Summary
Joe explains why we procrastinate on things we “know” we should do: the real reason is that part of us doesn’t want to do it, and that resistance contains wisdom. Neurologically, procrastination means our prefrontal cortex, emotional brain, and nervous system aren’t aligned. Until all three are on board, we won’t take action.
He identifies three reasons for this misalignment: it’s not the right time (your intuition sees something your logical brain can’t), the way you’re approaching it sucks (like perfectionism killing motivation), or you’re avoiding an emotion (like fear of failure). In each case, listening to the procrastination and addressing the root cause produces better results than forcing yourself through it.
Joe warns against the bully-resistance loop where one internal voice demands action while another passively refuses, and advocates for deep listening and wonder as alternatives to self-coercion.
Key Concepts
- Procrastination contains wisdom worth listening to
- Three brains must align before you’ll take action
- Bullying yourself into action creates resistance
- Intuition sees what the logical mind cannot
Key Quotes
“The reason that you know there’s something to do and you’re not doing it is not going to be easy to hear, but here it is. You don’t want to do it.”
“Your prefrontal cortex or that logical part of your brain, the emotional part of your brain, and the nervous system part of your brain aren’t all in alignment with doing the thing.”
“If you try to bully yourself, you’re going to hit resistance. Just like if I try to bully anybody, there’s going to be a certain amount of resistance in the system.”
“Instead of trying to get it perfect, my job is to enjoy the process.”
“If she would have had a huge job and the fear of failure, she was far less likely to succeed than if she had that huge job and she was totally okay to feel that failure.”
Transcript
The reason that you know there’s something to do and you’re not doing it is not going to be easy to hear, but here it is. You don’t want to do it. Of course, there’s a part of you that wants to do it. There’s a part of yourself telling yourself you should do it. But there’s also a part of you that doesn’t want to do it. And so that procrastination that you’re experiencing has wisdom. And if you listen to that wisdom, it can change everything if and only if it’s the right thing to do. Unfortunately, what’s probably happening for you right now is that you are just bullying yourself. You’re telling yourself, “Do this thing,” and then you’re not doing it. Or you’re telling yourself, “Do this thing,” and then you’re saying, “Yeah, I should do this thing.” And then you’re not doing it. Neurologically, the way that this works is there’s not alignment. Meaning that your prefrontal cortex or that logical part of your brain, the emotional part of your brain, and the nervous system part of your brain aren’t all in alignment with doing the thing. Only one of them is in alignment. And it’s telling you, “You should do it. you should do it. You should do it. But it doesn’t mean you’re going to do it. And until you get that alignment, until you actually figure out how to make this emotionally something that you want to do, intellectually something that you want to do, and something that your nervous system wants, your chances of doing it are far less. Typically, there’s three reasons why you’re not in alignment and why you’re not doing the thing that you think you should be doing. The first one is that it’s not the right time. you recognize a pattern that your logical brain can’t see and you realize, oh, this shouldn’t be done right now. The second reason is because the way that you’re doing it or the way you’re thinking about doing it isn’t going to be a good way. It’s not effective. It’s not a way that you want to do it and you haven’t considered that. You’re only thinking about doing it instead of how you want to do it. And the last one is because you have an emotional experience that you’re trying to avoid. So, you’re telling yourself to do something that feels like crap. And so to figure out how to make it feel great or to figure out how to fall in love with the emotion that you’re trying to avoid will immediately unlock it. And the thing about all three of these things, whether it’s timing or whether it’s an emotional avoidance or whether it’s the way that you’re doing it, is if you actually solve those problems, how you’re going to do the thing is going to be far more effective than if you just force yourself to do it. So the best way to share about the timing is a personal story. I was introduced to a pretty famous CEO and he wanted to work with me and I wasn’t saying yes even though my mind was like, “Yeah, this is a great opportunity. This is something you should do.” But I knew enough at that point to really listen when my intuition was talking. And though I couldn’t describe what made it, I just knew that it wasn’t right. It wasn’t the right timing. Couple years later, this person had a big fallout. It was a big failure. It was a public failure. And I immediately reached out because I knew at that point there was going to be enough humility where that person knew that they could be wrong that they didn’t see everything and therefore the work that I was going to do with them was going to be more meaningful to me and more effective for them. And so that’s when we started working together and it was so much more rewarding than it would have been otherwise. But my brain couldn’t see it because the left side of the brain, the way it works is that it can describe stuff, but the right side, it doesn’t describe things. You get it on an intuitive hit. You kind of know it, but you can’t explain why you know it. And if you look for a rational explanation, then you’re going to actually forego some of the intuition that’s actually happening in the right side of your brain. And so often times it’s really important if you’re procrastinating to just wonder, is this the right time? Is this the thing to do? to really feel in and something in you will know, oh, there’s something at play that’s asking me to wait and I can be patient with that. So, the second reason that you might be procrastinating, which has a lot of wisdom in it, is that the way that you’re going about the thing might really suck. And so, there was this person I was coaching at one point and what we found out was that all the procrastination was that he was trying to do everything perfectly. And as it turns out, doing something perfectly is bad on so many levels. First is nobody wants to do it. Oh, I’m trying to make it perfect and you can’t make it perfect and so it’s just really always sucks to do the thing because I’m trying to make it perfect and it’s not perfect. Uh-uh. That also doing something perfectly is a lot less effective because you have to do it right the first time instead of iterate over and over and over again and be able to mess it up. And so we know that the best products are ones that have versions 1.2.3.4 for because they’re constantly being iterated on, constantly improving. And as soon as they saw, oh, instead of trying to get it perfect, my job is to enjoy the process. Boom, they started working on it right away. And they iterated and they made really a great product. But that wouldn’t have happened if they forced themselves to do it and they stayed in the perfectionism. Instead, they listened to the wisdom of their procrastination and they said, “Oh, okay. there must be something in the way that I’m doing it that’s not appealing and they started to change the way that they were doing it and got a much better product because of it. Now the third thing that your procrastination might be telling you is that you’re avoiding something emotionally. So I was working with this very cool technologist and she has done some amazing things in space. She was offered a job that was like a really big job with a really big title and a really big salary and she said no to it. She somewhat regretted it and we started to talk about what had happened like why she would say no to this huge opportunity and what she found out was that she said no because she didn’t want to take the responsibility of a potentially very big fail. So by keeping under the radar it wasn’t going to be her that was held responsible. What we started to realize was there was just an emotion there that she was trying to avoid. That feeling of failure, that feeling of I’m not good enough. And so what we started to do is we saw that that feeling of failure was preventing her from doing a lot of things. Speaking her mind in meetings or advocating for the thing that she knew was the right thing to do. And so we started to work on that and we started to visualize the failures over and over and over again. Feel all the emotions that could happen in the failures and then visualize the success and then feel all the emotions in the success. And she did that for I don’t know maybe it was like three or four weeks and that fear of failure went away. And it was really actually a kind of a cool thing because if she would have had a huge job and the fear of failure, she was far less likely to succeed than if she had that huge job and she was totally okay to feel that failure, to confront that failure so she could speak her mind, so she could do the things that she needed to do in the meetings to be successful. And so once again that procrastination held this wisdom. So in all the cases the procrastination is giving you some wisdom but you’re not listening to it. And the question is what makes you not listen to it? And it’s because part of you is telling yourself you should do it. You’ve got to do it. You have to do it. Why haven’t you done it? It’s being abusive. And so you get stuck in this loop and you’re going back and forth between this bully voice of you have to, you need to. Why aren’t you? and this kind of passive aggressive, yeah, yeah, I really should do that. You know, off. I’m not going to do that over and over and over and over again. And the reason that this stays this way is because you’re not actually listening to yourself. If you try to bully yourself, you’re going to hit resistance. Just like if I try to bully anybody, there’s going to be a certain amount of resistance in the system. Instead, if I deeply listen to the wisdom of the procrastination and it feels heard, then movement’s going to happen. So, when you start really getting interested in figuring out what your procrastination has to say, there’s a couple tools that come in handy. The first one is you really want some wonder, right? You do not want to come at the problem in the same way that you created the problem. You want a different set of thoughts to solve the problem than the thoughts that created the problem. And so the best way to do that is to use wonder. Is to really ask questions that you wouldn’t ask otherwise. And a great way to do that is just go to our free online workshop on wonder. You can find it here or in the link below.