How to Stop Procrastinating and Finally Take Action

if you struggle with procrastination if you struggle to do hard things if you struggle with discipline sometimes then hopefully this video is for you because in this world of self-help personal development there's one thing that very few people are talking about and that is the overwhelming impact of negative emotions that prevent us from doing things and actually getting started with stuff so it's not that you're lazy or unmotivated or undisciplined it's that there is a Sinister emotion holding you back and that emotion is fear and so in this video we're going to talk through six

micro experiments that you can try that will hopefully help reduce the impact of fear and that'll hopefully help you stop proc procastinating and finally get started with whatever you've been putting off if you're new here hello my name is Ali I'm a doctor turned entrepreneur and author and since 2017 I've been making videos on this channel about the books strategies and tools that can help us live more intentionally be more productive and generally build a life that we love I also spent absolutely ages researching and writing my book Feelgood productivity which is now a New

York Times bestseller and this really Dives deep into how we can get stuff done without burning out or without sacrificing the things that really matter it's available in all formats paperback Kindle Audible and has been translated into 35 languages with thousands of festar reviews so if that sounds interesting there's a link down below now this video is going to be a little bit different from normal because we're going to be combining some of my own Thoughts with some animated sections from the audio book of Feelgood productivity and to start I want to share my own

experience of putting off something that was really important to me and what I eventually realized was stopping me from actually getting started it took me 7 years to launch my business I'd wanted to start a YouTube channel since 2010 but whenever I thought about shooting that first video I'd experienc some Force preventing me from taking the plunge I thought I was putting it on off because of my perfectionism I didn't want to produce videos that totally sucked but looking back I now realize I was wrong something else was holding me back fear the fear of

failure the fear of judgment the fear of not being good enough in the end I didn't create a video Until 2017 I thought I was just being lazy or not committed enough and that fueled my self-doubt and negative selft talk but once I started to understand the role that fear was playing in my life I was able to identify it as the primary obstacle standing between me in my ambitions knowledge is power getting to know our fears is the first step towards overcoming them now in the process of writing this book I did a ton

of research into the science of procrastination just really trying to understand why we don't take action on the things that we say we want to do and honestly one of the biggest realizations that isn't talked about enough is that procrastination isn't just about motivation or discipline it's often about fear and anxiety and the reason for this is something called the amydala hijack so basically our brain's threat detection system the amydala it kicks into overdrive whenever we perceive something as scary or uncertain even if there's no real danger so instead of lions and tigers and bears

which are a genuine threat it starts seeing things like posting on LinkedIn or starting my YouTube channel or like quitting my job to like follow my passion it starts to see these as a genuine threat to our safety and so to keep us safe it nudges us towards the easiest safest option which is often to do absolutely nothing but the good news is once we understand this we can work with it and so let's get into the six experiments that you can try to beat procrastination and hopefully finally take action on whatever it is that

you've been putting off experiment number one all right so there is a fun study that illustrates this which I write about in the book basically there was a group of researchers at UCLA and they got a bunch of people who were afraid of spiders to get close to a Chilean rosee head tarantula now some of these people were told to distract themselves some of them were told to reframe the fear or something else but one group was asked to just name Their Fear out loud like say out loud something like I feel anxious that the

spider is going to jump on me or whatever the thing else and the results of this basically showed that the group that labeled Their Fear felt less afraid and were more likely to actually approach the spider just putting their emotions into words helped them process Their Fear rather than being controlled by it now in the field of psychology this is called affective labeling and it applies to procrastination as well we very rarely say something like I'm afraid of failure or I'm afraid of what people think of me instead we say things like oh I'm too

busy right now or I don't have the right idea or I don't have the time right now but it's really when we acknowledge the real fear that's holding us back from doing the thing that's when it can lose its grip on us so this is experiment number one the emotion label and let's segue briefly into the audiobook to explain this it's the act of putting your feelings into words which forces you to identify and get to know the sensations you're experiencing it works in two ways first it increases our self-awareness by naming and acknowledging our

fears we cultivate a deeper self-awareness that helps us better understand our emotional patterns second it reduces our rumination cyclical thoughts about our fears can make us even more convinced that fear is Justified when we label our emotions we become better able to process and release them and so it's escape the cyclical thoughts that make us put things off the trouble is labeling our emotions isn't always straightforward we're very good at rationalizing reasonable reasons for not doing things I'm not putting off starting my business because I'm scared of something I just haven't found the right idea

yet so how can we get into the habit of naming Aus and so learning to process them one method involves asking yourself a few questions when you're procrastinating say to yourself what am I afraid of our core vulnerabilities and insecurities are often at the heart of procr destination next take it a step further and ask yourself where does this fear come from is it a me reason or a them reason me reasons are fears associated with your perception of your ability for example being scared that you're not good enough or not well prepared enough to

start them reasons are fears associated with how other people will react to what you do for example being scared that people won't like your work or that they'll judge you for putting yourself out there in each case try to internally clarify what your fear is really about and where it's coming from and in instances where you're still struggling to make sense of what the fear actually is one strategy I find super helpful is I tell myself okay I'm not sure what I'm feeling about this but if I were to tell myself a story of someone

in my similar shoes what emotion What Fear might they be feeling about this specific thing and often if you depersonalize the thing it becomes a lot easier to be like oh okay well in that world that person would probably be feel really scared of like what other people would think of them and therefore I'm probably afraid of that as well all right so that was the emotion label let's move on to experiment number two now and the idea here is that yes sometimes our fears are about something very specific like starting the project or like

tarantula or whatever but a lot of the time our fears are broader than that they're less about specific problems and they're more about wider identities and sometimes we give ourselves these labels like I'm not a runner or I suck at maths or like I don't like creative tasks or whatever and these identities can make us afraid to get started in just the same way that the more specific fears can back in the 1960s psychologist Howard Becker suggested that the labels society places on us profoundly affect the way that we behave he found that people who

are labeled as criminal after a first crime are much more likely to engage in criminal Behavior again labels become a self-fulfilling prophecy you have one bad relationship and you conclude that you just aren't any good at relationships at all you fail one test and you label yourself an academic failure forever okay so Becka called this labeling Theory and he suggested that labels can often become self-fulfilling prophecies and that's why experiment number two is the identity label the good news is that labeling can also cut the other way just as a negative label can amplify our

fears a positive label can overcome them for example when I'm experiencing self-doubt a favorite label for myself is lifelong learner this label highlights my willingness to learn and grow a lifelong learner would never get stuck in a procrastination rout for long when you find that you're putting things off look at the labels you use are you over identifying with the problem and what might be a more positive way to identify someone who works hard someone who has achieved a lot before someone who meets their deadlines if we can change our labels we can often change

our Behavior now this might sound like a tiny semantic change but it really isn't like labels are not just these inert tags that other people place on Us labels are tools that help us make sense of who we are and one of the strongest forces in human personality is the need to stay consistent with how we label ourselves and how we Define ourselves so if we can change the label we can often change the underlying fear and then we can stop procrastinating and take action on what matters to us experiment number three the 10 10

10 rule one of the reasons fear is so paralyzing is that we tend to catastrophize in our heads some minor setback becomes hugely important take the following you get rejected by someone you like as a result you decide that you're not lovable and will spend your life alone when you catch yourself catastrophizing in this way try to take a step back and look at the bigger picture the scientific name for this process is cognitive reappraisal changing the interpretation of a situation so that we feel better emotionally you can do this by asking yourself the following

three questions which add up to what I call the 10 10 10 rule will this matter in 10 minutes will this matter in 10 weeks will this matter in 10 years trigger you get rejected by someone you like will this matter in 10 minutes well I might still feel a bit down and might not want to show my face to that person will this matter in 10 weeks maybe but I'll probably be less upset by then so much much could happen will this matter in 10 years probably not at all I'll meet many people between

now and then who could completely change my life the 10 10 10 rule helps us recognize the magnitude of the problem we're stressing out about usually we discover that the failures we're worried about now aren't the ones that will always Define us and that the fears we have now won't always carry such significance okay so the example I used here is a little bit of like a high school college problem usually for most people that oh I'm worried I'm going to get rejected by someone I like but I find that even for people who are

likeing their 20s 30s 40s 50s Plus there's always this fear often this over catastrophized fear of like the negative consequences of making that decision like oh my God it's so risky like I'm going to die I'm going to end up becoming homeless and alone and whatever one exercise I've often found that's really helpful for this is Tim Ferris is fear setting exercise uh if you want to check that out just Google Tim Ferris fear setting and it's just like a list of journaling prompts which whenever I have to make any kind of big decision or

something that feels particularly scary that I've been procrastinating on for a while I run through these different prompts and it usually helps me realize that the fear is greater in in my mind than it actually is in reality experiment number four the confidence equation all right and this is where we are talking about the low grating sense of self-doubt self-doubt is one of the key fears that stands between us and our goals the fear that we are just not good enough to do the thing I often think of this form of self-doubt as a kind

of suspended animation part of US thinks I really want to do this but another part says there's no way I can the result is paralysis for example when I procrastinate writing which is of often it's because I'm suspended between two ideals on the one hand there's a genuine desire to write my book to create something beautiful to help people and on the other there's a little voice in my head saying anything I right is going to be garbage anyway so there's no point in even doing it self-confidence equals perception of ability minus perception of Standards

if we believe our ability is higher than the standard needed then we're confident if we believe our ability is lower than the standard needed then we're doubtful what does all this mean for reducing the effects of self-doubt well just try asking yourself could I just get started even though I'm feeling unconfident in most cases the answer is invariably yes I don't need to feel like a schwarzen EGA style bodybuilder to work out for an hour I don't need my first crack at my business strategy to be a work of visionary corporate genius and I definitely

don't need the first draft of my book to be a masterpiece when you're trying something new the idea that you should only begin when you feel confident to begin is a blocker all of its own the solution make a start you won't need to get perfect for a long time yet I find that this actually tends to be an issue with a lot of smart and successful people and if you're watching this Channel and you've gotten to this point in the video you are probably a smart and successful person in some areas of your life

but if you're trying to do something new you're probably your standards are probably up here because you're used to doing things at a high standard but your ability is probably here because you have to suck at doing something especially if you're new at the thing you have to suck at it initially in order to get good but the problem that we High Achievers tend to have is that like we're like oh h i I want to be that good from day one I don't want to be this bad from day one and so this whole

like self-doubt thing can really get in the way one strategy I found super helpful for this which I got from Oliver bergman's book 4,000 weeks which is a very good book is to just lower the bar just Embrace mediocrity just like recognize that you know what I'm going to suck at this thing it's okay the first 100 reps are going to be absolutely god- awful and that's fine and if we're worried about what people are going to think about that that takes us to experiment number five which is to stop spotlighting we're highly attuned to

what others think of us as social creatures our amydala is always on the hunt for threats to our status but this means that we spend our lives believing a spotlight is always trained on us and that everyone around is constantly looking at us analyzing our behaviors and passing judgment on our worth as human beings in a series of papers published in the early 2000s psychology Professor Thomas gilovich and His co-authors proved time and again that individuals have a remarkable tendency to overestimate the degree to which others are thinking about or judging them people are often

anxious about how the tiniest details of their actions and appearance are likely to come across to others the truth is everyone is concerned mostly about themselves and how they're coming across they're not spending much time if any thinking about us what this suggests is that the spotlight effect can be reduced with a simple reminder that well no one cares and when fear is holding you back from doing something this can be profoundly liberating no one cares if my first few YouTube videos are terrible and cringey no one cares if I write blog posts that are

a bit rambly because I haven't had much experience of writing no one cares if I show up to this salsa dancing class as a total beginner without a partner no one cares if my belt doesn't match my shoes when I attend this party this mindset of No One Cares can be totally transformative it's one of the simplest methods I've identified to reduce my own anxiety related procrastination now I already think of this as the no one cares muscle the more you do stuff and find that basically no one actually gives a toss the more you

build this muscle of no one cares and you no longer struggle with the thought of what other people think of you and finally let's move on to experiment number six the Batman effect the Batman effect was first identified by a team of researchers led by Professor Rachel white at the University of Pennsylvania White and her team were curious about whether adopting an utter ego could improve a child's approach to a task the children were given a task that required them to concentrate and resist the temptation to engage in a more enjoyable activity nearby one group

was given no Specific Instructions the second group was asked to reflect on their own feelings and thoughts and the third group was asked to think of themselves as a superhero or another character they admired the children who were asked to imagine themselves as superheroes or other characters exhibited significantly better self-control focus and perseverance than those in the other two groups when we embody the traits of a Fearless confident Alter Ego we can tap into a reservoir of courage and determination that we might not feel our regular selves possess I find it particularly handy when it

comes to speaking in public often I'm plagued with insecurity and self-doubt and even though I've been delivering classes and presentations for years I sometimes feel the fear associated with putting myself out there in this context my Alter Ego is Young Charles Xavier AKA Professor X from the X-Men series my physical trigger for stepping into the identity of Charles Xavier is when I put on my fake glasses that's why I still wear glasses in many public settings even though I've had laser eye surgery they help me adopt a professional intellectual Alter Ego that I need to

overcome the impostor syndrome I often have when giving a speech in summary the solution isn't to get rid of fear instead it's to develop the courage to face up to it that courage comes from three sources the first is to understand your fear ask yourself why have I not started on that task or project yet what am I afraid of where does this fear come from the second is to reduce your fear our fears are often blown out of proportion ask yourself these questions to prevent yourself from catastrophizing will this matter in 10 minutes will

this matter in 10 weeks will this matter in 10 years and the third is to overcome your fear if you're scared of what other people think remind yourself that most people are not in fact thinking about you we're a self-conscious species but we're not usually a judgmental one by the way if you haven't yet read the book or listened to the Audi book might as suggest giving it a go it is a very easy listen and it's got some pretty solid reviews as well all right so if you like this video and you'd like to

see a similar animated video about the core philosophy behind Feelgood productivity which would be interesting if you haven't read the book and actually good revision if you have then check out that video over there thank you very much for watching and I'll see you hopefully in the next one bye-bye