7 Ways to Overcome Procrastination Now!

0:00 Welcome to The Unapologetic Man Podcast, the only podcast that's all about self-improvement, confidence, success, women, and being a man without making any apologies for it. What is up, guys? Thank you for tuning in to another episode of the UMP. You didn't procrastinate on clicking on this link, and for that, you should smack yourself on the ass. You are a goddamn champion. So today, we are going to talk about that all-encompassing feeling of procrastination, why we do it, and seven ways to overcome your procrastination now. Not tomorrow, but now.

0:42 Before I jump into the content, I want to read you a very quick review that I got from an NLP coaching client. His name was Pat, and he said, Mark, I can't believe how good I feel after our session. I feel like a weight has been lifted that I've been carrying around for 30 years. I feel like myself again, and I can't wait to get out there and show that new self-worth to women. Thank you again. And that was from Pat. I had a session with him a couple days ago, and we had some really good movement during our session together.

1:11 And if you don't know, I use NLP, which is Neuro Linguistic Programming, to essentially reprogram the programs that are running in your head that aren't conducive to attracting women. So I work with Pat, and he's going to fly out of his Pat cave and kick some ass with women because he is now a new man working with new programming, and that's what I do. So if you're interested to learn more about that, I have a ton of testimonials on my sales page. You can learn more about that by going to MarkSingCoaching.com.

1:40 Once again, that's MarkSingCoaching.com, or you can click the link in the description below, and it'll tell you all about it. So let's stop procrastinating. Let's get into the content. All right, so why in the hell do we procrastinate? Well, let's think about it logically. Obviously, it's to avoid pain. It's to avoid pain, and I'll tell you what. When those taxes come around, boy, those are pretty much the most painful thing in my entire life, and there's almost zero reward with it, right? It's like I got to pay these assholes a bunch of money, and I got to figure it all out myself, and me owning my own business.

2:14 There's tons of expenses to consider, LLCs, and all this bullshit that I hate dealing with. So when those taxes come around, I always procrastinate on it. But some of the things that I'm going to talk about today are some of the strategies that I use to overcome my fear of doing taxes, and one of those is I reframe it in my head. I think to myself that my money takes care of the roads. It pays the fire department. It pays the police department. It takes care of nature.

2:42 It makes it so that I can access nature every weekend, and it keeps our nation safe by paying our military to protect us. Sometimes you just have to reframe things in your head like that. So that's what I do, and it's funny. When I write a check sometimes, I always say, like, for 2,500 hand grenades, right? Because it's like you're giving money to the government, and they're going to buy a bunch of military equipment. So, hey, I always think of it like, dude, this is going to buy some epic ops for the Navy SEAL Team 6 to go kick some ass against those terrorists.

3:14 That's kind of how you have to reframe it. So I was watching this thing by Gary Vee. I don't know if you guys ever watch him. I really like his content. I really respect him. He's just like, man, he's like a little gnome on cocaine, that guy, dude. He just goes on and on and on about how to be a successful entrepreneur, and he has some amazing insights. And what he said about procrastination is if you're procrastinating something, then don't do that thing because you obviously don't enjoy it.

3:39 Now, that's a great tip, but it's kind of like sometimes we're like, well, I have to do this thing. Like that would be nice if I could just completely set up my life where I didn't have to do shit that I don't want to do. But the very definition of life could be doing a bunch of shit you don't want to do. So that's why we procrastinate is because like we simply don't want to do it. So we have to set up rewards for ourself. We have to set up an environment for ourself, and we have to set up punishment for ourself where we don't do it is actually worse than doing it.

4:11 So let's get into that. All right, so obviously avoiding pain, but in addition to that, not wanting to fail. So I see this a lot with guys who are trying to get good with women. They'll talk to me, and I'll be like, oh, yeah, man, I've been rejected thousands of times. And they'll laugh at me. They'll be like, dude, you've been rejected thousands of times? I've only been rejected once, bro. And the reason they've been rejected once is because they don't put themselves out there. Not only have they only been rejected once, but they've only been with the number of girls that they can count on one hand.

4:40 So when you don't put yourself out there, you don't run the risk of failing. You don't run the risk of getting rejected. So when you procrastinate on getting good with women, for example, it's basically a fear of failure. It's a fear of rejection. And I'm going to address that at the very end of this episode because I have a very good way that I reframed it in my mind where I actually enjoy getting rejected. Or enjoy isn't really the right word. I reward myself in a very certain way for getting rejected so I no longer fear it.

5:11 And because I no longer fear it, I don't procrastinate going to talk to women. And on that note, another reason we procrastinate is an excuse when you do fail. So let's say you're procrastinating on studying for midterms or something like that. Well, if you procrastinate until the very last night and you stay up the whole night studying and then you're standing in front of the lecture hall before the midterm goes down, and you're talking to your friends and you say, yeah, man, I put in an all-nighter.

5:38 I'm super tired. I don't even know if I remember half the stuff that I learned, so I'm probably not going to do so good. When you procrastinate, it sets up an excuse for you when you do fail. So it's kind of like a preemptive excuse that we do when we're afraid of failure so that when we do fail, we have a reason. And this is really common with students. Another thing that's really common with guys who are trying to get better with women in this whole vein of procrastination is you have what I call armchair pickup artists, and it's guys who study this material, get really knowledgeable about how to pick up girls, but they never actually go out and do it.

6:14 They keep telling themselves, well, if I just learn a little bit more, I just need to learn a couple more gambits. I just need to learn a couple more strategies, understand female psychology better, understand frame control better, practice my frame control reversals in the mirror 200 more times before I put myself out there. And of course, the reason they're doing this is because they're afraid of rejection, but they're using getting more knowledgeable as a means to procrastinate actually doing it. And a simple truth about anything is there will never be the perfect time.

6:45 And that's what these guys are doing. They're waiting for like the perfect time when they're completely prepared, when they have all the knowledge and they're ready to go, and then I'll do it. But that time never comes. So you just have to get started today. Because while you think the perfect time and environment and opportunity is going to come in the future, it won't. There's no better time than now. And that goes down to the old spiritual saying, if not now, when? And that's what I want to ask you guys if you're procrastinating on getting out there and talking to women.

7:14 All right. So now let's jump into seven ways to overcome procrastination. It's funny, I said seven, and I'm looking at this list, and there's probably more like 10 or 15 because I always like to over-deliver in these podcast episodes. So the first strategy is to forgive yourself for past procrastination. As you're listening to this, you may feel a sense of guilt because you, just like me, have probably been guilty of procrastinating. So first of all, we need to forgive ourselves. Why did you procrastinate? To avoid pain, to avoid failure.

7:46 There's always a positive reason for our negative actions. So if you procrastinated in the past, you say, well, listen, there was a part of me that was trying to prevent myself from going through something uncomfortable. It's very natural. It's actually written into our DNA. So forgive yourself. I forgive all past transgressions. Say that to yourself now. And now you have a clean slate to move forward and your resistance to doing something, your inclination to procrastinate, will naturally go down when you forgive yourself. So the next thing to do is to remove distractions from your environment.

8:22 So for example, when you're going to do some project, like me recording this podcast, the worst thing I can do is have Instagram open on my phone, right? So what you want to do is you want to eliminate all those distractions. Just get very clear on what you're going to do and do that thing. One strategy I heard is when you wake up in the morning, don't let yourself look at your cell phone until you've completed three tasks. And I actually heard this last night. I was watching this thing from Mr.

8:48 Wonderful from Shark Tank. He was talking about this, which he learned from another woman, where you write three things down you want to get done immediately in the morning before you're allowed to check your phone. So checking your phone can kind of be the reward once you finish these three tasks. I thought that was a really good tip. So I wanted to add it here. Another important step is to not mix areas. So a lot of us try to get work done in bed, or a lot of us will bring our laptop into the family room and try to get work done while we're watching TV.

9:19 Well, while you're trying to do that, you think you're going to do like two birds with one stone. It kind of seems like a cool idea when you first think about it, but it's just killing your progress because you're mixing areas. So when you're sitting there watching TV, not only are you going to start getting anxious because you've brought your work into the TV room so many times, but then when you want to do some work, you're naturally going to want to watch TV, which is a distraction.

9:43 So for me, I have my office. I'm in my office right now. It's my recording studio. It's where I do my coaching calls. Only work happens here. I don't even let myself surf the internet or look on Instagram or Facebook when I'm here unless I'm doing it for work. When I do that kind of stuff, I do it in a very certain place. And then when I get into bed, bed is for sleeping. So you have to have designated areas to where you get certain things done because when you mix them, that's when procrastination will slip in.

10:10 All right. The next tip is to start small. Now, let's say you're going to take on a big project like getting good with women, right? Getting good with women is a gigantic undertaking. It takes years. It's a marathon, not a sprint. And a lot of people won't start it because they know that it's going to be such a gigantic hassle-off to finally get good with women. But when you start small and break it up into bits, it makes the whole thing a lot more doable. So first, you're just going to learn female psychology.

10:40 Then you're going to learn what kind of things you can approach women with. Then you're going to open and eject with women. Then you're going to stack and push the conversation a little bit further. Then you're going to work in one of the attraction-building gambits. So what we do is we just do it incrementally. Incremental improvement is the nature of all mastery. In addition to that, there's a Zen saying that says the elephant is eaten bite by bite. If you're about to go eat an elephant, you're not going to do it in just one big old gigantic bite.

11:09 You're going to do it slowly. It's probably going to take you days if not weeks. But that's how you do it. You just do it bite by bite. Take the little bit that you have in front of you. Tackle that before you even think about the next part. I'm very interested in military training, particularly like the spec ops kind of military training. And especially Navy SEAL training. Because I feel that that's the hardest training in the world. And one of the ways they get guys to quit is to make them think about the big picture.

11:35 They're like, man, you think you're in hell now? You have seven more days of this with zero sleep, zero breaks. We're going to be hammering you the whole time. You're only on day one, man. You're only on day one, hour three. Just think about day 10, hour 20. You can't even imagine that right now. And that's how they get guys to quit is they get them to look at the bigger picture. But the guys who get through Navy SEAL butt training, they just think about the next meal.

12:01 I hear that over and over again. They say, okay, let me just get through this one evolution and then I get to the next meal. That's all I have to do is get through this one evolution. And then if it gets really hard, let me just get through this one push-up. Let me just get through this one half of this one push-up. And that's how you get through something. And the way I like to look at it is when I'm trying to build out something like a big coaching program or a training program, I always think like the mark of tomorrow will take care of what I have to do tomorrow.

12:30 The mark on Wednesday will take care of what he has to do on Wednesday. The mark next week will take care of that. And I think of myself as like a recharged entity that wakes up in the morning, all charged up and ready to work. The me today doesn't have to do all that because the me of tomorrow will take care of it. The me of Wednesday will take care of it. And all I have to do today is what I've designated for myself today. So this podcast, for example, I'm just doing this one episode today.

12:56 I'm going to release it. I actually want to prepare a few more episodes because I'm going hunting this weekend and I'm not going to be able to record Monday's podcast on the weekend. So I'm going to do it this week. But all I've done is I've told myself today, you're doing this one. Tomorrow, you're doing the next one. Thursday, you're doing the next one. So you got them all lined up until Monday. That's all you have to do. I don't even know what I'm going to talk about for Friday and Monday's podcast.

13:22 I have a lot of notes, but I'm letting myself of tomorrow take care of that. Just get this one done today. Let the mark of tomorrow take care of tomorrow's podcast. Another good thing to do is to make it time-based rather than task-based. So my taxes, for example, what I do is I set aside 20 minutes per day to work on it. And I just say, okay, the first day, I'm just going to go through my expenses. And it's just that bite-by-bite analogy, right? Next day, I'm going to go through all my income.

13:50 The day after that, I'm going to go through whatever it may be. I'm going to get on TurboTax and begin filling in all the information. So when you do it by time, 20 minutes, or even if you're starting out, do it for five minutes. So if you're trying to get better with women, you think to yourself, oh my hell, I have to learn all this shit to get better with women. Set yourself five minutes a day to study getting better with women. Or maybe assign yourself one of my podcast episodes per day to better yourself.

14:19 And that's it. That's all you have to do. When you do that, you're going to get started. Then hopefully you'll get some momentum. And then who knows? Maybe you'll do two podcasts a day, three podcasts a day, or a hundred podcasts a day and really boost up my download numbers. That would be awesome. I'd appreciate that. But again, sell yourself time-based tasks, not actually task-based tasks. God damn, that was a tongue twister. I'm not even trying to say it again. I'm just going to leave it like that.

14:46 And that's the way to get through it. So you also want to set up yourself for success. So setting up the environment for the task. For example, you guys trying to meet more women. Well, what you can do is instead of trying to go out to meet women, you begin by setting up the environment for yourself to meet women. So let's say you sign up for some yoga classes, maybe you sign up for a dance class, you make plans, go to the bar with your friend, you set up yourself for success, and that could be the first step to eliminate your procrastination of getting better with women.

15:18 Also, it's important to make the reward more abundant than the punishment of actually doing it. So with taxes, for example, when I get done with taxes, I let myself have my all-time favorite cheat meal. No, it's not Burger King. Actually, it's cinnamon rolls that Marissa cooks for me. I allow myself cinnamon rolls about three times a year. The first is for my birthday. Next is when I get taxes done. And the third is when I hit some like big time monetary achievement in my business. So I'll give myself in one year this massive, massive reward of cinnamon rolls, which is my all-time favorite.

15:56 Holy hell, man. Her damn cinnamon rolls are so good. So I'll set that up. I'll be like, yo, I'm going to do my taxes. I'm probably going to be done with them in about five days. Will you make me cinnamon rolls? And then she gets up in her little baking outfit and she bakes me some cinnamon rolls. And when I finally push enter on my TurboTax, I get to go up there and enjoy them. The reward is bigger than the punishment and it pushes me through.

16:18 I got a little background on my computer of just cinnamon rolls floating through space. And I'm like, oh man, I want the cinnamon rolls. So I go ahead and get my taxes done. Also, you should know that when you do something you don't want to do, it actually raises your testosterone. Don't know if you knew that, but when you do something you don't want to do, it raises your test. And this goes into my biggest point of this whole podcast, which I want to finish on this is your desire to become the best man you can be should trump any desire for quote unquote success.

16:50 Okay. So what does that mean? That means that growth should be your number one priority, not getting success. And this is why when I get rejected, it literally almost feels the same to me as when I pull a phone number. Reason being is because I base my feelings of success on the fact that I had the courage to go approach her, that I had the wherewithal to persevere through the rejection. I also enjoy the feeling, the shitty feeling of getting rejected because I know it's making my social pressure muscle grow so that when I get rejected, I'm actually like patting myself on the back and being like, fuck yeah, man, you're a champion.

17:28 You had the courage to go talk to that girl. You persevered through it. You felt the social pressure and you just grew. See, that's the thing. When we put our goal as growth above success, then it doesn't matter what happens because when we fail, we learn. And what is that? That's growth. So even in the failures, we're growing. And because we're growing, we're satisfied. And because we're satisfied, we don't procrastinate on things because we know no matter what happens, we're going to grow. So either you win or you win.

17:57 That's really the way I look at it. And that's the way we need to base almost everything. Like with doing something, you don't want to do taxes, for example. Well, doing taxes raises my testosterone. It also prevents me from getting audited by the government. But more than anything, it benefits me. So when you do shit you don't want to do, you're growing as a man. If growth is your number one priority, then boom, you have the fucking solution. And finally, I want to end it with this is just like what Gary Vee said, right?

18:25 He's like, look, if you're procrastinating, then you're doing the wrong thing. And there is some truth to take from that is if you're in a job where constantly you have to do shit you don't want to do, you fucking hate it, or you're studying something that doesn't resonate with you, and you hate the assignments, and you're just doing it because your parents pushed you into it, it may be time to reconsider. So look at your procrastination as a symbol. What is it telling you? Look, we're all going to have procrastination.

18:51 We're all going to have to do stuff we want to do, no matter what kind of business we're in. But when you're on purpose, when you're doing what you really want to do, the procrastination goes way down. Like I don't procrastinate on meeting with guys to do NLP coaching. I fucking love it. I look forward to it. I'm like excited, literally. And it's fucking stupid. Like I get up in the morning and I read the questionnaire and I prepare myself and I'm like, man, I'm really going to help this dude today.

19:17 And therefore, I know I'm on purpose. But there's other things about this business that I don't like to do. But for the most part, when you're on purpose, when you're doing what you want to do, when you feel like you're really helping the world rather than taking from it, when you feel like you have a positive result on other people's lives because of what you're doing, I'm telling you, man, the procrastination really goes away. You know, I've been an entrepreneur for 10 plus years and people always ask me, how do you stay motivated?

19:45 And I'm like, man, motivation is a flash in the pan. Purpose is what takes you through. Every morning I wake up with purpose. My purpose is to better the lives of men. My purpose is to get this message out there to a million plus guys so that I can help better the world. And when you have a purpose like that, like me procrastinating on doing this episode just wasn't going to fucking happen. I'm not going to procrastinate tomorrow. I'm not going to procrastinate on Thursday because I have a deep seated purpose.

20:13 I have people relying on me. I'm relying on myself. I have a message that I believe was implanted in me by God himself for me to share with you guys. So really, as you're going through your life, you want to try to get yourself into something where you feel like it's conducive with who you are as a man. And if you're doing something right now that you don't enjoy doing, and there's a lot of procrastination going on, not only should you take that as a symbol, but you should know that probably what you're doing is working into your greater purpose that will come to you in the future.

20:46 So use it as a tool to better yourself by doing things you don't want to do, which is going to raise your testosterone. It's going to grow you as a man, and it's going to shape you into what you have to become first before you can truly step into your purpose. So look at procrastination as weakness. And just like they say in the old gym t-shirts, pain is weakness leaving the body. So go into that pain willingly. The weakness will leave your body. Your testosterone will grow.

21:12 You as a man will grow. And that really should be your overall goal with anything is growth. And again, when it comes to women, pat yourself on the back for the effort, not the result. It doesn't matter if she gives you your phone number. The only thing that matters is you have the balls to approach her. When you reframe it that way and congratulate yourself, give yourself that quintessential cinnamon roll as it were, then you will continue to approach women. You will continue to get better.

21:40 The procrastination and fear will go down, and you'll start getting the results you want. All right, boys. I hope this has helped you in some way. I know it helped me when I did all my research on this. We all procrastinate. It's completely natural. So forgive yourself. Forgive yourself for doing it. And put a clean slate in front of you that you can move forward, knowing that in the future, you have these tools to overcome procrastination, and it's no longer going to prevent you from achieving your goals.

22:05 All right, guys. Thanks for listening. I got another one coming on Friday. I have no idea what it's going to be, but don't worry about it. Mark of tomorrow will take care of that. Thank you again, and I will see you in the next episode. I'll see you in the next episode.

This transcript was made automatically, so a few words may be off.