27 Dec, 2022

3 Steps to Conquering Procrastination

 

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“Procrastination itself is a failure – failure to utilize your innate talents. When you procrastinate, you’re failing to believe in yourself.” – Dr. Travis Bradberry

Procrastination is putting off doing something. We procrastinate for several reasons and one of them is that man has been designed to conserve energy to survive. Another reason is that we do not want to get out of the familiarities in our life. We do not want to sacrifice the little rewards we get because we do not see ourselves as part of a tangible future.

Procrastinating can have great negative impacts on your life if you do not overcome it. It is one of the reasons why you are living a life that you do not want.

Listen in as I tell you three steps to conquer your habit of procrastination. Untap your greatness and live the life you have always wanted.

Highlights:

⚡️Human beings are good at adapting to situations but some return to what is familiar to them after overcoming a crisis.

⚡️ Progress will not happen if you do not examine your life.

⚡️ Most people care about the future, but they do not care about the future they do not see themselves in.

⚡️ People do not change their behavior through warnings or by frightening them.

⚡️ The Stop One 🛑 Start One 🟩 is a strategy that encompasses the three elements needed for one to change.

🔥 Steps to conquer procrastination:

  • Stop and be aware of the two debating sides
  • Know there is an optimism bias
  • Look at your life and see what you need to stop and start
  • Know the three key elements needed for one to change:
    1. Social incentive
    2. Immediate reward
    3. Progress principle

Important stories: 

🎯 11:31 Optimism bias based on a study by Tali Sharot

🎯 25:08 The 3 key elements to change

🎯 29:59 Working with an overeater

🎯 33:10 Working with Sally Gunnell

Send us a message and tell us what is your biggest takeaway about this episode. 👇🏼👇🏼👇🏼

🛑🟩🛑🟩🛑🟩🛑🟩

Change your habits the fun, easy, and simple way. Download the Stop One Start One Habit Tracker app now!

Set your intentions, stop the habits that have limited you, and start living the great life you have always wanted. Take advantage of the great features anywhere you go.

This app allows you to

  • have as many habits stops and start as you want
  • track your progress
  • share your progress with others
  • connect with likeminded people who inspire, motivate, and support your goals
  • learn insights from training videos and courses
  • keep a journal to record your adventure and track your progress
  • write letters to your future self to help you form that much-needed relationship with the person you are becoming
  • join different challenges and groups

What’s more, it’s FREE for the first 14 days –  so try it now!

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Stop One 🛑 Start One 🟩 Challenge

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I help everyday people achieve their goals & dreams!   Helping and coaching people in my expertise. And it is VERY satisfying to change people’s lives so they improve and change their health, finances, relationships, confidence, and mindset.

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About Pete Cohen: Pete Cohen is one of the world’s leading life coaches and keynote speakers. Hundreds of thousands of people from all over the world have been motivated and inspired by Pete’s presentations. He has professionally impacted the lives of thousands of people worldwide, including business executives, professional athletes, and everyday people.  Pete focuses on the importance of closing the gap in our lives between where we are and where we want to be, both personally and professionally.

It’s then all about coaching you to remove the obstacles that are in your way and helping you install the habits of success.

Pete is the author of 20 published books, several of which have been best-sellers across the world, including Shut the Duck Up, Habit Busting, Life DIY, and Sort Your Life Out. He has also presented his own show on TV called The Coach and was the resident Life Coach on GMTV for 12 years.

Pete Cohen 0:00
And we'll press record on here. Happy beautiful, amazing fantastic Supercalifragilistic expialidocious day it is Pete Cohen and it is the Future Self Podcast. Today's podcast is called 3 Steps to Conquering Procrastination. I will see you after the theme tune.

Pete Cohen 0:39
Greetings from my Hey, good morning. Good afternoon. Good evening. It's Pete Cohen here. Thank you so much for joining me for the podcast. Today we're going to be talking about 3 Steps to Conquering Procrastination and the number three is a powerful number and you're going to see why today. One of the reasons is because I think there is three of us. There's your past, there's your present, and there's your future. And maybe there's you as well, that's four of you that you could step back from your life and observe and see the experience of being you. How did you get to where you are today? And by the way, congratulations for making it to this part of your life to get into this point. Because you've done great, right I mean, I don't know exactly what you've done, but I bet there's been some there's been some sweat and some tears and some blood there's been some heartache. There's been some inspiration. There's been some achievement I mean, wow. And what's really fascinating about human beings is human beings a very, very good at adapting, we know that we adapt to situations, you know, give a human being a crisis or a disaster. Wow, do we get to see a side of people that we don't normally see. But then what happens for most people is they just return to some form of normality. They return to what is familiar to them, or they return to the idea that they have about themselves. This is called their identity. And the word identity basically all it means it's really the story that you're telling yourself. It's it's how you see yourself, and then your personality is basically played out on your identity. And most people today, they think who they are is who they are actually going to be. And this is one of the first steps when we're really looking at the steps to overcoming procrastination. It's absolutely essential that we just stop, stop and a lot of people don't want to stop. A lot of people are scared to stop because when we stop, there's there can be a silence. And within that silence, well, who knows what could happen? I remember reading about some studies years ago that showed that people would prefer an electric shock to actually spending time with themselves with their own thoughts. Now, why would that be?

Pete Cohen 3:06
Now I'm sure you've got your own opinion about it, but perhaps some commonality amongst all of that is, it's just not normal. It's not something that we have been encouraged to do to spend time with self as Aristotle said, an unexamined life isn't worth living or I'd say unexamined life is a dangerous life, because you end up going on repeat. And you keep being who you were today and you wondering why you don't make progress. So when we look at the three steps to overcoming procrastination, the first step without that has to be let's just stop. Let's put a big smile on our face. And then let's just become more aware of the fact of why we do what we do and this is where things start to get really, really interesting for someone who's spent years working in the field of human behavior and psychology having written 20 books, published by the biggest publishing houses in the world books published in multiple languages, having appeared on TV and spoken to millions of people around the world. I'm as fascinated now, as I ever have been. In fact, I'm more fascinated than ever, because I'm wiser. I've got better results with people. And I realize there's so much more to us than meets the eye. And this is really important that when we stop and we look and think well, why do I procrastinate? Let's let's be honest here. Who, who's listening to this? procrastinates? Well, you might think well, what is procrastinating what does it actually mean? What it means to put forwards it comes from a Latin word, which means to put off to put forwards like well, I don't need to do that. So I won't. And this is where if you can just take a moment to think about this and just see it as if you were stepping back and someone was presenting this information to you for the first time. Perhaps they were even talking about somebody else who's not you. So here we go. Right so we have parts of our brain and parts of the brain are very similar to the brains that our forefathers had through evolution. And we still have some of these ways of operating ways of thinking. One of them is called an optimism bias which we really really need to talk about because that's the second step. The second step to over coming procrastination is to know that there is a bias towards optimism, even people who say they're pessimistic. Most of them are lying to themselves. And I think people are denying themselves or lying to themselves or they they've got their head so far up into the clouds, that they can't really see what's going on, although they've got their head right stuck in the ground and they're not going to look up to see what's going on, to realize that we're living futures that we don't want. We ultimately are, but why I've spoken on many of the podcasts about the work of Kelly McGonigal and her book The joy of movement when she states that 97.3% of Americans are unhealthy by four basic measures she also cites which is truly fascinating about the amount of steps that people do in America, the amount of steps that people do on average daily steps, and it's below 6000 Something like 5739 and then they've looked at some research that shows that if you do less than a certain amount of steps, you are more prone to depression and anxiety. And most people in the world do less than those recommended amount of steps yet, you and I know that exercise is good for us. We all know that right? Consciously we're aware of it. We know deep down that eating well. And looking after us are all these things you know not looking on the internet for too long. We all know these things can damage our health. We know. But even with what we know, why do we struggle to do better? And this is the debate. This is the debate the debating society. I think most people have got a debating society in their head with one part of them that will debate them away from progressing in some way because there is a part of us that wants us to hold on. When I say us, this might not apply to every single person in the world. But from my experience being one of the most curious souls you'll ever meet, I love to look and to look at the research and to talk to people and just to see what's important to people.

Pete Cohen 7:47
So we have a part of us that wants us to conserve or insist to stay put doesn't want to stand out, doesn't want to conserve energy. We've spoken about this before you know cave men never would have gone for a run for the sake of it, you know to get fit and healthy. No, they would just they lived a fit and healthy lifestyle. They were hunter gatherers. That's what they did. So they didn't need to go to the gym because they didn't sit on their ass and not do anything. They didn't have chairs. They didn't have sofas, they didn't have remote controls. They didn't have mobile phones. They didn't have tablets, they didn't have newspapers. It's no surprise that we have a few issues today because we're living in opposition to how we were actually how we got to this point in our life. And the more we live in opposition to how we got to this point in our life, I think most of us know deep down. We're causing ourselves some struggles. Would you not agree? So the first step definitely just just become aware of the fact that there's a debating society and one part of the debating society wants you to stay put wants you to say this is me this is this is I don't Excellent. How many of you would say I'm not that type of person, and you will defend the type of person that you think you are for the rest of your life and if that's what you want to do, that's totally your choice. But how do you feel about where you are right now? How do you feel Do you feel like there's still something in you that you've still got to do? Some people were asking me the other day about you know, who's your who's your audience you know, who do you attract, you know, who are the people you want to work with? And I would say the majority of people are people who get to that kind of middle age when they're starting to actually get to a point where they realize Hang on. There must be more to life than this. There must be more I'm not I don't feel fulfilled. I don't feel happy. I don't. There's something missing. And for most of those people, they've got to a point where they've accumulated things and stuff. And now they're realizing it must be more than what most people are realizing is more it's just getting better themselves to make a difference to everyone else around them. That's what the future self podcast is all about. The future self podcast is actually about helping you look to a future where you become clearer as to the person that you want to be. You can actually see that person. And we know because if you've listened to any of the content we put out into the world, you know, that most people's view of the future doesn't go very far. So you know, there's a future you do care about the future? Of course you do. But most people don't care about a future that they can't see themselves in. That's why people don't look after the environment. That's why because people don't think that this stuff is going to affect them right now. And deep down human beings can be quite selfish, because there's a part of us that just wants us to survive. So would you agree there's a part of you that just wants you to stay put if you if it proceeds, that something you're about to do is going to be difficult, you might fail? It might be hard work. There's a part of you that will resist it. More than likely. But there's another part and that's the part I represent. I'm Like a Lawyer, right? I'm a lawyer. Hi, I'm representing. I feel like going up to some people sometimes with a piece of paper and say here, this is a letter. Your future self is suing you, your future so you're not listening to your future self and this is part of Step number two, for first step awareness. Step number two is just be aware of the optimism bias. The optimism bias is truly fascinating. Some of the research around this is really, really interesting. There's some amazing researchers a lady called Talley shara, who's a lecturer, a professor, and one of the areas that she specializes in is the optimism bias that we have this bias towards being optimistic about the future. We do have it and you know, and I know And where does that come from? Well, can you imagine if, if, when we were quick cave dwellers to crave, we would cave dwellers, that if we weren't optimistic when we left the cave, I'm going out and I'm going to get some food I'm gonna hunt and we will we will bring something back. You can understand why you'd have this feeling of optimism that even if you didn't find food, you'd come back and you needed to be optimistic for the people around you who were starving. They needed someone to believe it.

Pete Cohen 12:16
It's so interesting. It's one of the most facet Could you be optimistic about who you are, what you're doing and who you're choosing to become. Is that possible that you could create the optimism bias to because I'm here representing your future self when you listen to this, that unwrapping I see the person that you want to be when anyone whenever I work with anybody. That's what I want to talk about. Ask them what do you want? Most people don't know. They know what they don't want. They know what the problem is. They know what they haven't got. But when you can help someone get to the point of knowing who they want to be, then it's having a harsh conversation with that person to say, well, the person that you see in your mind, that is actually not you. It could be you and surely the greatest work of your life would be to become that person. But it No. Now these three steps they kind of interweave with each other because if we go back to step one, which is the awareness, the awareness of the fact that everything you do every single day is a vote for the person that you want to become. And when we look at optimism, there's the optimism bias, but there's also this false optimism right please pay attention to this because this could be a big game changer for you. How do we drive change in people? There is this belief that if you scare people, you frighten people, you warn people. It will It will change their behavior and the research around this shows that doesn't really work and it doesn't last. So you know, what we've what have we done for years? We knew that for many years that smoking was damaging people's health. What did it take in order for eventually for people to cigarettes to be banned in certain places? Then what did it take for warnings to be put on cigarettes for cigarettes not to advertise on, you know, sporting events. I remember that you know, I mean, what did we have to go through? And in many cases, it was too late, too many people have actually died until we realize Hang on a second Smoking kills. But we know that when we put the health warnings on there, it does nothing. Research shows that it actually strengthens people's resolve to keep on smoking because they then rationalize, well, that's not me. It won't happen to me. This is a cup of false optimism. You know, which is why I think we're just living in denial. Rather than knowing deep down we just know we know it with alcohol. We know it with sugar, massively. We know it with sugar. But then there's a few outliers who have been speaking about this for years, who has been someone who talked about this in the 1950s. I wrote about him. And he wrote a book called pure white and deadly he was ostracized. People thought he was crazy. He was a lecturer at Oxford and he was just people said sugar doesn't make people fat. Fat makes people fat. Fat doesn't make people fat. If you just get fat and nothing else, you wouldn't unless you didn't move. But if you moved, you wouldn't get fat. Because when you eat fat, you don't secrete insulin and insulin is a fat storing hormone. But when you mix fat, with sugary foods, you're going to spike your insulin levels, you're gonna get fat. And it's just that kind of realization. And sometimes I think, well, I you know, how forward should I be in what I'm saying, you know, how, you know, do I really want to hurt people's feelings? You know, do I want to make people feel that blame shame? No, I just want to be honest with you. I just want to be real with you because I care about you. I really care about you, but I care more for the person that you're going to become and allowing you to listen to that person because your future self hasn't had a lawyer present. And that's why we don't really listen. And that's why when we start things, we don't finish them. How many times in your life. Have you started something, honestly, how many times you started something you didn't finish it? How many times if you bought a book joined a gym, how many times and it's fascinating, isn't it? There is a word that means here in the beginning that people spoke about this two and a half 1000 years ago, the first written words there was a word for people start things and don't finish them. Yes, I know. In your mind, you're thinking to yourself, what did they start? What did they start? They didn't finish building a house style. I mean, who knows? But right now, you and me. How many things can we stop right now and not finish? How many? How many podcasts can be listened to YouTube videos, clubhouse rooms, LinkedIn posts, you could just look at something, not give it your full attention. And this is what I'm inviting you to do. Give yourself some full attention right now. Ask yourself a couple of questions. Are you Are you done yet? Where would you like to make some advancements?

Pete Cohen 17:11
Where is there anywhere in your life? You think I'd like to advance there? When we when we look at this, it tends to revolve around three areas for most people. Most people would like to advance with their health and their well being. But most people are advancing with their health and well being where they'll end up on some medication and perhaps dying before their time because they are advancing but it's not the one that they want. And I think we all know that's true. And then with our relationships, you know how many of you would like to advance with our relationships? And maybe you turn I remember as a child going to my parents and just turning over a new leaf and giving them a leave and turning it over and say listen, I'm really sorry. But it was you know, within a few hours, I'd gone back to my old ways, because I was very set in my ways. And what we want to do is help people get their minds right. That's our goal with with what we do we want to help as many people get their minds right by didn't mind set setting on the person they want to be and then paving the way, especially with the technology that we've created, with the Stop One Start One application and the programs associated with that helping and supporting people realizing okay, this is the third step right. The third step is looking at your life right now and let's let me ask you a question for someone who deeply cares for you. Or cares for your future self? What's one thing that if you stopped doing right now today we're at the single biggest impact on your life? What is the one thing if you stopped doing it without the single biggest impact of your life? Now, what is that thing? Well, if we ask 100 people, what's the one thing that they wish they stopped doing? That would have the single biggest impact on their life? What do you think we'd hear? We probably hear a lot of people go stop procrastinating. Stop putting things off, you know, stop overeating, stop eating sugar. Stop looking at the Internet for, you know, for whatever it is, you'd probably find that there was a lot of things we all had in common. And then what's one thing that if you started to do just one thing if you started to do it would have the single biggest impact on your life. And I'm going to round it all up into this these three things that if you want to bring those three things into the world apart from us using what we have created with Stop One Start One. If you want to use that, that's great because we will help you we will help you and support you in not only knowing the person that you want to become, but also going to track that person down as Gandhi said being the change that you want to see in this world or a Steven Bartlett said, when he was 15 he knew who he was pursuing. You know who you're pursuing because you're talking to that person. You know, your future self is talking to you. And if we go right back to the first step, step number one awareness, aware that there's a part of you that wants you to stay where you are, defend, retreat, stay where you are, don't change. That's not you. You don't exercise. You don't get up at five o'clock in the morning. That's not you. This is who we are. And we should stay. Practicing who we think we are. But you know, and I know there's a part of you that it's time to give that person the space that they deserve. I'm representing that person. I am their lawyer. And I'm issuing issuing you with a piece of paper. That's right and written down. Your future is unwritten. You have the power to change. You have some goals, you have some dreams, you have some aspirations, and it's time for you to make this stuff happen. How by knowing the person that you need to be and knowing the discomfort that you have to go through to bring that into the world. You know it and I know it, nothing grows without some form of discomfort. Some sort of challenge to that growth. Look at anything in nature right now. Our nature is being massively challenged right now. Imagine all the trees out there right now that are struggling with this heat. You know, they're struggling, and will it be the strongest survive? Or will it be the ones that most adapt to change? Well, maybe that's another conversation for another day.

Pete Cohen 21:36
So it's just becoming aware of that and then to become aware of that you have this optimism bias. The optimism bias means that you there is a part of you that is optimistic, and this has been measured. It's fascinating. We'll do some podcasts and some videos all around this sharing some of the the fact that people tend to be so if you were going to go and drive and you knew that there could be some traffic, you would probably underestimate how much traffic there was going to be. If you were going to go out you think I'm going to have a really really really good time. And it might not be as good as you thought it was going to be. But this this optimism bias that we all have. What could you be optimistic about? And this is where we really need to draw some distinctions because it's so important. So when we look at what does it actually take, what does it actually take for people to change? Well, warning and scaring people doesn't work. And a lot of people are put their heads in the ground or their heads way up in the sky. They're not in a reality of just facing the truth of what they're doing today and how that is serving their future. It's just if we stop and we just took a moment to think about that, that we know that we're doing harm to ourselves in many cases. So we feel uncomfortable about that. So what do we do with that uncomfortableness? We want to escape from the uncomfortableness so how do we escape from something that is uncomfortable? Well, we we want to feel something we want to feel so what do we do we do something that gives us an immediate reward. It's not that we forget about the future. It's not I think we all know that the future matters, don't we? Every one of us knows. But it's our relationship to it. And a lot of people will just favor an immediate hit of something to sacrifice a future that they don't really know about. It's very simple. It's very simple to get your head around as we said before on podcasts that everything that is difficult to do is actually really very easy. If you did it every day. So as we kind of bring this to a close there's three things that make what we have created a massive game changer. If you want to change, you can threaten yourself. You can wait for a disaster or a prognosis or something bad to happen. That forces you into change that forces you to move out of where you are. And for some people, they're massive game changing moments, and they're great moments in their life. But for a lot of other people, it drives them to move away from where they were to wait as soon as they're out of danger as soon as they're out of pain. They go back to where they were before to who they think they are and that's why motivation. what moves people is often fear, worry, pain, sadness. It is a force that is not as powerful as I believe the most powerful force on earth, which is the force of motion forwards to be inspired to breathe life into something. And if you really want to change this three key elements to this one is social incentive. There's no question about it. When you surround yourself with people who have similar outlook to you. When you see what other people are doing, we call this healthy competition where you see someone stepping forwards. You know, when you see yourself as an athlete, the word athlete means competing for someone competing for a price. And what's the price you're competing for? are you competing for the price of just to be better, be healthier, be happier, be more fulfilled? Is that something you're competing you don't want to be other people that's a that's a that's a recipe for disaster in many cases, rather than you want people to do well, because it inspires you to do well.

Pete Cohen 25:41
And we've seen this with certain with with some of the brain mapping. That's been done that you see the emotional signals of light up when you see other people doing well, that inspires you to do the same. Where you want to be a part of something. In fact, you know, the British government have said we've tried to warn people we've tried to warn people about the you know, the British government made one change to encouraging people to pay their taxes. They used to say send letters out there was explaining how important it was they made one change, which was saying nine out of 10 people in the UK pay their taxes on time. And what that showed is it showed enhanced compliance of about 15% which was estimated to bring in another 5.6 billion pounds. Because when you say nine out of 10 people, often people will go I want to be one of those people. I want to be one of those people. That's why teams and cultures are so important, but we live in a culture a global culture that doesn't embrace people getting better. We live in a global society that embraces consumerism, you know how many likes you have or how many followers you have? What you have as opposed to who you're becoming. But it's only when things get really really bad. That's what happened with smoking. That's what happened with alcohol. That's what was happening with sugar. That's what's now happening more and more with depression and anxiety, that it's only when things get really bad that we change. We it doesn't have to be that way. So it's important to have some form of social incentive. Right. That's why we've created step one start one because that really is all about people seeing what other people are doing. Seeing that someone else has started something. They've decided to start meditating every single day for 30 days, let's say and you might want to follow that person and you become an a group of people. And you might come up with your own stop or start and other people might follow you as you do one of the greatest things you'll ever do is getting better by realizing this is something I need to stop. This is something I need to start. So social incentives are hugely important. And then immediate reward is let's again, as we come to the end of this podcast, let's just be brutally honest here. We all know deep down, that there are things that we do if we do them, we benefit from them. We know that we know that if we did this, our future would be better. But it's hard for us when we don't actually really know the future. And we just think Well, I'm gonna sacrifice that because it might happen it might not happen, but I know that if I do this, I'm gonna get something right now. It's more tangible. It's hard for people to sacrifice something into a future that isn't tangible to them. But it could become tangible and that's why immediate reward is really important that for example, before I recorded this exercise, I didn't particularly feel like doing it but my reward is I put it into my journal. It's another bit of evidence. It's like a yes, but also the reward is how I'm feeling now I'm very acutely aware of how I feel. But imagine if you feeling discomfort for whatever reason that the thought of exercising is even more uncomfortable. That it's very easy to put it off. But if you think if I do this, what's the reward in it for me? You might even find you've got even more willpower from having done it. When we've done podcasts on willpower willpower is really the science of self control. So immediate reward rewarding ourselves for the little things that we do. Because if we reward ourselves for them, and other people reward you and again with the technology that we've created, that every time you see your progress, we actually have a little treasure trove that opens up on our app and you hear the sound of coins you see coins, because the idea is you're investing in your future self. And the last, the last is progress, progress principle. It's one of the most powerful principles. It's a tendency. I mean, I think it's deeper than a tendency but there's a principle about how the brain loves to be in control. And we're always searching for ways to gain control. But, you know, one of the biggest models in the world for behavioral changes is Alcoholics Anonymous. And, you know, I remember working with a woman

Pete Cohen 29:56
who came to me and she was in a group that was running this is many years and she told me she was an overeater she goes to Overeaters Anonymous, and I said, Well, what happens there? And she said, Well, I get up, we're gonna circle and I say, Hi, I'm Jane. I'm an overeater. So I said When was the last time you overwrap she said about three years ago. I said, Wow. And you get up and tell everyone you were an overeater? And she said, yeah, and the funny thing is, I feel like overeating a lot. So I said that I kind of didn't know anyone. I'd never met anyone who had been to Alcoholics Anonymous narcotics, and I'd never met anyone like that. And I just said, I said, I find that a bit strange. Because you seem like someone who's really in control. What did she do? She went back to her next meeting, went round in a circle. She stood up and said, Hi, my name is Jane. I'm in control. And then sat down. Everyone looked at her and it's just he was mad. And afterwards, the guy who was running the group said, you can't say that. You can't say that. She said, Well, I just did. You can't say that here. That's not how we roll. Now, I understand the process. And the reason they say that and I'm not here to say that there's anything wrong with that because ultimately you have to find your own way. But knowing that you want to make progress and knowing that once you start to see progress, then this is why the progress principle this is what again, while we we've created the technology to help you see where you're progressing, where you're making marginal gains, that to the point where What was hard to do, becomes easy to do, because it becomes a habit. And it was almost 20 years ago, in 2003 that the book I wrote habit busting, which has been published in Arabic and Korean 20 years ago, I wrote it too. And more than 20 years, I wrote the book had to rewrite it. The publishers didn't like it. And now I'm going to probably say now I'm going to probably and what does that mean? Now I'm going to probably I mean that's just a recipe for procrastinating, isn't it? We will rewrite that book because things have changed. And what will be the greatest thing you ever do? It will be the person that you become and if you're interested in becoming more than who you are today in a better way, rather than creating a future that you don't want. That's what the future self podcast is all about. So three steps to overcoming procrastination. What are those steps? Well, the first step is definitely just become aware, aware that you're not alone, that there is a debating society going on. There's a part of you that wants you to stay where you are and there's a part of you that wants to grow in advance. I am representing your future self. I am a lawyer to your future self. You'll also see one of our podcasts that we launched recently, where we put out one of our meditations where we actually encourage you to go and meet your future self to use your imagination, the ease of remembering who you think you are versus the challenging of imagining, but the challenging of imagining was just like working with Sally Gunnell in 1992 when she won the World Record and sorry, she won the Olympic gold medal in Barcelona. And then in 1993, she broke the world record just going Google that 1993 Sally Gunnell. She had really worked out something that the person that she was wasn't the person that she needed to be, and she committed to becoming a front panel person, and she chipped away just like Michelangelo carving out the statue of David chipped away chipped away. She built a relationship to her future self. And when she crossed the line, she didn't know that she had won. Watch it. It's fascinating. She didn't know she'd won a gold medal. She didn't know she'd broken the world record and when she realized that she'd won, she started jumping up and down. And then again, a little bit later on a few minutes she realizes just broken the world record. She just got her head down and got on with what she needed to do. To the point where it she actually came to do it. She didn't actually know that she'd done it.

Pete Cohen 34:04
We have this imagination. We have this ability to create. We have the ability to evolve and leave the world in a better place. So step number one is awareness. Step number two is knowing that this is optimism bias. And it's putting that bias into play. The bias of if I do this, I'm gonna get that just taking control. And the third step is these these three areas of of knowing that if you really do want to change social incentives, so knowing that there are other people amazing study that was done in a hospital in Britain, where people when they wash their hands, the medical practitioners, when they went into a room to see a patient when they wash their hands when they went in and wash the hands when they went out there was a big counter on a board and the number went up all the time. That increased compliance by 90%. People just started to see oh, that's this is the thing to do. And you see a collective score. That's what we've also created, which people will see that every time you start and stop something you see this score this number going up of people who are all complying and or building a better world by stopping and starting behavior that serves their future self. And the second principle is that is that immediate reward is to start with you rewarding yourself or using our technology to help that for you to get a dopamine hit for doing the things that you didn't want to do because you didn't feel like it. And the third principle around all of this is around the progress principle. So what has been your biggest takeaway from the three steps to overcoming procrastination? I really, really appreciate you listening in I really appreciate you being someone who is obviously interested. I mean, you got to the end of this podcast. 35 minutes you've been listening. That's incredible. You are awesome. You are fantastic. I'm representing your future self and the more you start to represent your future self. That is where the magic really, really happens. So thank you so much. Enjoy whatever you're doing for the rest of your day. Make sure you let us know comment, get in contact with us go and have a look at S one S one.me. S one S one.me and join the most powerful community of people all over the world who are making a statement a statement of who they are becoming a great life. It doesn't happen by chance. It happens by design. Thanks for listening to the podcast.

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