Chapter 1: What is the main reason people procrastinate?
So there's something most of us have been putting off. Maybe it's a project, a creative pursuit, a conversation, a chapter you've been meaning to write. I mean, literally or figuratively. And here's the thing. You probably already know what it is. It's been with you for a while. You've thought about it. Maybe you've gotten excited about it. And still, somehow, it keeps not happening.
I have been there and I will be again. I think most of us have. And my guest today, an old friend, John Acuff, has spent years studying exactly this. And he's really arrived at a take that honestly surprised me. Procrastination, he says, is not actually a problem. It's a solution, just not a very good one.
And when you understand what it's actually solving for, everything about how you approach the work you care most about changes. John is a New York Times bestselling author of 11 books, including Finnish and Soundtracks, which have together sold over a million copies. His newest is procrastination proof. Never get stuck again. He's also one of Inc.
Top 100 leadership speakers and someone who brings a rare combination of just deep research and genuine warmth to a topic that most of us take very personally. In our conversation, we get into what he calls the four permissions that most of us are waiting for without realizing it.
Why desire creates discipline and not the other way around, and what it actually looks like to finally close the gap between who you intend to be and what you actually do each day. So excited to share this conversation with you. I'm Jonathan Fields, and this is Good Life Project. You share a story about how you used to listen to one particular song over and over and over in your car.
Take me into that.
Yeah. So I went through this for probably a year. I was listening to Colin Hay, who's the lead singer of Men at Work. Land Down Under was their biggest hit in the 80s. He has a song called Waiting for My Real Life to Begin. And I felt like I was in a rut. And I guess I thought, why don't I just dig it deeper? and listen to a musical version of it constantly.
And it's a beautifully written song, but it's not helpful in the sense of the main character is just waiting. Like he's looking over the horizon.
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Chapter 2: How can understanding procrastination change your approach?
He's waiting for the phone to ring. He's going to slay the dragon someday. And every day he gets up and it's like the same exact thing. And I felt like I was stuck in that own loop in my life. And so I, yeah, I probably listened to that song hundreds and hundreds of times that year.
Yeah. I mean, in your case, What was the waiting that was resonating with you? Like when you're listening to that over and over and over. All right. So, you know, I happen to be a huge Man at Work fan. Great songs, great musicality. He's got a very cool voice. But still, like, what were you waiting for?
I was waiting. I mean, part of it was I felt like I had ideas worth sharing and I didn't know how to do it. So I felt like I was waiting for the internet to catch up with what I wanted to say. Meaning like, I don't have a platform. I have all these ideas. I mean, I think my wife once said to me, it's hard living with a writer who isn't writing. And I think that's true of most crafts.
It's hard living with a painter who's not painting. It's hard living with a woodworker who's not woodworking. And so I felt like I look back on my life and go, man, this is my 11th book. The 12th comes out. I've got another one coming out this year and later this year. Like where were all those words going before they had a home? Like you talk about a frustrated, you know, log jammed writer.
Like I had all these things to say and all these questions to ask and all these threads to pull. And I wasn't, and I didn't know what to do with that. So I felt really kind of like,
creatively constipated in that moment i think that's what i was waiting for was like where is an outlet where is an audience where is a chance where is there a microphone yeah i mean i think that probably resonates with so many people like maybe you're not a writer but whatever it is there's a pressure that builds i think inside all of us there's an impulse that we all have to do something to invest our energy in a particular way um we often deny that it's there i don't
Oh, and you push it down or you get successful in another thing that doesn't really matter to you, but it comes with a lot of rewards.
Yeah.
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Chapter 3: What are the four permissions we need to give ourselves?
And you're like, well, the rewards don't really matter, but at least I'm in motion. And yeah, I had Brian Koppelman, who's a friend of mine. He co-wrote Rounders and Billions.
Yeah, Billionaire.
Yeah.
Yeah, just great guy.
Chapter 4: How does desire influence discipline?
And he his kind of theory was like, unexplored creativity kind of mutates into something else. And sometimes that's anger. Sometimes that's bitterness. Sometimes that's disappointment. And so I think that's the moment I was in.
So when when you're sort of spinning this, as we have this conversation, if I remember, you're like, you're right around 50, right?
Yeah, I turned 50 last December.
Yeah. But this was happening for a really long time before. This was kind of like your mid to late 30s.
Yeah, mid 30s. Yeah.
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Chapter 5: What are the broken soundtracks that affect our productivity?
Right. When you're in that state and you're kind of sitting there spending, you're kind of waiting for the world to be ready for what you have to share or for you to have the permission, the assets, the resources, the platform.
Chapter 6: What does 'the opposite of procrastination' look like?
You're just like... When you say like in that moment, you're waiting, you're not letting it out. Did you have a sense that this was just waiting for the right time or that there was actually something called procrastination that was sneaking in?
No, I think the biggest thing was I realized I was wrestling with mindset things that weren't physical, real things, but felt like it to me at the time, meaning perfectionism, procrastination, overthinking, like no one ever taught me how to think. And I felt like I was wrestling all these tangled thoughts, all these tangled desires.
And then also, if I'm honest, I wasn't taking personal responsibility. Like I was, there was a part of me waiting for someone else to do it. Like, Someone, you know, like someone, a boss should recognize that I've got this or, you know, someone else will kind of tap me on the shoulder and say like, no, you are special and you are capable.
And so that was part of it too, was kind of coming to grips with that of like, I don't know that that person's showing up necessarily the way I want them to. What if I showed up? Like, what would that look like for me to start to try some things that are riskier creatively? And that's when I started to really blog and talk online.
I mean, it's interesting, right? Because I think what you're describing is having a sense of something that was inside of you that you were drawn to, that you wanted to explore, but maybe not having a clear shape or form. Right. And waiting even to get clear about what it was and how it might show up before you sort of like had these different things offered to you.
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Chapter 7: How do we shift from procrastination to action?
I think for so many people, when we think about what we put off in life, we start to look at the things that are right in front of us, like the immediate tasks that are clear, that are defined. And we're like, oh, I'm not doing that because I look at that and it feels like a burden to me. It feels onerous to me. It feels too complicated. I just, I'll do anything but that.
And we look at that and we're like, okay, so that's the type of thing that we procrastinate. But when we look sort of like bigger or deeper into the sort of like the mercury areas of our life, which are actually where like the really juicy stuff often lies and it's not clear, like we don't associate the experience of procrastination with that.
We're just, we tell ourselves all sorts of stories that justify an action, but we're not like, oh, I'm not procrastinating the rest of my life. It's something else happening here.
Yeah, and it's funny. We kind of do this weird victim thing that I've seen in myself where it's like you go, well, I can't do that because I'm so busy with my kids. Or like I've had people that I could tell they had the entrepreneurial bug. They wanted to start a side hustle, maybe a company, and they go, but I don't want to be a workaholic and never see my kids. And I'll go ā
whoa, like there's a huge gap between not do the thing and sit on it and become a workaholic that doesn't know their kids' first names. Like there's so much land between those two things and your kids aren't telling you that, or I've seen it in marriages where they go, well, my wife really wouldn't want me to do this. And the wife hasn't said that, or the husband hasn't said that. In fact,
In a good marriage, the spouse often sees the thing before you do. And they're going, I wish you could see what I see in you. I wish you could see what I think you're like. And so because we're afraid of the thing, you're right. I think we do write really elaborate stories.
Yeah, 100%. You make an interesting argument that I think will surprise a lot of people. And it's that procrastination is not actually a problem. It's a solution. So unpack that for me.
Yeah, it's a solution. It's just not the best one. So I believe if you ask people why they procrastinate, they say things like, the task was so big. I didn't have time. It's my style.
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Chapter 8: What steps can we take to create sustainable habits?
I got an A in college once when I turned in a paper at the last second. It's how I produce the best. I shouldn't have to do this. That's ego. But ultimately, it all boils down to it's solving a problem you're more afraid of. So the alternative of doing the thing feels more dangerous, more challenging, more awkward, whatever.
So you go, I don't want to tell my mom I'm not coming to Thanksgiving this year. So procrastination steps in and goes, you don't have to do that for like seven months. Like, no, no, no. Like, let's put that off. Like, I got you. And it quote unquote solves the problem for seven months right up until it's an emergency and it's the week before.
And she says, hey, you guys are coming next Tuesday, right? And you go, Actually, I've been meaning to tell you this for seven months. No, I'm not. Or I want to write a book, but I'm afraid of the criticism. So like the way I think about it. I never had a stranger on Amazon write a one-star review about me when I worked for Home Depot.
When I was writing rug headlines, no one ever said, John Acuff is terrible at sitting in his cubicle. He writes the worst rug headlines. You can tell he doesn't understand rugs. But when I actually did the book and I got it across the finish line and I stopped procrastinating, I got criticism. So in that moment, criticism would approach me and go ā Man, criticism would cripple you.
I'll take care of this. I'll make sure you never get criticized publicly for anything you create. It doesn't tell you the full truth, which is you don't get to create, by the way. You don't get to know the thrill of somebody coming up to you at an airport and going, your book changed my life. So it solves problems. It's just not a great solution.
In the same way that if you meet somebody sober, they'll go, yeah, alcohol solved a lot of my problems for a while. But when I stopped drinking and I dealt with them, oh my gosh, I got real solutions. I got a long-term solution. So that's where my theory is. It's a fine solution. It might have served you for a time.
It's no longer a helpful solution because you're not doing those things that you know you're capable of.
Yeah. I mean, it sounds like what you're describing isn't really solving the problem. It's avoiding it.
Yeah. It's numbing it. It's delaying it. It's dampening it. It's quieting it for a period. But it doesn't get better on its own. That's the frustrating work about the work you and I do for people is people will go ā Well, hey, what's the shortcut? Or they'll say, I have writers tell me all the time, everybody keeps telling me I need a platform to sell a book, but I don't need a platform, right?
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