrastination is the most well funded fear in human history. What do you mean by that? And who's doing the funding if that's the case?

Yeah. Hulu doesn't fund inner critic like Netflix doesn't fund perfectionism. But you better believe Instagram and Netflix and Hulu and Amazon prime all fund procrastination. They're funding that with billions of dollars of research and content. My favorite quote about that, reed hastings, the CEO of netflix said in 2017 at the LA summit, our number one competitor is sleep. Like they're worried you're going to go to sleep. Like they're worried you're going to get in shape, they're worried you're going to write a book. So give yourself some grace that like it is harder now because you have a casino in your pocket.

Like you have an escape mechanism with you and at all times. And it is geared to make sure you don't do the goals because their whole business model is your attention and your time. So you're in this constant war with the smartest people, the best programmers, the best psychologists, researchers, whatever that are actively trying to make sure you give them your time instead of the thing you really want to do. And nobody feels better after like a long doom scroll session. I've never met somebody who said I feel refreshed and renewed. I'm glad I did that. That was a good use of those two hours like they. I was.

I'm so glad I poured into that. And so that's what I mean by it's well funded. And I just don't we talk about it a little bit because we'll go, oh, it creates comparison or whatever. But I just don't think we tie it enough to like wow, it's extra hard to do this thing. Well yeah. Because you're the. Your opponents are amazing at it. And so like this.

So silly. I did a post the other day on LinkedIn which I'm loving LinkedIn lately. I don't know like when you and I connect next, let's talk about what you're up to and what I'm up to. Cause there's so many wild things going on. But I wrote a post about the $9 Sleep app Sleep Hack nobody talks about. And it was in essence about just leave your phone downstairs if you want to sleep better, leave it in another room. And I told a friend that he's. That's my alarm clock.

And I was like, they sell those on Amazon. They're $9. This one, I found them when I had 27,000 reviews. It's so it's well tested idea. And it was $9. And so this I. Because for me, anyway, there are some people that have the level of discipline where their phone can be next to them and they're not tempted to use it or be on it at night. Especially when their willpower is the lowest.

For me, dude, if it's in the room, game over. Like, it's so good. I'm not trying to criticize Netflix or Instagram, Hulu or anything. Like, they're so good at what they do. Like, I'm just trying to stack the deck in my favor, like, and leave it downstairs. Because my ultimate thing I want to do is I get up at 4:55 to go do this workout. That's what I want. Like the drive home from that is the.

Is such an amazing 15 minutes because I've done something really hard with a bunch of guys I love and like, I'm really satisfied and proud and full of endorphins. I want all of that. But at the night before, if night me has a phone next to him that has all of recorded history on it and all of the new stuff and so, so many great video. Forget it, dude, I'm doomed. And so that's those little things where I'm like, okay, if I think of procrastination as a game, that's one of the ways I can play it. I just, I leave it in, I leave it downstairs. And what a crazy sleep hack that is.

That's so great. Again, night me versus morning me. Like night me.

I want them aligned. I don't want them fighting. I don't, I don't. Like again, you just. When you say it that way, you see the ridiculousness of getting up in the morning and be like, dude, why are we so wiped? And nightmare. Sorry. I ate lasagna at 11. I just, I was bored and we had lasagna.

Like what? And then. And so, yeah, if you think about it that way, it does kind of another thing. I'll do this is another silly one. I'll use the momentum of as soon as I get home from a trip, I unpack. Like, I unpack the second I get home. Because if I don't. Everybody's had this experience where your open suitcase grows roots. Like it roots itself to your ground.

And, like, you'll pull stuff out of it for days. And I'm like, no. Like, I got a little bit of momentum. I'm just pulling the driveway. Like, I'm going to unpack it. And that's the kind of thing for me, that's the trip isn't over until that, like, the trip is. And if I can continue to find little spots in my life like that, then I don't. It takes me seven minutes to unpack it, versus it hangs around and I procrastinate.

And it again, it grows roots. And so little things like that I think are fun. And that's how I stay productive. I couldn't have written this on book two. Like, I couldn't have said procrastination proof. Never get stuck again on book two. Cause I didn't know how. It would have been an arrogant, untested idea.

On book 11, I feel pretty good about being like, hey, I figured out how to not procrastinate. I think you'll love this. Like, I have no problem book 11 being like, I've learned how to. As somebody who procrastinates, this is the way I think you'll really enjoy it.

Procrastination proof is available now wherever books are sold. I want to circle back to something John said that really landed for me, because I think it's the kind of idea that can change the way you move through your day if you let it. He said, the person who has to do it later is also me. Let's sit with that for a second. Because most of the time, when we put something off, we're not thinking about the future version of ourselves as a real person with real limits and real stress. We treat future us like some sort of superhero who will magically have more energy, more clarity, and more willpower. But future you is just you, probably a more tired, more pressured version of you. Every time we procrastinate, we're essentially handing a heavier bag to someone who's already carrying a full load.

And I love his reframe on discipline. Make tomorrow easy today. That's not about gritting your teeth. That's about generosity. It's about treating your future self like someone you actually care about. So here's my challenge for you this week. I want you to identify one thing, just one that you've been putting off. Not because it's unimportant, but precisely because it is important.

The conversation you need to have. The project you need to start. The decision you've been circling around for weeks. And I want you to ask yourself John's question. What is procrastination solving for me right now? What discomfort am I avoiding? Because once you name it, it loses a lot of its power. Hey, thanks so much for listening. If you'd like all of our interviews in full, including this one, you can get them absolutely free@dailycreativeplus.com that's where you go. And just enter your name and email address and we'll send you a private feed to listen to all of our interviews in full, absolutely free.

My name is Todd Henry. If you'd like more information about my books or my speaking events, you can find it@toddhenry.com until next time. May you be brave, focused and brilliant.