Episode 437 Procrastination With Jenna Piche

Hey everybody, Rob Cairns here and today I’m with my guest Jenna Piche. I hope I got that right. Time management coach, how are you today?

I’m great, rob. How are you?

Doing good. It’s we both had some life things get in the way of trying to get you on the podcast, so it’s finally great to have you. I’m glad you’re here. We were talking a little bit offline a couple weeks ago about should talk about and you and I both thought we should dive into the topic of plastination. Because. This is one of the biggest problems I think people have in business and their personal life and their school lives. They just don’t seem to get it. So let’s kind of start to what what’s the problem with procrastination?

Well, first I think it’s important to understand how much time we lose to this. So based on different studies, I’m reading some say as little as an hour, some say up to five per day. So the average is roughly 2 hours and 25 minutes a day. We lose to procrastination. So if we add that up over the course of a year, that’s 55 days. So that’s why this becomes a big problem. And it tends to spill out of just our work lives, right? If we tend to procrastinate in work, we procrastinate in life. The procrastinators are typically people who have bigger health problems because we procrastinate appointments or we procrastinate, taking care of ourselves or or the things we need to do to move us forward. So. At a high level, I think procrastination is really something that all of us suffer from, but we have just been told, just pushed. Through. It. You can just figure this out. Just hustle and grind your way through and I think that’s the worst advice we could give anyone. So that’s what I’d love to dive into today in this conversation.

Yeah, I would too. And it’s it’s, I have to ask. It’s a correlation between somebody’s organizational skills and if they’re procrastinator or not, is there any tie there?

I think yes, but it’s loose, so there’s certainly is an issue with not having a plan for your time. So if you are at a high level, more organized and you know these are the types of work I do every week, every month and you know, maybe on Tuesdays I do strategic work. And on Wednesdays I do client meetings. If you have a plan for your time and you’re more organized. You’re less likely to procrastinate, so I think it’s a loose one, but at a higher level, what I see is the core issue here is emotional resistance. So we see something on our list. We know we need to do that thing, but we don’t feel like doing it right now. Maybe we don’t feel like we have the skills necessary to do that thing or it just feels uncomfortable. There’s some reason that we don’t want to tackle it, so we. Put it off.

Yeah. And is one of the best ways to avoid putting stuff off to do what they say, like put it on the calendar and just book yourself some time to do that task you’re putting on. Does that work?

I think time blocking is a really great strategy to at least have a plan for your time like I mentioned. So get some organization in your week. But I’ve talked to so many entrepreneurs and I’ve worked in marketing agencies before where people say I created myself the time block. We just can’t make myself do the thing. I don’t honor it. So the next piece of that is then really diving into OK, you said you’re going to time. Black. Doing this work on this website or diving into troubleshooting this problem and then you put the thing off. Well, why are you putting it off? So the the first step I recommend to clients when they’re when they keep putting things off for days and days is just to sit with the fear and discomfort, right? Don’t distract yourself in what feels good to do like. Scrolling social media. Yeah. Or looking at, you know, Reddit or Reddit threads or whatever The thing is, but sit with the discomfort. I’ve never been to. They’re distracting.

I have to stop you there. I mean that I think social media is the biggest procrastinate or time waste. It’s either that or news sites, right. So I I made a decision about all about six months ago. I took all all the social media sites and all the new sites off my tablet and off my phone. And I just said I’m back. Does that work?

What kind of difference have you seen since you’ve done that?

I’m not as stressed out because I don’t care what everybody else does. I I’m not really on social from a personal point of view, except for a couple family chat groups. I the rest of it are really honest. I don’t, I’m not concerned as much about.

Right.

I personally. In terms of sharing pictures and stuff, as I tell my family, if you want to see them, I have a personal website. You can go there. Oh, we don’t want them, I said. That’s nice. No, I’m OK with that. They wanna do that. Then that’s their kind of their kind of thing. But I I just find them more productive and I don’t get myself caught. And new sites the same. The way news sites you can spend all day reading about the problems in Canada, the US we both of us have them. We all know what they are and I just, I just don’t like negative energy. So I just kind of avoid that stuff like the bike.

Yeah, I agree. I cut out new sites and and watching the news I grew up with my dad turning the news on every morning, mostly because of the weather. But then you hear the headlines and I thought, what a negative way to start my day. So I disconnected from the news and I find I’m much happier. I have a much rosier sense of life. And it’s not that I’m looking through rose colored glasses, it’s that I’m choosing what my input is because that. I don’t want to show up and give that negative energy to someone else, so I completely agree. But social media is one of those things where yeah, if you take the apps off your phone, even if you just have to go to the website, it’s another. Set up blocking you and so it’s something that can slow you down and help you ask is this how I really want to spend my time? Another really good step is putting your phone in grayscale, especially when you’re trying to do deep focus work because then social media isn’t it as exciting or putting your phone on mute then you don’t get to hear all the fun things. The reason that these websites. Goes away, as they’re strictly for entertainment and they’re designed to keep us on, so that’s their job. They want us to lose 2 hours a day in the scroll and good for them. They’re doing a great job at it, but then we need to have our own filters in place to keep us off of it. So yes, that’s a great step in the right direction. But even just having a a delay, so there’s a great book by nayer El. It’s called indestructible, and one of the things he talks about is a 10 minute rule. So if you find yourself wanting to do something that you know is not the thing that’s going to move you forward, it’s a distraction. It’s. Scroll social media or you know, go have a drink or whatever. The thing is, he invites you to sit in that that discomfort for 10 minutes. So yes, I want to scroll my phone. OK let me set a timer for 10 minutes and sit in this discomfort and really name it. Am I avoiding something? Am I, you know, experiencing some kind of fear? Am I delaying the fact that I have to like get up and go outside when it’s hot out and that’s uncomfortable, right? What am I avoiding and really sit with that for 10 minutes because we are so good at pushing down our feelings and pushing these things down that if we don’t process them, we just put a Band-Aid on it like. Go social media and forget it. We don’t ever truly show up in the world as a better version of us because we never had an opportunity to reflect on how we could do things differently. So that’s what this 10 minutes is really meant to be, sit in the discomfort for 10 minutes and then after 10 minutes, if you still want to scroll social, then go do it. Allow yourself to do that thing, but usually in that 10 minutes you get a chance to try to overcome what that discomfort is so you can move forward in a more productive way.

And I agree with that. I mean distract. You know, this whole procrastination thing comes when the test is discomfort. If it’s a test you like doing, I think we’re gonna go and do it and get it over with, right? I mean, I I know, like, I was thinking about coming in this conversation about my own business. And for example billing. Billings and necessity necessity to keep the business going, but they actually like collecting money cause that’s why we work. So they never procrastinate billing for example or certain clients that I’ve got that are really great to work with. Generally there’s stuff gets done before that client that’s not so cordial. Let’s put it that way, right? So, because that’s discomfort and that’s a bit of a pain sometimes. So you just kind of shift that around that makes sense. Any, is there any correlation to if you got that task that you’ve been putting off to doing it first in the morning and taking that approach and just? Getting it done or going or doing like a focus session where you just say ohh I take that task and just kind of focus on it for an hour like how does that work?

Yeah. So there’s Brian Tracys eat that frog. Right. When’s the best time to eat the frog first thing in the morning. So I think if you are a person who has your breast, brain power and mental capacity and your best energy in the morning, then yes, follow that advice, do the hard things in the morning because. Is it’s. If you’re leaning on willpower and motivation to do a thing, you’re going to find that it’s really hard for you to do that thing because willpower is a muscle and it can get fatigued just like a muscle in the gym. So that’s why you start the day making really good, healthy decisions. And if you’ve had a really full day where you made something like research says 35,000 decisions. Unconscious or or conscious. These ones by the end of the day, you’re like, screw whatever healthy eating plan I have. Give me all the chimichanga smothered and cheese and the margaritas and and everything because you’re just done making good choices. So it’s harder for some people to make themselves do the work in the afternoon because they’re so fatigued from what they’ve avoided in the morning. So trying to get to the hard work in the morning. Is a great way when you still have. Some of that, but I really like implementing systems. So for example in my life I know that I do my high leverage work from about 9:00 to 10:30 usually in the morning because that’s when I have the most energy. That’s when I can focus. That’s when I can drown out distraction. So I don’t typically take meetings in that time. So I can honor that to make sure I get the most important work done. And if you don’t have that kind of planner structure to your day and you say ohh at some point today, I need to get out the billing for those of us who maybe aren’t as financially. EPT then it’s one of those situations where you put it off until 20 minutes before the end of your day and you have to be somewhere and now you’re rushing. And it doesn’t get done to the quality that you want it. So I think there’s some value in doing it first thing in the morning, but it’s also just about knowing yourself and when you have the most energy to do hard things.

Yeah, I’m. I’m with you. Like I I tend to do my best work. Believe it or not, between about 7:00 AM and about nine. And one of the reasons is nobody else is up. Nobody else is making phone calls till after nine. Nobody’s bugging me. And. And that’s another thing like. We talked about phone calls. I think people use getting on the calls with clients as a way to avoid stuff they don’t want to do. Like I see it all the time and I know in my business I’m very unlikely to jump on a phone call with a client at Hawk. I always say to my clients, if you really want me booked time with me and hear Sal. And just do it properly because and they’re like, why? And I know what happens. I’ll be in the middle of something. I don’t want to do. But jump on with that client, especially if I really like the client and an hour and a half goes by and I still haven’t got done the job that I set out to do right.

Yeah. So many of us lose time to ineffective meetings because we we take them ad hoc without a particular agenda or we don’t come to it, then prepared. If it’s add hacks. So if the client has questions, we can’t necessarily answer all those questions. You might need to go do some research and come back to them. So I think that is 1 issue. I think the other piece is. Being really protective again about the work you need to get done today. So not that those client meetings aren’t valuable, there’s. Really great. A lot of good things can happen, but brainstorming can happen in client meetings where where I need certain feedback that is great for client meetings, but just giving updates is a waste in my opinion. A waste of time and it’s one of the easiest places to reclaim some time during your. Week. When I was working for a marketing agency. We would have leadership team meetings every week that would go. They were supposed to last 90 minutes when they would last two 2 1/2 hours first of all, so ineffective meeting management. But there were so many updates that came through those meetings that could have been an e-mail that could have been 5 minute video. Watch this before you come to the meeting and then just bring your questions right. Save us all some time here. So I think there’s a lot to be reclaimed with meetings, but we tend to like the the interaction that we get. Especially if we’re client facing and we want to have that time. So we tend to say yes, but I have yet to meet a client who, when I answer with you know, they asked me oh, hey, can you meet real quick? I’ll say, hey, I’m in the middle of a really important project that I’ve set aside. Time to do. Is it OK if we meet at this? Time. Very few of them are going to say no. Or you can just say you have another commitment until 2:00. Can you meet after that? They don’t need to know. The commitment is to yourself to get the work done.

No, because and that’s a good point. If you don’t give yourself time to get to work done, there’s no point in having all these meetings, because a lot of people do that. They entrench themselves in meetings. And I know, like typically on a Monday, almost never take a meeting till after 3:00 in the afternoon. And people look at me and. So why? And I said, Monday’s my heaviest day coming out of a weekend usually. Yet this week it was yesterday. It was Tuesday because of the long weekend, and I know myself. The other thing I don’t do, which a lot of people do, I don’t take meetings Friday afternoons. I know by about Friday at 1:00. Or do heavy work Friday afternoons cause I know by 1:00 on Friday my brain is pretty checked out usually, so why would I try and go to those hard tasks that have been putting off when my brains checked out? I’ll just check out you. One more right?

Right, right. And it won’t be the quality of. Work that you want.

Yeah.

So do you have any other good strategies to kind of help him with this? You say come up with the system, what else works?

Absolutely. Yeah. So another one is to shift how you view yourself. So if you say, oh, I’m a chronic procrastinator, I put everything off into the last minute. This is also not serving you. So I don’t know if anyone else. Did this in college or university, but I would put off writing the paper that was really only 5 or 10 pages right at this point in my life. I could probably crank that out in an hour, but back in college. It would take me, you know, a few hours or a day to do that work, and I put it off until the night before. Why? Because I work great under pressure. I am so good. Give me a deadline. Right. But if I identify as this kind of procrastinator, then I’m going to let my actions lean into that identity. So some of it is shifting. How you view yourself? Self so you can also apply this in your personal life. It might be an area where you say oh I like I can’t walk around, I’m just such a lazy and unconnected grandma. For example, if you have grandkids and rather than associating with that and really letting your actions align with that identity, you can flip it and say no, I’m really connected. And loving. And parent and then your actions will follow the identity and that’s the powerful piece here is that we tend to think that we need to take action and take action and then that’s going to drive who we become. And that’s true. But if we change to the lens we view ourselves through, our actions will change more quickly and more consistently. Because that’s how we see ourselves. So if you see yourself as a chronic procrastinator, you need to change the lens to be, you know, I’m a proactive professional who helps my clients make more money. And then when you view yourself in that way, of course. You want to get to the work.

Yeah, part of part of it is people like to look at themselves in a negative point of view. They do the negative self talk routine. And I I haven’t told you this, but I’ve spent kind of a lifetime between being a bit of a time management junk. Yet I’m also a mental health junkie. So I’ve been through. My own issues in past, not just to the procrastination doing due to other things, bad relationships, bad issues. You know, that kind of stuff. And one thing I learned long, long time ago is the negative kill the negative self talk. So don’t look at stuff like. Like you said, like I’m a chronic fascinator because if you start to say that all the time, you start to become that all the time and that is an issue. Just try and look at things in a positive way. The other thing is look at how you were brought up even with the press nation like there’s a really good book out there by a mental health professional. And named John Deloney. He’s on the Ramsey network and he’s wrote. The he wrote. A book costume called on your past Changing Future. And it applies to this. It applies to everything you do is the way you’re brought up and the way things happen in your past impacts on what you do, and you need to change that. And people need to make that. Concentrated effort to make that change because it will impact and the same thing with procrastination and funding a lot of cases when people are procrastinated very often, their parents are their siblings are their family is. And I don’t think it’s an auditory gene. It just becomes an acceptable way of life.

Yeah. Thank you for bringing up this nuance of it all. I think there is. What I’ve learned as a parent is that behavior is caught, not necessarily taught, so we tend to model what we see. So if our guardians, when we were young, tended to avoid hard things and didn’t avoid the discomfort, then that’s the learned reaction we have when things get hard, we either check out. Or we find a way to avoid the work thinking people just do that later when I’m in a better place. But what if the? Place doesn’t come. How do we get ourselves to a better place to actually cross that bridge? And that’s what I think the reflection does. A really good job of is so many times we try to push through and just say I can do this. I’m just going to buckle down and do it well. But why? What are you learning out of that? And so if you can take 5 minutes to try to process what is truly making you want to push off this task. You’ll learn how you can not only grow as a human, but do better and faster.

Mm-hmm.

So true one things I find and I’ll share with you that helps me is I journal every day and I’ve done this every day for probably the last 20. I’m 57, so probably that’s 25 or 26 years. And in there it can be personal stuff. It can be business stuff, it can be whatever’s on my mind. And I know when I’m having problems dealing with tasks, they end up in their. I’ve journaled different ways of done paper. I’ve done word docs. Now I use a an app called the day one journal for journaling which works really well, but I find by journaling I’m working out my thoughts. It actually helps the procrastination. It helps me avoiding putting stuff off. Do you find that helps secure with your client?

Yeah, absolutely. I think the more we know ourselves and our tendencies, the easier it is for us to coach ourselves through these uncomfortable moments. Because life wasn’t meant to be comfortable. We were meant we were put here to figure this out. Whether it was easy or we, you know, it was going to be hard, but. I think the journaling is a great opportunity, and I’ve seen many clients make shifts and observations that they would not have otherwise made because they didn’t slow down long enough to process that emotion or process that observation. So I think it’s an amazing. Tool that is getting more attention, and rightfully so. One of the things that I have seen. People do more of is. So let’s say someone says I don’t want to be a procrastinator. I I do want to start hitting my deadlines and not feel this discomfort or stress every time I have something coming up. One hack is to leverage habit goals to get yourself there. So your journaling is a great example where I might say I. You don’t want to procrastinate anymore. Well, that’s great. It’s kind of an achievement, but it’s not really measure. So what is a habit that someone who doesn’t procrastinate might do every day while they journal, they unpack their feelings. They unpack where they get stuck. Great. Now how can I incorporate journaling into my daily routine? So that might look something like, you know, there’s a lot of great habit books out there, but. Habit stacking is one which basically talks about when I wake up, I’m going to spend 5 minutes journaling and I might journal initially about the weather and my dream last night. And you know, what do I want to accomplish today? But the more we get into practice, the deeper that journaling. Gets so creating some kind of achievement that attaches to the kind of identity that we want can really help us make leaps and bounds toward the kind of person we want to become. That isn’t a. Procrastinator.

Mm-hmm. And I think what you have to do. And in all this process, whether it’s journaling or anything else, it’s be vulnerable to yourself more than anybody else. It doesn’t mean if I’m vulnerable to you or a friend or colleague would be honorable to yourself and take a really deep look and say, why am I falling into have a procrastination and what’s going? On here and admit that to yourself, I think that’s really the first battle.

Yeah, and it’s the. It’s identifying to your point again, it’s identifying the tracks in our head, identifying what are we saying that we’re not acknowledging out loud because as we TuneIn to how are we talking to ourselves in here, we realize we have this judge that we carry around with us all the time. No wonder we feel these negative feelings or we want to put. Off this uncomfortable stuff, it’s because we’re constantly judging ourselves. So when we get that out on paper, it’s a lot easier to view that in a in a in a an objective fashion that was hard for me today when it’s on paper.

Yes.

Then it reflects back to us just like a mirror.

The other thing I think really helps and I don’t know how you feel about this. Get somebody. Us or a couple of people are trusting you some as accountability partners. I think that really helps, like when you’re when you’re struggling with stuff, you don’t wanna do. I think sometimes having somebody to bounce it off for 5 minutes, that is really important. Does that work for you or for your question?

Absolutely. So there’s research that says we’re 95% more likely to do the thing we said we’re going to do if we have accountability. So that’s why a lot of people join groups and masterminds because they they want to live into what they said they want to do and what’s going to help them get to their goals. They’re not very good at keeping their word to themselves, but I’ll keep my word to you that I’m going to show up at the time that I said I was going to. So one is sometimes just sharing your goals with people to a selective group, right? We don’t want to necessarily shout your biggest, most vulnerable goals from the rooftop, but with a few trusted advisors, that’s great. But even on a more day-to-day. Basis basis it might be something like. There’s really great programs out there. There’s one called focus blocks dot IO. I think there’s another one called focus mate, where I know focus blocks at least every hour on the hour, across the world. They have coaches available. You log in at the top of the hour, you write what you’re going to work on, and then you sit there, live on zoom and do that work for 50 minutes. And then at the end, you report how you did. And even just the not having someone in the room but having someone on the other side of the camera keeps us accountable to stay in that chair and do the. Work.

Yeah, I think that can help in a in a big, big. Way. Is there any correlation to on it? Procrastinators and people have mental health issues. That’s always question of.

You know, I don’t have any research that that uncovers that maybe there is something out there that I’d love to learn more. I would say from my own personal opinion and I am not a mental health professional. I find that people who sit with the discomfort and and do the deeper work and do the journaling and try to uncover why, why they might be avoiding some of these harder things, tend to be the people who have more joy in their lives tend to be people who can deal with harder situations. Because they have the tools they need when things start going sideways, when their mental track isn’t where they. On it. So sometimes it’s just starting with a small practice to turn that around, and I know there are certainly a lot of things that people struggle with. That journaling alone is not going to solve. But it’s it’s just even having the tools to sort out what is going on in my brain and how can I look at it in a more objective fashion.

That’s true.

That I have found has brought me more peace.

Mm-hmm. That’s really good point.

How about you? How have you? How have you addressed it in your life and how has it evolved for you?

Procrastinate. I used to be really bad when I was younger. If you know, if stuff I didn’t want to do, I would just find a way to avoid. It and I. I kind of took the approach many, many years ago when I was running big projects in healthcare before I got into business myself, there was something I just didn’t want to do. I just had to deal with it and just get it over with. Because once it’s done for me, it’s the satisfaction that the task, the hard task is done and. And I can. Move on to this stuff. I really like doing so that’s kind of how I’ve dealt with it over the years. I like to get the hard stuff out of the way early in. The day. Yesterday I was working on a project and I just I’m I got up and I’m like ohh do I have to do this? Yes I have to do this. When do I gotta get it done by? Ohh I don’t know and I just kind of took eat the fog approach and just got it done and and I just kind of focused when I’m in stuff that I’m avoiding doing, I turn off the phone. I turn off the computer, I turn off. Pretty well everything and I just kind of. Just deal with it that way. That’s kind of been my approach over the years.

Yeah. So I call that creating a focus cave. So if we know we have to really dive into some really deep work that’s going to challenge us. It is really great to shut off all the notifications, put your phone somewhere else, turn on some great background music like viral beats or actually Baroque instrumental. Classic music is really great for focus, but ultimately creating yourself. Space in which it’s it’s harder for you to get distracted, can really help you do that. Another tactical tip is if you have a team or you have someone you can delegate to a contractor. This is a great opportunity to say, well, if this is uncomfortable for me. And it needs to get done. Is it in the strength or desire zone of someone that I could delegate it to? Not that we want to push our work off on others, but if this work is truly in my drudgery zone because I feel like I just don’t have the tools I need and it’s going to take me longer than it should take someone. Maybe that’s a great candidate for delegation, and there might be someone who’s amazing at that thing, or it’s a great growth opportunity for them and for you. It’s just a distraction. So we can also use it as an opportunity to say, should I really be the one to do this work?

I would agree with that. A mentor in my life is still in my life and a big guy and his philosophy with a lot of stuff, and I’ve kind of adopted if you’re not good at doing something, find somebody to do it for you. If you don’t like doing it, finding somebody to do it for you and concentrate what you’re good at and what makes you money, that was his whole philosophy and. I think when you do that, it makes life easier, so I’ll give you an example. I can do accounting work till the cows come home. My father was the CFO. I was good at it.

I.

Hate it. I hate it. I hate it. I hate. It so I always say to people, what do I do? I go. I have an account and I handle all my accounting stuff every month. I say just deal with it. Please. I don’t care what customers. Deal with it and he deals, right? So it’s done.

Right. Well, and this is this is true in our businesses or in our careers, but it’s also true in life outside of it. So I was at a conference. Marketing conference I was six months pregnant, so it was the was the last week I could travel and I went and I had a that part was OK, but I had a mom who ran an agency come up to me and the advice she said was. I know I’m giving you unsolicited advice, but delegate everything that you can so you get time with them when they’re little. And I, you know, flippantly, he was like, yeah, OK. Never. But now that my kids are almost five and seven, I realized how right she was in life, too. I there are certain things I can’t delegate that I don’t want to delegate, like spending time with my kids, with my partner, or these other things in life. Right. I’m. I’m building a business so I can enjoy these other areas, but I can certainly delegate cleaning the toilets. I don’t like doing that. That’s a great opportunity. I could certainly delegate mowing the lawn or doing the landscaping if I don’t really enjoy that work now, there are certain people who love that opportunity to be outside. Great. Don’t delegate it, but. That that, yes to doing the landscaping something that you hate is a no to doing other things that could fill you up.

Yeah.

So true and the problem is people look at it wrongly. They say ohh. If I go Kate cleaning the swords, let’s go back to cause I hate housework more than anybody and. And you know, I live with my elderly mom and she ate so, so. So what do I do? I bring in a cleaning lady. Once a week. My mom says, doesn’t it cost you? And I said, you know what? That I make more money for what I charge than I’m paying to do this. So you gotta you can’t just look at it that way. You gotta also say, OK, but then I’m freed up to do the stuff I’m good at and I wanted it. And that’s what people realize.

Right. Yeah, that’s the ultimate time and financial freedom, you know, is looking at the cost of not delegating. So you can truly free up your time to do what will make you money and. Make you feel like you can have the freedom. I think the the ultimate that we’re all looking for is how can I spend 90% of my time in my desire zone and my zone of genius where I’m passionate and proficient. And so it’s great to try to delegate or get rid of or eliminate automate those things that don’t fall into it. But there are certainly. Developmental things that we want to do for our business that kind of fall into this growth zone where it’s maybe just a little bit out of reach and it’s an OK that it’s a stretch. And so if that’s the case, like for example in my. Business. Maybe it’s getting up and doing more public speaking. Maybe I want to do keynotes and so I really should practice that public speaking. Well, it’s not completely out of reach for me, but it is certainly a little bit of a risk, a little bit of a stretch. So it’s overestimating the amount of time that I need to do that thing to allow for. The learning curve, because that’s another place where a lot of us make mistakes is we underestimate the time it’s going to take, and then we get frustrated that we can’t do 15 things in a day when we thought each of these things was going to take 10 minutes and some of them took two hours. Years.

Because they don’t have any concept. Because I haven’t done it before. They don’t know what it’s going to take. So and they don’t. You know, it’s funny. I always tell people, even in web projects that are starting out. I said take your restaurant, double it and add 50%. And they look at me and say really I said until you get it down, double it and add. 50% you watch and sure enough. It almost always works out exactly like that. Let’s kind of head to wrap up a little bit. If you were, I’m gonna put you a bit on spot. If you had three real good books on the topic to help people, which ones would you want to throw at the? I’m a bit of an avid reader, so fill my bookcase.

Yeah, well, I know you’re a productivity guru, so you maybe have read some of these, but I believe the one thing by Gary Keller. Is great procrastinator. I’m sorry. Prioritization is the thing. The number one thing that I hear my client struggling with and the focusing question from the one thing is a great way to move through life one project at a time. So I highly recommend the one thing I’ve also really been enjoying in distractible by Nayer Yao. It’s a great book talking about leaning into the discomfort. In creating system so you get the right work done and if I had to pick a third. Word. I’m trained in the full focus system by Michael Hyatt. It’s a productivity system, so I really love his free to focus. It’s a very baseline foundational book about productivity, but it gives a lot of really great systems. If you’re just getting started and trying to create more. Foundational structure around your time.

Yeah. Michael’s got a unique way of of putting stuff across on this subject and many other subjects and he’s very much a system focused guy, so that that kind of helpful, wouldn’t know what we’re talking about. And if you had three quick tips that somebody could help themselves today that don’t take a lot of work, what would you say?

I would first pose a question that what would you do if your if your success were inevitable? So so many of us think about all the things we need to get done today, or we put these limiting factors on ourselves because of our judge and we can never step above the fold to ask. But what is truly possible? What’s my end game? And. We are. We overestimate how much we can get done in a day and underestimate how much we can do in a year, three years, five years. So I would just ask you to think about. Well, what would you do if you thought your success were inevitable? How would you lean into every day? What would you dream of? And I think that really helps people think bigger.

Yeah.

And think more about. I’m not going to get it all done today and that’s fine because I’m playing the long game. I’m playing the infinite game.

Yes.

So I find that helpful and then the other two levers that I feel like people don’t pull often enough, they come to me and they say, Jen, I thought I’d be further along by now. I thought I’d get this promotion. I thought my business would be more successful. And the two things I asked them to lean into our focus and consistency. So we tend to think about. Well, you know, if my teacup were my energy and my time as a business owner or you know someone in a full time career, I tend to try to pour that in 15 different cups and then I wonder why I’m not further in any of those fifteen. Well, it’s because I’m spread too thin. So by choosing a focus one to two things that you really want to put your energy into, then you can pour all of your time and energy into those things, accomplish that thing, and then move on. So focus is a really great lever to pull. And then the third and final would be consistency. And that’s again coming back to systems, but. How would you show up with small action every day to move that thing forward? So if I wanted to write a book, for example, about all the WordPress hacks in the world, or how to build the best websites, I would identify myself as a writer. But then rather than saying I want to write a book by December 30th of 50,000 words. I might just say I’m going to write 1000 words a day, every morning at 7:00. Yeah.

Yep.

And leveraging those small actions every day turn me into the kind of person I want to be, and it doesn’t feel as big.

Yeah, I I so agree with that. One of the things I like to do is take big tasks, big goals and break them down into mini goals or smaller goals with time, deadlines on them, cause goals have to be measurable, right, and they by completing all those, you can. You hit the big goal and people say well. That’s cheating, I said. No, it’s called helping you focus on making the end goal by breaking it down into manageable chunks.

Well, and that ties back to our conversation about procrastination because so many people put a project on their To Do List rather than the next step in the project. And so when we don’t have clarity on what’s next, we can waste a lot of time because we don’t know where we’re going. So if we have a plan of what we need to do in the time, that’s.

Yes.

The next step we can save so much agony in that space. We’re not wasting time thinking of what to do. We can do the work.

Yeah. So true. Jenna, what a conversation. Thanks a lot. Today. Somebody wants to talk to you about some coaching or the things you do. Where’s the best place to find it? Where’s the best place to get?

Absolutely. Well, thanks for having me, Rob. This has been so fun. They can find me on Instagram at first. Like coach, that’s FIRST light coach or first light health.co.

It has. Thank you very much. You have yourself a wonderful day.

Thanks you too.