Sticky Learning Lunches #36: Keep Putting Off Your To-Do List?

Today's topic, Annoyed That You Keep Putting Off Tasks Part 3. Find out why you procrastinate, how to avoid it, and simple tips to start doing the tasks that you are putting off.

You Can Read the Full Transcript Below:

Nathan Simmonds:

Good afternoon, sticky learning. Lunches. Lunches. Gonna give a couple more seconds while we wait for the last few people to come into the room. Good afternoon, Colin. Darren, good to see you, Tim. Welcome as always, just as we're getting ourselves in, just gonna make sure, let's get these phones on flight mode, zero out the distraction, a hundred percent attention. Just gonna give it a moment. Hello, Claire. Good to see you. Welcome in. It's Thursday, good to be here, and we're gonna dive in, in just a moment. Karen, good to see you. Thanks for being here.

Nathan Simmonds:

So right now, before we even get into today's session, those of you that are here now ready to start that thing that you said that you were procrastinating on or had been procrastinating on you, hopefully, fingers crossed, you've come up with one or two actions that you could have taken or have taken to help move you forward and get that thing done. Get it off your to-do list, stop the procrastination, and you know, get that action in place. How are you progressing on a scale of one to 10, one being not at all, 10 being completely taking action.

Work on your procrastination and be more productive

 

Nathan Simmonds:

On a scale of one to 10, whereabouts are you on actually moving toward getting that thing done? 10, one, not at all. 10 being complete action or taking action? We've got an eight. Good. We've got 10. Good. So those things that you said, happy days. Yeah. Nice. Got another 10 in there. So those things that you said you were procrastinating on about, even with two 20 minute conversations or two 30 minute conversations, you've now come up with one small action that you could take and you have taken, and you are now moving forward to get that thing done.

Nathan Simmonds:

Howard, no need to apologize that you are with us. That's all that matters. This is it. This is as simple as that. When you see it as too big and it's over overpowering, you know, it's too big. It is. You know, it's the big hairy ugly frog that we don't wanna eat. You know, we, we find reasons and we make the excuses to put it off, but actually one small action moves you closer towards it. How do you now feel in one word about that thing that you are procrastinating about?

Nathan Simmonds:

Knowing now that you've taken at least, you know, 1, 2, 3 actions against it. How do you feel about that thing? You are procrastinating about? new faces in the room. I love this. Good to see you, Basan. Thank you for being here. Lynn. Petra, good to see you again. Ramla. Rock and roll, productive. This is exactly what it's about. You know, there was a reason why you are procrastinating about that thing. How long has that thing that you've been procrastinating about being in your mentor, on your mentor to-do list? How long has it been there for?

Nathan Simmonds:

Do you have the wherewithal to take action once I'm in control? Several years, two days? Absolutely. Now, it might be two days worth of procrastination, or several years, but actually now you've taken an action. You're mo you know, you've now taking one small step. The journey of a thousand miles, as we all know, you know, it starts with one step. And the successes of tomorrow are made by the actions that we take today. Or they may seem like cliche memes or, or quotes. It's the truth and the moment, you can see the excuses that you are saying that we talked about in day one.

Nathan Simmonds:

Those seven excuses, easy, boring, certainty, thrill, whatever it might be, when we hear those words, we can understand that we're procrastinating. When we boil it down, we can then understand which one of the four values that we're, we're, we're moving towards, and which one of those two fears is starting to come up. This hope, this is all plugging into some of the thinking that's you, you're starting to see how you're talking, how you're behaving about certain things. And when you can see this a little bit more clearly, it just gives you an opportunity to do something a little bit differently.

Nathan Simmonds:

Good. And we haven't even got into today's session yet. I was just giving you the warmup of, you know, plugging in from yesterday and the day before. Quick recap. So everyone, you are in the room. Thank you for being here. Welcome to today's Sticky Learning lunch with me, Nathan Simmons, senior leadership coach and trainer for MBM, making Business Matter, the Home of Learning. And we are the leadership development and soft skills provider to the grocery and manufacturing industry. Idea of these sessions is to give you new ideas, uncommon thinking, delivered in uncommon ways to help you get uncommon results.

Nathan Simmonds:

More success, more successful than other people have been in their thinking and their approaches and their delivery. That's what this is about. And I'm gonna give you these micro learnings to help you be the best version of you in the work that you do right now and preparing you potentially for the return to work if that hasn't happened yet. Good phones, I've already done mine. For those that arrived afterwards. Phones on flight mode, a hundred percent attention, top of a fresh page. Let's get some, a fresh page for fresh thinking at the top of that page. Keep us, these are the things you wanna remember, remind yourself about.

Nathan Simmonds:

And when you go back and read it to reignite that thinking and help you really make this, this learning stick, that's what it's about. Making sure the behavioral change goes in, it stays there and you do something differently. Let's do this. Day three of procrastination, excuses. We covered human needs, the fears. Where does all this come from? So what we have, or when this comes up is we learn at a very early age that right and wrong is a binary equation. We learn that failure is bad and that you know that it's, you know, the failure is painful and success is good.

Nathan Simmonds:

And we learn to steer away from the failure. And we learn this as a is a simple yes or no. It's ones and zeros primarily. Where we learn this though is, you know, in, in early life, it's where we learn this first two fears is around the age of kind of 2, 3, 4 years old. We start to learn these fears. It's taught to us by our parents and our grandparents. They did the best that they could with the best that they had and to, you know, to deliver the best possible result they could. And that was in our parents, in know, in our, in our upbringing, which is where we are at right now.

Nathan Simmonds:

When we start to understand these behaviors and where these fears come from, we can start to unpick them when we then go to school. Who here, and I may have mentioned this before, I ask you guys here, who here remembers spelling tests at school? Yes or no? Who did spelling tests when they were at school? I am presuming this is probably a fairly international thing. Yes. Okay. So you would get, you know, when you were younger, you would get given 10 words and you would go home and you would learn those 10 words.

Nathan Simmonds:

And then next week you would you know, you would do your spelling test. Everyone remember this. And you would sit there and the teacher would read out the word, and then you diligently write it down and you get to the end of the words and hope that you, you know, you've done all your your revision and you'd learned these words by heart and how to spell them. And then you get to school and you write them down, and then you pass 'em to the person to the left. You know, correct me if I'm wrong, everyone, remember everyone with me on this, you know, you've written your 10 words down and you pass 'em to the person to the left, and you have to tick across them.

Nathan Simmonds:

And you are doing this for the person to your right. And the person to your left is doing this for you. And then what happens, you know, you get a series of ticks and crosses and then the teacher calls up the, the celebrates who got 10 out 10. Everyone's like, yeah, I got 10 out of 10. And maybe you didn't, maybe you got six out of 10, maybe you got five out of 10. And what are the sort of things, do you remember what the, the, the person to your left or to your right, whoever you gave your spelling test. Do you remember what they used to call you when now your so-called friends would call you when you didn't get know the highest score, or you've got the lowest score for whatever reason.

Nathan Simmonds:

And you don't have to write them in the, in the, in the chat box or the question box. You know, your so-called friends because we dunno any better. Then they're calling you thick or they're calling you stupid. So you start to learn this behavior. You know, they, okay, the people that get 10 out, 10, they get celebrated. But the people over here that don't know, that doesn't feel good. What we do is we experience insults and we start to learn that right and wrong is that binary equation. We start to learn, like I say that fear the failure comes with a price of pain. It doesn't feel good, and success feels good and is celebrated. So we always have to be moving towards success.

Nathan Simmonds:

But the interesting dynamic of this is that fear, sorry, that failure isn't the opposite of success. Failure is the route to success. You cannot have one without the other. They're not opposite ends of some of a spectrum. They're a continuum. They're part of the same thing. Night and day aren't opposites. They're one thing. They're a natural flow of harmony of how nature works. Now, up and down, left and right, doesn't matter. One isn't the opposite of the other.