Beat Procrastination

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Host Wayne Rivers appears in front of a white screen and talks to the camera.
On screen text, Wayne Rivers, Performance Construction Advisors

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WAYNE RIVERS: Hi everyone. This is Wayne Rivers at Performance Construction Advisors, where We Build Better Contractors.

This week I want to talk about beating procrastination, something that we all perhaps struggle with from time to time. Before I do that, we have a webinar, March the 31^st on cybersecurity. Be on the lookout for that. And our final Boot Camp for the first half of the year is March the 18^th in Charlotte, North Carolina. So get your folks signed up, contact our Charlotte for the Charlotte Boot Camp and we'll be off and running.

Okay, this idea of beating procrastination came from George Stern who writes really good articles that I find from time to time. But one thing he does uniquely is he includes an infographic with his articles, which I like. I mean, the visual representation I think helps concepts sink in. He said about procrastination: "Most people think it's a personal flaw, but it's not." Okay, I'll buy that. I'm happy to hear that. He says, "It's mostly friction that causes people to procrastinate." I would like to add to that, dread. I know that when I have projects looming, sometimes I dread the project. Then once I dig in, I'm like, "Oh, golly, that wasn't so hard." So dread is a piece of it too.

What gets put off? Well, big picture stuff generally gets put off, strategy, for example. Strategy is incredibly important, but it's rarely urgent. So just this week, we had a construction firm and they wanted to do some long-term strategic planning. And they contacted us and they said, "Well, we're building new headquarters. We've got ..." Oh, I forget, there were some other things. There were two or three other projects that were kind of looming, oh, getting ready to go into the busy spring, et cetera, et cetera, and so they want to put it off.

So they know it's important, they really want to do it, but, "Ah, 6 months from now, 12 months from now, we'll get around to it." It's rarely urgent, but it's always important. And then the other thing that gets put off is the uncomfortable stuff, especially people issues. Nobody wants to deal with interpersonal conflict or controversy or whatever's happening in the workplace.

All right, now what about this is important to you? Well, we all procrastinate and to the degree that we can avoid procrastination, then life is a little bit simpler, isn't it? So George had seven tips for how to beat procrastination. Number one is give yourself, I mean, this sounds good. His recommendations reminded me a little bit of Atomic Habits, the James Clear book. But some of these sound a little bit offbeat, but I think they're pretty cool.

Okay, the first thing is verbal, give yourself a countdown. So give yourself a one-minute countdown. Set your watch or your smartphone or whatever. Give yourself a one minute or a five-minute countdown before you're going to dig into a project. And then state your intention out loud. You know who does this? People on submarines because what you want to do, and I'm not sure if airline pilots do this or not, but I know in boating and specifically in the Navy, you want to state your intention so your colleagues can hear it. And then you also want to demonstrate what you're getting ready to do.

So if I do this, if I say, "I'm going to turn to port," wait, that ain't port. And so anybody on the flybridge with me can see that, "Hey, Wayne, you stated your intention was to turn to port, but you've just turned to starboard." So before you actually make the mistake, you represent what you're going to do. And then somebody has a chance to backstop you a bit and say, "Hey, wait a minute. Let's think this through." Okay?

The second thing, and boy, this is so common-sense, ditch your phone. Get rid of your phone. Put your phone in a drawer, leave it in your truck in the parking lot. Don't bring it in the office with you because let's face it, when I get that little text thing, it's really hard to keep focusing on what you're doing rather than grabbing the phone and seeing, "Oh, my buddy just texted me to have lunch or whatever."

The third thing, this goes way back, I'll give you a little color on this in a second, but do the hardest thing first. So this is, I think a real story. I don't think it's apocryphal, but gosh, I've read it a dozen times and I've heard Zig Ziglar and other motivational speakers talk about it. And it's a story about Andrew Carnegie and Ivy Lee. Ivy Lee was one of those time and motion study specialists, I think in that first half of the 20^th century. And Andrew Carnegie was a tycoon and he had a million projects and just all kinds of things going on in his orbit and he was struggling.

And Ivy Lee came in his office. And Mr. Carnegie was clearly in some distress and he said, "What do I do about this?" And Ivy Lee said, "Make a list of everything, every project that you have in front of you, and you start with number one, and you do not move to number two until you are complete with number one." It sounds like the most basic information. And Carnegie wrote him a check a few weeks later for $25,000, which was big money back then in the, whenever it was, 1920s or '30s. I'm not sure what it would be worth today, but it's a lot. And he sent a note and he said, "This is the best piece of business advice I've ever gotten."

And whether apocryphal or not, it's a great story, but it makes a lot of sense. Do your hardest project first, your most challenging project first, maybe your most potentially impactful project first. And then don't move on to number two until number one is done.

Okay, number four, undertake projects at peak energy. Some of us are morning people. I do much better in the morning. My wife is the opposite. She'll not attack projects first thing, but then in the afternoon, she starts to get more energy. And boy, by five o'clock when I'm ready to shut down, she's a ball of fire. So it's just, know what your peak energy is, if you're a morning person, if you're an evening person, whatever it happens to be, and tackle projects when you're at your best.

The fifth, next action. What he said was, "Define the smallest step that visibly moves the task forward." There again, Atomic Habits. One of the things James Clear suggested, for example, is if you decide, you know what, I'm going to run a marathon this year, but you haven't run in a while. And so how do you go from 26 miles breaking it down to the smallest step that moves the task forward? Put your running shoes beside your bed. Put your running shoes and socks beside your bed so when you crawl out of bed in the morning, the first thing you do is slip into those running shoes and now you're ready to go out and tackle the day. Great suggestion.

Number six, change your space. This is a Dan Sullivan. You've heard me talk about Dan a million times. He's a genius. He had this idea, this radical concept. I bought into all of Dan's concepts except for this one. I couldn't quite bring myself to get there.

But in the context of changing your space, Dan Sullivan said, "You should not have an office in your building. You should have a blank table in a blank room, no pictures, no nothing, no windows hopefully, a blank room. You should have a table and you bring in your work, or you bring in the people with whom you need to work. You work on it until it's complete or until you've made that next step. And then you take that stuff and you put it away wherever. You close that file on your laptop, whatever, and you move on to the next thing. But you do this in a blank space where you're not distracted by all these things."

He said basically, "If you do that once a week, that you'll advance your career immeasurably in three years time if you do it just once a week." I've never been able to get there, but it is a cool concept. It does make sense if you think about it.

And the seventh thing is, use a timer. Boy, this is simple. I'm going to work on this project that I've been dreading or putting off, or that's really super challenging. I'm going to work on it for 30 minutes in the morning and one hour after lunch. And set a timer, your phone. I used to be a runner, but your watch, whatever, set the timer. It's so easy, and you'll be surprised how fast the time goes. Okay, say you're going to work on it for an hour. At the end of that 60 minutes, you may say, "Wow, this is going pretty well," and stay after it. But using a timer so that you know you're not going to be married to that project the rest of the day or week or month. Okay?

He wrote that procrastination is a learned behavior, therefore it can be unlearned, which is very encouraging, I think. So how can you find ways to reduce friction in your day? If procrastination is all about friction, as George Stern says, then how can you find ways to reduce friction? Where the term friction came from for me and probably Dennis, you heard us talk about the Experience Economy so many times.

And that was one of the keys in that book, how can you reduce friction specifically for your customers? But think about it, it applies to yourself. It applies to your co-workers. It applies to your customers, of course, but your trade partners. How can you reduce friction in your interactions with all those people? It'll make you happier. It'll make everybody else happier too, I think.

So let's hear from you, [email protected]. This is Wayne Rivers at PCA, where We Build Better Contractors.

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