These past 2 weeks I’ve been talking about the high-level strategies I’ve used to double my productivity and crush my procrastination. 2024 has been an incredible year for me as a result.
As I’ve said before, I’ve probably read just about every single major book there is to read on the topic of productivity.
And just before I sat down to write this email, I went back to an old report written by Jason Fladlien (genius marketer) on “how to double your productivity” that I read for the first time 13 years ago in 2011!
I wanted to see if there were some big things I might have missed these past 2 weeks.
What ended up happening is that I got super excited by all of the productivity hacks, tricks, and systems that Fladlien shares.
My brain started whirring: “Here’s the key again, it’s right here! Here’s how I can crush my work even more and become superhuman!”
I’ll stop here because I can damn near guarantee this is exactly how you feel when you read any new productivity tips or hear something explained in a better or more exciting way.
The problem is what comes next for most people. This is what I’ve discovered mainly about the topic of procrastination:
You can read all the productivity tips in the world, have them make complete sense to you, but if you have underlying limiting beliefs and you don’t address them, you will always fall back into your old patterns and slip right back into being unproductive.
For example, in Fladlien’s report he talks about how to teach yourself to write without stopping. When you can “just write without stopping,” what ends up happening is that you obviously write more, and with some practice, you end up writing with the same level of quality too.
More writing + same level of quality = more productive
This particular topic of writing without stopping has been something I’ve worked on a ton. I know all the tricks, like just typing for 5 minutes straight not caring about your writing quality, or even just typing gibberish for 5 minutes straight to get your fingers moving.
But because I used to have this unaddressed limiting belief of “I’m not good enough” running through my brain, I always doubted this productivity “secret.”
I doubted that the tactic would work for me. I doubted that I would have “good enough” writing if I didn’t stop and think about things. Without consciously knowing it, I simply felt like I wasn’t good enough to make this very simple productivity strategy work for me.
It’s honestly so f*cked up to think about in retrospect, and I’m “mad” at myself for not addressing these underlying issues and limiting beliefs sooner.
What I did for my whole life was run in the opposite direction of the belief that "I’m not good enough".
I tried with all my might to disprove the belief: “I’ll show you! I am good enough! See, look at how good I can be!”
This defiant way of approaching a problem either straight-up doesn’t work at all, or it works for a while but you end up burning out, exerting more mental effort than you need. That’s what happened to me.
It wasn’t until I sat with the “I’m not good enough” belief and looked at it (which is highly uncomfortable at the beginning) that I was then able to modify that ridiculous belief and move forward.
Now, back to the above example.
I was reading about Fladlien’s method for typing without stopping. Even though I’m practiced at this stuff now, I was starting to feel that damn limiting belief creeping back in: “I’m not good enough. I can’t do this.”
In the past, that would mean I’d procrastinate. I’d go distract myself with something else, and I’d get nothing done.
But instead, I recognized that script playing out in my head and then said to myself, "Oh, that’s Derek’s old ‘I’m not good enough’ script at work."
And that was enough. I hopped over to my Apple Notes and started writing everything you’ve read above this sentence. I put the productivity tip to use, and now I’ve written a quality email on how I’ve solved procrastination in my business life.
It is wild what happens to your productivity when you address the limiting beliefs that make you procrastinate.
Now, I have so much more I could write about productivity and procrastination.
I never even got to proper goal setting or half of the other little productivity tips I use daily. So I’ll have to save those for another tutorial.
I hope this series was helpful for you.
Have a great weekend!
– Derek
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