For the past week I’ve been talking about how solving my issues with procrastination and productivity has led to all-time highs in revenue in 2024.
These are major issues for entrepreneurs and solopreneurs at all levels of the game – and many of you have expressed that procrastination and productivity are your two biggest problems when it comes to starting or growing a business.
In this series of emails I’m walking you through some of the steps I’ve taken to “kill” procrastination and to work faster (and with more focus).
Productivity is about behaviors. Procrastination is about beliefs.
Yesterday I was talking about how trying to change my behaviors has helped with productivity but led to little success with procrastination.
Again, it was a critical realization for me (and maybe it is for you too) that there’s a big difference between productivity and procrastination.
- Productivity issues are related to speed while you’re working.
- Procrastination issues are when you can’t force yourself to start working on something.
To solve issues of productivity (moving faster while I work) I’ve mainly needed to focus on behaviors or little actions I take.
Here are things I’ve noticed that have sped me up (made me more productive). Notice how they’ll all in some way related to behaviors or actions:
- Only write about things I’ve actually done, not what’s sexy (or, research everything before writing)
- Write within a pre-established framework
- Set a timer while working
- Go to bed early
- Exercise
- Do breathing exercises
- Leave my smart phone in the other room
All these things are fine and dandy and they help me work more efficiently – but the problem is actually doing those things… and/or sitting down to work in the first place.
It’s a much deeper issue.
The problem I had previously was thinking that behaviors like these on their own were going to overcome procrastination and force me to want to get to work.
News flash: they don’t.
So how I have beaten the procrastination bug?
The answer lies in modifying my beliefs.
When I delay working on something I really WANT to work on – and even when I have the time I can’t force myself to do it – that signals to me that there’s an underlying belief that’s holding me back.
I’ll share the major limiting belief I have that makes me procrastinate in just a moment.
What I procrastinate on most frequently.
First, let me take you through how procrastination affects me in the CopyHour business. I need to start all the way at the beginning…
- What is the goal of a business? To make money.
- How does this particular business make money? Through the sale of courses that I create and affiliate products I promote.
- How do I get people to buy my courses? With sales pages.
- How do I get people to my sales pages (traffic)? Primarily with affiliate traffic and email marketing.
As you can see from above, there are at least 4 different things that this business depends on to make money.
I need:
- Course content to sell.
- Sales pages for my courses
- Emails to get traffic to my sales pages.
- Affiliates to send me traffic.
Now, what do I typically procrastinate on doing? All 4 of those things above.
- I don’t start making new courses which is why I developed the Email Delivered Courses method in the first place.
- I half finish sales letters at times.
- I delay on writing emails and getting ahead.
- I sometimes won’t reach out to potential affiliates.
I know I should be doing these 4 things – and I really WANT to do them, but sometimes I can’t seem to force myself.
There are other parts of the business that I procrastinate on too – like admin work and interacting with contractors. But those 4 above carry the most mental weight when I don’t get them done – which is no surprise because those are the things that make me money.
You might be in a scenario where you want to start an online business, but you keep procrastinating on getting going. And even though you really WANT to do it, there’s something holding you back.
That something holding you back, if you’re anything like me, is a “belief”, sometimes called a “limiting belief” or even a “mental block”.
How to figure out what your limiting beliefs might be.
Here’s how I ultimately figured it out. It was simple:
- My business wasn’t where I needed it to be, so I hired a business coach.
- After lots of patience trying to drag me along, that business coach told me to hire a therapist
- After procrastinating on hiring a therapist, I eventually did, and he helped me realize I have a deep-seated limiting belief that I’ve been running away from my entire adult life
Depending on where you’re at mentally reading this – I feel comfortable recommending that you, “Go hire a therapist”. Start with the big company you’ve probably heard of, Better Help, if you need to. I could talk about how to hire a therapist in a different email if there’s enough interest.
But now, let me open up for a moment and share the main belief I’ve discovered (with the help of a therapist) that holds me back – and leads to bouts of procrastination.
I suspect many people reading this right now have a similar belief (if you struggle with procrastination when it comes to putting your writing out into the world and starting a business)…
Again, this is a deep-seated belief that I didn’t even really consciously know was floating around back there in my mind. But I’ve been running away from this belief for my entire adult life – and I’ve gone to extremes to try to prove my own belief incorrect.
My limiting belief is: “I am not worthy”.
God, that is painful to type out and send to an email list filled with tens of thousands of people… but it’s the truth.
Thinking back as far as I can remember into childhood, this belief that “I’m not good enough” seems to have been with me.
I don’t know exactly how it got there, but it did.
So if you think about it for a moment – how could any behavioral change overcome that belief?
For example, if I start going to bed early at 9pm and wake up at 5am to work (so I can be productive before the family wakes up) that’s a great behavior change. But in those early morning hours I’ll still feel like I’m not good enough and I’ll procrastinate on working with that free time.
The same is true for every other behavior that technically should put me in a good space to work.
This negative (and ridiculous) limiting belief overrides the system and produces procrastination.
In the rest of this series of emails, I’d like to show you what I’ve done (and still do) with this limiting belief of “I’m not worthy”.
Because if I find myself procrastinating, I’m now at the point where I can stop myself and say, “Oh, it’s my old ‘I’m not worthy’ thought pattern.”
Then I work with the belief, stop procrastinating, and get back at it.
Tl;dr
- I haven’t been able to cure my procrastination by changing my behaviors. Behavior change is how I become more productive.
- I HAVE helped my procrastination problems by figuring out the underlying limiting belief that causes procrastination. I used a therapist to help me figure this out.
The next emails will describe what I do systematically with this limiting belief to crush it and crush procrastination in the process.
Let’s talk about it tomorrow!
– Derek
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