Episode 340: Top 5 Tips to Beat Procrastination and Boost Productivity
Overcoming procrastination is crucial for entrepreneurs who want to maximize their productivity and achieve their goals. The feeling of being overwhelmed by a long to-do list can lead to a lack of focus and unproductivity.
In this edition of #AskAdam, Adam Stott shares his top five tips for overcoming procrastination. He emphasizes the importance of having a clear plan and prioritizing tasks that will have the biggest impact on business growth. Adam also discusses the role of perfectionism in procrastination and encourages listeners to take action and embrace failure as a learning opportunity.
Using ChatGPT and other tools may spark inspiration and overcome mental blocks. By implementing these strategies, entrepreneurs can overcome procrastination and achieve their business goals.
Show Highlights:
- How to combat procrastination that often stems from feeling overwhelmed.
- How to prioritize tasks based on their return on time invested (ROTI).
- Embracing failure and taking action.
- Analyze how you spend your time and make adjustments to increase productivity.
- Utilizing tools that can be used to generate ideas that may help to overcome procrastination.
Links Mentioned:
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Watch the Episode on Adam’s YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/adamstottcoach?el=Pod
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Transcript:
Please note this is a verbatim transcription from the original audio and therefore may include some minor grammatical errors.
[00:00:00] Adam Stott: The reason people procrastinate is they write a to do list of 28 things. They don’t know where to start. They get overwhelmed. They don’t know what they’re doing and they can’t focus. Hi everybody and welcome to business grow secrets. Really excited about what we’re going to do
[00:00:17] today because I’ve got. One of my marketing team, Charlie on the line. We’ve got these amazing school groups where we bring clients in. Uh, we give them the opportunity to network, communicate, ask questions. And we’ve got a really cool business group called big business entrepreneurs and that big business entrepreneurs.
[00:00:34] School group is where people come when they register for events. They get to come and hang out in that community for free. And what we decided to do is to, to answer some questions. So if you’re listening to a podcast, perhaps you’ve been listening for a long, long while you really love the podcast and you want to get involved, then you can submit your questions via the school group, which is big business entrepreneurs.
[00:00:54] And what we’re going to do today is I’m going to take some time to answer those questions. I think what we really want to do here. It’s just reach as many business owners as possible, help as many business owners as possible. So we thought rather than just keep giving you content, why don’t we let you be the content, right?
[00:01:10] Where you literally ask your questions and we go from there. So Charlie is here with me. Hi guys. How you doing? Tell me what we got. Who’s asking questions? Let’s get into them and let’s help people grow their businesses.
[00:01:21] Charlie: Yes, let’s help everyone else. We’ve got some great questions here. So the first one is from Piers Day.
[00:01:26] And the question is, what are your top five things that you do to help people pass procrastination?
[00:01:32] Adam Stott: Okay. So Piers Day, one of, um, Our great clients, uh, in our gold circle, really awesome. Been to all our branded retreats. His question is how do I get them out of procrastination? Top five, top
[00:01:42] Charlie: five tips that you do maybe personally, or you tell people to do to help them with procrastination.
[00:01:47] Okay.
[00:01:48] Adam Stott: So, so what I’ll do is I’ll talk about a little bit about me. Personally, how I manage my time, how I manage my day. And then hopefully that will bring some really great tips out in that process. So the first thing, what is procrastination? Procrastination is when, you know, you got things to do, but you just can’t bring yourself to do them.
[00:02:07] And a lot of people end up in procrastination because they are, frankly, they’re overwhelmed. They’ve got too much going on in their mind. They’re not chunking it. And really building it into step by step processes they can use. So I’ll give you first of all, the first step I’m going to give you this many, many years ago, and I’ll take you all the way back to when I was 19 years old and I was starting out in my career, many, many years.
[00:02:34] So we’re talking like probably 2000, uh, 2003 can’t even calculate in my head, whatever. Right. But 20 years ago now, um, I literally worked for an amazing guy in a company called Ford Motor Company, Alan Ford. And one of the guys there, Michael used to say to me, Adam, never, ever start your day without a clear step by step guide of what you are going to achieve in that day.
[00:03:02] He said, you’ve got two options. You can get there early in the morning and you can plan your day out in a step by step or before you leave the business that night. You have to make sure that you have that plan to walk into the next day. And I took that on board when I was 19 years old. I’ve done it ever since I was 19, but I will never leave this office without an I’m no good at the morning, right?
[00:03:24] So sometimes I get in a little bit late. I’ve never been that good in the mornings. I’m definitely not a 5am kind of guy. So for those of you that had that concept of getting up really early and stuff, um, this will definitely help you. Cause that ain’t me. But what I will do is before I leave this office, before I leave my business, before I leave wherever I’m working, wherever that is in the world, I will literally write out these step by steps of what I’m going to do the next day.
[00:03:47] And then what I do is I combine that with Michael’s advice, age 19 that I got, and Sarah Willingham, who I still work with to this day, who’s been a great mentor. She’s always said to me, Adam, so tip number one. Don’t leave your office, never ever go into a day at work without knowing the exact task you are going to do the next day.
[00:04:09] And then go to tip two, which is really important is. Don’t just write a massive to do list. Everyone’s got these big to do lists. They just get bigger. They end up being a hundred tasks. And what people do is they look through these hundred tasks and they say, you know what I’m going to do is I’m going to do this one.
[00:04:25] I’m going to do this one. I’m going to do this one. I’m going to do this one. And they pick the ones they like the sound of, right? And then they ignore all the important ones. So what Sarah has always said to me is Adam, we’ve all got, Oh. An amount of time. And what we need to focus on is what are going to be the activities, the tasks, the strategies, the actions that are going to move the needle the furthest, i.
[00:04:50] e. things that are going to make the biggest difference. And the way that we look at this is called return on time invested. So if I spend one hour doing. This task, this issue, this thing, what am I going to get back from that hour I’ve invested? And, and that’s why I always look at now, as I look at return on time invested, I look at making sure that I have three to five.
[00:05:14] So combined with my Michael ball bit of advice to my Sarah bit of advice What I look at is tomorrow when I get into this business, what are the three? To five things that I can do that is going to move this business forward the fastest, that’s going to move the needle the fastest and that way if I focus on those three to five, I know that I can get a maximum roti, which is return on time invested.
[00:05:37] That’s like our maximum roti time. And, and, and that for me has been super powerful because I don’t procrastinate because I don’t worry about 20 things. I say, what are these five things? Anybody that goes into their business every day with five things can get five things done. The reason people procrastinate is they write a to do list of 28 things.
[00:05:55] They don’t know where to start. They get overwhelmed. They don’t know what they’re doing and they can’t focus. Right. So there’s my first two. First of all. Never go into the office without nailing it. Second of all, look at three to five things. And then we’ll get the third one. We combine it in to make it simple.
[00:06:11] Is the roti out of those three to five things that you’re going to do that day. What is your return on time invested? So I’ll go a little bit deeper into that. So one of the things I do when I make my list, I’m always asking myself, and this is something you should always ask yourself. Is what tasks move the needle the most, but also what tasks are revenue generating versus non revenue generating.
[00:06:36] So on those five tasks, I’ll write down, if I do this one, what’s it going to make me in the next 12 months? Well, it’s going to make me 150 grand. Is it worth me doing it? Probably. Depending on the size of your business. Now, sometimes I might say it’s gonna make me 150 grand. The percentage of revenue is so small.
[00:06:53] I’ll get someone else to do that. If I do this one, this is gonna make the business a million quid. So should I do that one? Yeah, definitely. 150 grand one, right? So now what I’m doing is I’m actually adding revenue generation to my to do list, which does two things. First of all, It’s like dangling the carrot gets me motivated.
[00:07:12] Secondly, if I can’t put any, yeah, if I can’t put any revenue against it, what’s the point in doing it? Yeah. So that, so that would be my third one’s money, right? Yeah. Time is money, right? Because you’re investing your time to make money. That’s what business is. It’s a commercial enterprise. Um, the next one I would say is, um, You know, procrastination a lot of the time comes from perfectionism.
[00:07:34] You want things to be perfect. It’s impossible for them to be perfect, especially when you’re early and new in business because you’ve never done it before. So I think that what you’ve got to do is, in addition to the things I’ve said already, is be prepared to fail more successful. People are successful not because they’re geniuses.
[00:07:53] Not because they’re super clever, but because they’re not afraid to fail. So what I would suggest that you do is you just start taking more action. Don’t worry about it being perfect and actually understand that everything you create creates feedback. So if you get it done, then you’ll get some feedback, which is awesome, right?
[00:08:11] Um, but if you don’t get it done and you do nothing, you will get no feedback. So start looking at all the actions you take as feedback creation, because if you’re just staring at a piece of paper. And you’re not taking the action and you’re not doing anything. The problem is you are silent to the world.
[00:08:28] Right. Getting mother’s ass. You can’t get feedback from the world. Yeah. If you actually do it.
[00:08:31] Charlie: Yeah.
[00:08:31] Adam Stott: You can get the feedback from the world. So look at the things you do, not as a, as a, a way of becoming perfect, but look at what you do as a way of getting feedback from the world as to whether what you should have done is successful or not successful.
[00:08:44] That’s the fourth one. Quite, that’s a good question. Right? Big. I like it. Right? Yeah. And then we go with, uh, go with number five.
[00:08:51] Charlie: Do you set time limits? Do you have, do you time block or anything like that? Do you set time limits? That’s
[00:08:56] Adam Stott: a really, really good one. Um, I don’t know if it’s the tip that I would give, but that’s a really good question.
[00:09:02] Is time blocking is super powerful. So this is what I’ll give for the fifth one, which you’ve led me on to Charlie, right? Is I would look at Doing some analysis on yourself and the way that you do this is you print off an outlook calendar the day bit and you write down every 15 minutes what you do every 50 every 30 minutes every 30 minutes what did you do in that 30 minute block every 30 minutes of every single day what do you do what do you do what do you do what do you do and then what that would a label you to do is to see where you’re wasting time that’s a good tip actually I’m going to give a different 50 I like that it shows you where you’re going wrong.
[00:09:43] Yeah, you’re spending 30 minutes on Sky Sports every day. That’s a mega waste of your time, right? And that’s you procrastinating. But actually, I’m going to give you a way better one. Okay, so this is definitely good. Every single one of you should be using chat GPT. And the way that I use is I use it on the voice notes, right?
[00:10:01] So what I would do is when you procrastinate, you’re a bit stuck. And let’s say you’re trying to market your business. You’re a bit stuck. You do a voice note and you say, Hey, chat GPT, I love you. Could you come up with three really good marketing hooks, um, for my business? Um, and what I’m trying to market is I’m trying to market, we take peers as a good example, hypnotherapy.
[00:10:25] Can you give me three really good hypnotherapy hooks that can help me push forward on my business? So you do a quick voice note, you punch the button in, and I do this loads, right? And I’ll tell you why I do it. It’s not to get the answers from ChatGPT. I don’t do it to get the answers from ChatGPT. I do it to stop the procrastination and the thinking time.
[00:10:48] Charlie: Yeah.
[00:10:49] Adam Stott: Because what I can do now is, these are the hooks I’ve got. Transform your mind, transform your life. Unlock the power within you to overcome obstacles. Blah blah blah blah blah. Break free from what holds you back. Find your inner peace. I’ve now, what I’ve done is I’ve sparked inspiration in my mind.
[00:11:05] So I would start using chat GBT every time you procrastinate, you do that in conjunction with the other four things. I’ve just said, you’re going to be a machine. Hopefully that helps you.
[00:11:13] Charlie: Yeah, it doesn’t give clear answers, but it definitely gives really good inspiration and spark. So yeah, I think that’s a great one and it saves lots of time anyway, doesn’t it?
[00:11:20] So really good one. So
[00:11:23] Adam Stott: great question there from Piers Day, who’s one of our great clients, worked with him. He’s an amazing guy. Um, and hopefully everybody’s listening. Can start to use some of those techniques to help them with their procrastination, because look, let’s face it. A lot of entrepreneurs feel like that is a real struggle for them.
[00:11:40] Often they’re saying to themselves, there isn’t enough hours in the day. There’s not enough days in the month. And because of that, they often don’t see the results they want to see because they can’t get the things done that they want to get done. So hopefully that really, really helps. We’ve got a couple more questions in, but remember.
[00:11:55] If you’ve got a question that would really help you or help somebody that, you know, in fact, actually, if you know somebody that struggles with procrastination, share this episode with him, because with him, with her, because these five tips can really, really help them. I think that’s really important. All you got to do is go and hit the three dots, go and share this out to market.
[00:12:16] And if you’ve got a question that you want answered and you’re not sure about. Go over to our school group, which is a free community group where you can put your questions forward, which is called big business entrepreneurs. Go to Google that big business entrepreneurs, school group, go and join, join on and ask your questions away.
[00:12:37] So we can help you too. Hey everybody, Adam here, and I hope you loved today’s episode. I hope you thought it was fabulous. And if you did, I’d like to ask you a small favor. Could you jump over and go and give the podcast a review? Of course, I’ll be super grateful if that is a five star review. We’re putting our all into this podcast for you.
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