What Procrastination Is and Isn't

Sarah: 00:00:06

Hello, everyone, and a very warm welcome to the SEO Mindset podcast, where your hosts are, myself, Sarah McDowell, and the ever so delightful Tazmin Suliman. Thank you so much for joining us for another episode. This week we are talking about procrastination. Yeah, a biggie here is going to resonate with a lot of our audience. And this is such a good episode because what me and Tazmin talk about is the two main sort of culprits of why procrastination is about. So we talk about how it's often linked to having a lack of clarity or being unfamiliar with something, or a fear of failure and success. And we don't just talk about those two things and discuss it and explain it. But Tazmin has a list as long as her arm full of easy to implement strategies. So you can avoid this. Yeah, so we can wave goodbye to procrastination. Before we get into this week's episode, just a reminder of how you can support me and Tazmin. So if you're thinking, hey, I'm liking what Sarah and Tazmin are doing, let me support them. You can. In our show notes, in the show notes, there is a link to buy me a coffee page. It's a place where creators like me and Tazmin can receive one off donations from their listeners. So go and check that out or follow us on Twitter or X, whatever you want to call it. Still feels weird calling it x. Come and join us, reach out to us, chat to us, because that would be fabulous. Right, without further ado, let's get on with this week's episode. Hello, Tazmin. How are we doing? So we're recording on a sunny. It's sunny in the UK, isn't it? We're recording on a sunny, sunny, sunny Monday evening. Gosh, that was a tongue twister.

Tazmin: 00:02:13

Try say that ten times really, really quick.

Sarah: 00:02:15

Sarah couldn't say it once.

Tazmin: 00:02:18

Yes, it's sunny in Milton Keynes as well. Yeah, Monday evening eid festivities are well and truly done. And, yeah, glorious evening.

Sarah: 00:02:31

And it sounded, obviously. We chat, don't we? We chat quite a lot. And it does sound. Last week was pretty full on for you all. Sounds wonderful, all the celebrations. As you should. As it should be. But it does sound a bit full on.

Tazmin: 00:02:48

It was full on. It felt like I was upside down for a lot of it because people coming in, people going out on Eid, we had more or less open house from eleven in the morning to eleven at night. People coming, people going, food was being replenished. So, yeah, it was a lot of fun, though.

Sarah: 00:03:08

I'm glad. I'm glad. And. Yeah, and now hopefully this week for, for you, it's a little bit more calm.

Tazmin: 00:03:17

Yeah. But now looking forward to brightness here.

Sarah: 00:03:21

Well, calm before the storm because, yeah, next week is bright and SEO, but more excited. Well, no, more excitingly bright and SEO is excitingly. But we obviously have our live podcast on the Wednesday, don't we?

Tazmin: 00:03:39

Yeah, yeah. And then I meant moderating on the Thursday, you're moderating on the Friday. So it's. Yeah, lots going on.

Sarah: 00:03:49

Lots going on. Lots going on. I always enjoy when it's Brighton SEO week. I love Brighton. Wonderful place to go and visit and depending. Oh, let me just think about this. So this. Yeah, this episode will go out on Thursday. So you will still be able to get your tickets?

Tazmin: 00:04:10

Yes.

Sarah: 00:04:11

Yeah. So obviously we've been talking a lot about the live podcast that we're doing. If you are going to Brighton, SEO, or if you're in Brighton on the evening of Wednesday the 24 April and you want to come to a live podcast all about being authentically yourself, there's free pizza, free drink, free snacks. Then check out the link in the show notes. I will say that tickets are going. We've only got a handful left, haven't we?

Tazmin: 00:04:45

I know. It's really exciting actually, because every time we do this event, it becomes bigger and bigger and this time we've added to what we're offering and we've got a guest speaker. Tickets are flying through the window. Is that the term? Anyway, it's flying.

Sarah: 00:05:05

Selling like hotcakes.

Tazmin: 00:05:07

That's the one. Let's go with that one.

Sarah: 00:05:10

That's the one.

Tazmin: 00:05:12

Yeah. Promises to be a great evening.

Sarah: 00:05:14

It does. It does. And you get to hang out with me and Tazmin. So, you know, always, always a good evening.

Tazmin: 00:05:20

So, Sarah, are you ready to talk about today's topic?

Sarah: 00:05:24

I am ready to talk about today's topic.

Tazmin: 00:05:27

So we're talking about procrastination. I want to start off by asking you, what do you think procrastination is?

Sarah: 00:05:34

So. Procrastination. Tricky word to say. I always have to think when I'm saying it as well. It's a lot of. A lot of letters and a long word and you have to visualize it. I'm procrastinating now in answering the question, aren't I? But to me, procrastination is when you are putting off doing something. And for me, I would procrastinate if it's something new or something that I don't really get or it feels big or maybe I feel overwhelmed by it. Or maybe I don't like it. Maybe it's a job. Maybe it's a boring admin job that I don't really want to do. But whatever the reason, even though it's an important task and I need to do it, I push it back. I give excuses, I give reasons. I'll do something else, whether that is another job or another task in a work capacity. Or maybe I'll decide, oh, this is where I need to reorganize my kitchen cupboards instead of doing this job. So that is how I would define procrastination.

Tazmin: 00:06:56

You know, you've identified so many key elements to it. What? Procrastination. So it's quite complex, and we're going to go through what it is, but what it isn't is laziness. Often people will say, oh, you've been so lazy, you're procrastinating. And it's not laziness. And I don't like it being thought of as laziness because it paints that particular picture of a person. And even when you're thinking of yourself like that, it's unkind, it's not true. It makes us feel very negative about ourselves or negative about a person. So just let's just get it sorted right from the beginning. Procrastination does not equal laziness. Not saying laziness isn't a thing, it is, but procrastination is bigger. And there are two main reasons why we'll procrastinate. One is lack of clarity, which you have touched on. And the other is fear of failure or even success. So lack of clarity, you talked about, if it's something new, if it's daunting, you can feel overwhelmed. So sometimes we will to have a new thing to deal with, and it's too big, and we don't know how to start, or we're so uncertain about it, we become paralyzed. Does that ring true to you?

Sarah: 00:08:25

100%. 100%. And what I also find interesting is I 100% understand about the fear of failure as well, because there is this idea of you don't even want to start something. Because what if you fail? But what I didn't think about, or what never springs to mind is the fear of success as well, because I've definitely felt that as well.

Tazmin: 00:08:56

So it's interesting, isn't it? We're going to go into that a little bit more. But carrying on with this lack of clarity when we have a task that we've never done before, that's often when we will procrastinate, and it feels unfamiliar. And unfamiliar then, for us, feels as wrong. Because everyone needs a certain amount of certainty. I think we've touched on this a few times in our podcast, the six human needs. One is certainty. And when we're feeling uncertain, we feel unsafe, we feel insecure, and we don't want to go there. Some people are better with uncertainty than others, but most people will need, you know, everyone needs a certain amount. And when we're feeling things are uncertain, feel things are unfamiliar, complicated, we can end up feeling quite overwhelmed, and then we panic. So there's two parts of lack of clarity. There's one where you just don't know what to do because you haven't identified the smaller chunks of work, or because it feels so unfamiliar that you become overwhelmed with that feeling of uncertainty.

Sarah: 00:10:13

I definitely resonate with that because there are some things that just feel humongous. And we actually had this conversation earlier, and something that I'm trying to get better at is I always tend to overcomplicate as well, which I think then feeds into it.

Tazmin: 00:10:33

Yeah, absolutely. And that overcomplication sometimes stems from wanting things to be perfect. And then you add more and more layers to it because you think, I can't release this product because it's not got everything it possibly could do. Sending something out into the world, into business, just as a very raw core product doesn't feel natural to many people. But I think it's changing. I think more and more people are accepting that that's okay. I feel that. Do you feel that?

Sarah: 00:11:10

I don't actually know. Can I ask why you feel that? What have you kind of seen in the wild?

Tazmin: 00:11:16

Maybe because I'm getting more comfortable doing that. So last Thursday, I was out with my cousins, and the company that run my social media said, could you create three reels for us? And I said, I'm out with my cousins. I don't want to do this today. They said, no, we need them today. So I thought, I'm in Birmingham. I was at the mailbox. Apparently, you can't record at the mailbox. It's against rules. So I thought, where am I supposed to go now? And I only had a little bit of time to do it in. Do you know where I recorded them?

Sarah: 00:11:55

Sarah, where did you go?

Tazmin: 00:11:57

Harvey Nichols, ladies. I went in. It was very, very snazzy. So I thought, okay, you know what? It's quiet in here, and I can. It's just me. There's nobody else in here. I just want to stress that to all of our listeners. I wasn't being weird, and it was so I just recorded three reels in five minutes and I was fine.

Sarah: 00:12:22

And I, yeah. So if I'm thinking about me personally and I don't know, maybe this is a thing that maybe our listeners can reach out and talk about as well because I definitely, I try and sort of have that mantra that it's better to get something out than strive for perfection. And then it never getting out as well. Yeah. Because, and then, because that was part of our planning today because obviously we had a bit of a strategy session. And I think one of the things that I said to you is what's the quickest thing that we can get out first? Because we can always refine. So. Yeah, I agree that on a personal level that that's definitely the case.

Tazmin: 00:13:09

Yeah. And I think as more and more people are getting. What's the phrase I'm thinking about? They want to create more content and they realize that it doesn't have to be perfect, it has to be authentic. People are getting more and more used to being their authentic self. It's being embraced more. And, you know, it doesn't have to be perfect. You don't have to have a great hair day. You just do it because it's the value that you're providing people with. So that's, that's why. But coming back to this topic, I knew we would go off, off route because it's so huge. But we've, you know, just take a step back. We're talking about how lack of clarity can lead to procrastination. And I want to give our listeners some tips on how to overcome this.

Sarah: 00:14:04

Okay.

Tazmin: 00:14:04

Yeah. So one of them is understand why you're doing what you're doing because that will then determine what steps you need to take. For example, if you are writing a book, are you writing a book for fun or is it to publish? Because if it's for fun, you'll have certain targets. You can give yourself certain targets. I'm going to write at this time. I'm going to write for this long, and you're chunking this big book into time allocated slots if you like. If you are writing to publish, that's a different ballgame, right? You have to go down the whole route of how do I get this book from my laptop to a bookshelf? If you are wanting to exercise more, are you exercising because you want to get fit or are you training for a marathon? Because, again, that determines what steps that you need to take. So understand why you're doing what you're doing. Another tip is find somebody who's already done it before. So this could be a mentor, this could be somebody that you know, because they will help you identify what the little chunks are. You could even talk through those steps with a friend. Now, they don't need to know the ins and outs of publishing or running a marathon, but they'll be able to ask you questions that will trigger something in your mind thinking, oh, I better do this. Or actually, you know what? That question is really useful, because now I know I need to go and do this step, and this step and this step. So that's some of the practical stuff. You know, as we said, chunk down the big tasks into small little steps. Set yourself mini deadlines. So, especially if that goal that you've got is not part of your work life, if it's extracurricular, which the fitness could well be. Then again, set mini deadlines because there's nothing like a deadline or a target, as you mentioned earlier, a target date that is going to help you feel, feel like you need to have some motion and move forward. But then there's some more inner, inner work stuff. So often it's our inner chatter that will get in the way of us and getting that thing done. I've never done this before. It's too big a task. I feel overwhelmed. I don't know what to do. When am I going to find time to do it? I don't have the resources. I don't have the knowledge. All of that can really impact our ability to take action. So you can change that in a chatter to something that, you know, when you hear, like, especially on, like, american shows, shout out, I am awesome. At the top of your voice, it doesn't ring true. If it doesn't ring true true to you, then that sort of affirmation isn't going to be helpful. But you can, you can find affirmations that do help. For example, I'm someone who can always figure things out. I'm getting better at this every single day. Every small step I take, I'm getting closer to my goal, because those are. Those are believable affirmations. So adjusting your inner chatter can also help you with procrastination. And you're going to like this one. Celebrate your actions. So often we say celebrate your wins. And sometimes when you've got a big task that they don't feel like wins. If you are training for a marathon, and if I was training for a marathon, day one would not feel like a winner. If I just looked at how far I ran, but if I said, you know, every time I get out and run, that's, that's an action and I'm going to celebrate that.

Sarah: 00:17:59

Yeah. I'm all one for and championing, celebrating your wins and something that I haven't thought is the action because, yeah, definitely that should be celebrated. The actions of what you are. Yeah. Because all these smaller actions are a part of a bigger piece. Bigger beast, a bigger piece. Sorry. We are coming up to needing to take our short break. Is there anything else before we do that?

Tazmin: 00:18:34

Tazmin, one very quick thing to find an accountability body, whether that's a coach, whether that's co working on Zoom, whatever it is, find somebody that you are going to be held accountable with.

Sarah: 00:18:47

Yes. Accountability is a good one, isn't it? You need something to hold you accountable so you make sure that you're showing up for yourself or showing up for that project. So. So I love that. So a quick rundown of those tips. Again, just a quick summary so, you.

Tazmin: 00:19:08

Know, find out why you're doing it, check your why. Find somebody who's done it before. Go through the steps with a friend. Basically, you want to divide that big task into little steps and check your inner chatter and adjust it to something that is going to help you take those actions, celebrate those actions and find an accountability buddy.

Sarah: 00:19:32

There you go. Awesome. Very easy to action strategies and tips there. Before we do go into this short break, Tazmin, what have you got for us for part two?

Tazmin: 00:19:44

We're going to talk about fear of failure and touch on fear of success and what that means.

Sarah: 00:19:50

Amazing. All right, well, make sure that you join us back and I can't wait to delve more into this topic.

Tazmin: 00:19:58

Wonderful. So welcome, everybody, to the next part of our procrastination podcast topic. Sarah, so what did you make of part one?

Sarah: 00:20:08

Love it. I love it. Yeah, I think because obviously we did a quick summary at the end of part one, didn't we? Of all those easy to implement strategies and yeah, I think all of those will help with getting clarity and getting your head around what you're trying to do and why you're trying to do it and the best ways that you can do it as well. So all of those were great. And I was nodding along like, yeah, that's great. That makes sense. And I'm sure Alyssa's were doing the same.

Tazmin: 00:20:43

Now we're going to talk about another key piece into why people procrastinate. And it is fear. So we've said, I said earlier that we're going to talk about fear of failure and fear of success. And you were saying you'd thought about failure, but never fear of success, but let's do failure first. So you're trying something new and it's daunting. And you, you know that there's going to be some negative emotion that's going to come to play, so you're avoiding it, right?

Sarah: 00:21:18

Yes.

Tazmin: 00:21:18

And the more you avoid the thing, it becomes bigger and bigger and bigger. And now you're panicking, especially if it is a deadline that you've got to meet for someone else. You're thinking, I need to do this, I need to do this, I need to do this. And suddenly anything and everything is more important than that thing. Keep cleaning the kitchen cabinets, googling where a particular country is in the world. Anything. Right?

Sarah: 00:21:45

Is that what you usually do, Tazmin?

Tazmin: 00:21:48

Honestly, you ask me, I could give you a hundred recipes of how to air fry chicken. That was my thing recently. Don't know what to do. I know. Let's look at another air fryer recipe. So, yeah, that was me. And then you start panicking. And when you're panicking, you are not going to think straight. And when you're not thinking straight, suddenly even what ability you had before diminishes because now your problem solving abilities have, have been clouded. So you're in a worse state than before. You start doubting your abilities, you catastrophize the outcome. Suddenly you want it to be perfect because you've spent so long not doing it, it, you feel like now it should be perfect. And again, perfection is that fear of committing to something. I'm going to make it bigger and add another bow here because I can't just commit to what I've got and ship it. So that's, you know, that the fear of failure, because we don't want to know that it's gone wrong. It feels it, and then it impacts our self worth. Right. Because we don't see failure as a good thing, we say is a bad thing.

Sarah: 00:23:10

Yeah. And that self worth is such a biggie because how, what's important to you, and this is something that me and my partner, Tash, was talking about of, um. And it was more linked to productivity because we were sort of saying, uh, what we find as a. That's linked with our self worth is being, yeah. Being nice and productive and doing stuff. But then also this is going to feed into this fear of failure because you're doing all this stuff because you want to get recognition. Maybe or you want people to say nice things or whatever it is, but obviously it has to be a polished, perfect project product, right? Or project or whatever it is. So that fear of failure is going to creep in. And as you were saying, like you're just going to add more stuff, like, oh, I need another bow, I need to do this. It's not quite ready and it's just excuses, isn't it? Or it's like reasons for you not to just go ahead and put that thing out there into the world.

Tazmin: 00:24:20

Because until it's out in the world, nobody really can judge you on it. When it's out there, then they can. And when we start seeing as seeing failure as you know what, the more times I try, the better myself work because I've given it a go. I've been resilient, I've taken feedback, I've changed things that need to change, I've shifted again and again and again because it doesn't have to be perfect to be valuable. Somebody said to me about one of my revitalized videos that, you know, can you do this? And I said, absolutely, I can. But how much extra value will it add? Would I rather spend my time creating another video that would help other people on another topic? So it's, it's a very personal thing, but at the same time, I think we have the bar too high on what acceptable is.

Sarah: 00:25:23

This is a special sponsored segment of the podcast where I have Inge Boubez, director of enterprise marketing for STAT, the enterprise search analytics division of Moz. Hello, Inge.

Inge: 00:25:38

Hello, Sarah. How are you? I'm so glad to be here. Thank you so much for having me.

Sarah: 00:25:43

Thank you for joining me for this special segment. And without further ado, let's start with the first question. Can you explain what STAT does?

Inge: 00:25:54

Stat is a SERP tracking and analytics platform that's built for large scale SEO needs. So large scale SEO could mean that you work for a really big website, one that has thousands or even millions of pages that you're responsible for. Think the retail and e commerce, finance, travel, hospitality, or even media and entertainment spaces. Or it could mean that you work for an a. And maybe you're not a big agency and maybe each client website isn't massive, but when you add up everything that you're actively working on, it turns out you've got a lot of SEO on your hands. So basically, a typical stat client ends up tracking thousands of keywords or more. And whether that's for one website or across many websites doesn't matter. Now, we also tend to favor saying that we do serve tracking instead of just rank tracking. This is because our data is more than just here's your ranking position and ranking URL. Google puts a ton of money and effort into understanding what searchers want and delivers with the Serps. So we parse and analyze everything on the 100 results served. So along with ranking data, you're also going to get SERP features, competitor insights, visibility metrics and so on and so forth. In many ways, the large scale of stat also applies to the sheer amount of data that we collect and the fact that we collect it daily.

Sarah: 00:27:37

How does all this data help SEOs?

Inge: 00:27:41

So by serving up these position SERP insights every single day, we're helping SEOs understand their unique search landscape in deep dive and how they're positioned in it, and also helping them find new search opportunities and strategies to improve their performance. So SEO is also both very cross functional and not always the most understood function within one's own organization, even by the team that it may end up sitting on. One of the biggest things we hear from SEOs is that they often spend a lot of time educating the organization on the value of what they bring to the table, which is a big frustration in itself. So having this kind of data allows them to show the impact their work. Now, compared to a discipline like PPC, for example, SEO has huge returns and potential, but it does lack concrete data to prove it correct. So stat aims to bridge that gap by giving SEOs the scale of data that they need to explain the value and context of their work. That in itself is hugely beneficial.

Sarah: 00:28:58

Can you give some specific examples of how clients use stat to improve their SEO?

Inge: 00:29:04

You know, I have many examples, but I'm going to try to distill it to the salient ones. A lot of times clients think they're competing with a handful of known business competitors, but from an organic search standpoint, there are almost always plenty that they aren't aware of. Statistics services, those true search competitors, and how much serve visibility everyone owns. So now you've saved yourself a ton of wasted effort and you're in a better position to be super targeted with your strategy. This means that you know who your competitors are and what type of content you need to beat.

Inge: 00:29:44

And now you can also chart your progress and gain the visibility that you need. This means that since the SERPs are more than just ten blue organic links, right? Understanding the different types of SERP features that appear in your search space is definitely key. Not only do they present to present a golden opportunity to own a larger piece of SERP real estate. Crucially, they're Google telling you the type of content it knows searchers want to see. See stat will show you exactly which Serif features are showing up for your whole keyword, site specific keyword segments, and even for individual keywords. This way you can truly understand the content formats worth pursuing, and there's no sense in showing up to a circle of video results with a blog post, for example. I think that's truly the salient point and the most important use case that stat can bring to the table for SEOs.

Sarah: 00:30:47

Thank you so much for telling our audience all about STAT. If you want to find out more, go and follow the links in our show notes and you can find everything that you need about STAT now.

Tazmin: 00:31:09

Fear of success this is when you procrastinate, but you self sabotage yourself because you're avoiding opportunities. So supposing you think, I've, you know, I've got this skill set that would be really useful here, here and here, and you don't reach out to those people, or you don't put yourself forward for talks or different sorts of competitions or whatever it is, because you're concerned about your own abilities, you're fearful of what change that would lead to. Because if supposing they all said yes, would you be able to handle it all? Supposing you were successful, would you be able to handle the pressure that would come with that new life? What would you have to give up in order to have that new life? You might not be able to meet people's expectations. So supposing you wrote a book and it went out there and it was successful, then people would want another book, another bestseller. What if you couldn't do it? What if you put yourself forward to be in a theatre production and you did really well, then the next one would have to be better. So then it feels better to be in your own comfort zone rather than putting yourself out there. Does that make sense to you?

Sarah: 00:32:39

Yeah. Yeah. And I definitely can think back, especially new opportunities. Every time that I've been out of my comfort zone, there is this procrastination or I don't. It's scary putting yourself forward, isn't it? Because, like you say, like it could. I suppose something that you might get into your head about is if you try something, it's a real good success. Was that a. Was that a fluke? Do you know what I mean? Like, can you do it again? And that is an interesting angle that hadn't even came onto my radar.

Tazmin: 00:33:23

I think I think the writing example is a really good one. It could even be leading a project. You can put your hand up and say, I'd like to lead that project. What if it goes really well and you think it's by fluke? Or what if it really goes well and even though you know it's not a fluke, what if that then changes the commitment you have to give to the business or you feel that you have to give to the business? What if that impacts your work life balance?

Sarah: 00:33:55

So I suppose as you're saying, that that is where you need to have boundaries in place.

Tazmin: 00:34:04

Yeah, boundaries. It could be open and honest conversations with your partner and say, look, I've got all of these opportunities now because of this success and I know that the next five years are going to be really important and then I'm sorted. Can we manage with a different shift in our work life balance for five years? And this could be really important if you've got a young family and you think, you know what, now's the time for me to sort this out because I want to provide for them. And then it's a conversation every couple will have of a different way of handling it, but it does require those difficult conversations and sometimes we're avoiding those.

Sarah: 00:34:51

Yeah. And when we're all, in all relationships, not just our sort of like loved partners, wherever going with that significant partner, could you say. I don't know what I was trying to say. However you're set up, if you're, if you're married, if you're not, if you've got a problem partner, whatever that situation is, you need to have regular check ins with that person because things are going to change. Yeah, that's inevitable. And I think when I look back at all the arguments that I've ended up having in, it's because of a lack of communication and a lack of sitting down and being open and transparent with each other and, yeah, celebrating what these opportunities mean and what they could bring, but having that sort of raw, vulnerable conversation, being like, yeah, things are going to change, but these are the strategies that we'll put in place so that it doesn't have a negative impact as much as there's going to be a positive impact. There's always that science, isn't there, isn't it? I imagine every positive reaction has a negative reaction. I don't know.

Tazmin: 00:36:08

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But so one of you.

Sarah: 00:36:13

Sorry, sorry, no go. I was just going to go more into a rabbit hole of what is science and what isn't science.

Tazmin: 00:36:20

And I was and I started getting scared that any minute now, Sarah's going to say, it's time to wrap up. And I've got lots of tips to give everyone. I'm going to rattle these off really quickly. Number one, self acceptance. In any journey of growth, when you're trying something new, it can feel scary. It's a great thing to do, but it can feel scary. And then suddenly, if you fail, quote, unfair. You didn't just feel worse about yourself. So self acceptance is really important in any journey of growth. You are where you are, you're getting better every day. And this isn't about you making life worse for yourself. Number two, visualize your success. So visualize yourself going through all of the parts of the process to get to success and visualize the success. Visualization is so powerful, I think maybe we need to do podcast episode on that. I'll write it down. Another thing is name your fear. Give it a name, and then it just reduces the power. So it could be, oh, here she goes, negative nelly in my head again. You can't do it. You fell. Because if you give it a name, it just adds a layer of comedy to the whole thing. And comedy is going to be really good for reducing that power of that fear. Set yourself up for success. So have the time blocked out in your diary. Get the equipment that you need to hand, get everything that you need. Another thing that will help is have a sort of detachment. So rather than saying, I am scared, say I'm feeling scared. And feelings, they're like clouds, right? You know, have you ever done, like, cloud gazing? And then one cloud drifts in and then it goes away again. Feelings just like that. You can't, can't pin your life onto them, you just can't pin them down. Another thing is, where is that feeling coming from? Is it a you thing or is it a them thing? Are you trying to impress them? Do you think they are judging you or are they actually judging you? So, inner or outer? And then this, this rule is used a lot. The 1010 rule. If I fail in ten minutes, is it going to matter? In ten weeks, is it going to matter in ten years, is it going to matter? Just give yourself a bit of perspective there, because actually in ten years, it probably is not going to matter that you try to swim a lap and you couldn't. Ten minutes, maybe ten weeks, ten months, no. So the 1010 rule, spotlighting this is where you think everyone is looking at you and noticing you. The reality is they're not. They're busy with their own life. Ship the thing, apply for the job, give the talk, do the thing. Don't worry about what other people are thinking. They're probably not thinking about you.

Sarah: 00:39:35

Can I just add as well? Because everyone is in their own heads, everyone is self critical about we're all having these feelings and in actual fact, nine times out of ten. So I had to think, I had to change my mindset when I did my first ever speaking gig. Because people aren't wanting you to fail, people are wanting you to succeed. Especially if you're doing something that they haven't done themselves or they don't feel confident enough. Have that mindset. Yeah. People aren't out there, what, waiting and looking out for every fail. That's you. That's what you do to yourself. And that's where this talk of being kinder to yourself comes in. Yeah. That's the only thing I'd add in that bit.

Tazmin: 00:40:24

Absolutely. Reuse the power of reframe. We've talked about this before. Remind yourself that you're learning all the time. Use your language to power yourself. I can't do this to. I can't do this yet.

Sarah: 00:40:41

Yep.

Tazmin: 00:40:41

And the movie star method. We've talked about this before. Pretend that you're a movie star. Somebody is watching you in that scene. How are you going to empower them and inspire them and make sure that they don't flick to the other channel? I should write a book on the movie star method.

Sarah: 00:40:58

You should get. I'm impressed, by the way, how many more tips are there?

Tazmin: 00:41:03

You have a lot of you. I know, that's why I interrupted you. Thanks, Sarah. I've got to get these out into the universe and imagine yourself doing a twelve month celebration. So this is from one of my new favorite books, feel good productivity. Ali Abdul saying. It was from that one where he said, imagine yourself in twelve months time telling your friend over dinner what you achieved. So visualize that. And I guess the crux of it is whatever you do, do one thing, even if it's a small thing, because doing something is the opposite of procrastinating and nothing is going to give you momentum as much as action.

Sarah: 00:41:53

I suppose I'm doing this and I'm not doing a dance move, but it sort of breaks that cycle, doesn't it?

Tazmin: 00:42:00

Yeah.

Sarah: 00:42:01

Doing that one thing.

Tazmin: 00:42:03

One thing. Because I read this somewhere. So supposing you want to start a task at the beginning, it's quite hard to get that momentum, but once you get that momentum, you keep going and going and going and equally it's then quite hard to stop doing that task because you've built that momentum. So just. Yeah, absolutely. Do one thing that is the opposite of procrastination.

Sarah: 00:42:30

I'm impressed, Tazmin. You did rattle them off. You got through. How many have you got? How many is on that list?

Tazmin: 00:42:39

I had to merge. I haven't done numbers, but I had to merge a few in the interest of time and we didn't get into. So for anybody who has not listened to the podcast where we talked about the movie star method at length, that may have felt a bit confusing. All I can say is go and listen to the other podcast episodes.

Sarah: 00:43:02

That's a good bait tactic there. In one of the episodes in our previous catalogue, Tazmin talks about the movie. Yeah, the movie method.

Tazmin: 00:43:13

I think it was the movie summer. I think we talked about it in, in the first episode of this, of season nine.

Sarah: 00:43:20

Oh, now you're. Now you're putting your bets in, aren't you? What if it was?

Tazmin: 00:43:26

Well, at least I've. Who knows? Who knows?

Sarah: 00:43:29

That's amazing, Tazmin. Thank you so much. I feel like that was a great conversation because we discussed in length about the two main areas of how procrastination comes about. And obviously we talked about lack of clarity and something being unfamiliar and like the feel the fear of failure or success. But then you've given our listeners so many great actionable tips and just to do my little takeaway here. So I loved all your tips, but I was just writing out the ones that sprung out to me. I love the cloud idea of, like, emotions and feelings. They're like clouds, so don't. Don't get too stuck on them. I love the is it a you or them thing? Where is the judgment coming from? If it's a them thing? Who are they? Who are they to you? Do you know what I mean? Do you, should you care? Why do you care? 1010 again, this is the first time I've heard of this method. So I'm going to use that more because. Yeah, reevaluate, have a bit of reflect, reflection. Does this really matter in 1010 minutes? Ten weeks, ten months, ten years? Probably not. Everything seems worse during whatever has happened. Yeah, the 1010 method and spotlight. I've just written spotlight. And I remember thinking, oh, that was a good one. But now I've gone blank. What was the spotlight one?

Tazmin: 00:45:08

So that's when you think everyone's noticing what you're doing.

Sarah: 00:45:11

Ah, yes. And because then I was like, yeah, people on people are in their own head. I even, like, expanded on your point as well. But anyway, now I have.

Tazmin: 00:45:24

I have rattled off lots of things, but I just want to say that there is another reason you might be procrastinating, but I'm going to have to cover that in another episode. So.

Sarah: 00:45:34

So smooth, Jasmine.

Tazmin: 00:45:37

And that's all around burnout.

Sarah: 00:45:39

Oh, I mean, burnout is a great topic that we need to talk about anyway, isn't it? Yeah, definitely.

Tazmin: 00:45:48

So this. This season, we will have another episode on burnout. And what are three types of burnout?

Sarah: 00:45:56

Nice. Nice. Done like a true professional that you are. Slick tease. The next episode hooked our listeners in for more mic drop boom from you, Sarah. Well, thank you so much, Tazmin. That was an awesome episode. Full of your golden nuggets as ever. So thank you. Thank you so much. Just a reminder that if you are enjoying what me and Tazmin are doing, you can give us a one off donation. So we're set up on buy me a coffee. So, yeah, buy me a coffee is a platform where creators like me and Tazmin, because we are creators, very creative, procrastinated. Again, get to the point, Sarah. Go to our buy me a coffee page. There'll be a link in our show notes and you can give us a one off donation. Lots of you have already done that, so thank you very much. And then Twitter or X or whatever you want to call it, find us on there because we love to continue the conversation. So reach out to us and all of that lovely stuff. And remember as well, get your tickets for the live podcast that me and Tazmin are doing in. Wow, in just over a week. That's. That's bonkers, isn't it? It's really, really close. So, yeah, if you're listening and it's Thursday, get on those tickets because they're selling like hotcakes. I think that's the analogy that we were going with earlier. And. Yeah. Is there anything else, Tazmin? Any last nuggets that you want to leave our audience with?

Tazmin: 00:47:40

Just, you know what? If you are about. If you're in the middle of this. Well, not in the middle. If you are procrastinating over anything, it's normal. There is a reason behind it and you can beat her. So don't feel bad about yourself. Just go and do that one thing, whatever it is, whenever you're listening to this episode, just go and do that one thing that will help you gain momentum.

Sarah: 00:48:07

Fabulous. Right? Goodbye, everyone. Thank you for joining us. Take care of yourself and join us next time.