 Okay, welcome everyone to another edition of TechSoup Connect Australia. We are absolutely delighted today to be hosting Rebecca King of Moonbeam Monday. And I'm your host, Kat Milner, from Create Your Change. I'm one of the hosts here with TechSoup Connect Australia, and it is absolutely my pleasure to introduce you to Rebecca. Now Rebecca has lived with crippling anxiety and depression for over 20 years, and she eliminated it when she discovered how to take control of her thoughts and master her mind with the help of a life coach. So Rebecca now dedicates her time as an NLP, Neural Linguistic Programming Practitioner and Life Coach, to supporting others who are having a similar journey to help them identify what's holding them back so they too can retrain their brain and live a truly inspirational life. Now, for today's topic, eliminating procrastination, procrastination creates overwhelm, leading to anxiety and can ultimately become health issues and affect all the other areas of your life. Raise your hand if you've ever been so overwhelmed with everything you have to do that you don't know where to start, so you just don't. Okay, I am so excited about this topic today. So if you're feeling that way and like procrastination is getting in your way and creating a lot of overwhelmed stress and anxiety, you are definitely in the right place. So let's waste no more time and jump into it with Rebecca. Awesome. Thank you so much for that introduction, Kat. It is fantastic to be here. As Kat said, I'm Rebecca King. I'm from Moonbeam Monday Training and Coaching. Now, I did want to start off, Kat's done this for me, but I want to know who here would actually class themselves as a procrastinator. I'm guessing that if you're on this call, that's how you're classing yourself. Yes. So I want to thank you for actually owning up to that and to somebody who actually avoids tasks. But most of all for identifying that you need to take action, that it's time to do something and saying enough, I'm ready to make a change because that is a big part of this. It takes real courage to do that. So thank you for being here today or for listening to the recording if you're watching this afterwards. I know that we have a lot of competing priorities and there always seems like there's a million important things to do. But the more you put things off, the longer that list gets, yeah? It just grows and grows and so do those feelings of overwhelm and anxiety. And I'm guessing that if you're here, you have felt, as Kat said, you felt that anxiety, you felt that overwhelm. And I totally get it. I've been there. As Kat said, I spent a lot of my life before now living with anxiety. And it became way too much for me. And I finally did something productive about it. And that has led me to do what I do now, which as Kat introduced, I'm now a life coach and NLP practitioner. So I help people work through things like anxiety, overwhelm, depression, working out what their purpose in life is. And that's what's brought me here today, talking about procrastination because it's not simply just talking about the anxiety, the overwhelm, it's what's causing it. Now, I just wanted to share this before we get going. It's a little testimonial from a client that I was working with for a little while who was having avoidance issues. She was procrastinating and she had her own business, but she was finding anything to do other than what she needed to do, which of course is procrastination. And she was getting distracted from, yep, I can see people are resonating with that. And she was getting distracted, couldn't make decisions without the input of other people. So when this client implemented some of the tools and tips that I'm going to talk to you about today, this is what she had to say. She said, girl, this was a message that she sent me out of the blue. Girl, what have you done to me? I'm getting stuff done, zero distractions. I'm making decisions and I don't care about what other people think anymore. And I was so excited to receive this message because it had been such a problem. So I'm guessing that there's people on here today who would love to be able to send this message to me after they've implemented some of these tools. So does that sound good? Cool. So we'll begin. Awesome. Thank you for the thumbs up. Now, we know that procrastination is a huge problem for so many people and it's costing us big time. It doesn't just cost us financially though. It costs us emotionally and physically too. 20% of Australians identify as a procrastinator. So I know that we've got some people outside of Australia here, but just to put this into context, 20% of Australian population is 5.6 over 5.6 million people, which is more than the current population of Melbourne, a whole city. OK, so let's just break this down. If you work in an organisation that has 100 employees, and this is all based on a study, but I'm going to use averages here. So let's say you work in an organisation that has 100 employees, 20%, you've got 20 people that are regularly procrastinating. Now, most of these people in the study, the majority said that they procrastinate at least one hour a day. So if you take 20 people procrastinating an hour a day, five days a week, and let's just assume that they're full timers, that's 100 hours a week of lost time. OK, so if you look at the average hourly rate in Australia of $36 an hour, over a year, that's a financial cost to that organisation of almost $180,000. OK, it's a massive cost to the organisation that could pay a couple of people for a whole year's worth of salary. So you can see that it's costing a lot of money. Now, also on top of this, 25% of adults say that procrastination is a defining characteristic of their personality. Now, I want to point out here that your language is so important. Labelling yourself as a procrastinator is giving yourself permission to act like somebody who is worthy of that label. OK, does anyone here actually want to be known as a procrastinator? I'm guessing not. I certainly don't. I don't want to be the one known to put things off all the time. But when you identify as a procrastinator and you continually tell yourself that you're procrastinating, you can be sure that this pattern will repeat itself. That is how your brain works, because what we believe, we prove. OK, so our language, both external and internal, is vital to becoming aware of an issue that we want to change. OK, so procrastination as well as any other issue. So moving forward, when you hear yourself identify as a procrastinator, I want you to reframe this. OK, so instead of generalising and saying, I always procrastinate, try, I haven't completed that task yet, but I have a plan. OK, and I'm going to give you some tools to set that plan today. Now, here are some other alarming facts about procrastination. Studies indicate that chronic procrastination can severely impact your mental health. It can exacerbate stress, as we already said at the beginning. And it can actually lower a person's general well-being. And I don't think that's something that we usually put together with procrastination. We just think that we're avoiding things, but it can actually have a big impact on your health. Chronic procrastinators are more likely to suffer from issues like headaches, colds, and even digestive issues. And I guess if you think about it, that makes sense, right? Because when you feel anxious, what happens to your tummy? You get that butterfly feeling. You get that feeling of anxiety. Our gut is generally where we feel these things. And yes, thank you, Kat. That feeling of things hanging over your head is exhausting. It is. And a 2015 study also shows, and I was blown away by this, there's a correlation between chronic procrastination and cardiovascular disease and hypertension. So we're talking some serious health issues here. And it's also been linked to underperformance and negative self-esteem. So the more we put things off, the worse we're performing. And not only this and the financial cost to the organisation, which we talked about earlier. If you're struggling with anxiety, you could potentially be having to visit the doctor. You could be taking time off work, especially if you're a casual, for example, and you don't get sick leave, then that could potentially be hitting you in your pocket as well. So emotional, mental, physical, and financial issues, simply from avoiding tasks. So whether you're an employee, an employer, or just somebody who wants to achieve more in their personal life, I think we can all agree that this is a big problem and it needs to be addressed, yes? Yeah, of course. So when you have the steps from today, will it be as simple as just rocking up tomorrow and everything's good and you're a changed person? No. All right, because learning any new skill, this takes work. Okay, it takes commitment. It takes a deep desire to want to change, but it is possible. All right, and to help you along the way, I do have a special offer for you at the end. Now, I just want to point out that procrastination is not a result of laziness. Okay, I think a lot of us have felt that or even said that to ourselves. I'm procrastinating. I'm a really lazy person, but it is simply not true. And in fact, many people who procrastinate are far from lazy. They're simply highly stressed or overwhelmed with the amount of things that they've got on their list. So if you struggle with procrastination, you are neither lazy nor alone. But why do we procrastinate? Okay, there's a variety of reasons, of course, but I'm only going to go through a couple today. Instant gratification is one of the biggest reasons. Okay, it's the desire for immediate positives being stronger than our desire to delay negatives. So what does that mean? It means that if you dread something, which is the negative, if you dread responding to a full inbox of emails, for example, you're more likely to put it off until later. But if you look forward, which is positive, to your yoga class, for example, then you will want to do it as soon as possible. And in a world full of instant gratification, Facebook, Instagram likes that kind of thing, where we receive a dopamine hit from something as simple as that. It can be really hard to turn this around, okay, because we're so used to getting that instant hit. But that instant gratification is really short-lived. It's actually what we call a short-term mood repair. All right, so think about it. In that example I gave, you still have to answer your emails, don't you? You know, it's part of your job, right, if we're talking in a work scenario, but avoiding it and doing something else that you deem as positive repairs your mood for a little bit longer, okay? It makes you feel good. And who doesn't want to feel good? This means that you avoid your work stress for a little bit longer. And as I said before, people who procrastinate are usually those who are under stress. And no one wants to feel like they're under stress, do they? So that's why we go with that positive, that instant gratification, that mood repair. Okay, and that short-term mood repair is protecting you, okay, against that feeling of stress, against fear of failure, against judgment from others. And so that's why we do it. And we're not even conscious of this, okay? This is our unconscious mind. Now, another thing that comes in here, I'm just curious to know, does anyone here categorize themselves as a perfectionist? Has anyone ever said I'm a perfectionist? Yep, okay, thank you for being honest. Now, procrastination can also reduce that stress of can I do it perfectly? Or will my boss like the outcome? Or what will the team think? Okay, these are all things that we think when we feel like we need to do it perfectly. And of course, it's protecting you from thoughts like, can I even do this? Do I have the skills? Do I have the knowledge? And you're actually doing something against your thinking brain's awareness. It's the left side of your brain, the ego. Okay, it's jumping in to save you. And you let it because it momentarily relieves the... All right, it's not rational. It's not logical because it takes effort to procrastinate, doesn't it? Because you've still got everything on your mind. It's taking that energy and effort, that list of things that you've got to do. It doesn't leave your mind. Even if you're not consciously thinking about it, you are unconsciously thinking about it. But your efforts in this case are going in the wrong way. Okay, so let's begin with step one. Okay, step one is understanding your purpose, the purpose for the task, the project, the goal. Okay, your purpose is important in every aspect of our lives because it provides that underlying sense of peace and fulfilment and it gives us a continuous development for our being as such. Now, Tony Robbins, who I'm sure most of you, he sums purpose up really nicely when he says, when you truly know your purpose, you'll experience a sense of clarity like never before. You'll feel passionate, driven and laser focused. You'll stop battling with the past and the future and start living in the present. And that is the greatest gift that you can give yourself. And I'm sure we've all heard about living in the present being mindful, and this is what purpose does for us. Now, I know that in this particular example, Tony's talking about purpose in the larger sense, but it's relevant when overcoming procrastination too. Okay, if you're tasked with completing a project at work, you must be clear on what the overall purpose or objective is. Okay, if you've got any doubt on why you're doing it or what the expected outcome is, or what the expected outcome is, or the impact that it's going to have on the team or the organization or the people supporting it, then you're going to put it off and do something that you have a clear purpose for. And when you know your purpose, you can ask questions, intelligent questions, which provide clarity. Is this still important to me or the organization? I know that I've come across this when I've had a massive to-do list and I keep putting tasks off. It might be a month or two or even three down the track when I finally, I've ticked all those urgent things off and I get to the list and I go, okay, I better do this. But by the time that's passed, is that task even still relevant? What is the purpose? Is the objective still relevant to you or the organization? Ask yourself, is it the most important thing right now? Okay, and we're going to talk about important versus urgent in a moment. And then these two questions are really eye-opening when you ask them. Firstly, what would happen if I didn't do this? And what would happen if I did? All right, because when you ask those questions, it really teases out that underlying purpose. Okay, and it will tell you whether you actually need to do this now or whether it can wait or whether it needs to be taken off the list. So just to summarize step one, understand the purpose of the project, the goal, the task, whatever it is that you want to achieve before you even begin. Okay, purpose is going to pop up in all of the following steps. So if you don't nail purpose now at the beginning, you're going to get stuck further on. Okay, so I'm going to keep moving through. Step two is understanding the difference between important and urgent, as I alluded to. Now, Stephen Covey, who is the author of Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, describes this the best in the following way. He says, urgent matters are those that require immediate action. Okay, these are the visible issues that pop up and demand your attention now. Often, urgent matters come with clear consequences, don't they, if not completing the tasks? Think about if you get a fine, you have a deadline to pay that right. And if you don't pay that, there's a consequence. You get another fine. If you leave it too long, you may even end up losing your licence. It could be the same with an invoice. If you don't pay an invoice, you don't get the product, you don't get the service. Okay, you get a late. Important matters, on the other hand, those that contribute to your long-term goals and organisational values or personal values if this is a personal goal. Okay, these items require planning and thoughtful action. When you focus on important matters, you manage your time, your energy and your attention rather than just mindlessly expending these resources. So, of course, what is important is subjective and it will depend on your personal and your organisational values and goals. In a team environment, it is really important to define urgent over important from the beginning of the project, okay, because you might all have different ideas of what's urgent versus important. And in fact, many people do have a problem with making the distinction between important and urgent. And also, a lot of people focus on being really busy with urgent things, right? Okay, if you've ever been to one of my events before or heard me speak, you'll know that I really don't like that word. I don't use busy. That's why I use quotation marks, okay? We get busy with urgent things, which has the added benefit of making our work seem really important, but it distracts us from the actual important tasks that may require that time and reflection to think about in order not to miss important details. Now, on a practical level, a really useful tool to help you determine this urgent over important is called the Eisenhower Quadrant. Now, this isn't my model. This is available to everybody online. And as the name suggests, there are four determining factors and we start with your urgent and important tasks. So these are the ones that have a deadline and have consequences for inaction. So in a workplace scenario, it might be that your website is down. Now, in a not-for-profit space, our website is super important because often this is where we take donations, right? So if we're in the middle of a campaign and our website goes down, this is a very important tool to take donations. So it becomes urgent that we get the website back up and running. Next is your important but not urgent tasks. Okay, so these are tasks that enhance your life and should have specific time set aside for these. In a personal sense, think of spending time with your family or in an NFP sense, it might be making donor calls. Now, donor calls are very important because they build rapport with our donors. They give us the opportunity to tell our donors what's happening and how they're making a difference, but you don't always necessarily have to do them right now today. Okay, so beginning to see the difference between urgent and important pool. The next one is your urgent but not important tasks. Okay, these tasks need to be done, but they can be delegated to someone else. So you might be able to free up your time and concentrate on other things if you delegate these tasks to someone else in the team or even a third party outside of the organisation. And then lastly, there's the not urgent, not important. Okay, so either delete these tasks from your routine or delay them until your urgent and important tasks are completed. So just to summarise this, a very easy summary here. Define your urgent and important tasks and you can use colour coding or anything that helps you with this and consider the Eisenhower Quadrant to help you define these tasks. Okay, start with purpose and then define what is urgent versus important. Then we move on to step three, which is clarity. So even Tony Robbins mentioned clarity in his little statement about purpose. You must be clear on what it is that you're trying to achieve. Okay, we've already talked about the purpose of a goal and this is very closely related. Many of us procrastinate and avoid tasks because we don't actually have a clear understanding of what our desired outcome is or what specific tasks are required to get us to that outcome. We have an idea but do we actually sit down until we're made to do it and usually we've procrastinated on doing this but do we actually sit down and write every single little task that's required to get us to our outcome? We often confuse this label and often confuse this and label it with overwhelm. Okay, and we talked about overwhelm at the beginning. It's that feeling. It's a really heavy feeling that gets us and remember I said at the beginning also how important our language is. When we're constantly telling ourselves that we're overwhelmed, that is exactly what you will be. That is exactly how you will feel. So be sure that you're labelling things correctly if at all, okay? Because the truth is with this it's because we lack purpose and or clarity and this is fixable. Okay, so in a work sense if you've identified that you're avoiding things because you don't have clarity it is time to book a meeting with the project manager, the team leader, whoever is in charge and is going to help you get through this, okay? And you want to ask a lot of questions. Now, I've put nine questions up here. I'm not going to go through these in detail but hopefully we'll be able to share this presentation with you and you'll be able to take note of them. These particular questions talking about the objective of the project what are you specifically required to complete? Is there a budget? Are there deadlines? Is anybody else involved in this? Are there dependencies? Suffice it to say that you need to confirm these things you need to ask these questions and be as specific as possible. Okay, the more specific you are the easier it will be to get on with your tasks and you could use this at the beginning of starting any project or even a personal goal. If your personal goal is to trek to Basecamp for example there are going to be a number of things that you need to do in preparation for that. So you could use all of these questions of course you might not be talking to your boss about it but you could be sitting down and asking these questions yourself. Having a clear sense of the impact each of these tasks is going to have on your overall goal or the overall project or the purpose is going to help you find the motivation to complete the task and that's an important part isn't it? The motivation. Who here says to themselves I'm not feeling motivated I'm waiting for the motivation to kick in. I'm guessing that there's a lot of people here that resonate with that. But the truth is motivation comes from taking action. Okay, I love that comment. It's like you're in my brain. I know I've been there remember. The motivation when we are sitting there waiting for the motivation we're actually in the wrong place. Okay we're in the wrong side of our brain. We need to take action so that we get the motivation from that all right and you'll find once you actually start once you take that first that second that third step you will be motivated. I'm sure you've all experienced that. Okay so don't wait for the motivation. It's not coming until you take action. All right and once you have this information you will have clarity around what it's going to take to complete the project or achieve the goal. Okay so to summarize the clarity point if you're feeling overwhelmed it's likely that you still need clarity. Set a time with your upline to get answers to your questions. If it's something that's in your personal life you might need to take some time yourself to sit down and do it or ask for some help and I'm going to get to that point shortly. Be very specific with your questions okay and if it's still unclear revisit your purpose. Okay cool let's move on to step number four realistic time frames. Now I didn't just want to call this time frames I wanted to call it realistic time frames. Okay deadlines help eliminate a lot of procrastination because procrastination is actually an unconscious preference for immediate gratification over potential future rewards as we talked about in the beginning. So if you think about it I'm sure that you've all put something off because we can't see an immediate benefit yeah a common one if I think about it is going to the gym right or eating a piece of cake. Okay thinking I don't feel like going to the gym now even though I promised myself I would I'm going to go tomorrow or I'm going to eat the cake today because it's in front of me I'll start eating better tomorrow. Okay this happens because you want to feel good now because we all want to feel good now right. So staying home or doing something other than going to the gym feels better eating the cake now feels good. There's no instant benefit to saying no to the cake right now. It's only when you go to the gym regularly or you consistently eat fresh healthy nutritious food that you start to see and feel a benefit am I right it takes time okay. So go into your goal or your project or your task with your eyes open. Okay be clear on the timeframe around achieving your goal or completing your project. Okay so what do you need to consider in order to set realistic timeframes. You need to be clear on how long the goal is going to take to achieve. Okay now I know that most people these days we class ourselves as time poor right we stuff our diaries with so many things and there's other reasons around that that's a whole other webinar but we class ourselves as time poor. So if we don't have realistic expectations of the time that it's going to take to achieve our goal along with the purpose we're going to find excuses okay we're going to procrastinate. Then we need to schedule time to complete the task. Put it in your calendar okay when you take the time to diarise it you give your unconscious mind a helping hand. It's harder to say no to something that isn't in your calendar. My calendar is I love colors right I'm a visual person it's color coded and it's blocked there's a thing called time blocking you might be aware of it and I have literally got everything in my calendar it tells me when I'm going to wake up the meditation I do in the morning how long I need to eat breakfast shower and get ready admin time if I've set that. It's got my lunch it's got my snack times it's got my dinner time my gym I could go on my calendar looks very full because my life is full okay if it's not in the calendar it may as well not exist then be realistic with your scheduling okay we come back to the realistic part. We consistently underestimate how long something is going to take us you know this is where this comes in don't schedule half an hour first thing every morning at work to read and go through your emails if you know that the first half an hour of your day is taken up answering the phone or returning messages or having a chat in the kitchen having a coffee because you're not going to get to that and then you're going to have a meeting or something after that so everything gets pushed and quite frankly I don't know about you but it often takes me more than half an hour to get through my emails and respond meaningfully so be realistic if you know it's going to take you an hour to do a task set an hour if you're going to have a meeting that you know is going to take an hour and a half because there's a lot to get through don't schedule it for 30 minutes because you're setting yourself up to fail in the first place okay and it's this fear of expectation of failure that creates procrastination as well and then treat this appointment whatever's in your calendar like you would brushing your teeth before you go to work all right who here would go to work without brushing their teeth nobody I'm guessing right we would all brush our teeth before going to work so treat your appointments or your to-do list or your schedules like you wouldn't miss it for anything you brushing your teeth now I've had a question that's come in here thank you how can you adjust for chronic illness for example I may have time booked out for something but then have a chronic fatigue flair I can't do anything absolutely thank you for asking that question it's a really good question I acknowledge that things come up okay we feel ill we have illnesses urgent matters come up and we need to move things around and that's okay all right and this is where having these things scheduled in your calendar works really well because you can literally move your appointments around okay but don't delete the task simply move the task okay so if you need to take even a full day out or it might be longer but let's just say you had all of these things scheduled in your calendar and you now need to take a full day out you will need to take time to look at your calendar when you're feeling well enough to move those items don't simply delete them this is when you go back to the Eisenhower quadrant and you decide what's still urgent what's important and what you can give away because there may be things in that day where you go do you know what it was important on that day but it's no longer important okay so you can shift things around and I'd acknowledge that sometimes things will have to come off the list so I hope that helps a little bit with that question thank you cool so to summarize this one procrastination is a form of time inconsistency it's that unconscious preference as I said for instant gratification over potential future awards so in order to eliminate procrastination you must be in tune with your purpose I told you this was going to come up throughout the whole thing when scheduling make sure you understand how long that project or the individual tasks are going to take you and be realistic okay really take the time to understand how long it's going to take you and be okay with the fact that if you haven't scheduled enough time you may need to schedule more time that's okay I don't beat yourself up about it sometimes we need to do things a few times to really understand how long things take us and then schedule the time to complete the task and put it in your calendar or your diary okay if it's not in the calendar it won't happen all right and by doing this you're also giving your mind your memory a bit of a break we've got so many things to remember let's give it a break and give it a helping hand and lastly treat every task like an appointment that you wouldn't miss for anything like brushing your teeth before going to work okay or going to the accountant at the end of the tax year you don't miss that appointment do you because there's consequences all right so you're not missing it for anything so we're up to step five excuse me step five is resources and I split this into two categories you as the resource and other so let's start with you so you want to be asking yourself am I the right person to even tackle this task okay do I already have the skills the experience or the knowledge required if you're at work are you the right person in the organisation to even be in charge of this project or be completing these tasks or if you're if it's a personal task at home for example do you have the skills and the experience to tackle that or do you need to hire someone to help you perhaps a procrastination often happens because we don't feel confident in our ability to achieve the task so if you're procrastinating on a project at work ask yourself if you're really the best person for the job and if you're in doubt of course talk to your upline your team leader your manager secondly is the other category okay so do you have everything you need to complete this task and if not what do you need so consider oops sorry I moved too quickly there consider the materials the skills the time and the equipment be very specific include all the nitty gritty details to make sure that nothing is missed okay and I think I was talking earlier about how specific I get so this is the time to make sure that you've got everything that you need to get the task done so just to summarise this point asking yourself am I the right person for the job or is there somebody else more suitable in the organisation or around me to complete this task and are there any additional materials equipment or anything like that I need to complete the task and will you need anyone else's help to complete the task okay so if you do have you actually spoken to them do they know what you need from them do they know when you need it from them and then do you have all the skills necessary yourself for this task if you're the right person you've got the materials you may or may not need somebody else's help but then do you have the skills necessary is there any study or research or podcasts you need to listen to linkedin learning that you need to do to undertake before you begin this project and then we move on to step six which is accountability okay this is one thing that I hear really often is I can't keep myself accountable and staying accountable does rely heavily on completing the first few steps of this process okay you to keep yourself accountable knowing your purpose having clarity they are really super important so if you don't have these things or if you don't have a deadline you don't have that realistic timeframe you are going to find it hard to stay accountable so that's why these are steps for you to follow at work you're probably in a great position because you can actually use your upline your manager your team leader to your advantage okay so you can establish a routine whereby you create a an accountability buddy in them all right so if you have an agreement that you're going to help keep each other accountable you might have a weekly or a fortnightly or a monthly meeting so the important parts here are go to your meeting prepared all right don't it's not something to think about at the last minute five minutes before the meeting go prepared have that project plan with you mark off the items that you've completed and flag any areas where you have concerns or where you have questions and be sure to address them there and then and if they don't get addressed in the meeting make sure that you make a time for them to be addressed okay and walk out of that meeting either with a solution or at least with an action point or some action points for the next step in the process okay so you don't want to walk out of there feeling like I didn't get anywhere with that none of my questions were answered and I don't know who's responsible for what now make sure you leave that meeting with action points and I'm sure that you've all heard this before but this is the key repetition is necessary okay you guys are here for a reason listening to this for a reason today let this be your reminder now if you work for yourself like I do and you're finding it hard to keep yourself accountable reach out and ask for help okay do you have a friend or a former colleague who might be willing to spend even 15 minutes or half an hour every week to check in and help keep you on track there's a lot of networking organizations now who have these weekly or monthly check-in calls for people like me who work on their own just to I guess it's that it's that motivation to do something before that check-in call and it's keeping each other accountable and boosting each other so think about what it is you need and then go and look for it because they are out there so to summarize this be clear on your purpose because it will help you stay accountable you can always go back to your purpose that will keep you on track when you're working with a team leader or an accountability buddy at work be prepared okay know exactly when you're going to meet what questions you're going to ask what you're going to discuss and knowing what tasks need to be completed and where you need assistance all right we talked about asking for help but make sure you ask the right person for help based on the task that you need help with okay if you're working on a project and there's a large finance component in the project don't go to your web developer for help around that okay make sure you ask the finance person to help you with that particular task and if you're having trouble asking for help because I know this is a big one for a lot of people a lot of us feel a little bit uncomfortable asking for help we might feel like it's a failure on our part or we're embarrassed but consider why this is what are the barriers to asking for help and begin addressing these because this may be a big reason that you procrastinate and this leads us nicely into step seven addressing limiting beliefs and fears okay this in itself is a whole workshop but here's a very quick look okay so i'm going to start with an example of some limiting beliefs so that you understand what these are I can't afford that I don't afford enough sorry I don't earn enough money I don't earn enough to save any money I'm not pretty enough I can't lose weight I don't have time it's a big one I was born this way I can't change now I don't have a uni degree so I can't expect to pay rise or a promotion I'm an overthinker anybody ever said that I'm an overthinker yeah thank you cat I don't feel well and my brain doesn't work yes a big one because is it true does your brain work of course it works don't shake your head of course it works it's working right now and here's a big one I'm a procrastinator okay this is a belief about yourself that is holding you back understand cat we all have moments in illness where things are a lot harder I fully acknowledge that now these ones that I've put up here these may seem like simple casual remarks but as we've already discussed our language is very important it makes a huge impact on us and these are in fact limiting beliefs now I again I acknowledge that first one I can't afford that I totally get that there will be people in situations or each of us might be in a position where we literally can't afford it if somebody said to me right now Beck there's this amazing course to do it's going to give you this and this and it's going to cost $20,000 I would say right now I can't afford that okay but it's things like you know somebody said to me oh Beck do you want to go out for dinner on Friday night and my immediate reaction because of what's it been instilled in me as a child is I can't afford that but I really can I can afford to go out for dinner I'm making the choice not to do that right now okay so I acknowledge that there are things in here like that one that may be true in certain circumstances but the rest of them these are generalizations and they're very rarely true now I love what are you saying here oh a couple of comments here Jane thank you I'm a perfectionist is always an excuse for procrastinating yes absolutely now I think you joined us a little later Jane but I do address perfectionism earlier on in the in the presentation so I'd love for you to go back and watch the recording and see that part and then what Kat we've got I call it custard brain yeah I get that when it feels like swimming through custard and nothing makes sense Kat I so get you I have had a brain injury myself in the past and I get that feeling of custard brain you're trying to engage but it feels like the gears aren't clicking totally get that that is your body also telling you that you need to rest okay so again this is why I wanted to hone in on that point earlier that procrastination doesn't equal laziness okay because if you're in the middle of an illness flare up and you're on the couch or you're in bed I don't want you to be saying to yourself I'm being lazy I'm procrastinating this is a real thing you need to take the time to be kind to yourself I know it sounds really cliche but it's so true and yes it is frustrating I get it okay so these limiting beliefs it's likely that these aren't actually true these are stories okay we've talked about excuses these are excuses that we tell ourselves that hold us back from really realizing our full potential in other words they limit our growth and they can negatively affect our lives and our sense of self as humans we are wired to seek certainty in everything that we do okay that's the left side of our brain that's our ego always trying to jump in and save us okay we are risk averse and only consider investing energy and something when we're pretty sure that we can be successful okay this is that primal part of our brain that said don't step out of the cave there's something dangerous out there okay it's still kicking in and doing that in other words we don't like getting out of our comfort zone do we it's hard when we don't really believe that we can get the results we want we tend not to put in our best effort okay we sabotage ourselves I'm sure we've all heard of our self sabotage we've probably all said that to ourselves okay and we sabotage our efforts at the beginning and that tends to justify it to us like see I told you couldn't do it and this is a big reason for procrastination you know I want to give you an example here let's say that the boss comes to you and asks you to apply for a promotion now when the boss approaches you for this it means that they believe in you yeah why else would they encourage you to seek a promotion within the organization and so you agree okay you agree to apply but unconsciously you don't believe you're good enough or qualified for the job you know and even though you're very competent perhaps at your current role you've got doubts that you can do this new job because maybe it's something or it's at a level that you've not done before okay but pride doesn't allow you to withdraw withdraw from the application process so you unconsciously sabotage yourself okay you put off collating your resume you'll find excuses like I'm too busy I don't have time this guarantees that you do a poor job in the resume because when you're procrastinating because you don't actually believe that you're good enough to get this promotion you procrastinate and so you end up doing this resume at 11 o'clock the night before it's due which results in a poor application okay and miss out on the promotion and you say to yourself see I was never going to get that promotion I'm not good enough I don't have the qualifications okay so your limiting belief in this case in this example led you to procrastinate which means that you take a hit in the self-esteem department and potentially in the financial department too don't you you don't get the promotion you don't get the pay rise so it's just another example where procrastination is costing you yes imposter syndrome feeling like you're not good enough but again if we go back to this is a story that you're telling yourself isn't it because the boss came to you in this example and said apply for this promotion you're going to be great we want you here okay so these are the stories that we tell ourselves so when you find yourself procrastinating ask yourself what is really stopping me is the reason legitimate or is it simply a story that you've invented to keep yourself safe because when you replace these beliefs with ones that empower you to change your life oh sorry they empower you to change your life okay so an example in this one might be that limiting belief might be I don't have the education and skills needed to get that promotion reframe this perhaps to what skills and further education could I undertake to make it possible to get that promotion do you see how any negative belief can be turned around into more positive language now I'm not saying that all you need to do is think positively there's so much more to it but that language is a big start okay so look at how you can turn this around so to summarize here is how to identify these limiting beliefs that are holding you back and start changing okay firstly develop awareness awareness is a big part of this okay begin listening to yourself and identify those limiting beliefs write them down journal them seek help with a coach to shift them okay because they could be costing you a lot emotionally mentally physically financially and reframe them okay instead of focusing on the negative aspect of the limiting belief turn this around into a possibility okay with a bit of thought as I said this is possible for any negative statement it is possible to turn it around and then take action okay challenge your limiting beliefs and explore ways to achieve your goals and ambitions information is simply information until you take action it will be uncomfortable as I said it's not you're not going to rock up at work tomorrow and instantly be changed okay you do need to put the effort in but when you're uncomfortable this is when you know that you're growing so there you have it these are our seven steps to eliminate procrastination forever purpose urgent versus important clarity realistic timeframes resources accountability and limiting beliefs now this I this has been a super quick trip down the path to eliminating procrastination okay there is so much more included in here each of these topics are worthy of a full webinar so here are a couple of steps to help you along the way to get started all right take action immediately all right schedule that time to talk to the boss put what you've learned today into action book the meeting look at your calendar as I said information is only information until you do something with it now if you want to delve deeper into this topic we've got a course for you okay it's going to be released soon and I'm going to give you the details here I would love to offer you 50% off this course so all you need to do is email me today at this email address hello at moonbeam monday.com.au and type I'm all in in the subject line and I'll give you a coupon code that secures that very special price and for those of you who are in Adelaide if you want to learn more about what's happening in your brain and why we're doing these things we do have an event coming up on the 12th of October which you're welcome to come along to it's a free event it's called Mind Shift Mastery and you can register on our website for those of you who aren't in Adelaide because this is a face-to-face event we will soon have an online version so we'll be able to share that with you at some point very soon so I am Rebecca King I'm from Moonbeam Monday training and coaching and I want to thank you so much for your time today and I would love to take any questions if there are anymore thank you Kat. Absolutely a pleasure if anyone wants to raise their virtual hand by clicking on the reactions button at the bottom of your screen and clicking raise virtual hand I'm happy to unmute you Jane has asked time blocking is it just manual and outlook or is there a productivity tool that you would suggest? Yeah thanks for the question Jane and it's funny that you bring up time blocking I had a couple of things in here around time blocking and some other tools but because of time I took them out look I personally use manual time blocking in outlook because I love to be able to move things around and that just works for me but there are certainly online tools I know one that I've used in the past is it's funnily enough it's called monday.com not related to Moonbeam Monday and what I loved about that tool and I'm not specifically recommending it or anything I just know it because I've used it but you're able to move things around there as well but what I love is the ability to plan with dependencies if you're if you're waiting to do your task because you have to wait for somebody else to complete something that can go in this tool as well and so you can see all the dependencies move times around and if that person is going to deliver something a week after they said they originally would how does that affect what you're doing and then what time does that give you back to do something else on your list so yes there are plenty of tools out there it would just be a matter of jumping on google and searching for them or if you're on a forum ask people what they've used and why it works for them thank you for the question and Rebecca how do you feel about time productivity tools like Pomodoro where you work for 25 minutes take five minute break and how do you find that those are helpful yeah look for some people and again that's one of the things I was going to mention earlier and I took that out of these slides because I just wanted to make sure we had time there's these the three tools that I recommend to different clients are that time blocking the Pomodoro method and also the two minute rule so the Pomodoro method just a little bit more for those of you who don't know it's essentially looking at scheduling 25 minutes for each task and then taking a five minute break okay and what I love about this is because I think one of the things and we've talked about overwhelm a lot is that we look at this task and we go oh my god it's going to take me ages okay and I don't have three hours or four hours or five days to do this task right now first of all breaking your tasks down and having clarity on each of those tasks is super important there but the Pomodoro method I love because 25 minutes like it's a friend's episode right it's long enough to get something done but it's also short enough that it's not an overwhelming amount of time and then you can take your five minute break and then you can either have another chunk on that task or you can move on to another task so yes I do love Pomodoro method I also love the two minute method there's so many little bits and pieces that we put off I'm I've actually got one at the moment I'll be perfectly honest with you I haven't swept my front stoop for a long time all right there's a lot of leaves on it now I've put it off but it would take me less than two minutes to do it so the two minute method is if the task will take you two minutes or less do it straight away if answering that email will take two minutes or less answer it now if making that phone call will take two minutes or less do it now if sweeping your front stoop will take two minutes or less do it now so guess what I'm doing straight after this yes so thank you good question awesome okay that is us at time so I want to first of all thank everyone for joining us and making this an excellently well received workshop and especially big thank yous to Rebecca and Moonbeam Monday for a most informative and extremely practical and valuable webinar and presentation today thank you so much for that okay so the next one that we have coming up is going to be on the 12th of October about how to increase funding for your NFP programs so we'd love to see you join that it's on the TechSoup Australia website and you can register there and again I'm Kat Milner of Create Your Change and I am your host today for TechSoup Connect Australia and I look forward to seeing you next time thanks so much for joining thank you