Procrastination In Physical Form

NOTE: This is a transcript from my podcast The Mojo Mindscape.

If I didn’t put in the long hours of building the foundation till the post-midnight hours after coming home from my previous full time job, my small business would probably still be a mere idea. My last job was working in the mobile service industry a couple years ago. And to keep it short and sweet, it just wasn’t something I was passionate about. It was actually really decent in terms of pay and incentives; but the bottom line was it wasn’t feeding my soul. And it’s nothing against anyone that enjoys working for such companies or industries. If you’re satisfied to the core with the job you have regardless if it’s working for a corporation or for yourself, then you’re on the winning team because contentment and fulfillment is ultimately the end goal.

Each job we have in our lifetimes is a stepping stone towards your life’s goal as long as you see it as that; never to remain stagnant. The point I’m making is that we all have passions and a vision for how we want to end up in life. And growing up, I was always fixated on the arts whether it be music , visual arts, graphic design, photography, all the way down to writing.

Throughout my experience in sales and retail management, I did in fact learn many skill sets. But as time went on I started to dissect the bigger picture through my own observations of the world around me. And what I found was that in almost all the jobs and companies I worked for, a good percentage of the people I came across seemed as though they had a very depleted battery charge left in them. Not everyone, but enough of them. So when you see people storming out of their work environments for that 15-minute smoke break, that tells you something about their energy in the workplace. I for one can attest to that; minus the cigarettes. And the reason why this happens is quite simple: it just seems as though many times we just hit a downward slope of mental stimulation. We simply are no longer interested and invested in whatever it is we do occupationally. And that can be a good thing in hindsight because that’s your inner self telling you it’s time to evolve. You can evolve by changing your attitude and rejuvenate your passion for your job. But if that’s not possible, then the ball’s in your court to take action towards your next move. But most of the time, we don’t take the time to listen to that inner self, that inner voice, that’s trying to clue us in on taking life a step further. We tend to push that voice aside and just find something to do with our friends for that quick high until we turn off the lights and go to bed at night. And the following day? Same thing. It’s a vicious fucking cycle.

So whenever you have a moment, seriously take thirty minutes to one hour to take a seat and write down what you want to achieve in life. What your calling is. Why the hell you choose to wake up every damn morning. Please do that so you can see it right there in front of you. If you’re saying to yourself, “Well I don’t choose to wake up, I have to”, that means you haven’t really assessed your definition of happiness or contentment; or the legacy you want to leave behind. It’s extremely unfortunate that we’ve been biologically predisposed to not wanting to wake up early and attack the day. I mean, if we each had a tally for the amount of minutes cumulatively added up from hitting the snooze button on our alarm clocks, it would be pretty upsetting to know how much time we’ve let go of. In fact, I wish there was a way to do that. For the universe to send us a timesheet in the mail of all the alarm clock snoozing we’ve slept through so that we can see it firsthand. That would probably guarantee most of us to have that holy shit moment we all need every now and again. Unfortunately, there’s no return policy for time. Buying time is expensive in the long run. So when you invest in the time market early enough, the returns are exponentially satisfying!

So now let’s get into the core of the issue. Procrastination is so much more apparent when you personify it as an evil entity that wants to keep you for itself from yourself. As silly as it sounds, it’s the real life Dark Side. It’s your Darth Vader. And you’re Luke Skywalker. And I learned how to see it from this point of view by the book that single-handedly changed the course of my life a few years back. That book is called The War of Art by Steven Pressfield. The War of Art is not to be confused with The Art of War by Sun Tzu. In the book, Pressfield rightfully gives procrastination the name of Resistance.

In the beginning of the book, he lays out a simple explanation of Resistance. And he says:

“There’s a secret that real writers know that wannabe writers don’t, and the secret is this: It’s not the writing part that’s hard. What’s hard is sitting down to write. What keeps us from sitting down is Resistance.”

Pretty simple but powerful stuff. So if you have a five-minute or hour long task that needs to be done today and you put if off till tomorrow. You basically turned it into a 24-hour task. You’re probably thinking to yourself: Well that’s a pretty skewed way to look at it. But what’s skewed is that if our hit rate or success rate of getting things done is not 51% or higher, we really need to focus on a brilliant term I recently came across called productivity endurance. Just like a marathon, how long can you work on something without getting distracted?

Procrastination can also be visualized in physical form like this: Let’s say you go up to one of your best friends and ask them for a small but very important favor. A small task that would help take your pursuance of a certain goal to the next level. And immediately, your best friend just looks you dead in the eye, spits in your face, turns around and walks away. Well in this case, your best friend is yourself. When you put things off till the next day, and then the day after that, you’re basically not taking yourself seriously. So if you’re not taking yourself seriously, why should anyone else? When you start to eliminate the habit of putting things off, your levels of integrity start to improve.

There’s an aura about one’s self that starts to become apparent on an outward level. It sounds weird to say, but be your own friend. Why is that when people are at their jobs and they have the upper levels of management from the corporate offices come in to check in, these employees all of a sudden get nervous and straighten up and act like they’re walking on eggshells to impress these bosses? Why not take that level of initiative and apply it in your own life?

Be your own role model. Become the boss you wish to work for; as well as the employee you want working for you when you’re the boss.

We often try to justify so many of the circumstances that we think are setting us back. We say things like: I need better equipment before I can begin or I work full-time and by the time I get home, I’m just drained. The bottom line is: you either want it or you don’t. Once again: YOU EITHER WANT IT. OR YOU DON’T. When someone is arguing to themselves about their so-called “setbacks”, another person out there is being resourceful with the same tools and the same amount of time that the first person has. So if you don’t have the state-of-the-art video equipment yet, use your camera phone to study composition. To get timing down. To see how far you can go with the post-editing process to try and get footage to a professional level; even if it’s impossible to. Because in the end, it’s the execution that pays off. And once you do have that dream camera of yours, you don’t have to go through the learning curve from the very beginning. You already put yourself through the trenches. If you work full-time and are drained, watching YouTube tutorials take just as much energy as binging on Netflix. Now, there’s nothing wrong with Netflix. But in the end, it’s either YOU WANT IT. OR YOU DON’T. Ideas are invisible. They have no worth until action is applied.

I was one of those individuals. I was caught up in too many projects spreading myself too thin, caught up in relationships and trying to please others before myself, overly caught up in the temptations of leisure and entertainment. I didn’t put any skin in the game when it came to life outside of working for a paycheck and going out to escape work itself. So about half a year before I quit my last job, after reading The War of Art I planted the seed of questioning life on a broader scale. And as soon as I started watering that seed with contemplation, the contemplation cracked that seed open and the root of formulating a plan started to erupt. I started mapping out the core vision of what Mojo Bazaar (my small business) stood for. The design aesthetic I was going to apply to it. Fonts. Logos. Color palettes. Materials. The vision in all areas of branding. I went home every night after work and studied the look of other websites in different industries. Studied their social media profiles. How they told their stories.

I just decided to buckle down and look the Excuse Monster in the eyes and see it for what it was. Don’t get me wrong. It’s still a constant fight. But as long as you continuously taste the process rather than avoid it, the flavor of your own accomplishments becomes sweeter. Forget what the outside world thinks of what you’re striving for in the beginning. Validation should come from within as we begin our journeys.

So to end on a practical level, start by attempting to reverse engineer your goals. One way to do so is to ask yourself: What do I want accomplished a year from now? Then break the year down to quarterly goals. What do I want accomplished in the next three months? Then chop the months up into smaller objectives that you feel you can execute. Those months then can further be broken down into weekly and then daily assignments. Mapping it out should help in manifesting results and progress.

I feel that leaving our destinies, our paths, our callings in the hands of uncertainty is counter-intuitive. The external factors should never dictate our trajectory. Regardless of where we are or where we begin the journey, there will always be someone out there willing to take our place. So it’s best we don’t take the experience for granted. Life’s cool as hell! Everyday is a weekend if you show interest in it.