The Disaster Known As Procrastination
Host: Isaac Mashman · April 22, 2022 · Episode 102 · 8 minutes
Transcribed from the episode audio and edited to read cleanly: names and terms corrected, grammar fixed, filler words and false starts removed, punctuation added. Words in [brackets] could not be made out with certainty. Wording can differ slightly from what was said; the episode itself is the record.
[Welcome] to Chase the Vision with Isaac. Yo, yo, yo, what is going on, everybody? Isaac Mashman here, and welcome back to another episode of your favorite podcast, Chase the Vision with Isaac Mashman, the show that is all about helping you become a more capable individual through me sharing my experiences and knowledge in business, life, and personal growth. Man, practice absolutely makes perfect, because the first, I don't know, two, three, four dozen times that I did that intro, I butchered it every single freaking time. I think I finally got the hang of it. Thank God, I got it down to a science. Anyways, I want to go ahead and talk to you about procrastination today, but I want to talk to you about it in a more straight-to-the-point kind of way, and that's very simply this: you either need to do the task now or you're not going to do the task at all.
You're going to be hindering yourself, shooting yourself in the foot, and doing yourself a massive disservice. But before I hop into it and expand on this topic in this conversation, I would like to remind you that the fee for listening to the show isn't monetary, and I'm not about to run an advertisement. Rather, I ask that if you get value from this episode, you share it with a friend, a family member, a business partner, somebody else that you also believe will get as much value from this episode as you did. I ask that you do that for every single episode, not just share the podcast once and think that your due diligence is over.
No, I would greatly appreciate the share. Word of mouth is how we keep the show growing and in momentum. I'm going to be doing the show regardless, but out of good faith, I would definitely appreciate you guys spreading the word about it. So anyways, let's go ahead and talk about this subject of procrastination.
I don't know about you, but in my own life, if I put something off and do it later, nine times out of 10, I regret that decision. I regret putting it off because the results are going to be hindered or it's going to lead to a more difficult situation. It's as simple as doing the freaking laundry. The other night I was going to go to bed, and I'm walking into the bedroom. The lady's already asleep, and I'm thinking to myself, man, I'm about to crawl into this bed and finally shut this mind off and get some rest and have a great day the next day.
As I'm walking in the room, I'm thinking to myself, crap, I have laundry to do. Laundry's in the washer right now. I can either switch it over right now.
I have a load of dry laundry, and then I need to switch over the wet laundry. Or I could just leave the laundry as is for tonight, wake up in the morning, and rewash the load of laundry because it's going to have [soured] in the washer overnight. I'm thinking to myself, oh my God, I really don't want to go back out of the room and then have a chance of waking her up, and then I have the cats meowing at me. But I'm thinking to myself, you know what, [I'll do it] anyway. I end up going, and I switch over the laundry. It's a stupid example to give, but it's an example that is legitimate, because if I had waited, then I would have been regretting it [the next day], because now I would have just caused twice the amount of work for myself, when it took me literally two minutes to go and walk my butt, even though it was like three o'clock in the morning, back to the laundry room and do it.
That is oftentimes the case with our business, with our life, with our careers, with our marketing efforts, with our branding efforts, with the tasks that we know we need to be doing, but we put them off because they're uncomfortable. It's absolutely vital that you start developing the ability and the willpower to just say, no, I'm going to do it. I'm just going to do it. One of the best ways of doing that actually comes in the form of taking a cold shower. I've talked about cold showers in the past, and then I slacked off on it. Guess what? The moment I slacked off on the cold showers and doing those things was, ironically, the time and the situation when my willpower started to get lower and lower and lower.
Napoleon Hill talks about nicotine. He doesn't expressly talk about nicotine in this conversation. He talks about cigarettes. He talks about tobacco. It was quite fascinating, because this audio is probably 40, 50, 60 years old. Napoleon Hill died in the 70s. I believe it was like the late 70s, maybe early 80s. I'm going to have to double check that fact. But he mentions how tobacco and cigarettes cause a person to lose their willpower.
It causes them to become addicted to the substance, to where they no longer have control over something. This is how most addictions occur. You throw the chemicals off balance, and you create this dependence. It's as simple as caffeine. Caffeine is a chemical dependence. Your body relies on that feel-good stimulant. Whenever there's something in your life that starts to deteriorate and break down your willpower, you have to have the serious conversation and say, wow, this is actually making me reliant on something that I shouldn't be relying on. No longer am I relying on my own self-control; something else is kind of taking over my body. Now, you can break that curse and break that habit as quickly as you want to.
A lot of people don't want to think like that, but if you build yourself back up and you reestablish the willpower, you have the ability to control everything in your life.
It's not like you lost control. You gave away your control, which means that if you gave it away, you can take it back. You can take back control over your life. So whenever you procrastinate and you put a task off, you're establishing this habit of doing things later. Then tomorrow comes, and you're like, I'll do it tomorrow. Then you get distracted, and you're like, let me put it off, let me put it off. Let me go ahead and do it [later]. I'll do it tomorrow. I'll do it the next day. I'll do it next week. I'll do it next month. Why are you waiting? Seriously.
Something that I've started to do, whenever I have the situation to book a call with somebody who I know I'm going to need to talk to, is rather than saying, let's do the call next week or next month, I'm like, what is the quickest you can do this?
When can we get this call on the books? It's not that I necessarily want to have that conversation, but I know putting it off is just going to be a waste of time, because what am I doing now versus what am I going to be doing then? It's still going to be an open space on the calendar, so why not cross that thing off today, feel better about it, and start reaping the benefits of that conversation, or of me doing that task? Just like me doing the laundry: guess what, I wake up today and the laundry is good to go. But if I had waited, then I would have had to rewash it.
I would have had to put it through [again]. Same thing with taking out the trash or cleaning the house or calling a prospect or creating a piece of content.
I'll create that content later on. I'll create that content later on. Today, prime example, I put off creating these podcast episodes until the evening time, and it's 12:33 at the time of recording this. Granted, I'm recording this a week in advance, but I know that if I had waited... I had the decision. I just recorded episode 101, and I'm like, I need to put out a piece of content on Friday. I know that if I did not create that piece of content today, while I'm still in this energy and frequency, then Friday would have come, and I would have been like, you know what, man, it's going to be another midnight project.
It's going to be another midnight thing. So why not get ahead of the schedule? Why not get ahead of your tasks and your to-do list and the things you do?
You just make the difficult decision, you do the damn thing, and you just cross off and eliminate procrastination from your life. Instead of waiting, start now. That's how you maintain your willpower. That's how you maintain that control of your life. If I could leave you with a closing thought: be aware, be self-aware of what things around you, what situations, and what external influences may be affecting and deteriorating and destroying your willpower as a person. If you're aware of it, then you need to start taking action steps to maintain control of it. Keep that in mind. Don't put things off, and speaking of not putting things off, what are you waiting for? If you got value from this episode, share this with a friend. Come on now. Stop lacking.
Stop procrastinating. Share Chase the Vision. Share this episode with somebody else who will also get value. There's no need to put it off and say, oh, I'll share it tomorrow. Share it now. Anyways, much love. I'm going to shut up. Have a great weekend, and I'll talk to you Monday.