 Did you know that there are four different types of procrastinator? I didn't until I started to delve into this issue very deeply but today I'm going to tell you about those four types and it can be very very helpful information because the kind of solution that would help one type may not help another type so if you can know which one you are you'll know exactly what your issue looks like, the sticking points that you need to work on and I'm also going to introduce solutions for each type of procrastinator so stay with me. Okay so I've made a full course already on procrastination and there's quite a lot in it this issue is a lot deeper than most people think it's not as simple as you know just do it or force yourself to do it or develop this one but we're going to get into that in a lot more detail here but I made this additional add-on piece of material here because quite often people would tell me things like David that piece of advice or that technique resonated with me worked for a while but then other issues came up so that's indicating that there's a sort of a deeper piece of work that needs to be done for that person really it's a different type of procrastination that's manifested on a deeper level but we're going to get into that I made this for people to try and identify specifically what are the issues that you need to be working on okay because the solution for one person may be different to another person but without delaying too much here four different types of procrastinator now I call these four types the first type is the emotional type the second one is the dejected type of procrastinator then there is the intellectual procrastinator and then finally we have the attached procrastinator now I'm going to explain all that in a lot more detail here but I want you to realize before I say any more about this these are the four types we're going to explain in depth these are not like personality types or traits that a person has you're not born as one type of procrastinator in fact nobody's born a procrastinator really these four categories are about identifying what are your specific sticking points what is the issue that's driving the procrastination that you should really be focused on because there are four different types of issues so it's not about personality traits or something this is about sticking points again I made this for people that said David I tried that technique it didn't work probably because they were trying a technique that was more appropriate for a different type of procrastination or procrastinator and they needed to do something else I'm going to give you very specific solutions at the end of this personally in psychology you know psychology is notorious for having categories and putting people in boxes and things like that I don't particularly like that approach and I don't want you to think of this these four types of procrastinator as very very rigid you know a definitive well that's me that's the type of one I am this is much more fluid we move in and out of these all the time you may notice that you're in a type of procrastination or you're a type of procrastinator for a period of your time and then you move up into a different one so we we move in and out of these categories so don't take the labels too seriously is what I'm saying and also another thing that's been to know and to know about this is this is a system I've developed through working with my my private clients worked with hundreds of people on this issue so this isn't coming out of extensive research this is my own interpretation of this issue and I want you to realize that there are no levels really in reality you could say but we're using these levels to conceptualize to make it simpler to make it easier to do a deep dive to find the deeper issue that may be causing this problem and that's a very vague thing to go deep so we're going to break it up into categories and these are where our four types are found or drawn from so with that being said we're going to look now at where this theory came from and four levels four psychological levels that are very important in determining which type of procrastinator you are so this system that I've developed here it works on four levels four psychological levels and these levels you can see them here they actually they're not distinct they build on each other like in a pyramid now the bottom one is the most fundamental and they go up to an apex and the one thing I wanted to realize about this level is procrastination manifests in different ways depending on which level we're at so let's say you have an issue of procrastination on a lower level that's where you should be focused you don't the point I'm making here is you can't skip levels with this if your procrastination issue is as you can see there if it's on the level on the emotional level for instance that is where you should really really be focused you shouldn't skip ahead to the behavioral level for instance but to be honest what I see is these four levels there's the outcomes behavior beliefs and the emotional level most people when they talk about problems of procrastination you know they can't achieve goals they're lacking in motivation they find themselves preoccupied with outcomes and the level of outcomes is all about you know well will I win will I lose will I pass will I fail will this be acceptable will this be unacceptable it's more about sort of how you'll be perceived in the outside world and this level is again it's where we all are preoccupied on and in order to sort of bring about the preferred outcomes people spend a lot of time going down into level two okay and level two is well if I'm going to get the outcomes that I want I'm going to spend a lot of time working on my behavior okay now you may have a sticking point on level one there's things if you you could legitimately be a level one have a level one issue and there's things we can talk about for that a lot of people go down to the second level and they try and modify their behavior and when we're talking on this level of psych this psychological level we're talking about decision making should I try harder should I try less harder should I study more should I study less should I exercise more or less should I stay up should I go to sleep should I be more disciplined should I you know what's your decision making like what's your planning like what's your what's your boundary issues like how are your boundaries this is all kind of if we have an issue on this level it's all about behavior modification okay particularly planning or excessive planning now that is a very you could have a sticking point procrastination on that level however if you also have a sticking point on the level of beliefs it's completely pointless to spend time on the behavioral level or the level of outcomes those come later okay those are of secondary concern to us if we have an issue on the level of beliefs and I think from my experience most people that I see for procrastination typically the most most of them are on the behavior problems and the beliefs issue problems some with outcomes and some with the emotional level but the issue of beliefs is really more about it's a deeper issue it's a place we'll find a deeper sticking points around procrastination and this is all about well am I good enough am I not good enough am I talented am I untalented is this goal I'm going to achieve hard or easy should I have to struggle or should I not have to struggle do I have high self-esteem or low self-esteem do I trust myself or not trust myself this is all the level of belief this is not about action taking action before this level is really resolved or kind of come to terms with or improved you could say the behavioral stuff is irrelevant at that point because nothing will change now some people have a sticking point on the fourth level and this is the most severe type you could think of these four types of of levels as incrementally more important the the bottom level is the emotional level this is all about anxiety fear feeling hopeless a lot of guilt shame isolation this is trauma driven this is in the level of the body okay and typically when it comes to doing things people will say look there's these intense emotions I experience it's even more fundamental than the beliefs or the self talk or the self-esteem stuff and we'll get into where that comes from now right but the most important thing depending on the level the psychological level you should read you need to identify which level you are at which where is your sticking point because that will determine what type of procrastinator you are or what type of procrastination problem you have if you have a problem on the fourth level you may have a level you may have to work your way up through all the levels you may have a problem at all levels you could say you could be someone who has only a problem on the top level the level of outcomes however I found that that's kind of unusual but it is definitely possible you'll have a sticking point at there's potential sticking points at all of these levels here but the most important thing to remember is you cannot skip levels if you're trying to fix your your procrastination issue I'd say the level of behavior and really you have an emotional problem with procrastination it won't work okay and this is why people say David I tried this I tried that and it didn't work it's because you're skipping levels okay so we can't really skip ahead we can't jump ahead we work on the level we're at and no one what level you're at is really what I'm talking about here today so we're going to talk about let's make this more practical okay this is much more about I'm just talking here now on these levels of the psychological levels what does it look like what do the procrastinators on each level look like practically speaking so let's take a look at that now so we're going to work on this from the most severe procrastination issue which is on the fourth level and this is what I refer to as the emotional procrastinator so let's take an example of someone who is an emotional procrastinator what does that mean really it means that this issue is kind of embedded in their body so the example here for Jake taking action towards any goal however small brings intense feelings of anxiety or dread into his emotional system so anxiety and dread it's so overwhelming that it debilitates him and at this stage he's learned to associate trying with fear or pain a part of him wants to move forward and take action but feelings of insecurity or lack of safety come up to prevent him he was constantly yelled at so this is a little bit of back story about how this issue developed for him he was constantly yelled at and shamed by his parents and some of his teachers as a child if he didn't measure up he was made to feel unworthy at times he was even hit physically or made go without food for failing to do what others deemed was required he was he's tried to discipline himself he's tried visualization techniques he's also tried to improve his self-talk but nothing worked and he has given up at this point so look at the things Jake has tried and he's the he's the emotional type okay the emotional procrastinator he's tried the visualization stuff he's tried the discipline stuff he's tried to even improve his self-talk the self-talk being on level three the level of beliefs Jake is on level four the whole issue that Jake is facing here and this is true for the emotional procrastinator the issue could be summed up this way a lack of safety so given the trauma that Jake went through earlier in life his body now someone put it to me this way it's like when we go through a traumatic thing like this the body remembers everything there's a book called the body keeps the score but the body kind of takes on these energetic assumptions and it gets into a defensive posture because of the past very very difficult challenges that it had to take on and it's become preoccupied with safety or and it doesn't feel safe so it's easy to see how Jake would have this issue but Jake you see he's tried to jump ahead to other levels he's tried to work on discipline for instance discipline is a level two issue now you can genuinely have issues on level two there is a lot you can do there and doing correctly most people are doing it incorrectly on level two but we'll get to that so what Jake really needs to do is to realize the most important thing for him to do in order to move forward with his goals is to start to foster a sense of safety in himself emotionally to learn emotional regulation how to be present with his feelings and above all not the judge himself and blame himself for that but we're going to get on to the specific solutions and techniques and strategies and tools that that each type can use a little bit later here but i want you to realize that's so fundamentally important you can't skip levels there's no point talking about your self-esteem or even your planning or your your decision making if you're carrying deep fear around this issue so level four is the most embedded of all and quite often people come to me uh suffering from procrastination and they have no idea that they are level four they may think they're on level one initially and we keep digging we'll do some work on level one and okay helps a little bit but it's still there we go down to level two helps a little bit more but it's still there level three do some more now we're getting somewhere but it's still there level four there's a perceived lack of safety when it comes to personal productivity so this is the emotional procrastinator and now we're going to look at the next one so the next type of procrastinator is the dejected procrastinator so i'm going to give you another description here of what that looks like what does that mean so deb used to make plans for her success not anymore what's the point she tells herself she has zero self-belief and her confidence is at rock bottom now she feels she doesn't even deserve success she feels she doesn't have the talent or the dedication to make things happen doing what she would like to do seems completely hopeless she believes she'll have to struggle so much to make even any progress that it's just overwhelming she's constantly compares herself to others she has a powerful inner critic and she always blames herself first she feels completely unworthy and powerless to enact change in her life her mother was right she thinks she'll never make anything of herself and needs to accept her place in life this is what her mother would tell her she's tried to stop caring so much about what other people think she's tried getting more organized and disciplined but again it hasn't worked for her deb is the dejected type and this is the third level and really deb needs to be working on level three here okay now she may not have the issues of level four she may not have the the traumatic experiences where her body is reacting maybe with a fear around this but there's a lot of work that to be done there on her beliefs and really well how could we sum up what her issue is here after having read that essentially her issue is a lack of self-esteem okay so you may have heard me say in other places that self-esteem is very very important when it comes to procrastination most people i would say that come to me kind of have some level of this going on not everyone is level four but the third one here the third level lack of self-esteem is very very important because we need to get this in place before we would move on to level two now you can still have problems and things that we need to get right on level two with the behavioral level but you can see there that deb talked about she tried to stop caring so much what other people thought of her that's level one she's not ready to even do that that may help her a little bit but it won't result for issues with procrastination really what she needs to do and we're going to get into the tools that she can use now later on but she needs to develop a much stronger sense of self-esteem and once you can do that then maybe she can go up to level two or level three but and it's a lot easier for her to work on level two and level three most people again are on level two and they really should be on level three focusing on the self-esteem issue but they're preoccupied with the behavioral stuff so in any case that is the dejected type and let's move on and see the next type of procrastinator the next procrastinator is the what i call the intellectual procrastinator and this is on level two here and if you remember this is the level of behavior so this type is going to be you're going to notice that this type is very preoccupied with behavior modification okay now they may not have the self-esteem issue of the level three or even the trauma in their body of level four but level two they still have a sticking point here they can't jump to level one it won't resolve it they need to stay on the level they're at they need to find out what their issue is so let's have a look at the intellectual procrastinator and see if this resonates with you at all so Sarah is not getting the results she wants and at times feels very pessimistic about ever doing so she's a master of making elaborate plans okay so she's very focused behaviorally however she regularly fails to photo through on them now she's on level two here now she's not she this is where she needs to she is making mistakes on level two so this there's very legitimate that you can be on level two there are things to work on with that and i'll talk about that soon so she fails to follow through on these plans she feels that work-life balance is a nice sounding idea but she'll get to that once she has sorted herself out first and become more productive i hear that a lot she fluctuates between feeling anxious and guilty all the time she procrastinates even though she knows she shouldn't but she can't even enjoy the things she's doing when she procrastinates because of the feelings of guilt she still feels she can turn things around somehow so Sarah doesn't have the the hopelessness entirely okay of level three maybe she is in the right area here because she is very very preoccupied with behavior she believes she has the talent so she has some some self-esteem she just feels she needs more discipline and this may be where she's going wrong this is her sticking point on level two once she gets the right plan things will be okay and that's definitely something to work on a level two but she's secretly starting to doubt even this because she's probably made so many plans and failed to follow through on it at this point she tried to stop caring but when other people think of her that was a level one issue she's on level two it probably didn't make any difference it helped but only for a while and the procrastination continued so yes she is level two okay she is the intellectual procrastinator now quite often again people come to me and they think they're on that level but really we have to go down to find out level three stuff but let's just say that she is this on level two where she needs to be she needs to look now more deeply well again what is the issue let's sum up her issue the previous one was the first one was a lack of safety on level one sorry on the first one we talked about lack of safety then we talked about the lack of self-esteem and this intellectual procrastinator the issue is lack of self-compassion that's what she is missing okay lack of self-compassion there's a there's a very practical way that you can actually address that issue i will talk about that very soon here so that's the third type and let's move on to the fourth type now so the next type of procrastinator we're going to look at here is called what i refer to as the attached type the attached procrastinator so remember this is on the top level so really if you do belong if this is the type you belong with these lower levels should not really be an issue and you should be focused on this one again many people think they're this one but they're actually down here somewhere so let's go deeper but let's just describe what the attached one looks like so generally john feels emotionally okay most of the time anxiety is not too much of an issue for him he is healthy self-esteem and values himself he knows his worth he recognizes the importance of balance in life and has a good work-life balance he's generally good at getting things done and doesn't let things pile up too much this sounds perfect so far right he's decisive and careful in making promises to himself he's realistic about his time commitments but the work he's done for this latest project has been less than pleasant because he's preoccupied with how it will be received he feels tense about this and it's affecting his ability to stay focused and work to the best of his abilities his productivity has dropped and he's avoidant of what he feels he needs to do he knows he'll take the negative feedback personally if it should come he just can't seem to stop caring about what other people think he prides himself on his work when people ask him how he's doing he defaults to talking about his work life he even on his dating app his bio describes his professional accomplishments okay so a lot of stuff is the lower level issues have been addressed a little bit but they're still a sticking point and this is level one and typically the procrastination issue on level one is less intense but it's still a sticking point what is the issue for john as the attached procrastinator this is a lack of what we have a lack of safety so far we have a lack of self-esteem lack of self-compassion and this one is about a lack of disidentification so john has tied his identity up in the things that he is producing okay and this can lead to procrastination issues and drop in productivity for instance and ability to engage a tenseness starts to come in okay so there are again specific tools that would make that easier for him to disidentify from his work to stop putting his sense of identity into the things that he is accomplishing because that will lead to these problems for him so that is the attached procrastinator so let's talk a little bit about solutions you've heard me talk now about the the different types of procrastinator and maybe you noticed okay i resonated with level four the emotional procrastinator more or maybe you think you're level two you're much more of the intellectual procrastinator you may notice that you have aspects of several of them so if that is the case you start off with the the one that's lowest down that you identified with above all well let's just assume here that you have level four okay the deepest most fundamental issues with this whole thing and again this is about this is the emotional procrastinator this is about the lack of safety what do we do okay now in my other course on procrastination i go into this but i'm going to go into it here again because i want to give you a number of options for what we can do practically speaking to overcome this to get us out of that level maybe up to some of the other levels where the procrastination is going to be less intense and we're moving in the right direction so the first thing we need to do is again there's going to be a lot of this fear in the body the body is reacting in this fearful way it doesn't feel safe every every time it thinks about taking action towards a goal first thing we need to do is to understand and validate why the nervous system has become defensive why has my nervous system taken on this defensive posture and really the answer to that so we not only we understand why it's happened but we validated we we we stop blaming ourselves for the fact that why do i act with such fear around this issue really guys the issue is trauma held within the body itself it's even pre-verbal the body itself just decides to get into this defensive posture and send out this fear response so we have to validate that we have to stop seeing that as a defect and start to see it as of course that's how it's reacting given what i've been through in the past and one other technique that can be very helpful for this is called EFT or emotional freedom technique now that is because EFT is one of those tools that was designed to help people where talk therapy was not even that helpful um working on their self-talk for instance or their beliefs which is level three you know level three working on beliefs will not be helpful for someone who has a level four issue EFT is a bit different because it goes it doesn't require talk therapy or self-talk analysis it's much more about if you don't know it i may make other videos on it but if you don't know about EFT EFT is much more about sense of touch and the tone of voice in which you talk to yourself you start off taking the position of the nervous system which is telling you there is going to be a terrible consequence coming soon here it just feels like that's what it's sensing EFT says yep i understand that i validate that and you do this thing called tapping on different points around your your body that actually are designed to kind of soothe the limbic system which is pre-verbal okay you can't talk your way out of this fear you can't rationalize or think your way out of this fear this has to be directly soothing your nervous system and EFT is one great way to do that essentially what we're talking about here guys is body work of types of different sorts not how we talk to ourselves or looking at our beliefs one thing is super important whether it's EFT or any of the other techniques no amount of forcing yourself to take action will work because as soon as the nervous system senses any sense of being forced it will it will react with resistance to that okay so this is much more about a calming influence we want to have on ourselves this is all about feeling safe so we tried to calm the nervous system one of the things a very very practical way to think about is okay people talk about affirmations okay self affirmations now if you're talking if your affirmation is all about i can be successful that may be useful on level three and level four that will make no difference the type of affirmations you can use in the type of self talk if you're going to use self talk up for this level four issue is going to be much more about safety so you can tell yourself keep reminding and reassuring your nervous system one of the affirmations i like is it's completely safe for me to move now okay it's completely safe for me to take action safety safety safety is the thing we want to emphasize other things we can do with this breathing techniques learn good breathing techniques that will help to relax and calm down the nervous system typically when the nervous system is in a fear response the the breathing is going to get well it'll get restricted but typically we we go into this hyperventilation and what's actually happening is we're taking in too many breaths per minute we're getting too much oxygen in sometimes it feels like you can't breathe with this fear response but actually what's happening is we're breathing too fast so breathing techniques help us to really slow down the breathing much deeper longer slower breaths and this is one of the things again maybe with those affirmations of it's completely safe for me to move with this so i'll make more content on this going forward for this deeper level of procrastination for this type of procrastinator who has this emotional procrastination but essentially if you're carrying a lot of fear around this issue we have to make you feel safe before you'll be able to move forward with it otherwise the nervous system will just keep fighting us okay so we have to help the nervous system not see it as an issue not see it as a problem or an enemy see it as of course it's it's guarded of course it's in this defensive position given what i went through in the past with all that trauma maybe all that shame and maybe even physical abuse in some instances it's completely natural that it would feel this way so those are a few practical things we can start to think about when it comes to solutions that will help the emotional procrastinator so if we're on level three here and we're talking about the dejected procrastinator and remember this is all about the lack of self-esteem so maybe the safety issue isn't as prevalent here but this is all about self-worth how am i thinking what's myself talk like so what can we do if this is where we would where we think we are with procrastination if you think you're on level three if you think you're the dejected type one thing i would say here is to drop self affirmations drop the positive thinking stuff that model in my opinion is pretty unhelpful okay what we instead need to do is go in and listen and find out and really stop trying to push away the negative story that's already there and let's bring it out until you open let's find out what the negative story is let's put all those negative beliefs that negative self-talk on a piece of paper and really get curious about it because then we can start to do something with it right the problem with a lot of the positive thinking stuff is that it kind of says yeah my self-talk isn't great and we say oh don't worry about that just just think these positive happy thoughts and of course then we go and try and practice those positive happy thoughts in the mirror and you're saying to yourself all these great positive things and meanwhile your subconscious mind is just saying i don't believe any of this at all okay so what we need to do is get curious about what the negative story is what are what is that negative self-talk like what does my inner critic really want to say here and then we can start to really look at it in the light of day we can't do anything with it when it's repressed and it's in the dark one of the tools so we're not going to use positive self-affirmations we're going to use inquiry so the inner critic is going to be there for a while and what we're going to start to just do is not fight with it we're going to start to just put little question marks on the end of all the things that the inner critic wants to say to us and this is essentially called inquiry putting a question mark on the end of these things it's like okay is that true so you don't you don't fight it off i mean the nervous system will draw from your memory to show you all the evidence it has for these negative things and by the way those images it pulls from your memory are selectively taken it never shows you the good things you've done in the past but inquiry is all about just gently questioning is this true and i've done other videos on that but i may make future videos in inquiry how to inquire into this negative self-talk another thing that i tell people to do is okay the technique is called story rehearsal and the idea behind this technique is you get all that negative dark self-talk put it on a piece of paper and what you have is you're looking at your story and story rehearsal basically takes that negative story and just completely flips it to the exact opposite okay once you've had the courage to go in and find out what it really wants to say and story rehearsal is like well what if the opposite of this were the case now if you sit with that opposite story and you don't try to convince yourself of it being true right in story rehearsal that's a misconception that's like a lot of attraction stuff and that's not what this is this is much more about what if i sit with these opposite ideas the exact opposite of what i've been telling myself and if i sit with them long enough maybe i will start to see that there's some truth to them that is opposite way of looking at things now the nervous system the inner critic will not allow us initially to just accept that but the longer we sit with it and rehearse it and look with that and be with that new story we may we may begin to realize actually you know what there's some evidence for this so gradually it starts to change so there's quite a there's a bit of repetition or time sitting with that new story in story rehearsal so that's definitely one of the techniques that is very very helpful for this dejected procrastinator another really practical thing we can do is to try to find really positive support systems to surround ourselves with people who are going to encourage us really really give us some positive feedback as much as possible and another way to say this is look if there are people in my life that are kind of a toxic influence on me a lot of these beliefs that we carry with us i call them seeds they come from the past you know and they're old they're unhelpful they're very negative and if anybody is going to continue to push that sort of belief system on to us or we're around that to put boundaries in place with that to remove ourselves from that if possible to certainly not to go to someone who is carrying that negative stuff and share maybe some progress you've made and then have them really put you down for okay we don't want that so this is all about finding people in your life that are going to be much more supportive and i'm positive and helpful another thing we can do for this dejected procrastinator is we can look at what is this emotional payoff i have for carrying all this negative stuff and for procrastination itself and we will invariably find that the payoff for this is i'm reinforcing guilt in my life so every time i procrastinate i'm just giving more evidence to the story that's already running in the background it's perpetuating evidence to prove itself true we can begin to realize and that's kind of important for for level two as well which i'll come on to with the the intellectual procrastinator but certainly for the the dejected procrastinator is to start looking at deeper at some of the underlying assumptions i have about productivity and self-esteem and how valuable i am and really start to question a lot of that negativity that's in there because it's not even ours guys it was put into us by somebody else sometime in the past probably some authority figure which is why it carries so much weight for us still so those are a few practical things we can do for the dejected procrastinator and now we'll move on to looking at what we can do if we are in the level two which is the intellectual procrastinator so when we're talking about the intellectual procrastinator and again this is on level two this is where we tend to be really preoccupied with planning properly and trying to just be more disciplined and push myself and someday i'll find the right plan and then everything will be fine what we need to realize what's the problem with this is that it's the lack of self-compassion okay so there may be again you may have some self-esteem or you may even have self-belief but there's a lack of self-compassion in this now what does it look like really we want to start emphasizing if we are this type of procrastinator the intellectual procrastinator always planning and always trying to tinker around with our plans self-compassion is essential so the first thing we can think about is self-care needs to be a priority so rather than trying to become more disciplined and finally get it done start to prioritize self-care and that means having a very strict boundary with work or your goal okay so that's something we can talk about another thing we can talk about is simplicity needs to be established because the intellectual procrastinator will make all sorts of massive elaborate plans that they typically fail to follow through on and they will completely overwhelm themselves because the nervous system really does not like complexity so simplicity right no elaborate plans being made anymore still a way to move forward but talking more about what is the next achievable step rather than what i'm going to do for the next three months okay because your nervous system will not respond to that the intellectual procrastinator you know the solution for them is really to start realizing planning for the future is not really that helpful okay it's not really that helpful at all there are ways to plan it's typically the way that the intellectual procrastinator plans that's the problem there's no planning for for instance where will i relax how will i have fun how will i have guilt-free play that stuff doesn't come in you can see the lack of self compassion with that it's all about how can i do more how can i get more done and the other thing we would say so there's a lot of stuff about boundaries in this there's a lot of stuff about decision making and how to plan effectively and also to put it another way non-negotiable guilt-free play needs to be a part of your life and now this is where you're going to have to become disciplined because this has been the thing that's probably been lacking most of all for the person who is the intellectual procrastinator on level two preoccupied with behavior so non-negotiable guilt-free play that is one massive issue this is much more about boundaries this issue okay the self-esteem or the self-compassion piece is really improved by looking at what are my boundaries with work come into terms with the fact i am more important than work okay my phone should not be put off indefinitely until someday in the future that is not very well defined then i'll be able to relax it's a completely wrong approach and that is how we go about helping the person who is the intellectual procrastinator so how can we help the attached procrastinator this is level one this is the the level of outcomes been preoccupied with what happens when i put my stuff out there or i put my myself out there into the world how it will be received by other people one of the techniques and i talked about this in my my other course on procrastination is called the success failure forgiveness technique and this is essentially about how you can become more detached from the output that you put out there so this could be about an exam you're going to do or you know could be anything that you're going to release that involves your your creativity for instance and this is all about questioning how great life will be when everyone loves this thing that i put out there and i get great feedback really starting to question maybe how that's not actually such a great thing at all and at the same time we start to question the story of how terrible it will be if it all goes wrong and nobody likes this so we're actually challenging this this whole narrative this paradigm of success failure entirely it won't be that big of a deal if it goes well and it's actually not such a bad thing at all if it isn't doesn't go well okay so we're challenging it on both sides it involves kind of running hypothetical scenarios what would it be like if i put this out there and it didn't go well and why would that be not such a bad thing at all okay these are the types of ways we need to think when we have this kind of issue of procrastination when we're really the attached type what we start to do also is to develop preferences and openness as alternatives to attachments so okay we're attached to outcomes but what would it be like if i wasn't detached how what does that even look like well you're still allowed to want things okay you're still allowed to want it to go a certain way so but instead of saying i need it to go a certain way you say i have a preference for it to go a certain way but i hold an openness to learning no matter what happens in the situation so we replace an attachment with preferences and openness and that is the mentality we're trying to form here another thing that can be helpful with this because this whole issue is lack of lack of this identification and we become identified with our productivity or maybe it could be our work life or something like that is to become much more familiar with what your other emotional needs are outside of gold related stuff or outside of maybe your work life or something like that and my other book Forget Happiness really talks about what our emotional needs are and that we're much more complicated than we think usually they're essentially for most of us they're about five emotional needs that we have but when we become really preoccupied with just one of them one of them becomes a dominant need this identification when my productivity can become a real issue so we need to start thinking okay what emotional needs have i been ignoring here that i've become so identified with this productivity or this goal this outcome and the last thing we can do is talk about ourselves in terms that are completely unrelated to the thing i'm attached to so for instance you're at a you're at a party and you don't start a conversation talking about what do you do and now you're talking about what you do you're you're sort of putting yourself out there i am my job or something like that we we start to steer conversations away from the thing that we're deeply attached to so we can practice identifying and understanding that and there's much more to me than this thing that i'm this maybe has my creativity attached to it or something like that the process of this identification from my productivity or what it is i produce it's all about not taking the things that you release too seriously okay now you can yeah again have a preference you can certainly enjoy doing it and that's a fantastic thing but once i become identified with my productivity it's actually going to hurt you in terms of procrastination your productivity will drop and we will go into that sort of freeze response that the nervous system gives us so again you can see even on level one with this attached type of procrastinator there's still issues okay but we work on that level now but again don't jump to that level this is not where you should be working on if you have an issue that is deeper down level two three or four okay you work there first and then you work your way up so that is what the we can do to help the attached procrastinator so guys i hope this has been helpful there are some practical ways that we can help each type of procrastinator hopefully you can see now that you know if you say things like oh well i you know i tried that technique and it didn't work maybe you need to go a little bit deeper into well maybe i'm not on level two maybe you know this isn't a self-compassion issue maybe this is more of a self-esteem issue i have because those are two separate things or maybe this is more of a lack of safety for me and there are ways to resolve all of these issues doesn't matter if you're level four or you're level one or you fluctuate between them right start off which on the deepest one that you can identify it's so important for us to feel safe especially given the context of our past maybe when we didn't feel safe we work on developing our self-esteem we work on boundaries we work on self-compassion non-negotiable guilt-free play and then we work about okay i'm going to probably be a lot more productive at that point and now we have to just work on letting go whatever it is that my goals are to not identify my sense of self with what those goals are because that will lead to its own issue so guys i hope this was helpful you can see that this procrastination issue is incredibly deep and i hope we've we've brought awareness to that here together and also it's not as simple as just do it just force yourself become more disciplined in fact those are entirely the wrong ways to think about this so i hope that was useful guys and feel free to get in touch if you have any thoughts or suggestions and i'll see you again soon bye from there