Ep #224: Strategic Procrastination: A New Way to Boost Productivity

Hey, this is Lindsay Dotzlaf and you are listening to Mastering Coaching Skills episode 224.

To really compete in the coaching industry, you have to be great at coaching. That’s why every week, I will be answering your questions, sharing my stories, and offering tips and advice so you can be the best at what you do. Let’s get to work.

Hey coach, I am so excited to dig in today because this is actually an episode I have been preparing for quite a while. I have been doing some research, doing some of my own exploration of this concept, and I wanna teach it to you today. It’s something I’m going to call strategic procrastination. And I’m going to talk about this in many different ways. I’m going to tell you what, how I define it, how I’ve used it, how you can use it, and how you can use it with your clients, of course, as always.

So this is going to be a tool for any of you. This could, you could use this literally with any niche, but I want you to consider for just a minute times when you know, you personally, when you know there’s something that you have to get done today or you know there’s something you look at your calendar there’s something on there that when you think about completing it or when you think about getting to work there’s this like I don’t really want to do that right now or you want to kind of put it off or avoid it altogether.

And maybe, even if it is on your calendar or it’s on your to-do list or however you organize those things, you have a really hard time getting yourself into the state of, okay, I’m ready to work on this. I’m gonna give you lots of different examples, but this is probably true for your clients as well. Not probably, this is like human nature. Almost all humans have this response to things that they don’t necessarily wanna do or that they think they’re not gonna be good at or maybe they’re gonna fail, that is called procrastination, right? We’re all familiar with that.

And for those of you that are great at doing always what you say you’re gonna do, there is a very small, first of all, congratulations, because it is a very small percentage of the population that this has been shown in studies that will actually say they’re gonna do a thing and then stick to it every time and not allow their brain to get in the way or their body to take over and just like, I think we’re gonna do something else and avoid it altogether, to avoid whatever that discomfort is that’s happening.

But if that is you, what I want you to consider is that you are a bit of a rare breed, which is amazing, and guaranteed you have clients who will need help with what I’m about to talk about because even if you are a person who kind of naturally sticks to your schedule, always does the thing, just pushes right past the discomfort, then it would be very rare for all of your clients to also be that same way, right?

So this is going to give you a really good strategy that you can use when you are working with a client that you can tell it’s like they keep saying they’re going to do something and then they just keep putting off for whatever reason, or they come to you and want coaching on, I just keep putting it off.

And in your brain, whether or not you’re the coach who does everything you say you’re gonna do, oh, I’ve seen a lot of people coach on this, and so much of the coaching I’ve seen often comes back to, well, how can you just honor your word? Right? How can you just do the thing that you say you’re going to do? And it kind of tends to lean towards this approach that’s like, yeah, okay, that’s human behavior, but also just do what you say you’re gonna do, right? Just like override that voice there that’s like, I don’t wanna do this right now.

I’m gonna give you something. I’m gonna teach you a tool today that hopefully all of you will use. And I wanna just prep this up front and say I want you to share with me if you use this for yourself or with your clients. Come to, if you’re in any of my spaces, definitely report back.

But if you aren’t and you follow me on Instagram or wherever, just send me a message and let me know because I have been really digging into this so much with myself, with some of my clients. And I just want to offer as well that this could be, I think this is a strategy that can be adapted to even different types of neurodivergent brains. You can take the strategy I’m about to teach you and you can use it with yourself if you have ADHD or other diagnoses similar and you and or your clients do. This is a strategy that you can adapt to override some of your natural tendencies.

So I want you to consider today, you look at your calendar, right? This is just like make believe, just go to that place in your brain where you look at your calendar and you see something on your calendar that has to do with your coaching or your coaching business that’s just like not your favorite task. It’s something that has to be done in your business. You still do it on your own. You haven’t like hired anyone to do it for you. Or even though you don’t love doing it, you think you should be doing it yourself, but every time you see it, it’s like, ugh, let’s just put that off. I really don’t wanna do that. And I want you to consider how you, like what do you do in that situation?

Here’s what I know I do. I’ll just share it with you. Not all the time, of course, right? But sometimes what happens is I see something that’s like not my favorite task. Maybe it’s like writing launch emails, right? Like writing a whole batch of emails, which I’ve developed other strategies for like how I work on stuff like that, but let’s just say it’s on my calendar it has to be done today and I just noticed myself like I really don’t want to do that. And if I don’t catch it, right if I just like let myself live my life and do what I want to do, then I might just start doing something else or working on a different thing that feels more enjoyable or getting distracted by, I pick up my phone and I go into The Coach Lab community to respond to something, but now I’m on social media, and so maybe I scroll for a little bit or just things that like I’m not being proactive, right?

I’m not saying like, okay, right now I’m gonna spend 10 minutes doing this thing, and then I’m gonna write the emails. I’m just kind of letting my discomfort of writing that, those emails take over in a way that now I’m just distracted for however long, like who knows how long that could go on. I’m guessing most of you relate to this in some way. It could be emails, it could be anything, literally anything you do in your business.

And you can also expand that to your life, right? Anything in your life that’s like, I said I was going to work out tomorrow morning, or I said I was going to work out this morning, but then I woke up, I was so cozy in my bed, I didn’t wanna get out. And so I just was like, oh, maybe I’ll do it later in the day. And you can kind of make that choice passively, right? With just kind of like, I’ll just like push it back.

Versus you can make it actively and say, okay, I’m not feeling great this morning or I had a bad night’s sleep or whatever it was. So I know I have a break at 4 or I have an hour, I move my workout to then, and that’s like very strategic, right? You’re moving it, you’re saying, this is when I’m gonna do it. But just consider those times when it’s kind of feels a little more out of your control, or like you aren’t doing it actively. It’s a little more passive and you just kind of find yourself not doing the thing.

And or you could think of sometimes where your clients come to you with similar things, right? So when you hear the word procrastination, you probably think, oh, it’s terrible, right? Procrastination is bad, we should just do what we are supposed to do. And in a perfect world, we would, and we wouldn’t procrastinate, and we would just get everything done when we say we’re gonna get it done, and it will all be rainbows and butterflies and sunshine.

But we know that that’s not usually how it goes and what I want to offer is a way to think about procrastination or use procrastination in a way that actually works for you and promotes you getting more of those things done versus just putting them off. So what I’m calling it is strategic procrastination. And I want to convince you by the end of this episode that it can be a really powerful tool to overcome this problem of just not doing some of the things that feel hard or that feel challenging.

And I want you to think about why we usually procrastinate, right? There’s like usually a lot of overlapping things happening. It’s not normally just one simple thing that we can just pick out and solve for. But there could be overlap of things. It could be overwhelm of just, I don’t even know where to start. It could be perfectionism, and just like, I don’t really know how to do this thing that well, so I just really don’t want to do it, I’m just gonna put it off. It could be fear of complete failure, right? I’m just gonna do this, it’s not gonna work anyway. It could be some overlap of all of those things.

It could be just that your brain doesn’t love to just task switch or to just turn on and like start acting on a certain task. It could be that you aren’t really sure if that thing is important or that maybe there are other things that you would rather do or that you think are more important, right? It could be so many different, just overlap of, pick any of those could be an overlap.

And then I want you to consider what usually happens if you take yourself to one of the recent times, maybe when you have really procrastinated on something, when you’ve put it off to the last minute, you are supposed to be getting this thing done, maybe it was already supposed to be done, and you just keep putting it off. One reason that that happens, that it continues, right? Because it’s a lot of times when we’re procrastinating, it’s not just like the one incident. It’s like procrastinate and then you keep procrastinating on the same thing. And then next thing you know, it’s like however long it is in the future and it’s the thing still isn’t done. And it feels even more uncomfortable now at that point, at this point, right? Because what happens is you procrastinate, you avoid whatever the task is, and then things start piling on top of that. So you avoid it, now it’s not done.

Now you feel guilty that it’s not done, especially if you told yourself, especially if there’s a deadline, right? You told yourself it had to be done by this time, or someone, maybe even someone is waiting for it to be done, they’re waiting for you to give them whatever this thing is that you’re working on. And so there’s, you avoid it, and then you feel guilty, and then the guilt just makes it feel even worse, so you avoid it even more, and then there’s more guilt, maybe shame, right? There’s like lots of layers that can just start happening and it becomes a cycle of just, oh, it comes into your awareness, you immediately feel guilt about it because it was already supposed to be done. Now you just avoid it and or buffer your way out of it until eventually maybe either you don’t do it at all, or that feeling of it has to be done becomes stronger than the avoidance and the guilt and all of that.

But what I’m gonna suggest today is that there is a way out of that cycle. And traditionally, so many of the strategies that I’ve seen for overcoming this type of thing or to help you be more productive, don’t really address that cycle, right? It’s kind of like you just put it on your calendar and then you just honor what it says or like you block your calendar and then on those days, like you just prepare for like this is the day where I’m doing these things that feel harder. There are lots of different ways to, you know, strategically manage your schedule to get things done. But what I don’t often see addressed is like what to do when you find yourself in this cycle and you aren’t sure how to get out of it. So what I wanna offer, something I’ve been using called strategic procrastination.

Now, this is very different than just regular procrastination, which is just like you’re just putting it off. It’s a little bit mindless. It, again, can be that cycle. It often comes with guilt and shame and all of that. And what it is is choosing an activity, right? Like knowing, seeing that thing on your calendar, knowing I need to get this thing done today, and finding something to do in a prescribed amount of time that is actually gonna help you shift your state into something that’s closer to the thing as that you’re procrastinating on, right?

It’s gonna kind of like prime you to get this thing done. I’m gonna give you lots of examples, don’t worry. But first I wanna talk a little bit about why it works and why it’s so hard to go from sometimes one state to another.

So sometimes, let’s go with working out because I think a lot of people at some point in your life may have experienced something similar to this where you promise yourself you’re going to work out and then that time comes and it’s like, I don’t really feel like it. And you just kind of move on about your day, right?

So imagine you’re laying in your bed, you have your covers pulled up, you’re so cozy and warm and it’s, you know it’s cold outside the covers and you maybe you have to like leave your house even to go to a gym or to go somewhere, or you’re gonna go run outside and it’s cold outside. And just think about how big of a difference that is from what you’re currently doing, right? Laying in your bed, so cozy, not really moving, going from that to, let’s say going outside to go for a run, right?

You have to get up and get dressed and like go through all those steps until you get outside and you get your run in. But the run, like the thing you’re thinking about doing is so far from the state that you’re currently in. And it can be quite hard for our bodies to like convince ourselves, right, to go from this thing that I’m doing right now to this other state, which is so far from what I’m doing now.

It’s why, one of the reasons why it can be so easy to get sucked into, you know, Netflixing however many shows in a row, or, you know, playing a game on your phone and being, you know, sucked into that and next thing you know it’s an hour later. Or just anything like that that you are, you know, that you can just kind of get sucked into, that it’s really hard to break out of that state and change into a more active state.

So when you think about strategic procrastination, what happens, like the benefit of it, is that you’re priming, it’s actually called neural priming, so you’re priming your brain for this new state, right?

You’re going to start to do something different, different than what you’re doing now, but something that’s gonna set you up for being more ready to do the thing that you’re supposed to be doing. And it’s also going to reduce the resistance because now the state change isn’t as big, right? It’s not as great.

So for example, when you are laying in bed and you’re super cozy, but the goal, the thing you’re supposed to do is go run, one way that you could, and you’re just very resistant to that, right? And you’re like, no way is that happening, that sounds terrible. If you think about like, what’s something I could do that gets me closer to that thing?

So I’m like gonna put off the run. I am gonna procrastinate a little bit, but I know I want to do it. So instead of just getting up out of this bed and putting on my shoes, walking outside and going for a run, I might convince myself to get up and then maybe I’m gonna walk around the house listening to music or I’m going to get up, put my clothes on, my shoes on, and then I’m gonna go unload the dishwasher, which is just gonna like get my body moving, and by the time I’m done doing that, like maybe I’ll feel like going out for a run.

That’s just one really small example. I’m gonna give you a lot more specifics in just a minute. Before I give you a bunch of examples, I’m going to kind of walk you through the steps that you could use if you choose to do this with yourself or with your clients.

So the first one is just to start noticing like what are those tasks that trigger your procrastination, right? Is it something specific? Probably what you’ll find for a lot of people, maybe it’s specific activities that trigger your procrastination, right?

So if we think about your coaching practice, it could be anything that you’re like, these are things I’ve committed to. And every time they’re on my calendar, every time I’m supposed to do these things, I tend to put them off or I really want to put them off. You could be like me and maybe it’s writing emails, but maybe it’s something different. Maybe it’s recording content or writing your podcast, recording your podcast.

It could be coaching your clients, if that’s the thing that just feels hard to you. It could be anything, right? It could be like you said you were gonna go live on Facebook every day for however many days, and every time it’s time to do it, you just put it off, put it off, anything like that. And so just identify that, right? Just start to notice like, oh, here are the things that I’m consistently putting off.

And then think about those things and think what would be an activity. So just take one of the examples that you come up with, and then think, what would be an activity that gets me closer to being in the state or putting my body into the state, like the way I want to feel when I do that activity? Then you’re going to possibly create, plan in intentional procrastination periods. So once you do this a while, right, once you start to notice, oh, every time I am supposed to write emails, I really wanna put it off, or I do put it off, and then I answer the question, okay, what gets me closer to that state? Like what really what’s an activity that I could decide strategically? I’m going to procrastinate on the emails, but for the next 20 minutes, I’m going to do what right fill in the blank for me. It might be like I’m gonna go for a walk. I’m just gonna get my body moving, get my blood flowing. That tends to really like increase my creativity and that usually helps, right?

And so if I know that, then I can start to plan them in. And I can plan in, okay, on Wednesdays, I’m making this up, this is not what I do, but let’s just say on Wednesdays I write all my emails for the next week or the next month or whatever. Okay, if that’s the thing, then I can just start to plan in that 20 minute period of activity right before I am gonna go to write the emails.

Another, the next step would be considering what’s your time boundary? Now this is something very specific that differentiates strategic procrastination from just regular avoidant procrastination, right? Is that you’re gonna set a time limit. You’re gonna say, for the next 20 minutes, I’m gonna go for a walk. Or like, it doesn’t have to be exact.

It could be like, I’m gonna walk around the block twice, and then I’m gonna write these emails. Or I’m going to listen to music for the next 20 minutes while dancing around my house, and then I’m gonna do this thing. It just keeps you out of the trap of just endlessly procrastinating and letting it go on and on. Then you’re going to see how it goes, right? Like test it out.

And what I want to offer, and this is really important, is even though I’m going to give you lots of examples, you are going to have to find your own, like the things that help you, that prime you to be in the state that you wanna be in to do your own activities. Because it could be totally different for everyone, right?

Just like I like to listen to music sometimes when I’m working, but I cannot listen to music with words. Whereas I know my husband, he loves to listen to all kinds of music sometimes while he’s working and he can be like writing and doing emails and whatever it is he does and while listening to music that has words, which just like blows my mind. Because for me, if they have words, I probably know all the words, that’s where my brain goes just to the music, right?

So you have to really be willing to experiment with this and to use things, even if you’ve never done something specifically like this before, you can probably think of examples you have in your past where you’re like, okay, here’s what I’ve learned about myself is that when I move my body, I tend to be more open to creativity or when I, you know, go work in my garden. I don’t even know where that example came from, it’s not something I do. But when I go work in my garden, then I often feel like doing XYZ after.

So be willing to experiment for yourself and with your clients, right? And just remember that if you are using this with your clients, you might tell them some of your ideas if they want them, but I would also tell you to be willing to encourage them to find their own things. Right, and the entire point of all of it is to get yourself closer to, to like prepare yourself for the actual thing that you want to be doing.

Now here are a couple ways that this could go wrong.

I’m just tell you now so you can prepare for them. There’s a big difference between strategic procrastination and avoidant procrastination. So strategic procrastination, what I’m offering is something that’s going to get you closer to the goal, closer to being able to complete that task. Avoidant is actually going to do the opposite.

So avoidant would be more things like that you’re doing kind of mindlessly, right? So I’m guessing we’ve all probably had this experience where there’s something coming up that we really don’t wanna do, we put it off, and so the next thing you know, you’re like scrolling TikTok watching cat videos or whatever we watch on TikTok or you like oh my gosh somehow Netflix is on and now I’m like two shows in or you’re playing games on your phone right or something that’s just like kind of sweeps you.

For me, it might be like listening, sometimes I’ll binge listen to audio books, which isn’t a bad thing. Just like in this moment, when I’m trying to get something done, I know for me, listening to an audio book will just, especially if it’s fiction or if it’s like a podcast, like an investigative series or something where that’s like kind of gripping, it will just sweep me away. Next thing you know, I’ve like listened to the whole series.

And so knowing those things for yourself is really important, right? Because you don’t want to be doing these things that are more avoidant procrastination, which is kind of like mindlessly putting something off and then doing something with that time that just helps you feel better. Especially with the case of watching Netflix, playing games on your phone, like scrolling social media, watching funny videos, whatever, you’re getting like dopamine hit after dopamine hit that really is making it way harder to leave that state, right?

To like, not only have you, are you not closer to doing the thing that you wanted to do, but you may be even like setting yourself back even more. You also wanna be careful to avoid the trap of productive procrastination. Now, this can be a little similar to strategic procrastination, and there could be some overlap here, but for the most part, they are different things.

So productive procrastination is when you put off the thing that you’re supposed to be doing, but you do something else instead that is still crossing something off your list. Right, so that might be, it’s like the lower hanging fruit, right? So let’s say every week when you record your podcast, it’s just hard, like you just have a hard time coming up with topics or writing it out and just like hitting record and getting it done and you put it off every week and you just know that that’s a thing that is always hard.

And so instead of recording your podcast, let’s say you are like, I record a podcast every Monday or I batch my podcast episodes one Monday, the first Monday of every month, and then every time that time comes, you would put it off. But instead of doing it, you do other things that are just that you like to do that are easier, right? You check your email, you record some Instagram reels, like whatever it is you love doing, you just replace the thing.

Now sometimes, that’s not a bad thing if you just have here’s a list of all the things I need to get done, because at least it’s moving you forward to get some of those things checked off the list. But what it’s not doing is kind of helping with the discomfort you feel when it comes time to record the podcast, right? It’s not getting you probably any closer to doing the recording when you’re checking out and like doing something totally different that has nothing to do with the recording.

Now this is where I say there could be some crossover because as you can see, if I’m using that example, right? And let’s just pretend like I love recording Instagram reels for a second and maybe I’m gonna record some reels that are connected to the podcast content. Okay, like that could be a thing, right? I’m gonna do this thing that’s like thinking about the same content. I’m gonna do this part of it that I love. Maybe I’ll start there and then that might give me some, that’ll change my state, it’ll get me in the mood of thinking about the thing that I want to do, that I want to talk about. So you see, there could be some overlap there and you just have to be really careful to know the difference.

Basically, productive procrastination, while it could be a good thing to help you move forward, it just isn’t going to help you learn to be better or to enjoy more the thing you’re putting off. And to kind of show yourself, like rewire that brain to show yourself that it’s actually not that bad. Once you get into it and get it done, right, and the more you do that, the less likely you are to like want to procrastinate every time it’s something that comes up.

And then the last tip is you just wanna be really aware and proactive on moving into the next activity, right? Like knowing that that thing is coming up, knowing I’m procrastinating on purpose in order to do this other thing, to really shift my state. And as soon as I’m done with this thing, right? So let’s say I’m gonna walk twice around the block. As soon as I’m done with that, I’m gonna come in and just dig right into that next task and not let myself get distracted by, oh, here’s this other thing that I could, like now maybe I’m gonna do the dishes or now I’m gonna, I just went for a walk, maybe I need to sit down and check my email, which might distract me and get me to somehow click into Instagram, right? Like that whole path that can happen.

So you just really wanna be onto yourself to tell yourself right at that time, like, okay, now it’s time for that next task. And one, just one more tip, if you still don’t feel like doing the thing, you have a couple options, right? It kind of depends on what the thing is. Is there really a deadline? Is it something that really needs to be done, then I would say just get right into it and see what happens. But if it’s not, maybe it’s like today is not the day. This is something I tell myself sometimes. But what I do first is I override that, like okay, I’ve strategically procrastinated. Now when my brain wants to like still doesn’t want to do it, it wants to just check out and maybe buffer with, you know, whatever it is it wants to buffer with.

What I convince myself to do is to maybe give myself a timer or to just look at the time and say like, okay, for the next five minutes, I’m gonna just start doing the thing. Right, so if we use the podcast example, it’s like I’m just going to start outlining the podcast. I’m going to start digging in, I’m gonna start writing that first email. Maybe I give myself five minutes, maybe I give myself 10 minutes, because oftentimes when you get past the just starting, it will actually start to feel easier and more natural.

But if you’re like me and there are days where, okay, I did the thing, I told myself I’m going to do this for the next 10 minutes and maybe at the end of that 10 minutes it still feels terrible, it still feels like I’m just, you know, what is it, like swimming upstream, right? It just is like everything is going against the grain. I do happen to know myself well enough to know like some days things, certain activities, certain tasks are just easier than other days. So if it still feels really hard, I’m not gonna force myself to keep going unless maybe there’s a close deadline. But otherwise, then I might switch it for like, okay, what activities can I accomplish today in my business and when am I going to make sure to get this done?

So that’s just one quick tip. And then as you practice this over time, what you can start to do is making, you can make a list, right, like in your notes app, in your phone, in a notebook, wherever, of activities that you can do that do shift that state for you, right, that really do get you to, from point A to point B, right? From like avoiding all the things to like, okay, I’m working on the thing. It doesn’t feel too bad because they’re going to be different for you and it’ll be different depending on what activity you’re wanting to shift into.

So for you, just start making a list, right? What are all the things? I have a list and it sounds silly to have a list because it’s like, well, wouldn’t you just know what they are? Like there could be a handful of them and that it shouldn’t be easy to just like remember them.

Yes, but if you really think about that moment when you’re supposed to start doing a thing and you really don’t wanna do it and you’re catching yourself in that moment of that other part of your brain taking over that’s like, nah, let’s just not do that. When you have a list written out, it’s like that’s just one more step that is making it easier for yourself, right? It’s like all you have to do is tell yourself, if I just open this note and read my list, it’s gonna make it easier. All I have to do is choose one of these things.

So those are all my suggestions. Now I want to talk about, I wanna go through a few examples of this when it comes to different niches. So for those of you that either want to use this with your client and you’re like, right, but how do I apply this to like relationship coaching? Or how do I apply this to my own life in examples that are completely different than the ones that I just used.

I’ll just give you a quick, like some quick examples that I just made, like a short list of, okay, here’s what I’m thinking that you could do these. But again, you have to be willing to test it out, right? To find the things that work for you and find the things that work for your clients.

But let’s say you’re a relationship coach and you know that your client comes to you and they have this difficult conversation they want to have with their partner. And they tell you, I’ve just been putting it off. Like I just am avoiding the conversation. I can’t have it. And you know, so they’re just trade, they’re procrastinating on the conversation, just trading it out for whatever, right? Just going on with other things in their life, maybe distracting themselves or maybe just like putting it off, doing other things in their life that need to be taken care of, think of ways that they could strategically procrastinate so they know, okay, we are both going to be home Tuesday night and I want to have this conversation then.

They could plan in an activity right before that that really is gonna help them, like help set them up to have this conversation, right? Maybe they need to do some journaling to just kind of think through like what are all the reasons they don’t wanna have this conversation?

Or what are all the reasons this conversation feels really important, right? To kind of connect them to the purpose of having it to start with. Or maybe it’s that they feel their emotions get too high, so maybe they could do something that helps calm their emotions or process emotions prior to the conversation. Right, maybe there’s like a, they could do something on a meditation app. They could, again, go for a walk, right? Anything, whatever it is.

Or let’s say you help clients create, you help clients date people, and one of the things you do is teach them to create dating profiles in an app, and they keep putting it off because they hate the idea of it, whatever. But they’re like bought in, they’re like, I don’t know, I do wanna do it, I just haven’t done it yet. Maybe you have them journal about or think about who is their ideal match, like really start to picture that and get excited about the ideas of going on dates, or like make a list of dates they would love to just go on, like things they would love to experience. Just finding a way to shift that state that gets them more into the idea of, you know, whatever the thing is that they’re trying to do.

Let’s think about career coaching. Maybe you help your clients find jobs. And I’ve actually coached a bunch of career coaches on this where they come to me and they’re like, okay, my client is doing everything except updating their resume. Like it is just painful to get them to do that. Maybe you use this strategy then, right? You like name a time, this is when they’re gonna update it, and before that, they’re gonna pick an activity that really helps maybe build their confidence about what they do, or maybe they’re gonna look through job listings for 20 minutes and find ones that feel really like, oh, that would be so fun to get that job.

But just something that gets them in the state of thinking about who they are, who they are in the position, envisioning themselves in that future position that they’re wanting, right? And again, this is all personal. So those things might not work, but maybe you could find something else that would help them. Maybe, and this is a little longer than like 20 minutes, but maybe they connect with someone who is in that role that they want or an old mentor or colleague and they get coffee with that person to just really like reignite that flame for, oh yeah, this is why I do what I do.

Let’s think about health and wellness coaching, right? Maybe you have a client who, maybe part of your coaching is creating meal plans. And your client is just always putting it off. They hate creating meal plans. It’s like, you know, it just feels like they’d rather go to the dentist. So maybe you, like every time, okay, you’re going to do that every Sunday. And maybe you plan an activity for them every time before they get started. They just browse photos of healthy foods that get them excited to think about what they’re having to eat for the week, right?

Or maybe they have like an Instagram. Now, I know this is different because I said social media is normally not the plan, but in this case, I think it could work if they have a really specific, let’s say Instagram page they follow that has a lot of just beautiful photos of food, of healthy food, and then they look at that every time before they do their meal planning, right?

Or they never show up for their workout on time or they’re constantly putting it off. Okay, what’s the thing that shifts their state into that? Like I was talking about earlier with the running, right? Maybe it’s like getting up and just stretching and just committing to like, maybe I’m just stretching for the next 20 minutes. But usually once you already have the clothes on and have the shoes on and now you’re already moving your body, it’s a lot easier to say yes to just that next step versus yes to like shifting completely from zero to 100.

Maybe, I’ve already used some business coaching examples, right, but maybe this is a time where you, one thing I tell my clients to do sometimes, depending on what they’re working on, is to make a list of, keep screenshots, or copy and paste nice things clients have said about them, or emails that clients have sent them, or texts that clients have sent saying, oh my gosh, this changed my life or this helped so much. And to just keep those all in one place so when you need some motivation, you could go and spend 10 minutes there looking, like not in order to fuel the content you’re creating necessarily, although it could do that as well, but to just get yourself in that place of like, oh yeah, this is why I do what I do, this is why my work is important, and this is why I have to keep going because look at all of these people I’ve helped.

Okay, those are just some really simple examples. I am really curious to hear if you use this, how it goes, how it works, and what your activity is that you use when you are strategically procrastinating and how it works. Tell me all the things. Reach out to me, let me know. Otherwise, I will talk to you next week. All right, goodbye.

Thanks for listening to this episode of Mastering Coaching Skills. If you want to learn more about my work, come visit me at lindsaydotzlafcoaching.com. That’s Lindsay with an A, D-O-T-Z-L-A-F.com. See you next week.