 Hey there, in this video I'm going to convince you, try to convince you at least, that making your life appear easy, even uncomfortably easy, is the path to fulfilling your full potential. Stay with me. So I've got a great question here from James, and James in his question writes, I can't convince myself that massive amounts of action are not absolutely necessary for me to be a success in my career and my life. So he writes, I'm stuck on one hand, this belief that he needs to take all this action overwhelms and demoralizes me. And on the other hand, I believe that it's the only path forward catch 22 help. That's James question. So this video is really about the uncomfortably easy solution to procrastination. Now the path forward with this is, okay, there's that belief that's there and you just can't convince yourself that maybe small consistent steps are going to actually do anywhere that you want to be, they're not going to work. So the path forward with this is not to try to convince yourself that what I'm advocating for and my approach to procrastination and productivity, which is small consistent doable, easy or comfortably easy steps works. What you're going to try and do is just look back at the approach you've been taking. And as you mentioned in your question there, James, you say, this belief overwhelms and demoralizes me. So anything, any kind of philosophy of personal productivity or an outlook that you have that demoralizes and overwhelms you. There's all the proof we need. It just doesn't work. This thing of really high demands of yourself. Now what we're ultimately trying to do here, as you may know from other videos I've made, being productive, just doing the things in life that you would like to do and expressing yourself and been successful in your life doing all those things. It's not about motivation. It's about relaxing your nervous system so that it is cooperative and will move with you through you reaching those goals. So which belief relaxes you more? Would you prefer to believe that it's very hard to achieve success or it's very easy? It's even uncomfortably easy to achieve this. Which of those brings up overwhelming dread and which of those seems a lot easier to you? Which one would you prefer to believe? Again, it's what relaxes you. Which of those two beliefs relaxes you? It's relaxing your nervous system, therefore making it cooperative. What we're looking for here is cooperation towards our goals, not motivation to sort of push myself forward in them. Motivation is massively overstated in terms of its importance in goal attainment. So the thing is, OK, you can't accept this belief that it's going to be this easy and huge amounts of work are going to be necessary. The problem is, and the reason James, you're probably struggling with that, like so many of us do, is that we cannot perceive the impact of easy, achievable, consistent action over time. We're terribly perceiving it. An analogy I use sometimes is compound interest and finance. So compound interest is, you know, you put your money in the bank, maybe a small amount of money and every year you get some interest on that just for keeping it there in savings. And now next year you go in with a slightly bigger amount. I'm explaining compound interest here. Not going to spend a lot of time on this, but you've got a little bit more money and now you're making compound interest on that larger amount. So year on year, it's sort of you're getting more savings. Now, it's not big every year, but over time, ask any financial advisor that your compound interest is a very, very important thing. And very powerful. It's the same with our own approach to our goals and what we want. It's like these, the tendency is for us to be very dismissive of tiny efforts that we make. Well, it won't make a difference. It won't make a difference. I need to do a huge amount to work. So therefore there's no point in doing the easy thing. But what if doing the easy thing over time is the very thing that's going to lead you there? What if a gold attainment must be uncomfortably easy? Again, why? Because it relaxes us, that philosophy, that outlook. So much of this is about the way we are framing our to-do lists and our goals. It's the self-talk. It's the philosophy that we bring to it. So I would suggest having a goal of don't be Mr. productivity anymore. Be Mr. consistent. But consistent in steps that are so easy, it's almost laughable. Almost makes you uncomfortable that it's so easy. I promise you, James, if you can do that, your nervous system will relax. You'll have a persistent or a regular sense of growth or moving in the right direction. Maybe not in huge leaps and bounds every time. But there will always be some sense of moving forward. Now that does, I call it psychological momentum, where you start showing up regularly to do these little things, these little achievable things. Occasionally you do more if you feel drawn to do more. But your philosophy is I'm really just dedicated to taking easy, doable, achievable steps. And the rest takes care of itself. Again, the nervous system relaxes when that's how we talk to it. If we make it promise to make these Herculean efforts and expend all this energy and these goals, it's going to get defensive. It's going to get overwhelmed and maybe even demoralized. The demoralizing thing is a defense mechanism because it doesn't want you to expend the energy in it. So it suppresses your impulse to move into that action. So I would suggest setting up a system to approach the goals you have maybe in your career, as you mentioned, where you can set up consistent, small, doable daily actions. And just sit back and watch them. Here's a change. Watch them actually get done. The other thing is because we're doing it, we're under-promising and over-delivering. There's no more guilt cycle. The guilt isn't there. Oh, I feel I fell short again today. I didn't do all that huge stuff I was supposed to do. There's no more guilt. The guilt is another reason why we get demoralized because we keep making these massive promises over-promising and under-delivering. We want to under-promise and over-deliver. It's a much healthier force. So James, I hope that's useful to you. Okay, it's a belief that you have here that you have to do so much work, not your fault, self-help, personal development. That's what it's been like for the last 15, 20 years, maybe longer. Do more, do more, push yourself, get motivated. You need more motivation to do more, do more, do more. That's not how the nervous system works. The nervous system is about conserving energy to guarantee your safety. So if we can convince it that I'm not really all about expending huge amounts of energy on things that are very, very difficult all the time, what if it's easy and doable? What if this is a marathon and not a sprint? I promise you, James, that that will actually help you do more. And again, the guilt will go out of it and everything else. And you get a sense of psychological momentum starting to build in your life. So sit into the uncomfortable feeling that what if this is easy? And challenge yourself to make it easy, to set really achievable goals that you know you can consistently meet. And just sit back and watch how you feel and watch how your life changes because it will. So guys, I hope that's useful. And James, I hope that's useful to you also. And as always, thanks for joining me today. And I'll see you guys very soon in the next video. Bye for now.