Getting After It

148 - Why We Wait: How to Beat Procrastination

• Brett Rossell • Season 4 • Episode 148

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You know what you need to do. You’ve written it down. You’ve scheduled it. You’ve even told yourself it’s important.

But you haven’t done it.

In this solo episode, I confront one of the most pervasive enemies of personal growth: procrastination. But not the surface-level kind. This is the deeper form, the kind that masks itself as perfectionism, fear, or even self-doubt.

Drawing insights from thinkers like Marcus Aurelius, James Clear, Seneca, and a powerful article by Joseph Foley, we uncover the truth: Procrastination isn’t about laziness. It’s about fear or lack of clarity.

You’ll learn:

  • Why emotional resistance, not poor time management, is what really stops you
  • How to break down big goals into “too small to fail” actions
  • The tools I use (like “Eat the Frog” and the Five-Minute Rule) to get out of my own way

We’ll also explore how identity, rejection, and even our relationship with God can affect how we show up. As Christians and Stoics alike would agree—action matters. And today is the only day we’re promised.

“You could be good today. But instead you choose tomorrow.” — Marcus Aurelius


This episode is your reminder that you are not broken. You are simply being called to be brave.

It’s time to start.

Check out Joseph Folley's YouTube Channel

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I hope today’s episode sparked something within you to pursue your dreams and unlock your true potential. If you found value in it, consider sharing it with someone who might need that same push.

Getting After It is for those who. want to silence their self-doubt. Refuse to be owned by comfort. Understand their limits are man-made and breakable. We live in a time of constant comparison. Social media drowns us in highlight reels and overnight success stories. But what most people don’t see is the grit behind it all. The reps. The quiet mornings. The sacrifices. The failures.

You are just getting started. 

Keep Getting After It. 

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Brett:

All right, a couple things. Number one I hope this video is not crooked. My producer, allie she's not here, so I'm on my own today. We're going to see how this looks. Number two I'm excited for this conversation today. It's something I've been working on.

Brett:

As I always say, the podcast is a compilation lessons I wish I would have learned when I was younger, one of those lessons being procrastination. Um, because let's be real with ourselves, like truth hurts sometimes, but let's be real, let's be honest. You know what you need to do and it's not vague, it's not mysterious. You may have even written it down. It's probably scheduled in your calendar. You've even told yourself that it's important to you and you still haven't done it. But it's not because you're lazy, it's not because you're stupid and it's definitely not because you're broken.

Brett:

So why the hell do we wait? Are broken. So why the hell do we wait? Why do we postpone the things that we know we need to do? Because our bodies tell us one thing or our thoughts tell us another. That's what we're talking about today.

Brett:

We're talking all about procrastination, but not the kind that you hear about in high school classrooms or self-help circles. This is mainly the deeper kind of procrastination that shows up when we have clarity, when we know what we need to do, but the issue that we're having is actually acting, getting the thing done, and the reason this came to me is one. Like I said, these are all things that I struggle with. These are all issues that I'm trying to learn how to beat myself. Also, it's nice for me to come on this podcast and talk about these things, because it allows me to be accountable to what I tell you. Guys, I don't want to tell you to do one thing and then not do it myself. That's hypocrisy and I do not believe in that. You shouldn't either. You shouldn't follow anyone who's a hypocrite and I was thinking about this because I was listening to an episode of Modern Wisdom with Chris Williamson and he had a guest on called.

Brett:

His name is Joseph Foley and he's a really interesting guy. He has a YouTube channel which, if you're interested in philosophy, this is a cool one to check out, but it's called Unsolicited advice and in it he basically just he studies different philosophies and tells you his take on them and where he got the information from. It's really interesting stuff. One thing he also does is coach academic students, and because of that, he wrote an article on his sub stack about procrastination and in that article he says this and this is why I wanted to bring it up today, because I feel like many of the reasons that we think that we procrastinate is due to the fact that we believe that we are lazy people, which is is false.

Brett:

That is not true. We are not lazy. Um, a lot of the times like, yes, we, we know what needs to be done, but a lot of the times we don't do it because it's difficult for us to do right. It's a hard endeavor that we know we need to proceed to, to go and get done, and it's always the beginning. That's the hardest piece. It's kind of like the um. We'll get into some of the tips and tricks on how to get behind or to beat this thing, but here's what he says.

Brett:

That was a really long way to get to this quote From his article. He says procrastination isn't about laziness, it's about fear or lack of clarity. Now, if you're listening to this and you're someone who has faced procrastination, someone who does the dance with procrastination every now and then, and you listen to that quote and you hear that last piece where it's about fear or lack of clarity, then there's two things I hope that you think about is one this can be beaten, because we've talked on this podcast before about fear and we've also talked about setting clear and realistic goals for yourself. And two, you should have hope because there's a lot of people who deal with the same thing myself included, which is why I'm doing a podcast episode about this today and I felt both of those things and both of the the fear piece and the lack of clarity when I was beginning this podcast, the, the thing that really stopped me from actually pressing upload was fear. But once I shined a light on that fear, once I brought it out of darkness and I called out what it was, it had no power over me. And, as weird as that sounds and it really does sound like a self-help thing, but I hate to say it but some self-help things work and this was one of them when you step into that fear, you recognize that it's a mile wide and an inch deep. It's not as bad as you thought it was, but maybe you've felt that too. Both of those things, whether it's in your, your fitness, or if you want to start a side business or you have a project that you're working on, if it's writing, if it's healing from something, chances are you've stalled, like we all have. So that's why I want to unpack today why we wait and, more importantly, how to stop that and how to beat that feeling of procrastination and that little guy that tells you not to do the things.

Brett:

We'll look at a couple things. We'll look at some science, we'll look at some stories and I'll give you some tools that actually work. So let's get into this thing Before we do. If you can see my shirt right now, we found the right supplier. Guys. We got a nice supplier that's going to get us good shirts. So those are going to be start. Those are going to be offered on the website really soon. Don't know if anyone's going to wear them, but I sure as hell am going to. So you'll see me rocking these bad boys, but this is one of the running ones. I wanted to test it out, so pretty comfortable. Why am I holding those? If you look at the video, you'll understand. Anyways, let's jump into procrastination. Let's beat this thing.

Brett:

So I want to start by killing a myth that procrastination isn't just about being disorganized or unmotivated. I believe that's surface level thinking and Dr Tim Cycle. He is one of the leading researchers on this topic and he says that procrastination is not a time management issue. He says it's an emotion regulation problem. When I first read that I was like that makes no sense to me. Like, isn't it a time issue? Like, if you have a time block set for your day in your calendar and you don't stay true to that, isn't that mainly a time issue? But Dr Tim Cycle says something else. He says it's not that we don't know what to do, it's not that we don't want to feel what we're. Let me restart. I just got over a 10 mile run so I'm a little scatterbrained. Let me restart that.

Brett:

It's not that we don't know what to do. It's that we don't want to feel what doing it requires. That might be fear of failure, fear of success, even fear of starting, and that fear often hides beneath the surface. It's showing up as scrolling, as cleaning the kitchen, as just checking one more thing. Doesn't that feel like it's true? Like that at that beginning what he says, it's not that we don't know what to do, it's that we want, we don't want to feel what doing it requires. And again, here comes running. But that's a really great example for this exact principle that he's talking about is I know what I need to do when I have a run. On the schedule it requires me to change into clothes, lace up my shoes, maybe have a snack before, depending on the length of the run and go out the door and do it. But I don't want to.

Brett:

A lot of the times and I have to push past that feeling of discomfort to actually get started. And once I begin I kind of get used to it and it's it's a lot easier. But that starting piece is always going to be the biggest challenge to face, and you don't have to look far to find examples in your life like waking up early. That's a hard one for a lot of people, myself included. From time to time, especially when I'm over trained, especially when I'm very tired, it's hard for me to actually have to sit down and or have to wake up and get out of bed, especially when my body is telling me the opposite thing. But when that does show up, ask yourself if you know what to do, and if the answer is yes, then you might just have to show up and get it done. You might have to dig deep and do that thing and it's going to be uncomfortable. But if you want to achieve anything in life, you have to get comfortable being uncomfortable. It's a classic saying. But here's the deal.

Brett:

There's also other things that can stall your progress. That isn't necessarily just like you're afraid of that feeling of what doing the thing is going to require. There's perfectionism, there's fear and there's identity. That also play a role in procrastination and I want to take another angle here. So James Clear he's the author of Atomic Habits. He says if you're not embarrassed by your first draft, you waited too long to start. If you're not embarrassed by your first draft, you waited too long to start. If you're not embarrassed by your first draft, you waited too long to start. You should always be embarrassed a little bit and that's actually a great thing to think about. If it's fear of starting something, well, guess what? Anyone who started anything ever. There's a starting point. That's why people say, oh yeah, he started a business. He's really successful. But he started it and there was a starting point.

Brett:

With the podcast there's a starting point where a lot of that was uncertainty. A lot of it was fear of judgment. A lot of it was I don't know what kind of content to post and I just had to keep moving forward, post. And I just had to keep moving forward and over time that clarity came to me. Over time, the more I did it, the better I became, and the more reps I put into it and the more I was able to take out filler words. I'm still working on it and it just it allows you to put it out there to see what your work looks like, and then you have an idea of what you can refine. And it's only then, when it's out there and you can see it, that you can actually refine it.

Brett:

But you have to start, and the thing that I'm trying to bring up here is we often use perfectionism as a shield, like if it's not perfect, then it's not ready. That's a common thing that we tell ourselves. Or if I'm not 100% prepared, I shouldn't start. What do you mean? What do you mean? That's not a great way to live, in my opinion. Sometimes you just have to jump into the fire, like you've heard that phrase before, learning by being thrown into the fire and sometimes that just requires you to take a leap, like if you want to start running and you're worried about what your journey is going to be like. Don't worry about the journey. Worry about today and make your actions reflect your decisions and the future that you want. Like your actions today play a big role in future.

Brett:

You and I love the quote that your future self is either looking at you now through eyes of gratitude or regret those two things. You have the decisions to either make that person in the future who that's you you can make them proud or you can make them regret their decisions today. And you don't want to live a life of regret. And you don't want to live a life of regret. Regretting something like living in regret, is a hard existence because you know you were fully capable at that time, when you had that idea, to do the thing, but you just couldn't do it, for whatever reason you you justified and you just couldn't do it.

Brett:

And imagine if you took the alternate course, if instead you said all right, I might look like a moron, I might look like an idiot at the beginning of this thing. If I'm starting my journey running odds are I'm going to look kind of crazy, I might not have the best times, my endurance is not going to be the best, but if you start today, you'll be better tomorrow and then that will continue to compound. It's like that flywheel and you'll have more and more momentum moving you forward and your future self will say hey, I'm glad that six months ago I pushed myself to start this thing and I'm glad that I stayed consistent and I had the discipline to show up even when I didn't want to, especially when I didn't want to. You'll be proud of those moments. And the alternative is man, I could have started this thing six months ago. The decision is yours. Your future is whatever you want it to be.

Brett:

But I think, if we break down perfectionism, if we think about what's underneath all that, where are those fears coming from? For me, I think it's the fear of not being good enough, the fear of rejection, or even the fear of discovering your limits. And that last one might sound weird, but if you realize and you see that you have talent to start a business, or you have talent to be a great athlete, you have talent to really work on your relationships and refine those, then what that means is that you're capable of doing great things. And you know that anytime you're not doing your best, you're leaving a lot on the table. And, again, that's a hard thing to live with. It's like every day I miss a workout, which is rare, but the days that I do, that stays with me all day long. And the reason being is because in my head I'm like I know I could have done that. Maybe I was tired, maybe I was weak this day, but I could have done it. And that kind of goes with understanding your capabilities is, if you know what you're capable of, then now you have the responsibility to live up to those, those capabilities, and to live up to those talents and and give back to the world and do something that makes those talents worth your time.

Brett:

And I think the fear of not being good enough and the fear of rejection are probably the two more common ones. But the fear of not being good enough. We're all human beings. We all make mistakes. None of us are perfect and because of that, that should set us free a little bit, because we're not going to be the best at the and we're not going to be the best. Uh, at the start we're not going to be the best. Five years into our journey we might get a lot and probably will get significantly better, but we won't be the best, and that's okay. But not being good enough, that's something you should throw out the window, because the fact that you're even going out and trying to do something difficult, that means a lot.

Brett:

And it's like I'm bringing it up again because it's literally my favorite quote. But Teddy Roosevelt. He says the credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena. And then, throughout the quote, he goes and says who knows great enthusiasm, who strives to do the deeds, the great devotions, who spends himself in a worthy cause. And this is the part I want to highlight. Later on he says If he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat. And if you think about that for a moment, that okay. Well, if that's the case, if I'm going to go after this thing and I'm not going to be the best, then not being good enough, who cares? You at least gave it a shot. You at least aren't going to go down with the cold and timid souls who didn't even want to give it a shot, who were too afraid of it. But that's not you, and the fact that you're listening to getting after. It proves that, because this podcast is all about improving yourself, becoming 1% better through small actions every single day and at the end of your life.

Brett:

The goal is to be proud of who you've become. It's the goal is to be proud of who you've helped along the way. But none of that will happen if you don't believe that you're good enough and I'm telling you that you are. You are worth something. Everyone is unique. Everyone has unique differences and talents that they can bring to the table that others can't, and so with that comes confidence that, yes, you might not be the best, but you offer something that's unique, and that will be your Musashi ore, if you remember my podcast about that, but where Musashi he's a famous Japanese samurai, he fights one of the best samurai swordsmen and he shows up with a wooden ore to fight this dude and he kills him Spoiler alert. But the point of that is he had a unique weapon and he used it to his advantage, and so that goes for you. And so you might not be the best. That's fine, accept that. But refine your skills and commit yourself to learning how to get better. Commit yourself to refining what you need to after you review the tape. Quote unquote.

Brett:

The other one is fear of rejection, and fear of rejection is something I think we all are very familiar with. That is something that I've actually thought was pretty interesting is after learning about, like humans and our, you know, ancestors and that kind of thing. The reason why we fear rejection is because we thought that we would be cast out of the tribe. You know, if we didn't bring home the deer and we were the hunters of the tribe, we'd get cast out. Or, you know, we're in charge of bringing the water to the tribe. Somehow that doesn't happen. Our vases all break, whatever the situation is, and you can get cast out of the tribe. And so I believe that's where the fear of rejection comes from. It's just like it's embedded into our DNA. And luckily there's no tribes. There's people who believe certain things, there's certain countries, there's certain religions. You can say that all those people are their own tribe.

Brett:

But really, when you break it down, you're not going to get rejected, you're not going to get cast out, unless you do something absurd. But don't do something absurd. Be smart, don't be dumb, but that rejection is a myth. Be smart, don't be dumb, but that rejection is a myth and I don't want you to think that you can't chase your dreams because you're afraid of what people will think. The truth is is people aren't thinking about you all the time. They're thinking about themselves and they might think about you for 20 seconds in their day. Uh, they might see a com or they might see a post that you do and comment something that's kind of rude. But who cares? What I've learned in my own experience is that people who are doing that are losers Like no one who is doing better than you is ever going to come down and condescend you in that way. And if they are, they're losers too. But fear of rejection I don't think should be a valid reason to procrastinate something. It's hard, it is hard to have those comments on your posts and I've gotten plenty of them, but you just have to ignore them. You got to realize that those people aren't doing anything with their lives. I stand by this and just move on. That's the best thing you can do for yourself.

Brett:

Marcus Aurelius. He says this If it's not right, do not do it. If it's not true, do not say it. But within that quote he also reminds us that action is everything. So if it's not right, do not do it. If it's not true, do not say it. Your best today is still better than waiting for some mythical perfect tomorrow. And so this hits me hard with fitness, because so many people wait until they're fit enough to go to the gym, or they wait until January 1st to make these changes, or they wait until Monday, or they want to be confident enough to run outside.

Brett:

But the only way to become that person is to act like them. Now You've heard that classic quote fake it till you make it, which I think has some truth to it, but it's not a valid long-term solution. But you should act like the person who you want to become, and that takes daily auditing of your habits, of your actions, to make sure that they're aligned with that person, and to align yourself with those actions, align yourself with those values and have your actions reflect them, like you have to be a person of integrity. Now I want to give you some practical tools to help that actually have helped me. And they're not taxes, wow. They're not fluff, they're actual, legit tactics.

Brett:

So the first thing I would say is break it down. And Joseph Foley, the guy who wrote this article. He says Procrastination strikes in the gaps where we don't know exactly what we need to do next. So get very specific. Like I said, and like Joseph says, it could be because of a lack of clarity, so let's throw it out the window. Let's get very clear with what we're trying to accomplish here. So get specific. Don't write oh, I have to work on the podcast. Write instead for your goals, outline intro or record segment two, or choose a final quote. But chunk the mountain into gravel. Make it too small to fail.

Brett:

When you break it up in that way, you understand what you need to do in this moment, what you're going to be doing next and how to keep going after that. So do step-by-steps. It's almost like when you were in elementary school learning division. You would have a long division problem in front of you and it would say like step one see how many times this one goes into this, whatever. And then you do the multi or the adding and subtracting, long division, whatever, all that stuff. But there's certain steps that you need to go through in order to get the equation done. And so you break down your own tasks as equations say, x plus y equals result and figure out what those x and Ys are in your equation and do X first and then Y, and then you'll get your result. But break it down, and sometimes that equation might look like A plus B plus C plus D plus whatever. As long as it keeps going through the alphabet, it might be a very long equation, but at least you have steps for each one, so make it too small to fail.

Brett:

This one, number two, is one of my favorites and it's the five minute rule. And this I apply it to running, but in running it has to be the 10 minute rule. I'll explain why in a second. But the five minute rule is basically you say, okay, I'm going to start working on this for five minutes. Let's take journaling, for example. I don't really have too much to say, I'm just going to journal for five minutes, I'm committing to five. But typically typically in my own experience you won't want to stop after that five minutes, because once you get going, that momentum builds, and fear is the loudest when you start something like I was talking about earlier, and so once you get into the flow, you build that momentum. Then that first five minutes that you said you were going to commit to, it's almost like a wedge that you put in a door and now you can open that pretty easily.

Brett:

And so that's what I would say is is, start by just saying I'm just going to work for five minutes, and the 10 minute rule for running is, if you don't feel like running at all, if you're really tired, if you're sore, then you say okay, I'm going to run for 10 minutes. If I'm still feeling this way, I'll stop. So it's a great tool to use and it tricks your brain. I've done this to myself so many times. I'm like, okay, I'll just start for five minutes, and then Allie will be like hey, you want to have dinner. I'm like, yeah, what time is it? And she'll be like it's six o'clock. I was like, okay, that two hours flew by. But it's little things like that, like trick your brain, it's all these little tricks. And so the third one is a little bit more. You need to have some people for this one, but it's accountability and your environment.

Brett:

And so if you want to get serious about something, don't just rely on willpower. Rely on a structure Like work with a friend, set a deadline, publicly commit to it and recognize that no one's coming to save you, but you can still choose to run with people who will pull you forward and so align yourself and put yourself in situations where there's other people who are trying to achieve their goals too. That could be running communities. It could be a group at work who you all want to get better or you all want to improve. It could be your networking after work and you find a group who wants to work on different careers and different projects. Whatever it is, find a group that aligns with your goals and tie yourself to them. Become friends with them. That will help you so much more, because a lot of the times, if you're working on similar things, they'll have problems that you might run into, that they already solved, that they can help you with and vice versa, and it creates this environment of improvement, progression, learning and camaraderie. Like you become, you will become closer with these people. My wife and drew people who I run with like I'm really close with them, but it's because a lot of the times, we're trying to achieve our goals together. We have very aligned visions, very aligned goals, and we want to see if we can just become the best together. So that's an important one is be accountable and maybe switch up your environment, if you can.

Brett:

Now this next one. You're going to have to be very real with yourself, like all truth. Nothing's off the table here. It's just you and you, and you can do this in a journal, you can do it in an audio message. But number four is a self-awareness audit, and I want you to take a real inventory of what tasks do you always delay, why do they scare you and when do you feel the most flawed and what led to that? And every day or once a week, sit down, answer those questions, understand where you can improve and boom. Now you have a game plan and take steps forward to achieve it. The more you understand your personal patterns, the better you can outmaneuver them. Again, it goes down to that five minute rule. You can trick your brain once you understand how it works.

Brett:

Some people might say procrastination is a good thing. Some people might say procrastination is a good thing, and while I didn't agree with this in the beginning, I did some research because I wanted to see what the opposing views of procrastination was, if there were any at all and Adam Grant, who he's a doctor, actually, and he studies a lot of things related to meditation, related to the brain and how it works, things related to meditation, related to the brain and how it works. But he says moderate procrastinators can be more creative and so delaying a decision sometimes allows more ideas to surface. And he says reflection can bring originality. So not all delay is waste, but there is a line when reflection becomes rumination, when planning becomes paralysis, when reflection becomes rumination, when planning becomes paralysis. That's when we're no longer thinking, we're hiding. And so if you have an idea and you're not necessarily procrastinating, instead you're ruminating on it, you're thinking through and you're trying to give yourself some time to get more creative with that, that's not necessarily a bad form of procrastination. But, like Adam Grant says, there's a line when reflection becomes rumination, and when sorry, I meant reflection, not rumination when I said it earlier. But the line is when reflection becomes rumination and when planning becomes paralysis. So if you need to take some steps to get your plan set, do it, but don't allow yourself to ruminate and don't allow yourself to become paralyzed by the thought of actually doing it.

Brett:

Seneca reminds us that while we waste our time hesitating and postponing, life is slipping away. The last solo podcast episode I did, I talked about how important time is as a resource, and it's finite, but we don't treat it as such a valuable resource. If you think about all the people who are on their deathbed who say, like I wish I had more time with my family, I wish it didn't work as much, it's because they're recognizing that they traded their time for money at work, which they may have needed to support their family, but it is a regret, like they wish they could have done something different. And so time is very important, and you have to understand that the more that you wait, the more that you hesitate and the more that you postpone, that time is slipping away and that life is slipping away. And so, if you're going to delay, delay with intention and not avoidance. Be smart about it.

Brett:

Let's wrap up so procrastination, the reasons why we do it. It's not because we're lazy, but because we're afraid or unclear or perfectionistic. And the antidote isn't just to hustle. It's to have clarity with your goals, it's to be courageous and it's to take small, repeated actions over a long period of time.

Brett:

Now let me leave you with something that's been helping me quite a bit, that I've been doing at work, and it's very simple. It's called eat the frog, which basically means each morning, you write down one thing that is either your hardest tasks, hardest task for the day, or something you've been avoiding, and then you do it first. Just one thing you don't need to clear the entire forest today, you just need to chop down one tree. To clear the entire forest today, you just need to chop down one tree. And I want to ask you to reflect and to think about some of these things, because what's one thing that you've been putting off for a while that you know deep down, you've wanted to start, that you've wanted to actually start getting after. What is that one thing? Write it down and then, like I said, break it down into smaller steps, set a timer for five minutes and then just start.

Brett:

Because here's another quote I'll leave you from Marcus Aurelius you could be good today, but instead you choose tomorrow. Don't wait, your life is already happening right now. And with that, I appreciate you guys for listening to this podcast episode. I hope it inspires you to go after and achieve something that you've been putting off for a while, that you know you've wanted to do. And thank you for listening, thanks for tuning in and until next episode, everybody keep getting after it. Thanks, guys.