Chapter 1: What is the main struggle addressed in this episode?
Welcome back to the Ryan League podcast, where we love to keep things short and sweet for you each and every week. Every episode, I just want to add a little value to your life.
I want to give you something that gets you outside of your comfort zone or perhaps gives you the tools that you need to have a difficult conversation or perhaps give you an idea that can add value to your meetings or maybe even your life. dinner table. Nevertheless, I believe today's episode is going to help you with a problem that I have.
I'm going to assume that you perhaps struggle with this as well, but I recently came across a book that was sent to me by a friend, and I thought, this book is so good. I need to do an episode on it because it solves a problem that I have, which is procrastination. Listen, I get a lot of things done, but... Not in the way that I wish I got them done.
I wish I could just get up and just be that guy that just crushes work, gets everything done, responds to every email. But there's times where I just wake up and if I'm honest, I just want to go golfing. Yep. There are days where I wake up, I don't want to write a book. I want to go work on my swing. I want to go play basketball. I want to go to the gym and not work out.
I just want to go and just sit there and just get like a smoothie and look like I'm working hard. I sometimes, instead of doing more research, would rather watch NBA highlights or sports. Watch a TV show. Really? I think of so many other things that I would rather do.
And so the only reason I even get things done is because, you know, oftentimes people that have paid me money are waiting on things for me. And then that kind of scares me. And then I just like... go and like try and do something with my life. And so I, when I got this book called procrastination proof by my friend, John Acuff, I thought, This is it. This is the moment. This is what I need.
I would argue this is what you need. If you don't know who John Acuff is, he's a speaker and writer just like myself. A very good friend. He's helped me tremendously in the speaking industry. Phenomenal, phenomenal communicator. Comes out with a book about every year or so. His latest book is Procrastination Proof.
In it, we discovered that studies show that up to 95% of people admit to procrastinating. So maybe you're like in that top 5%, but nevertheless, everybody in some way, shape or another is procrastinating. Navigating this, I have something to do, but there is this delay. And in his book, he discovers something, a framework that helps people navigate this procrastination problem.
And in it, he unpacks this idea that we don't actually procrastinate because we're lazy. We procrastinate because we've never been taught how to start. Think about that. We've never been truly taught how to start. And that reframing just gave me something new. It unlocked something new for me because I've spent years thinking like, dude, something is wrong with you.
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Chapter 2: How does procrastination differ from laziness?
Like your NBA highlights and now golf YouTube problem is like, like if you would just be more disciplined, right? You know, like you look at these people who are just getting so much done. It feels like they have a secret superpower that I somehow just missed out on. But in this book, a friend John says procrastination is not a character flaw. It's a coping mechanism.
And if it's learned, it can be unlearned. Isn't that awesome? All right, so here's the deal. Here is the framework that John lays out in his book. He calls it the four permissions. Okay, four permissions. Permission to dream, permission to plan, permission to do, permission to review. Okay, I'm going to take you through these four permissions.
Okay, now these are simple enough to fit on a post-it note, but they're powerful enough to actually change your life. Okay, so that first one, permission to dream. Let's talk about it. Most of us stopped dreaming a long time ago. Not because we ran out of ideas, but because somebody told us our idea was dumb. That our idea was impractical or that's not really who you are, right?
I mean, is that what you're going to be doing now? So what we did in that moment is we buried it. We settled. And then we wonder why we feel stuck. John says, the first step to beating procrastination is giving yourself permission to want something again, even if it scares you, especially if it scares you. The second permission, the permission to plan. John has this line and I love it.
He says, planning is visiting the future and taking notes for when you get back. Think about that. planning is visiting the future and taking notes for when you get back. And that is just such a great way to think about it because most of us skip this step entirely. We go straight from dreaming to doing. Then we get overwhelmed and we quit.
Or we plan so much that the planning becomes its own form of procrastination. John calls it procrastinating with a spreadsheet. I just love that line. Because if you've ever color-coded a to-do list instead of actually doing the to-do list, you know exactly what he's talking about. That third permission is the permission to do. And this is where it gets real.
John says most people think that they have a time problem. But what they actually have is a permission problem. You're waiting to feel ready. You're waiting for the conditions to be perfect.
You're waiting for someone to say, go. But nobody's coming to give you permission. You have to give permission to yourself. And here's the thing. You don't have to start well. You just have to start well. A bad first draft is better than no first draft. A messy beginning is better than a clean nothing.
And you've heard me talk about this a lot, especially on this podcast. I'm consistently trying to get people to do So if you're a procrastinator like me, will you hear this from me and hear this from my friend John today? This is your permission to do. So we've got permission to dream. We've got permission to plan. We've got permission to do. And this last piece is huge.
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