Join Dean Jackson & Dan Sullivan in this first episode of the Joy of Procrastination.
Transcript: The Joy of Procrastination Ep001
Dean: Dan Sullivan.
Dan: Dean Jackson.
Dean: Here we are. Look at this. Oh, by the way, we are recording this right now just so you know. I want to note that this is exactly 51 hours after we had a conversation and decided that we should do a podcast series called "The Joy of Procrastination." Here we are, 51 hours later, and we're recording right now.
Dan: Yeah, that was a Saturday at lunch at a very favorite restaurant of mine. I have to tell you, looking back, I have to say that that was one of the most exciting probably half hour, 40 minutes, when we were just talking about the possibility of doing what we're doing right now.
Dean: Yes. I think you're right. Part of it was that it was the 30 minutes that we had been talking, and then we both realized that would be a great podcast, what we've just been talking about, you know? Yeah.
Dan: Yeah. What occurred to me, and I just, for those of you listening, I just talked to ... First of all, Dean and I are great conversational buddies. Every time he comes to Toronto, we pick one of two restaurants. They're both French restaurants; Jacques and Le Sélect. If you guys are coming to Toronto, you might want to look them up. Jacques Bistro and Le Sélect Bistro. Strangely enough, I have a favorite table in both of them, and it's table number ten. If you are visiting and you go to either Jacques Bistro or Le Sélect Bistro and you say, "We would like to sit at number ten," and they're likely to say, "You can't have it. Mr. Sullivan is going to sit there."
Dean: "He'll be here any minute." That's right.
Dan: "He could be there any minute."
Anyway, what I said to Dean, just for those of you who are taking this in, is that I've been coaching entrepreneurs for 43 years, since 1974, so I'm in my 43rd year. There's like a spirit in the room, like you're having this conversation, but there's a presence in the room regardless of what's being talked about, and it's the fact that every entrepreneur I've ever known has this secret life, and the secret life is the time when they're procrastinating and they feel utterly alone and totally isolated with that experience. I just thought it would be a neat thing that we actually made this a topic of discussion and had the other 7.3 billion human beings on the planet who procrastinate actually get the benefit of some of the thinking that both Dean and I have had about how you come to grips with this very interesting experience.
Dean: Yes. I'm excited. I think we should start with what you were telling me on Saturday about how you, trying to embrace that procrastination and use it. Let's start from there.
Dan: Yeah. A lot of my experience as an entrepreneur really has to do, because, first of all, a little disclosure, Dean. Those of you who know the Kolbe profile, Dean and I are both 10 quick starts. That's one common feature that we have. That's in the Kolbe system. These are people who just like to take action, like having a discussion at lunch and starting a podcast series on Monday, a Saturday, and 51 hours later actually produce the thing that you talked about. The other thing is that we're both ADD.
I'll tell my story, Dean, and you tell your story.
Dean: Sure.
Dan: The whole thing is that I get up in the morning, and I have a sense of real disequilibrium about what the most important thing is to focus on that day. A lot of different possibilities suggest themselves to me, but what I've discovered is that if I choose one, I still have the feeling that maybe I should have chosen the other.
This is an internal process. People from the outside don't know that I'm doing this. This is all a personal experience I go through. People say, "You're so focused, and you're so orderly." I can tell you quite frankly, I don't experience it that way. I procrastinate a lot where I know I have to do something, I know I have to get it started, but I introduce something of lesser importance on the schedule, and I keep pushing off the really important thing I have to do.
Writing books, I write a book a quarter with help, and my part of it I push off to the last possible moment, and then I get a lot of stuff done really quickly. What I've noticed over the years, that I'm not unusual in this.
Dean: I think that's probably true.
Dan: What's your experience?
Dean: I look at that, like you and I both are 10 quick starts, which means we have lots of ideas too. My observation about my ability to come up with an idea and solve something intellectually at the idea level is infinite, but the getting the actual thing done requires it being done in real time, and that's where the procrastination often comes in. Is procrastinating the doing of something?
I, like you, and I think people are going to be fascinated, because I know that you very famously focus on doing three things a day, that that's your main focus. One of my main criteria is I look at, I have this guidelines where I ask the question, "I know I'm being successful when ..." and my number one thing is that I can wake up and ask, "What would I like to do today?"
I have adopted your process of picking the three things. It calms you a little bit. I think it makes it, when you realize that there's no way I can implement all the ideas that I have today, which is the only day that I can actually do something ... As I was actually thinking about it since we had the conversation, the reality about procrastination is that it can only be done in real time.
Dan: Yeah, that's for sure.
Dean: That's the one thing. We do have the ability to do things now even if it's procrastinating. That's the only time you can procrastinate.
Dan: I think the tension is there is because it's vying with actual performance. Procrastination is a fierce competitor against our actually doing stuff and actually getting them done. It barges in and it says, "No, no, no. You don't want to start any of that stuff. Let me use up your time for the rest of the day."
Dean: How do you embrace that? What have you found that helps you turn that into power?
Dan: Yeah, and this is very recent, Dean. I've been coaching since the 1970's and then had been an entrepreneur in one way or another for most of my life since the 20's. What I mean by that is that I've always had the tendency to take on big challenges which other people wouldn't think about taking on. I've committed myself to creating certain results. This is just part of how I operate in the world.
Then having made the commitment, so now it's public, I'm on the public record that I've committed to do this and there's deadlines and there's results that have to be achieved, then I get the full blast of procrastination, because I feel that somehow I don't have enough information to take action. I don't have a clear path to actually get to the result. I'm really afraid that I'll do it and then it won't be good enough and I'll be disappointed with the result. Then what's even more painful is that other people will be disappointed with the result.
I've just lived with this experience for a long time. Almost as long as I'm conscious I can remember this act of committing to getting things done with witnesses and then having to really furiously work at the very last moment to actually get them done so that I would maintain my reputation. "You can count on Dan. He'll get things done." In some cases I didn't, and I developed a reputation for not following through. That's the experience. That sounds pretty familiar, doesn't it?
Dean: Absolutely it does, yeah. The thing that I was happy to hear that we shared in common is this belief that procrastination at its root is really that I'm unclear on something. There's something that's blocking it. I've got some strategies around it too, but I'd love to hear how you embraced it.
Dan: Yeah. The more I've thought about it since going on 52 hours ago, I saw that there's really common patterns to this experience, that you feel you're experiencing it uniquely, but it's being widely shared without your knowing about it, that other people at this very moment ... For example, at this very moment probably it numbers in the billions, the number of human beings on the planet who are procrastinating about something. This is a very unifying, global human experience, except everybody thinks they're the only one actually experiencing it.
I think that our podcast here, which is called "The Joy of Procrastination," one of my intentions for it, Dean, is that people will realize that this is a completely normal I think universally shared experience.
Dean: I agree.
Dan: Going back to your comment, I think that the ... You're not clear about something, and because you're not clear, you don't feel a sense of confidence to move forward to actually achieve something that you know will be very important when it is achieved.
Dean: Yes.
Dan: Yeah. My breakthrough here, and this is about three weeks back, I was saying this whole thing about organizing myself in the morning, this is where it all starts. I get out of bed and I've got some routines that I do, like exercise and energy balancing and meditation with my partner and my wife, Babs, and we have the company Strategic Coach together.
Then it's about what am I going to do with the day. I know there's going to be three things, because I only set myself to actually achieve three things on any given day, three important things. I began thinking, "Hey, I constantly have this experience of procrastination. Why don't I let procrastination plan my day?"
Dean: I love this. This is what I got giddy about when you shared. I want to say that I'm happy that you only discovered this three weeks ago, because I felt on Saturday like you had been holding out on me for all these years for knowing this, but I'm glad that it's only been three weeks.
Dan: Yeah. I got very uncomfortable because I felt that there was going to be recriminations coming my way, but actually it was just three weeks ago that I did it. What I mean by letting procrastination plan my day, I get up and I just take a sheet of paper and said, "What am I procrastinating most about right now?" That's very easy because you can feel it. It's very emotional.
If other people are depending on you and you're past deadline or you're late, there's a feeling, kind of a field of guiltiness that you have about it. They're depending on me. They're probably getting worried. I'm causing stress for other people. That can be paralyzing actually that you're causing stress. It's not necessarily that you get real motivated when you feel that.
What I said is, "Let's plan the day on the basis of my biggest procrastinations." Here's the truth of the matter, and I've just discovered this. For me it always involves teamwork. It always involves teamwork, that other people are depending on me. This could be my team here at the company, or it could be teamwork, or it could be customers, in my case, clients, depending on me delivering some sort of something new that's valuable in the Strategic Coach Workshop. It could be outside commitments. It's usually about where I've committed myself. Again, I go back to that thing of committing.
What I do is I just go through and I come up, and I say, "Now I'm going to go after three of them today, three of these procrastinations." I know that if I work on the most important procrastination, it's actually the most important thing that I should actually be doing with my time today. I'm letting the power of the procrastination to actually identify the priority of the activities that I should be doing. I've done it for three weeks, and I have to tell you, I have never enjoyed three weeks more in my active adult life than I have the last three weeks.
Dean: It's like an adventure. You don't have to write it down. You don't have to do anything. It's like you wake up and there it is. You know what you're procrastinating.
Dan: Yeah. I always know when I wake up in the morning that I'm going to be procrastinating about something really important.
Dean: Exactly.
Dan: I said, "Let procrastination do the work." It's been living rent-free now for 70 years. Procrastination has been living rent-free in my brain. I said, "I'm going to get that sucker doing some work, proving its value." That's my insight. It was profound to me and it's had a profound impact.
Dean: It is absolutely profound. I've got a strategy that adds and enhances that, will build onto it ...
Dan: You're adding luster to my discovery.
Dean: There you go. Here's the thing, is that I found that when I'm procrastinating, which is often, that it's because I'm not clear or I've defined something as too big. I've just defined it "too much." "Write this ..." if it's this, "Write this email," or, "Write this book," or, "Write this program" or whatever. I started looking at the verb that I use to describe what it is I'm to do. What I found was that I started outlining and making a list of the verbs that go along with the action that I should be taking.
When I say, "Write this book," that is a very daunting thing, especially if you don't know what the next step is. When I made this list of the verbs, what I found is that there are four power verbs that are really the key to me getting things done. I found that "writing" is a verb that often triggers procrastination, but "brainstorming" is something that I'm ready to do right now. I could brainstorm at the drop of a hat. I'm ready right now. I love brainstorming. As a 10 quick start, just like you, there's nothing better than coming up with ideas [crosstalk 00:18:38].
Dan: Brainstorming is a wonderful activity.
Dean: Absolutely. Instead of saying ...
Dan: You know why? Brainstorming has no commitment to it.
Dean: That's exactly what it is. Whenever I find that procrastination kicking in, I'll define the verb for it as, "Brainstorm this." The power sequence that goes into order for writing for me is brainstorm, which leads to outlining, and then from an outline I can record a conversation or record an audio, just talking points from the outline, and then edit. I got that acronym, BORE, B-O-R-E, that's my action verbs, "Brainstorm," "Outline," "Record" and "Edit." If I just follow that wherever I am on the sequence, I think that would fit for almost anything. If you're having to do something, it's usually in creating some level of output.
Let's test it actually against some list of things. What has been on your list of things that you've been procrastinating lately, because I haven't yet been adopting that superpower of letting ... My procrastination is still living rent-free in my brain, but I'm putting it on notice right now, I'm going to start embracing it. Let's combine those two strategies and say, how do you start the process there? When you wake up excited and say, "Okay, procrastination, what's on my list today?"
Dan: First of all, there are quarterly patterns to my life. First of all, I have to create new workshop materials. With the 10x program that we're doing, there are structures that are in place like the moving future, the ABC model and the impact builder. These are repeatable thinking processes that we do. Most people really like them and they like doing them again, so they don't need anything new in their place.
Then I have about half the workshop where it has to be new material, because we're long quick starts and we are ADD, but so are a lot of the clientele, the entrepreneurial clientele. My clientele and your clientele are. They like new things. If it even sounds the same as last time, their mind switches off because there's a part of their brain that really wants new things, so I've got to have that new workshop.
The other thing is that I committed, and this has to do with how I'm leading my lifetime, Dean, but I committed that over the next 100 quarters ... I did these seven quarters ago, I committed that over the next 100 quarters, which would take me to age 95, I would create 100 books, a book each quarter. I started off by using your wonderful service, The 90-Minute Book. Then we quickly built a team inside so that I can actually accomplish that with a great deal of the work actually being done by other people.
There is a part of mine that's absolutely crucial for the other people to actually do their work, and that would be the topic of procrastination. Also, going back to the new workshop stuff, it's the new stuff where I would procrastinate. I would feel the pressure. There's deadlines approaching. I have to get things into the hands of other people if we're going to have a presentable product for the audience that we've set.
Then this year, this quarter, I have a special workshop, which is the Game Changer Workshop. I'm feeling that we're really behind in sales to fill this event. It's about six or seven weeks off. I'm feeling the pressure to actually get something done about it, to actually open the floodgates as far as applications coming in.
That would be the sort of thing that I'm talking about right here. Those would be three very, very prime examples. They're different from things I might have done in another type of light, in another point in my life, but they are very, very similar in the type of commitment that I would make to other people, where I'm going to pull off something really, really big and I commit at the beginning of the process that I'm going to pull this off by a certain date.
Dean: Great.
Dan: Yeah. I have to tell you that without the commitment I won't do it.
Dean: Right. I think you very publicly have committed to that. You're seven books in now; right?
Dan: I'm finishing my seventh book during the next four or five weeks, yes.
Dean: Right. That's fantastic. Do you see or think that that brainstorm idea would fit with how you address the procrastination for what you're doing?
Dan: Yeah. Now that you bring it up, I've actually realized that without actually knowing that we were doing this, we actually built it into the process. I reverse it. I do the O first. I do the outline ...
Dean: The outline?
Dan: Yeah. I brainstorm the outline.
Dean: Right. I look at those as, yeah, the brainstorming is coming out, the goal, the output of the brainstorm is an outline.
Dan: Yeah.
Dean: I think that once you just start, you call it "brainstorming." You're going to put it out just as the thoughts come free-form. Then notice that they're coming in through an outline form, and you start to see the connect- ... "Yeah, these are related, so, yeah, that's over here. This is related and that's over here."
I always find brainstorming very clearly leads to outlining, which is something more structured. Once you've got the outline, that gives you clarity. That's the thing about, that's where the action comes from is the clarity of knowing what the next step is. Often it doesn't even take that long to get to it. You'll be surprised.
I find that often I procrastinate making certain phone calls or sending certain emails or doing things that I don't know yet what I'm going to say or how that's going to go. Even ten minutes of just brainstorming the outcome or brainstorming the call or the email makes a big difference. At the end you're just so clear. Once you're clear, it's easy to take action, because you get that momentum of being excited about it.
Dan: Yeah. This is really interesting, because when I first started doing the book project where I was committing, I was going to do all the writing. "Write" is not a power word.
Dean: No.
Dan: "Write" is actually a paralyzing word.
Dean: It is. You're right. That's exactly right.
Dan: Because, first of all, you can see the vastness of the writing beforehand. If your first response to an idea is, "Gee, this is going to be a lot of work," that's a really sad situation.
Dean: I agree 100%. Yeah.
Dan: You showed me the diagram on Saturday. You were showing that when there's something to do ... I forget what ... The first thing, I think it was, that was a little diagram you were showing ...
Dean: Yeah. Yeah. I'm "Diagram Man."
Dan: How does that go from ... It's like there's two possibilities here, but you started in the same place. What's the first word that's in the circle at the top of the page?
Dean: The top of the page is the "Why?" The "Why" is the context, "Why am I even going to do anything?" It might be how can I generate more leads, or how can I get more referrals, or how can I ... whatever. Then the next step then is to brainstorm or expose yourself to "What's." "What could you do?" "What" is options? You could run a Facebook campaign, or you could run Google Adwords, or you could do print ads or whatever.
Dan: That just seems like a lot of work.
Dean: Yeah. Once you figure out what it is, then this is where the fork comes, that entrepreneurs often, they make the detour over to, the next level is, "How do I do that," and they don't know how, so they go down this path of having to learn how, which takes a lot of time before you can actually get to the point where you can do something. The other fork is instead of asking "How," I've trained myself to ask, "Who?" "Who could do this?" If there's somebody who knows how to do something, let's just find them. Then you're essentially done. That's a big procrastination eliminator is asking "Who" instead of "How."
Dan: Boy, that is really huge. The thing is that there's very little work in "Who."
Dean: That's exactly right.
Dan: There's an enormous amount of work, and it's work that you don't even know in "How."
Dean: Right. That's the thing. That "How" is figuring out, yeah, you don't even know what you don't know.
Dan: Yeah.
Dean: That takes time to figure that out so that you get clear on knowing what to do. That takes all the time then to get to "Done," but if you essentially find the "Who." It's next to "Done." I think that's where the impact filters really help. I think each of those things ... I think we could have a whole discussion just around the impact filter and another discussion just around that diagram that we've just shared there.
Dan: Yeah. You know what ...
Dean: We could have some brainstorming future episodes here right on the ...
Dan: Yeah. The thing that I love about this is that there's a movement from isolation to teamwork that takes place in that very simple diagram that you do, that what forces us to procrastinate is actually the starting position that I have to do this all by myself.
Dean: Yeah, that's it.
Dan: Yeah. That's a very paralyzing thought, "I have to do this all by myself," because I know that parts of what I have to do I'm not even good at.
Dean: That's the self-milking cow syndrome.
Dan: Yeah.
Dean: That's where people feel like they've got to ...
Dan: Can you explain that, the self-milking cow? It sounds gross.
Dean: That whole idea, that's what the entrepreneurs, that's exactly ... You put better words on it than I did, feeling like I have to do it all myself. That's like a cow, they've got to go out in the pastures and eat the grass and make the milk and then milk themselves and pasteurize it and package it and take it to market. All that stuff, it's when the real thing, the unique ability of the cow, is to make the milk. Everything else can be done by farmers. A cow's entire life changes when they're with the right farmer.
Dan: Right.
Dean: That's a whole episode. There's so much. That's a lifestyle. When I really embraced that, we've set up my whole organization around embracing the fact that I am a cow, and we are set up to embrace my "bovinity" and celebrate it, not try and get frustrated. If I have to ...
Dan: ... or change you, change you into something else.
Dean: Yeah, that's it. If I have to do something that requires opposable thumbs, that's where we're running into trouble.
Dan: Yeah. I grab a question here, because our two Kolbe profiles and the fact that we're ADD lends itself to brainstorming, but there are people who don't have our profile who also brainstorm. They brainstorm, but what I'm going to say, they certainly procrastinate, people who are very ... I know fact finders who procrastinate, follow-throughs who procrastinate, implementers who procrastinate.
My feeling is that you can have various ... For those who don't know the Kolbe, it's a way of discovering how you take action to get results. It's a test. Not a test, but it's a profile that you actually take which identifies your natural way of taking action to get results. I know people who know their Kolbe really down pat, but they still procrastinate.
Dean: I can't imagine what it would be like to come through as a 10 follow-through, how those people would experience things, but I imagine that their brainstorming would take the place, take the shape of making a list.
Dan: Yeah.
Dean: I guess. I think you'd see they're organized around ... or maybe they skip right to outlining just because that has more structure to it or whatever.
Dan: Yeah. The fact finders would brainstorm with facts. They'd probably put a lot of facts together to ...
Dean: Yeah.
Dan: They would draw connections and everything else and see that. Let's just go on the basis that we're talking about universal approaches here rather than making ourselves sound unique or something. We're just doing it.
What I think is that the context in which you're doing this is that you've made a commitment to other people or you've made a commitment to yourself. Commitments always entail a deadline, that a certain result has to be delivered at a certain date, and that gives us the real time intensity to it is that you're dealing with something that is always approaching you because it's in fixed time. You've actually done that ...
Dean: It's always another person. There's always somebody that is expecting something.
Dan: Yes. What I think you've introduced is, having created the pressure of the commitment, you then have to approach it with an activity that's free of commitment.
Dean: Oh, that's good. Yeah.
Dan: It strikes me that the brainstorming activity by its very nature is without commitment. You're not committing yourself to any particular result. You're just going to brainstorm to brainstorm. You've freed yourself up. You needed the commitment to probably move forward and be motivated to actually deliver a result, but then you have to turn around and approach this with an activity that doesn't have any commitment to it. Otherwise your brain gets paralyzed.
Dean: That makes total sense to me.
Dan: Yeah. I think that's why it works. In the ABC model that we do in Coach, I get people to identify all the experiences that, one, irritate them, that's on their platter right now, all the activities that are just okay, they're not irritating, but they're not very exciting either, and all the activities that are fascinating and motivating. They have five or six and five or six and five and six in three columns. Then I ask them to actually take a look at how much time of their total time they're spending on irritating activities, on okay activities, and then on their fascinating and motivating activities, how they're spending their time right now and 90 days from now how they want to spend their time.
In other words, everybody, given the choice, say, "I want to vastly reduce the number of irritating activities. I want to hold or decrease the number of okay activities, but I want to significantly increase the number of fascinating and motivating activities." Once I get there to that point, I say, "Okay, so now we're going to brainstorm," I actually use these words, "I'm going to brainstorm all the different things you can do to eliminate the irritating, all the things that you can do to delegate and automate the okay activities and all the things you can do to expand the fascinating, motivating activities."
I put a special emphasis that you're not making a commitment to any of these activities. You're just getting them out on paper so that you can see them. That's really what you're talking about, is that you have to get things out of your head, but it can't be under the pressure of commitment.
Dean: Right. Yes. I think universally I think people would embrace that idea of that definition of brainstorming. I don't know what it would be like to be an implementer or a 10 follow-through, if that's maybe built in and this is a workaround that you and I have had to discover because we're lower in follow-through and implementer. I don't know.
Dan: I don't think so. My sense is that they each procrastinate in their own way.
Dean: Yes. Actually, I think now that we're [pren-sin-sing 00:39:38] this conversation, I think we're going to start to hear back from people who will start sharing what their procrastination method is, how that manifests for them. I think that the universal thing is going to be because of unclarity, unclear.
Dan: Yeah. Some of the thoughts that you've had, I think we've established something very powerful just in this first podcast, this method that you have of "Why" and then a fork in the road, the "Why" either goes to "How" it goes to "Who." I think that's a very powerful ... That's something that anybody can take and do. You immediately, if you go the "Who" route, you immediately minimize what you have to do.
Dean: Yes, that's the whole point. I don't think we could do, maybe next time we could do a whole, do a deeper discussion about just that, that chart, because there's so many layers to it. It supports so many of the things that you've introduced to me in terms of unique ability and teamwork and process. That has been a big difference. When you really realize all of these things all fit together. When I completely embrace my "bovinity" as a cow and realize that if there's anybody else that could do any of the things that I need to have done, that that is what, that's the path I should be doing. Really, that the highest value, the things that create the biggest results for me, are when I'm doing the things that only I can do.
Dan: You're almost becoming the divine bovine.
Dean: Oh, that's so funny. I'll tell you, though, I'm so excited that all of these things are gelling together under this banner of procrastination, because that's the uniting thing. That's the baseline ...
Dan: Yeah. Not to touch a sore point, but can you imagine a procrastinating terrorist, what that must be like>
Dean: Oh, man.
I wrote down when we left on Saturday, I sat and I was journaling that this really, the goal of this could be to make productivity as effortless and joyful as procrastination. That's really what we're, when you were talking about letting it, using the power of it to sort your day, that right there is embracing it. It's serving a really great purpose.
Dan: Yeah. It's like almost anything that comes out in a product form. It starts with raw materials. The raw materials in themselves are not valuable at all. If you think about oil, for years and centuries and centuries and centuries all oil was was something that got camels' feet dirty.
Dean: And hard to get off, yes.
Dan: Yeah. It's hard to get off. You can't do anything with it, but it took the introduction of something, the internal combustion engine, before it had value. Then it had extreme value. We can treat procrastination as a raw material, but in its existing form it has no value. As a matter of fact, it has counter value. It undermines the value of our experience, but if we can treat it, and I think what we're going to do, Dean, through these talks, we're going to find that, first of all, we're going to really put a clear spotlight on techniques that we've both developed over the years to actually deal with this experience. I think we're going to create a lot of new ones just in the course of the discussion.
Dean: Yeah, I agree. I was looking down the list of the things that I just quickly brainstormed. Again, this is getting from idea 51 hours ago to action is immediately when, as soon as I left you, I sat down and I brainstormed some of the main things for us to talk about. I shared with you my idea of my acronym for GOLF, G-O-L-F, and that's something that we can talk about in another one, the idea of the 50-minute focus finder and the BORE, B-O-R-E, and "How" versus "Who" or "Who" versus "How" All of these, I've got a whole list of these. Some of them we've talked about on Saturday, but I already see how they can be a catalyst for creating something even different.
Dan: Yeah. I'm just reflecting here. It's really dawning on me as we're going through this podcast that probably every Strategic Coach concept and tool I've ever created probably has a starting place in the experience of procrastination.
Dean: You look at it. It's so clear. The impact filter is exactly that.
Dan: The strategy circle.
Dean: The strategy circle.
Dan: The moving future.
Dean: Yes. I find even bigger things, like the 25-year framework and the 80% approach. All of these things completely are strategies, workarounds in a way. That's what I call a lot of the things that I've developed as workarounds for being a 10 quick start with ADD.
Dan: It's amazing. We have about nine minutes, because I have a limousine waiting for me, and I can't procrastinate with this driver.
Dean: It's perfect.
Dan: He's a man totally devoid of sense of humor and flexibility and adaptability, so I've got to wrap up. I can't brainstorm with this guy.
Dean: I got it. You know, we've just stumbled on ... We've been experiencing here, this is one of the other things is synchronise and schedule. You can't procrastinate something that is synchronise and scheduled. You don't procrastinate workshop days, because they're on the calendar and people are showing up and there they are. You've got to be there. You can't procrastinate. It starts at nine. You and I made a commitment to each other to be at 4:00 on the conference line ready to record a podcast. You can't procrastinate that.
Dan: Yeah. Yeah. Why don't we do a little review of what kind of ground we've covered here just so we have some takeaways that we can enhance in the future.
Dean: I love it.
Dan: Yeah. I'll just go first. One of them I think is just the recognition that probably all human beings procrastinate. I'm just going to make a universal statement, and that it's an experience of negative stress for almost anybody that has characteristics of guilt, also shame, that they procrastinate, and they feel that they are utterly alone with this experience, that they alone are actually experiencing this but other people aren't experiencing this.
Dean: I think that you're absolutely right. I was quite happy to hear you share that with me on Saturday, because it was almost like news to me that you procrastinate too. I think people would look at you and think, "Wow, he's got it so together. There's no way that he procrastinates. Dan Sullivan? No way. Focus days and free days and buffer days and impact filters. There's no way he procrastinates. I wish I was more like Dan."
Dan: I wish I was more like Dan.
Dean: The thing is, you've created all of these things that are, they do work; you know? That's so funny. "I wish I was more like Dan."
Dan: Yeah. Also, I think that just the diagram, which we can probably reproduce so that people can download this.
Dean: Absolutely. Yeah, yeah.
Dan: In the future. The whole notion that start with why you're doing something, which I think is really crucial, because a lot of people don't. They start with what they're doing or how they're doing, so they actually don't start with "Why." Actually explain to yourself what the importance of something actually is. Then that crucial fork in the road is so important is that, does your mind go to "How" or does your mind go to, "Who," because all procrastination lies if you go to "How" where productivity and completion lies if you go to "Who."
Dean: I think that there's the thing, is like, I do the things where in some situations, when you look at it, in some situations you are the "Who." When you look at it, if you're going to write a hundred books, you're going to write next quarter's book, where you are the "Who" is, "Well, what's the book going to be about?"
Dan: Yeah.
Dean: "What am I going to ...?"
Dan: I'm the one who names the book.
Dean: Yeah, you name the book. You've come up with the content. You do all of that, but then the question becomes, "How do I get it into a book format?" You've got the ideas, but what? You've got the outline. You know what it is, and your process now for, "Who can milk me for this?" You've got the process set up to go into the milking shed and do the interview process, which is exactly the way that I do it. Go into the milking shed and organize conversation based around an outline.
You can get all of those thoughts, all of that milk, out into a format that can be recorded and edited and all of your thought is there. That's where you look at it, that without you having to write it, you can speak it, and you've got somebody on your team who can take my idea and the transcript and turn that into the book. There's lots of people who can do that, but only you know what you want to say.
Dan: Right. A cartoonist who does ...
Dean: Yes. It's even more.
Dan: Interpretation, yeah. Very, very fascinating. Let's just give ourselves a little pause to focus about what we've achieved here in hour number 52 since our Saturday lunch. What have we achieved in this first one? What do you think?
Dean: I've introduced you to my friction-free podcast method of just let's dial into the phone number and let's talk. This is the milk of this podcast right here. Now, from here, as soon as we hang up, Dan, we didn't have to do anything to start the recording. It already starts the moment we go. As soon as we hang up, this is going to set a whole trigger into action here, but this audio will get automatically emailed to a Trello board on my team where that will now automatically get turned into Episode Number 1 of The Joy of Procrastination Podcast. All we have to do is decide when we're going to get together again record the next one.
Dan: That's good, because I can go to a "Who," and that is my scheduler Anna, and we can take a look at it. That's all it requires on my part is a "Who," and all it requires on your part is a "Who." That will work.
Dean: That's it.
Dan: We're following the method. We're being good about the method here.
Dean: I love it.
Dan: You know what? Just as a thought about interesting is real disasters where we have procrastinated ourselves into trouble, and each of us shares one that ...
Dean: Oh, yeah.
Dan: The worst possible thing that could happen. The reason I'm saying that is because everybody's got one of those. You could probably learn a lot from the really, really bad ones.
Dean: Yes.
Dan: I think more people learn from other people's failures than they do from their other people's successes.
Dean: Yeah. That's it.
Dan: Yeah. Anyway, this is very exciting. I think this is infinite. There's limitless "bovinity" here in this ...
Dean: "Bovinity," yes.
Dan: "Bovinity" in this experience, yeah.
Dean: That's right.
Dan: More milk than we'll ever be able to get to.
Dean: I love it.
Dan: Thanks a lot, Dean.
Dean: That's exciting. Thank you.
Dan: Thank you, Dean.