Hello, my name is Austin Shadle, and welcome
back to the Life Endurance Podcast, where we
explore methods of unlocking your true potential
in the greatest endurance race we all partake
in, life. Procrastination. Not taking action.
By doing nothing, you will guarantee the outcome
you want to avoid. Ironic, isn't it? We desperately
want to avoid something, but we don't take action.
and by doing so, we ensure the bad outcome occurs.
Why do we do this? In a previous episode, we
discussed laziness and how laziness is focused
on the cost and not the reward. This also applies
to procrastination. We overthink the path to
the finish to a point that we don't even start.
I am as guilty as anyone in this, and if you
haven't listened to the last episode, I urge
you to do so. But there's a couple other key
sources of procrastination I want to talk about
today. The first is fear, most commonly the fear
of failure. We tend to overthink the potential
of failure, another common topic in the self
-help world, and one I will continue to bring
up. Sometimes, as I batch write episodes, I worry
about beating a dead horse at times, but there
are some things I don't think we can revisit
too much, and failure is one of those. We fear
failure even though failure is part of the process.
But failure can be painful, so our desire to
avoid it is a protection mechanism. A natural
mechanism that means well, but is one that we
must learn to override in order to improve. So
the first life endurance takeaway is for you
to consider something you are procrastinating
on. So take a moment and think about what outcome
you're trying to avoid, and what will taking
action ensure won't happen. Now look inward and
see if fear is the source of your inaction. What
are you afraid of? Dig into these fears and ask
yourself, are they rational and are they worse
than the outcome of taking no action? You'll
likely find the irrationality of the fear that's
causing your procrastination. Now the other source
of procrastination that has skyrocketed in modern
day specifically is the myth of multitasking.
Again, another topic I have hit on, so I won't
go into detail about how there is no such thing
as multitasking, just rapid task switching, which
is wildly bad for productivity. But this idea
of multitasking being a source of procrastination
really explained a lot when I heard it. When
we multitask or have the option to, we procrastinate
completion of the task we're switching from.
And it's also a way to cope with the fear we
mentioned before. It gives us an excuse to avoid
the thing that we're scared of. It gives us options
to procrastinate. And we justify them because
we switch to another task that, yes, needs to
happen, but might not need to happen as much
as the one we're working on. Modern day technology
makes this extremely difficult to avoid, and
I'm guilty of this. I have four screens on my
desk. I can have emails on one screen, messages
on another, documents on the other, and a web
browser on the fourth. At times, there's an advantage
to having multiple screens, when you need to
have two documents open to compare at once, or
you need to have info from your browser or email
to include on a document you're working on. But
it also makes it too easy to let yourself leave
a task for another. When a new email comes in,
or you remember a browser tab that you've been
meaning to revisit, it becomes too easy to indulge
in the impulse to go after the new exciting thought
and continue to avoid the task you should be
focusing on. So the second life endurance takeaway
for today is this. When you find yourself procrastinating,
observe how many options you have in front of
you. How much access to distractions do you have?
You may have to find ways to remove those options.
And with that, combating your procrastination.
I hope today's episode added some value to your
own pursuits. Please subscribe and take a brief
moment to share if you think this could help
others. To learn more about my background, follow
me on Instagram at TheEnduranceBeast. To support
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and as always, I look forward to sharing the
next episode.