📍 Hi, Chris. Welcome to the show. 

Hey, Mark. Thanks for having me. 

Thank you for being here. You are a procrastination expert, which is something that we all do, which is procrastinate. So I'm looking to find out more about myself more about my clients. I think my listeners would want to know about also why they're procrastinating and what they could do to overcome this problem.

But before we jump into all of that, Today you are a procrastination coach, you're a productivity expert, you're a motivational speaker, but you had a previous life before all of this. What did you do in your previous life? 

In my previous life, I've always been I've always been service oriented. I started out in customer service.

I started out in corporate America, I'm chasing the almighty dollar. I started out as a support agent. Worked my way up to, having my own teams, got into business development, project management, and even like financial risk litigation and things like that. Thing is that I was never really fulfilled.

I was always striving to, to do better. I was always pushing myself, burning the candle at both ends. And it, I didn't even realize what was going on. I fell into I was a high functioning alcoholic, actually what happened there. So what happened was, is that I was doing great.

I had no consequences whatsoever. Anybody looking on the outside mark would have said my life is great. I was on the fast track, I was getting promoted. I, was helping companies, make money hand over fist. Transcribed by https: otter. ai in the end, what happened was is my procrastination was I was putting off, taking care of myself and taking care of my family.

And honestly, I didn't even know I had an issue until a few years ago when I decided to leave corporate America and leave those jobs. It took almost losing my family because what happened was in that pursuit of, the almighty dollar, I neglected, I lost sight of why I was doing it in the first place.

And that can also be a big part of procrastination is that, we lose our way in our why that if that makes sense. So that's really why I got into procrastination coaching, because not only is it something that I used to do with everybody I met, I just, I just never had the title.

So I was always, helping supporting my team members. I was always helping and supporting even clients. And the executives with their their goals and things like that as well. But at a great expense to myself and of course my family. 

Wow. Thank you for sharing that. What a story.

You mentioned two things. You said there was lack of fulfillment, and then you also talked about self medicating with alcohol, something that many of us have been at a place, at different levels, including myself. But let's talk about the lack of fulfillment. You have a great job, you're doing really well, you're making money, you're on a fast track to getting promoted.

Why weren't you fulfilled? 

So what happens a lot of the time, Mark is that we don't feel fulfilled because we're doing something that goes against our core values or we're not in alignment with our core values. So when you talk about those soul sucking jobs, they can be good jobs.

They can be great. They can be they can be easy. They can be have a good schedule. They can have lots of bonuses. You can get vacation time. You can get good titles, but in the end, if you're not aligned with what you're doing, or you don't believe in what you're doing, then every day just becomes a real struggle to even, make it out of bed sometimes.

Wow. So what was the turning point for you then? Was it the fact that you found yourself? Getting farther and farther from your family. Was that the breaking point? 

The real breaking point Mark was actually when I hit my high point and I actually achieved all my goals it literally was.

When I had achieved everything I'd set out to achieve, my goal, my original goal was to because I was offshore for quite a while, my goal was to, go back to North America and, make a good life for my family, for my daughter and, my wife too. And so I left the job, we moved back up here and It wasn't until I'd left all that market that I realized that I had an estranged, estranged family pretty much.

And, I was going to start another project that was going to take up a ton of my time. It was going to take up a lot of resources and things. And I just looked at it and, my daughter didn't know me. And, I had the benefit of actually working, being able to work from home for much of the time, but I was just never there, mentally or emotionally.

The turning point actually was, when I got my family back here, we, got a, we got a nice house and I was just starting to work on this other project and I just realized that I didn't know who my family was, and they didn't know who I was. And then, the real turning point was.

Really, that I'd achieved all of this, and I felt empty because the, I had thought that the reason that I was doing it was, for my family, but in the process of ignoring them and chasing the dollar and chasing the resources to do what I thought I wanted to do, I almost lost them in the process.

And that was really the turning point. 

Yeah. This resonates with me at so many levels. I see this all the time and this specific thing didn't happen to me, but something in the vein happened to me is that sometimes when we are so obsessed with our goals, and we really pull ourselves in.

And like you said, you were burning the candle at both ends. We lose sight of other things that are important for me. It was health. In my story, I became morbidly obese and until my son was born, I didn't have that moment where I realized, Oh my God, what am I doing with my life? And New York is, despite having so many riches and so many successes and a nice house and everything, it was the moment where you realized that you don't know your family anymore.

Wow, that's powerful. So then what happened now, you all of a sudden have realized I can't connect with my family like I used to. Or maybe you don't know them as well enough, or what were the specific indicators that were going through your mind that made you feel like, I think I need to make a change.

And when you had that realization, what was the first step? 

The real realization came when when I tried to spend time with my family, I just didn't, I couldn't connect with them anymore. I had thought that my, something simple, like I thought my daughter's favorite food, she got mad at me because I didn't know what it was.

That was a pretty sobering moment because I thought I'd know that. And so the next steps after that were really to take a step back from everything, to really try and reconnect with my family while I decided the next steps. And while I was doing that, I was still doing some ad hoc project management type work.

And one of the clients that they were working with, they, I actually coached them. Not in a formal sense, but they said that it really helped them and they said why don't you just do this? And, that sort of rang around in my head for a bit. I was like okay, why don't I do this?

Couldn't find a reason. I started to, do my research and, really dig into how I could position myself as a coach in the industry. 

Why procrastination? 

Oh I'm a master procrastinator, Mark. Come on. I am an expert, I've pretty much my whole life, right?

I think we've all done to some extent, but I think sometimes I really took it to extremes. I definitely understand. I definitely understand the reasonings and went deep and when I was studying myself, I realized that it was something that I had a passion for as well that, I could really help other people and, I've always wanted to help other people.

I just, lost sight of that along the way, got into, the corporate. dollar chasing game, right? 

No, there's this profound meaning in what you said, because there's a difference between a life lived and lessons learned versus knowing something from just reading a book. With suffering comes wisdom, and because you have suffered through something yourself, Your take on it is so much different than just textbooks knowledge, right?

So I love that when you collated all the information in your head about experiences, personal real life experiences, when you did procrastinate and when you married that to your research and education and coaching clients through real life examples, what was the big aha moment for you when it comes to knowing about the world of procrastination and why it happens? 

The big aha moment is it's going to be different from it for everybody, right? But mine was, it didn't really click. Actually until it didn't really click for me until I was on my third or fourth corporate job where I was really I had a lot of reporting to do. I had a lot of people to report to.

I had a lot of teams to manage and it really clicked then because. I was, putting things off that things that were pretty important in the job. But the big aha moment for me was I was putting those off, but then I also realized I was putting other things off, like in terms of like you said, even my own health. And that's when I really realized that for me, I didn't, again, this is going to sound horrible, but for me, I realized that I was actually procrastinating in terms of my own self care and detriment. And at that point, I noticed it in myself, but I didn't notice that I was, also like my family.

There's that when you have the blinders on, you have the blinders on. There's definitely that. But that was my aha moment when, I realized I was putting these things off and I caught myself doing it because somebody asked me, where's that report? And I really realized that it came down to an importance thing because I didn't think anybody ever read it.

Like I, I was doing these reports day, like not day in, but once a week, once a month, I do a weekly one. I do a monthly one. I do a daily one too, to a smaller extent. And I heard nothing back. Like they wouldn't go black hole as far as I was concerned. And so I didn't do them for a month and then they started asking me where it was.

Oh I didn't know you read it. So for me, it was a lot of that was mainly like it went back to my values and how important I thought something was. And then I realized that, I was putting work above my own needs. So I was putting off these other things. And then my aha moment was, Oh, I'm putting this off because I don't find value in it, and it was in terms of my own health too, like even as something as simple as going to get a blood test at the doctors, right? And I'll be honest with you, I still do that sometimes, but but that was my big aha moment. 

But is that really procrastination or is it, difference in priorities? When I think of procrastination, especially think of myself, I think along the lines of, I know I need to do this. I know this is important, but I'm still finding reasons not to do it. Whereas when I think of your example of, putting off blood work, yeah, guilty as charged, right?

Because sometimes I will prioritize work over doing that. Is that truly procrastination or is there something else going happening there? 

It's a, it is a form of procrastination. And yes, there is often some deeper level. There's always something deeper going on. But what it is. When you're prioritizing, it's when you're putting that when you're putting things off, it's generally not really procrastinating if you have a valid reason for the priorities.

And it's a very fine line. And sometimes for this reason, it's a little bit difficult to identify sometimes. Because like you said, the blood work may not seem important, so the work might seem more important, right? But, if you continually to put things off that have shifting priorities or skewed priorities, because there's something that's how do I word this?

There's a difference between perceived priorities. And quote unquote, real priorities. The blood work is a real priority, right? Because it's tied to your physical health. But you put it off because you don't think it's important. Maybe because you're younger or maybe because you've never had health issues in your family or things like that.

But that doesn't You know, take away from its importance, but we perceive that it takes away its importance in the moment and put other things above it. 

Wow. I never really thought about that perceived priorities versus real priorities. Interesting. When you are working with clients now, can we work through a real life example of something that they come with and how you work them?

How you help them through the problem is I'm sure there's a lot of listeners here who are thinking about the ways they procrastinate, and they would love to know what a top procrastination coach like yourself, what are the beginning couple of steps that you walk them through so that they could perhaps do it on their own.

Oh, for sure. It's a lot of it's going to sound like common sense and a lot of it's going to sound easy. But and I'm not going to lie. If you really want to get to the bottom of procrastination, you really want to resolve it. You need to do. You're going to need to do a little bit of work. Actually it's. Probably a lot more work than most of you are used to. So the first thing that I do when somebody signs on with me, and this is also why I only take on five to 10 clients maximum at a time is it's a very involved process. So the first thing that you're going to want to do before you do anything else, before you even look at your tasks, or you look at your calendars, anything, the first thing you're going to want to do is you're going to want to understand yourself.

So what are your levels like? So you have to keep a journal during the day. When you wake up, how do you feel, when you eat your breakfast after, write down what you eat, how do you feel after you eat it, go through the morning go through your morning routines, how are you feeling when you come up to these different tasks, how do each of these different things you're doing make you feel, what are you thinking at the time that you're doing it, are are you focused, how much, how much energy are each of these tasks actually taking you.

Do you feel energized, neutral, or do you feel drained after each one of these things that you do? And you'll do that for a full week. I'm telling you it's a real the first week is a real marathon. And once you've done that, then you can start to take a look at your activities and you can start to look around your mindset because a lot of the time, a lot of procrastination comes down to your mindset and how you perceive things and how you feel about different things.

So once you've realized how you feel about certain things and how you operate, then you can start to get into your your area that you're actually having a perceived issue in. So let's say that you're I'm sorry, go ahead. 

I was just going to ask, so when you were saying, write down how you feel, What exactly are we writing down?

Like what type of feelings just so that we know exactly what to write? Cause the influence is the understanding of mindset, right? Can you give some examples? 

Oh, for sure. So when you're writing down how you feel that you're going to be focused on two things, you're going to be focused on the emotional and you're going to be focused on the physical.

And I know that we tend to either ignore the physical or we tend to ignore the emotional. It's just the way that we're wired for some reason. So when you're doing a task, let's say that your task is literally to call Bob, maybe you don't like Bob. And you pick up the phone.

And you talk to Bob and you say, okay, how did I feel after that? I felt drained and, I felt some, maybe tension in my shoulders or something that, take stock of how you feel physically and emotionally after each of those things and in terms of mindset. Really go back and reflect how did you feel before what were you thinking before you called Bob?

Did you go in dreading it? Did you go in like right away with that resistance? Did you say, Oh, I don't want to do this. I don't want to do this. I don't want to do this. What, what were your thought processes as you were talking to Bob? Were you focused on what Bob was saying? What did you guys talk about?

Because a lot of the time we're running on autopilot when we're talking to people, we're not giving our full attention. So were you thinking about something else? Were you giving all your attention to Bob at the end? And then analyze, did you discuss what you needed to discuss? Did you get done what you needed to get done in that call? And then say, okay you accomplished that. So again, how do you feel about having, it done, do you feel happy, do you feel bored, do you feel drained, do you, and then, and then notice the shoulders, are they stiff, do they still hurt? Did they did anything else change?

And that really starts to bring awareness into ourselves. And so we can know ourselves because that's going to be pretty important when you go to talk about and you go to think about how you're going to work through your procrastination, whether it be, for a big project or if it's just something as simple as, getting that spice rack made, you promise to get made in 1999.

Interesting. Interesting. So understanding how we are physically feeling and emotionally feeling. Associated with certain with the tasks that we're doing through the day and at the end of the week's exercise, that kind of gives us an understanding of our mindset around those group of tasks.

Correct. 

So that's phase 1. What's next? 

And so now that you've done that and you look at these things. Then we sit down together and we really look at, okay, so are there any patterns? And there generally are patterns. Morning you wake up, you feel a little bit sleepy, sluggish. You really start to feel you drink your first cup of coffee, maybe 20 minutes after you wake up.

So you feel a little bit, energized, but then you're just crashing again. Okay. And you do that every day and you feel the same. And okay, that's one thing. So did you feel the same the next day? Did you do the same thing? And then you see, okay on Wednesday, I didn't drink coffee. And oh, I felt more energetic in the morning.

And I felt more, I was able to carry through to the afternoon without feeling as tired. Oh, okay. So maybe we should, cut out that cup of coffee or, delay that cup of coffee until a little bit later in the day to allow you to, process the things you need to process without, having that caffeine spike.

And then we start looking at your emotional as we look at the emotional aspects and then the the mental aspects as well. So are there any blocks to, or any resistance to certain tasks that you need to get done? And then then we work through that because a lot of the time mark too, when you have an issue.

from getting into point A to point B. It's not always the core issue. The core issue, you might even be able to identify it and work through it from the clues that you get from the other issues beforehand. 

Interesting. Interesting. So when you're working with your clients, what are some of the core issues that you see?

I know it differs from person to person, but are there patterns of core issues that you see that are happening with people? 

Oh, for sure. Very big ones are, fear of failure, fear of being judged what I, what we call a witch wound, and What is a witch wound? The witch wound is, it's a phrase that was coined I don't recall off the top of my head, but it has to do with the Salem witch trials.

So they call it the witch wound because people are afraid of being burned at the stake. Not literally, but they're afraid of, being judged and tossed out and, discounted because of, their failures. Fear of failure is a big one. Ambiguity is another one.

So if you have a lack of clarity in what you want, in what you have to do to move forward, sometimes we tend to, it's almost like a analysis paralysis, right? Because we're looking at how to do it and we just don't know where to start. And we can't get that little notch and even get a foothold in.

So we just. Those are the big ones for sure. The fear of failure, fear of judgment. And yes, the lack of clarity or direction. Those are the big ones. 

Yeah. Yeah. I work with entrepreneurs on a daily basis and I can attest for the fact that fear of failure and fear of judgment are the two biggest obstacles.

That stopped them from taking action. Let's talk about the fear of judgment at a little bit deeper level. When you start working with your clients, what do you usually find out the actual block to be? 

Normally the actual block again, everybody being different, but the general pattern is when we're talking about the fear of being judged, it's that generally It's either a little bit of like imposter syndrome where they feel like they aren't really worthy of it, or it's the other one for the fear of being judged is that we're social animals and we clear and we crave, and our society has made us this way.

We crave validation. We want to know that we are worth something and when we're fear being judged, we're really afraid of not stacking up of, not being worthy basically. So getting that validation and, it's not entirely our fault. Society has made, even like with the advent of social media, we've really come a long way.

Because we want those likes, we want those shares. We want somebody to say, Hey. Chris wrote this or Mark wrote this and, oh that's awesome. He's so smart. He's so great. We don't want to put something out there and say, oh, Mark, Chris, that's crap it's horrible. We don't want to see that go away.

No, 

so you're 100 percent correct. Like the fear of, the desire to be validated is something that's ingrained in us from childhood, right? We're drawing a rainbow and we're running up to our parents and to our teachers to just tell us, Hey, you did a great job, right? That level of conditioning. That has happened for 20, 30, 40 years, depending on when a client comes to you.

How do you start to unravel that? How do you start to undo that? 

So the first thing that that we normally go through, if we're working on that set of limiting beliefs, then we generally work back in terms of their successes. And we really dig into not only their successes, but we dig into the, why the validation.

So the first thing that I like to do is I like to bring awareness to them. And we sit there for a moment because we're, for a lot of people, it's the same for some people it's different, we really dig into the why is that validation so important to you? What does that validation give you?

What need is it fulfilling? Because at its core, it is fulfilling some need that you have. So once we understand what you're getting out of that validation, then we can work on we can work on some techniques and things to say, okay I'm good enough for myself, right? Because the only, at the end of the day.

The only person you need validation from is yourself. You don't need it from anyone else. So that's the second part. 

Now, if I am someone, I want to start my business. I want to do my own thing. I've done a lot of internal work. I feel like I have, I've just overcome the need for validation.

And I just have overcome the self and self the imposter syndrome that I can take action. But then all of a sudden I have a wife. a partner, a husband, a family member. And I am not prepared to, I don't have enough of a shield to protect myself from people asking, are you really sure, like putting doubts in my head.

So even though when I have done a little bit of work on myself, what are some tools and techniques that you can share that perhaps, We can now be prepared to answer others who are attacking us or just questioning us, or just to be able to protect that mind, close the ears and stay in that mental space of the work that we have already done on ourselves. 

And that is something that, that is, it's difficult because a lot of times too, we don't get that support that we think we're going to get from our family and friends. And we actually get more support from strangers, which is. Another very interesting thing. So the ways that you can protect yourself and get through that, what I like to do, I like to do the power of there's a couple of things.

The first is the thought trap challenge. And the thought trap challenge is You know, I've got this negative thought, I've got this negative belief, or somebody's saying, you're gonna fail or, that idea is, horrible. What evidence do you have of that, besides that person saying it? Is there any historical evidence that, have you messed up before? Have you tried something like this in the past and has it gone poorly or badly? And then the majority of times, we're afraid of these things and, we have no evidence and we just think they're going to fail, even though we have no evidence to back that up.

And I like the power of three. It's it's a method. It's a methodology where, and you have these negative thoughts and you think back, okay, but I've had the success, and I had those challenges during that success and overcame them. And so you think of three different examples where, you overcame those adversities.

And if you overcame those adversities, then, and if they were legitimate obstacles and challenges besides somebody just saying, Hey, this can't be done or you can't do it, then it's just words. Yeah, 

absolutely. Especially. I love the part that you said at the very beginning that to ask yourself, have I actually, He'll that this something like this before, because as the quote says, we suffer more in our imagination than we suffer in reality.

So that's a great tool. And the power of three that you said is also a great tool. Let me ask you this question. Let's say somebody, I let's say I am somebody who has failed. , 

what do I do then? How do I get past this obstacle now? 

You know what's what's interesting about fail?

This isn't mine. I wish, and I wish I had been taught in school actually. I had a client, they had a their daughter was in a like a theater school or something in England, and they had the acronym for fail, and it was first attempt in learning. And if you have failed.

Then you have to know that you haven't really failed. You've just learned something in the process. And. If you can get up and dust yourself off, then you have the knowledge and you've got some additional ammunition to go forward and try again. And a lot of us get stuck in that, oh, we didn't get it right.

We didn't walk before we could fall. We didn't we didn't walk before we could crawl. We didn't fall in a few times. Did you, you're walking around now Mark? How many times did you fall as a kid? You're still walking around. Yeah, 

absolutely. 

It's good to remember that, and even if you have failed, I like to look at the successes within the failure because there are always successes within the failure.

It's never about the end result. It's always about the journey. The journey is much more important than the end result. 

And you're right, how many times have we fallen when we have tried to walk? How many times have we fallen when we're trying to learn how to ride a bike? Or even learning how to drive.

How long did it take us to do that? But why is it that certain behaviors that are just ingrained in us from birth, like learning how to walk, falling, and getting up again, why is it that the normal adulting process takes that out of us? Why is it that something that we are so okay with doing, normal with doing when you were a child, is all of a sudden so difficult as an adult?

Yeah and that really comes down to conditioning and environment. And again, it's different for everybody, but a lot of the times, When we're children, we learn these behaviors to protect ourselves because we don't want to feel pain. So the person, the personality is really developed to protect ourselves.

Just as an example, if I'm in the schoolyard and I see another boy getting picked on because he was crying, what am I learning? I'm learning that, oh, crying is not acceptable, so I'm not going to cry because I don't want to get laughed at and I don't want to, get teased and things. And, maybe you're only three or four years old.

This is happening in daycares, right? And you see the kid's crying, he gets ignored or, he gets sent to the corner. So we're taught from a young age that outbursts are not acceptable. We're taught from a young age that if you get a lower mark than somebody else on a test that you have, failed.

And so that just gets ingrained into our subconscious and we don't even actively think about it. We just automatically associate anything below 50 as, Oh, horrible. Actually it's a little worse now because they have the bell curve. So it's anything below 80 now but  see this in my own daughter too.

And it's heartbreaking because I understand, I've, I went through it too, and of course I didn't understand it though at the time, but when you when you fail at something, you got reprimanded by your teachers and we're always focused on the things you can do better, from a young age. And I think that schools need to really highlight the successes more. And, it, this didn't even really occur to me until after I started, Looking into coaching and, I, when I was in therapy and then after, and I saw the report cards and it just dawned on me kids are coming home and saying they failed and they've gotten, 68, 69, 70%, 71, 72, and they just don't want to try anymore because they've been ingrained to say that unless get perfect, you're no good.

You start feeling I'm never going to be perfect. Why even try to get a little bit better? Makes sense. Makes sense. Your journey, your story starts out with feeling burned out. Then it comes to realization that it's taking you away from family. Then it comes to discovering reasons why you were procrastinating yourself, doing the research, doing the personal work to become an expert on it.

You move into a productivity and procrastination curve and you're working with people today, helping them become a best version of themselves. All of this work for the end of the client is stressful. Changing yourself, getting better, challenging the status quo, challenging whatever beliefs that we had about ourselves causes a lot of stress.

So let's talk about stress management. How do we achieve that balanced life where we are productive, fulfilled, but also not stressed out of our mind are in control of our mental health? 

It depends on what your stressors are. There's different kinds of stressors for some people there's the stressor is. too many things. So that they have too many tasks or they have perceived too many too many things to do, or there's too much to do. And a lot of the time is what we do there is we just, we zoom out and we see add, edit, delete.

So we see, okay, so we get like an Eisenhower matrix, or we get the ABC method and we say, okay, so which of these actually has to be done today? Are these urgent? Are these important? What can you delegate? What can you get off your plate? Because as much as we like to think we're one man armies, right?

Eventually at the end of the day, we have to delegate to somebody. And that's actually a big contributor to to stressors. In terms of really managing stress though, and keeping calm mindfulness is a big thing. Mindfulness, gratitude even meditation affirmations these are things that I never really believed in before I'll be honest, I'll be up front, if you'd asked me 10 years ago, or 15 years ago if I if I thought that, mindfulness or meditation would be an effective stress release or management technique, I would have said, yeah, go get out of here.

 But it is because When you're totally focused in the moment, there isn't room for anything else. And then there are authors and that, that are much more articulate at this than me. So there's Eckhart Tolle, there's Michael Singer. When you're in the present moment, you're totally focused on the moment.

It doesn't leave room for those other emotions like stress. And actually a lot of our stress is again, caused by our imaginations, right? So we're either stressed about something that happened in the past. Or we're stressed because we're worried about the future or we're stressed because we didn't get some result again in the past.

So the more you can actually stay in the present moment and focus on what you're doing, the less stress you're actually going to have. 

The more we are present in the moment that we are doing, the more, less stress we are going to have. 

The less stress. Yeah. 

But what if someone is a workaholic?

What if someone loves to work and is in the moment all the time working? But with more work comes more stress, not just the work stress from work, but also the stress from life. Like your wife is you're always working and you're never with us. There's stress from that angle. How do we cope with that?

Cause it's almost like for a workaholic telling them to be involved and absorbed in work is like giving them the drug, right? Allowing them to be like just drug yourself out. 

No it's funny though, because I can't speak for all workaholics, but when I was there, honestly, I was not stressed at all.

I was tired, yes, I was numb, but stressed, no, I was never stressed. And I know that there are others that feel the same way too. But when you're talking workaholic and weaning them off that there's certain things that you can certain things that you can do a lot of the times we're people pleasers.

We want to say yes to everything, so if you're feeling particularly stressed about work, it might be time to just ask one simple question, where are you saying where are you not saying no, that you want to say, where

are you not saying no, where you want to say no. So what are the things you're agreeing to that you really don't want to agree to? 

And it's tough because workaholics generally are workaholics because they're getting something out of it. Whether it's the monetary. It's not necessarily always monetary.

It could just be that, that again, that validation. Oh, you're the best person on the team. Like you first went in last one out, you get your, the respect of your respect, perceived respect of your peers and, your bosses and things like that. But the way to really do it.

Is to, yeah, is to set boundaries, which is, it's difficult sometimes to splurge start but it could be as simple as, when you come home and just, put your phone somewhere where, you're not going to be looking at it. No, when you come in the door that actually my wife wanted to do, to have a bucket, when I walk in the door, there's a plastic bucket, it's your work phone goes in the bucket, goes in the closet until you go out the door the next day, that's it, it doesn't matter what's happening.

Just don't give yourself the chance or the access to it, which is hard because we're connected. We've got laptops, we've got cell phones, we've got smartwatches, even, so we're all, we're constantly being reminded and we constantly have that tether there, but that's the first step is to limit your access to actually work.

When you're not supposed to be well, when you're not in working hours, 

no, 100 percent correct. We are tethered to all these devices. And when the notification sign is on, even though we know we shouldn't be looking at it, we can't not stop ourselves from just reaching out and just glancing at it.

And the moment we glance at it. Now there's a series of thoughts that have occupied our head and we are no longer in the moment, spending time with our family. Okay. Or doing whatever else needs to be done. The older I get, the more I realized that discipline and setting rules for ourselves is not a bad thing.

It's a good thing. Growing up, we all looked at rules and discipline as something bad, what you just said is a great example of that. Being able to walk through the door and putting your phone in a bucket. That's a rule that you have created for yourself. And now you have to be disciplined to not go and get it out of the bucket.

So what are some things that, what are some other things that you think we need to develop? within ourselves so that we could be more disciplined because a lot of us struggle with that as well.  

When you talk about accountability and discipline a big part of discipline is accountability.

And so how do you be accountable to yourself? And you really need to find your why I really like this saying when, when your why is high, Your cost is low. So when you're trying to be disciplined, when you're trying to make these rules, when you're trying to structure things in your life, you have to have a reason for it.

You can't just say, Oh, I'm doing this because I have to, you have to have a reason because if your reason is not strong, then your cost is going to be higher. And you'll likely just not do it. I can give the same example of we, we tend to go to extremes, right? So when I say I want to exercise in the morning, five 30 in the morning, sometimes I'll go at it for six months, I've successfully done that for six months in a row and then actually just recently, I just didn't do it and, I come up with all these excuses like, oh, my daughter's out of school or, oh, the weather's nice outside or this or that.

And it's because my why for why I was doing the exercise in the first place got diminished. So it wasn't a really strong reason for me anymore. And so the discipline went by the wayside right away. And along with that, obviously the accountability, because, if it's no longer important, why am I going to be accountable to myself for it?

And when we have that strong, why, and when we are able to stay disciplined and do what we said we would do, that's the greatest feeling in the world, isn't it? 

Oh yeah. I felt even the small things. It could be something as simple as Delaying that first cup of coffee in the morning by an hour, which is, it sounds easy, but if you've been drinking coffee for a long time, it is really hard, right?

But it's amazing because by delaying that that gratification, which is another big thing, right? We're really big on instant gratification, but by delaying that, it actually does feel a lot better. 

Why do you think that is? 

And again, a lot of it is, a lot of it is how we're wired too, right?

In modern society, it's a little bit worse or a little, I'm sorry, that's the wrong word. It's a little bit more visible because, we've got Amazon, we've got 30 Minutes where it's free, we've got Uber Eats, we've got DoorDash, we're used to getting things instantly. And so it's almost like we have a sense of entitlement.

In the back of our minds, it's I felt this, I'm sure you felt this too. You're sitting there waiting on a delivery. How dare you come five minutes late? Yeah. So a lot of it is that instant gratification. And it goes back to just wanting to feel that. And because with that gratification, we get things like dopamine, we get things like the serotonin uptake, we get these different chemical responses as well.

And thank you. Who, who wouldn't want to feel happy right now instead of, feeling more happy a little bit later, right? 

Yeah, absolutely. It's so funny you said that because I literally was just having a conversation with a client yesterday about this thing that I remember pre Amazon days where it was accepted that something would take two to three weeks to deliver.

And then when Amazon came out, they somehow said we will deliver in two days. And it will deliver in two days. We were just ordering things just to see it would get here. And it was the best thing in the world. It was the best feeling in the world that I could order something and can be in two days.

Today in 2024, I can order things on Amazon and they give me a window within the same day in a couple of hours. But I feel frustrated when it says 3 to 6 and it's 6 or 10, 6, 10 and it's not here. So I totally resonate with what you're saying. At some point, something is so wonderful and over time it becomes an entitlement.

In your words, how dare is it that it's 10 minutes late and my cookie jar isn't here. Yeah. I love it, Chris. There are people who have read books and they know a lot of stuff and there are people who have lived a life. You have lived a life and the knowledge that we acquire through suffering the wisdom that we acquire through suffering is simply just not possible to obtain by reading books.

Your life, your struggles, your journey, how you overcame the problems that you were having, how you connected back with your family, how you took your life back into your own hands. How you stopped being a spectator in your own life and became a participant in it. This is a story that needed to be heard.

I am so glad that you are now on your own path and you're trying to help others. Who are perhaps struggling with the same thing that you were struggling with a few years ago. You're a procrastination coach, you're a mindset coach, you're a productivity expert. Thank you so much for appearing on our show.

It was a pleasure having you.