E232 | The Hidden Powers of Procrastination

It’s time to flip the script.

If you’re like me, you’ve fallen victim to procrastination guilt – the feeling that something’s wrong with you, you’re broken, or you haven’t found your true “why” because you’re waiting until the last minute to get a certain task done. 

The truth is, our perception of procrastination has been tremendously influenced by the unrealistic expectations of nonsense leadership books and mantras like “how we do anything is how we do everything.”

In today’s episode, we outline the reasons why this perception is off the mark, and how you can harness the power of procrastination.  More specifically, we discuss:

• What the term procrastination actually means and what it is not (7:00)
• How procrastination and perfectionism are related and how to deal with it (11:15)
  • Material Reference: Art of Coaching Podcast E190 – Why It Seems Like We Never Have Enough Time (18:00)
• How procrastination taps our inner adversity drives (18:10)
  • Material Reference: Find Out What Drives You (18:30)
• The physiological effects of procrastination that can help and/or hurt you

If this episode hits home for you, and you want to continue learning how to be more adaptable, go here for our latest content!

Remember – it’s not about being perfect or optimal all the time, because chaos leads to clarity. Flip the script, and put your work out there.

As always, we want to make sure to thank our loyal sponsors for helping us continue to deliver high quality free content, like this podcast.  Today’s episode is brought to you by Dynamic and Athletic Greens.

Dynamic: Our go-to equipment partner. Fully customizable and manufactured in the heartland of America- if you’re looking to outfit your home gym or weight room visit mydynamicfitness.com to get started. Tell them Brett and the Art of Coaching Team sent you!

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Brett Bartholomew  00:12

Today’s episode is brought to you by Dynamic Fitness and Strength when it comes to durability, customization, and customer care, Dynamic meticulously over delivers. My wife and I just got Art Of Coaching branded poly urethane dumbbells sent to us for our home gym. We have to do a lot of our workouts in a hurry. We love things like dumbbell complexes, we love to just chalk up throw these things around. They are nearly indestructible, and they look incredibly sharp. No matter what you want, whether it’s a rack, whether it’s dumbbells, kettlebells, anything that is related to your strength or fitness or performance needs.

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Brett Bartholomew  01:20

Check it out, check it . Welcome to the Art Of Coaching Podcast. I’m Brett Bartholomew. And at a young age poor communication nearly cost me my life. Now, I help others navigate the gray area of social interaction, power dynamics and communication so they can become more adaptable leaders regardless of their profession, age or situation.

This podcast is for everybody who is fascinated with solving people’s problems. So if you’re in the no nonsense type who appreciates frank conversations, advice you can put to use immediately and learning how others navigate the messy realities of leadership. You’re in the right place. I’m glad that you’re joining us. Let’s dive in.

 

Brett Bartholomew  

Welcome back to the Art Of Coaching podcast. I’m your host, Brett Bartholomew. And today’s episode is going to be all about procrastination, what it is, why we do it and if it’s really the evil and insidious thing that we make it out to be. Now credit for the idea for this episode goes to Josie, a longtime listener who sent her a question in VR website. And it’s worth reminding you guys, any of you can submit a question or a topic you want us to tackle on the podcast anytime by going to artofcoaching.com/question, that singular, question. Again, that’s artofcoaching.com/question.

 

Brett Bartholomew  03:01

We are always going to respect your privacy. So rest assured we will change your name. We’ll keep any finer details and other names out of it or change them. So you never have to worry about that. But make sure to shoot them to us because we will cover anything artofcoaching.com/question. All right, with that out of the way.

Josie wrote to us with the following. Hey, Coach Brett and team AOC, my question is concerning the topic of procrastination, just about every book, article and podcasts I listened to makes it out to be something that only impacts people who are not disciplined, focused or otherwise committed to achieving an outcome. I’ve always struggled with this since I’m admittedly somebody who procrastinates often yet I don’t identify with being somebody who’s unfocused or uncommitted. Actually quite the opposite. Sure, I have my moments like everybody else. But my work is very important to me, then sometimes I found putting it off until deadline, even though it can lead to more stress and the short term helps me focus and get it done more quickly. Am I alone here? More importantly, is something wrong with me? I’d love to get your take.

No, excellent question and that’s an example of tremendous context. So if you guys follow your questions, and please try to give us the full picture because I couldn’t have written that one better myself. First off, no, Josie, nothing’s wrong with you, at least in that sense, because you periodically delay things, otherwise put them off or in truth seem to work well under pressure. Millions of people do this. The vast majority of the human population does this, but we’re going to dive a little bit more deeply because, of course, there’s two sides to every coin. So like anything, we can’t fully explore this topic without looking at context at a deeper level. So let’s just set some expectations and ground rules here for the episode. Everything I’m about to say with respect to this topic, procrastination and in this episode in particular, is going to be centered around the following.

One, I’m going to keep it all about the performance of a work related or creative based task. I’m not going to talk about procrastination in the sense of making a major life change, change in your relationship. If you’re somebody who’s stuck, burnout, or in a toxic relationship, or work environment, or the like, if you are in any of those situations, and you’re putting off making a decision, or making a move, all I can say is get to it, life’s short, and it doesn’t get any easier staying in one place.

If you want additional resources on that, go to artofcoaching.com/mentor. And we can talk more because those are deeper topics. And they require more than a podcast to explain them. Right? And you’re not alone in that sense.

Number two, everything I say is going to assume you the listener and you Josie who are answering this question for have foundational skills related to the task you need to complete but are putting off. What I mean is, it’s one thing if you’re delaying getting something done, but you have the actual skills, or general know how, in terms of how to do it. It’s another thing entirely if what’s required of you is a completely foreign task. And you’ve never done anything like it in your life. And you don’t know where to even start. Procrastination is going to impact these situations very, very differently.

So once again, I am going to focus on the more typical example. And Josie is the example that I mentioned first, where you have the skill, you have the capacity, you have the general know how even if some of the task is ambiguous, but you’re putting it off for another reason. Excuse me. Alright, so with that said, let’s get into the meat of it. For those of you who are word nerds, and you know, I always like diving into the finer definitions and finer aspects of things.

For those of you who are word nerds, and you enjoy definitions as well, and even a bit of etymology, the term procrastinate is defined literally by Oxford as the action of delaying or postponing something, the action of delaying or postponing something. Notice how the good folks at Oxford Dictionaries did not include the words laziness, lack of focus or being a piece of blank, that is not included, even if some people insinuate as much in the actual definition.

Now, you can thank the leadership, hustle porn, guru community for the negative associations and connotations with procrastination. And of course, in some circumstances, there may be those things, but it is not inherent to the term. So let’s dive a bit deeper. The origin of that term goes back to the late 16th century. Latin of course, where the term CRAS means tomorrow, PRO means forward and CRASTINUS means belonging to tomorrow, or in yet another form of the word deferred until morning. Well, this lends credence to the definition that we discussed earlier.

Now that we’ve got that out of the way, let’s talk some truth as it applies to Josie’s situation. The real reason many of us procrastinate is often energy. Now, when I was outlining this episode, I thought about going down all the research rabbit holes, and this is a very well researched term and topic. There is no shortage of information out there about procrastination in every sense, especially around the pandemic, and you can get just about everybody’s take on it if their psychology professors, anything like that.

But when you look at this, and you want to say, well, why do we actually procrastinate? So much of it is energy. So yeah, it can have to do with priorities, actual and perceived, confidence, self efficacy, emotional regulation and of course, we’re more likely to put things off that we don’t enjoy doing, or that we find to be aversive. But generally, we put things off that require a lot of mental or physical capacity, relative to the amount we want to expend at any moment. And this is very personal to me as well, Josie.

And those of you listening, because I’m trying to get my doctorate and I’m trying to write a book and I’m running a business. Now at any point in time, one of those things is bound to suffer because there’s no such thing as true balance in life. And you lately it has been some aspects of my new book and my doctorate because we’ve been in a very, very busy season with the business. Other times that will shift, but there are times where Yeah, I for sure could go into my office at 9:00 PM and start knocking out more related to my doctorate. But after chasing my little dude around, after running a business and all these things, I don’t always have the energy, and tasks like that require a lot more energy.

So many of you feel like, well, I have plenty of energy, but it’s where I kind of spend it. Sure, you may answer email, or you might get on social media, or you might do any number of things. But these are huge tasks that we generally procrastinate the most, they require a completely different kind of energy for us. Some of it might be emotional, or psychological. And another sense, some of it might even just be logistical. I know there’s times and I don’t know how many of you can relate, we’re, if I’m gonna do some in depth work on my book or my doctorate. Or even sometimes when we put newsletters out, I need to go get five or six books from my library, pull some articles, I want to have all my information around me and that takes a lot of effort.

So when we talk about energy, on the flip side of procrastination, this is where I don’t think it gets the credit it deserves when harnessed appropriately, and I’ll get plenty of personal examples here. Putting things off until a deadline approaches can do some truly magical things for us, truly magical things. One, it helps us overcome and at least address perfectionism, which, if you’ve listened to this podcast we’ve talked about many times, the research indicates perfectionism is really a form of self handicapping. A lot of people use perfectionism as an excuse, and a very convenient and elaborate one. Because it’s this idea of like, Yeah, I’m working on this, but I never really put it out, I think of any of my hip hop heads out there, Dr. Dre and detox.

But anything that you might be doing, you think it’s not quite the way I want it, it’s not at the level that I want it and really, it never will be. But it allows us it’s something that society has deemed acceptable, or at least it’s very common in terms of an excuse. And, you know, when we use perfectionism, as an excuse that allows us to blame the deadline, if things don’t go right. Yet Parkinson’s Law shows us work will always expand to fit the time available for it. If you’re not familiar with that term, I’ll repeat it. Parkinson’s Law shows us that work always will expand to fit the time available for it. So even if you say, hey, it’s not quite if you file for an extension on a deadline or anything like that, by and large, you know, you’re always going to delude yourself into thinking, Oh, I just need a bit more research,

 

Brett Bartholomew  10:53

I need one more expert interview, I need a little bit more time to consolidate my notes, I need to get into the right environment all before I’m ready to go. But that will never happen. And it will continue to perpetuate. And remember guys, I you know, I’m not somebody that tries to talk to you from some ivory tower. I’ve done this, I’m in the middle of writing my second book, I’ve started, there are a million things. I am a reformed perfectionist, and I’m still very perfectionistic. It’s hard for me to get on and do this show for you. You know, it’s hard because there’s about 40 different ways every episode can go. But perfectionism can screw you up and I’ll use the last episode as a great example.

We wanted to do an episode on how to craft the perfect apology. And the mistake I made in that episode is I was trying to talk to way too many of you, way too many of you because we have such a diverse audience, we have people that were in my original profession, strength and conditioning, we have people, we have tons of folks that are firefighters and educators and leaders in other areas and we have folks in the tech world and lawyers. And so I find myself trying to do episodes for everybody and go super deep. And all those things at once are just not possible. So that’s where I’ve learned.

And I continue to relearn, hey, sometimes a topic is good for a podcast, you might need to touch, you know, at a superficial level. Sometimes it’s better for an online course, there are some things we’re only going to touch on in depth at our workshops, because all of these mediums impact the nature of the work and how it’s received. And the same thing is true in your life. Whether you’re Josie listening to this or somebody else, you know, you might be suffering from procrastination related to perfectionism. Because you’re looking at the task the wrong way, or you’re trying to do too much. You’re trying to make everything perfect, and it just won’t get you anywhere.

For those of you that own your own business, you know that. A huge thank you to Athletic Greens for sponsoring this episode of the Art Of Coaching podcast, I started taking Athletic Greens because I wanted to see what all the hype was about. And I’m not a huge supplement guy. I tried to just handle most of my nutrient intake through real food. But the fact is with my travel schedule and a lot of the other constraints that I have working on a book and running a business, I fall short in a lot of areas nutritionally so Athletic Greens was a great way to cover all of my bases. For less than $3 a day it was a small micro habit with huge benefits.

I wake up, it’s mindless, I put it in a shaker, do it with a scoop of my favorite protein, lock it in. I know what you said, A, I heard you’re not a huge supplement guy, but you just listed off two supplements. Yeah, that’s pretty much the only supplements I use, aside from things that help me with my sleep. The point is, is it’s straightforward, and it’s all natural. And they constantly iterate their product, and use third party testing, which my family history has cancer and heart disease in it, I want to know what I’m putting in my body.

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Brett Bartholomew  12:34

You’re trying to make everything perfect. And it just won’t get you anywhere. For those of you that own your own business, you know that. And I even discussed this with my employees recently. You know, we’re doing a ton of newsletters right now on how to motivate lazy staff, how to deal with burnout, how to overcome power dynamics, and I tried telling them, what you’re going to learn is there’s only so much you can put into an email. And even though we want to help people, it’s up to them to look deeper into our other resources and those courses and the same thing is true with you guys, right? Like you can’t try to make the thing that you’re doing, do everything for everyone. It will eat away at your soul.

And yes, some people are going to expect that, I have people that expect me to solve their biggest problems over an Instagram DM. And I’ve just given up on that. I’ve said hey, I can’t get into this the depth you want over this medium. If you want to talk deeper, let’s set up an appointment. And you guys got to do that too. Because perfectionism, using that as an excuse for procrastination is just BS, you just got to get on with it and find the medium and the right, you know, say hey, this is what I can do. In this circumstance with the resources I have available. And Dammit, I’m shipping it, that’s what you got to do.

Otherwise, you’re gonna continue ending up in this cycle where you complain that you don’t have enough time and things aren’t perfect. And then when you get time, you’ll waste it prepping and researching again and again. And then you’re just gonna get really unhappy with yourself and really unhappy with your work and the quality of it. So for more on any time management perfectionistic related stuff, be sure to go back and listen to episode 190 of the podcast episode 190. That’ll be in the show notes as well, you’ll really enjoy it if that speaks to you. But I want to go onward with this. Another thing that procrastination does that can help us aside from getting over perfectionism because eventually that deadlines gonna come and you’re gonna realize things can’t be perfect, is it taps our inner adversity drives.

Now if you’ve taken our quiz at artofcoaching.com/whatdrivesyou again, you can just go to artofcoaching.com/whatdrivesyou, it’s all free, it’s all really simple, doesn’t take you much time at all, you’ll know what I’m talking about here. If you haven’t done that, you know, go after this episode. And we also recommend taking it three times a year when you’re in different moods or emotional states to improve the accuracy and give you a more holistic view.

But for this episode, what I mean with respect to it tapping our inner adversity drives, is we all perform better when our back is up against the wall. I mean, we do, it may take some training and you may mess up a few times at first, but it is human nature, when you look at our species to fight, to explore, to push to look, to be able to figure out where the boundary is and go beyond it. But somewhere along the line, we all became so scared of getting our hands dirty and making mistakes and pushing.

We talked ourselves into believing everything must be like I said prior perfect in order to begin and that keeps us from making progress. And that is just where you’re not going to be able to make any true headway into these things. Because when you never put it out there, you’re never going to get that feedback as well. But I think that when I think about this being somebody that’s predominantly adversity driven, I think hey, man, alright, it’s time, you got three minutes or three hours or three days. And if you really know your stuff, cut all the bluff around it and just get it out, get it out. And let’s go, we have to lock that in. And I don’t know how many of you can relate to this.

But there’s some times where I eventually procrastinated things so much, and pardon my language, but I just get pissed. I get pissed off at myself to the point where my inner Wolverine rage makes me sit in the chair, tell everybody else to leave me alone. I blacked out and I start typing. And yeah, like to that point you did hear me correctly. Anger has its benefits too, we should have this sense of dissatisfaction, if you haven’t gotten in yet from listening to this podcast, either this episode or others, I don’t have a lot of love for traditional leadership advice, for traditional productivity advice, this advice that tells us that life is, you know, controllable, and we can all just have our routines and we should all just be calm.

 

Brett Bartholomew  20:53

I think about this too, when people tell me you should batch your content. Okay, let me batch my content for the next 12 months, wrong. People can tell. You want to have that, when you’re pushed up against the wall and you face adversity, that raw emotion, that raw authenticity, that elemental nature of who you really are comes out. And how you express yourself comes out as well a little bit more clearly. And even if it’s not clear, the people that get, it’s like a scent, it’s like a pheromone, they relate to it, they’re drawn to it. And the same is true when we try to batch stuff and we try to control stuff.

There’s this artificial nature to it that comes out and you can’t hide. So that’s why I love procrastinating sometimes, it’s not like I purposely do it. But I’ve just realized, hey, one thing it makes me do is it just gets me to the back to the core of who I am, makes me clarify what I’m trying to say. And it just, it sends everything else that’s in my periphery to the background so I can lock and load and get that locked in. So when we do you also have to remember from a physiological standpoint, when we get that anxiety, that fear and maybe even a little bit of anger. When we feel those things, our body releases adrenaline. And guess what that does, it energizes us.

Now remember, at the beginning, when I said so much of this is about energy. And having a bit of added energy. When we need to do things that we find to be aversive, overwhelming or mundane is a tremendous, tremendous benefit. Now with respect to more details about the systemic effects of adrenaline, because I know there’s some people they’re thinking, yeah, but what about this? What about that, just hear me out. It is worth noting that adrenaline has many different actions depending on the types of cells it acts upon.

However, the overall effect of adrenaline is, of course, to prepare the body for the “fight or flight response” during times of stress, whether that’s vigorous or sudden action. And the key actions of adrenaline, if you remember from physiology include increasing the heart rate, increased blood pressure, expanding the airways of our lungs, enlarging pupil like pupil dilation, redistribution of blood flow to the muscles, and it also maximizes blood glucose levels primarily for the brain. That last one in particular is great news for creatives, or those that need to do mentally taxing and draining work.

So when harnessed appropriately, adrenaline focuses us. Think like the movie 300, where the boy had to hunt the wolf, or at the end when Leonidas took his helmet off, so we could throw the spear with more true aim. In the case of our work, it’s not about hunting wolves or throwing spears, but it does give us tunnel vision. It makes us push aside all the little things like answering emails, cleaning up our desk, getting everything just right, all the things that in other circumstances seem to be productive. It’s like the machinations of productivity. Oh, yeah, I’ve got all this, I’ve done that I filled out in my journal, I’m very intentional.

In reality, guys, these are just forms of Yak shaving, or a form of self delusion into making us think or doing productive work, when in reality, we’re not being productive at all. So even when certain people seem to get things done ahead of time, you look at all the little things that they do like it’s assuming, first of all, it’s assuming that getting things done early or ahead of time mean that you’re getting things done well. Let me stand on my ground there. Just because you get things done early or ahead of time, does not mean you’ve done them well. I could get the first draft of my book done earlier than the deadline. That does not mean it’s done well. On the other hand,

 

Brett Bartholomew  24:57

I could wait, now you could say yeah, Brett, but the opposite is true, you could wait, you know, three months until it’s done and work like a bat out of hell and that doesn’t mean it’s done well, you’re right. But we don’t have to think that black and white, we might be able to get some things done a little early. But wait to put the final touches on it a little later. Because guess what, things are going to change, circumstances are going to change, details are going to change, emotions are going to change, you need to harness that. You need to harness that and you need to, there are so many different things that if I put in my book, because I started writing it really a year ago, there are so many different things that I wrote, then that now I’m like, no, I’ve had so many more vivid experiences.

Or there’s a day that I read my writing where I think, you know, I must have just had the time to go down rabbit holes. And I’m like, What the hell am I trying to say? And what I do is I put myself in my, if I was under pressure, how would I simplify that and it makes me sharpen up my copy. It makes me get to the point.

That’s why a favorite saying of us, like of ours at Art Of Coaching is that chaos equals clarity. It’s an underpinning principle of how and why we use improv in situational role playing at our workshops. And if you don’t like my quotes, that’s fine.

Screenwriter Robert McKee, who is one award after award after award for the films he’s worked on, says character is revealed by the choices someone makes under pressure. And guys, I’m the one telling you, we could all benefit from a little more pressure, we could all benefit from a little less perfectionism, we could all benefit from a little less comfort. We have so much of that in society. And I’m not telling you to go out and run an ultra marathon or do some grueling workout and blah, blah, I’m telling you just like, let go of some of the restrictions you put behind, you know, your self editing behavior and your work and your control.

 

Brett Bartholomew  26:50

 Like, ask yourself if I had a different kind of urgency if this was due tomorrow, if I had 30 minutes to work on it. What is the core of the message? And what matters most about this right now? What is the need for the now? Not what is the rabbit hole I can go down that’s endless just because I’m interested in it. So no, Josie, nothing’s wrong with you. If you thrive under a bit of pressure, as long as you and anybody else listening are ensuring you’re not putting yourself in that situation all the time for a wide variety of tasks. That is different. That is different.

Because if you’re constantly doing that, if you’re constantly putting yourself out and then of course there’s risk factors for mental health, physical health. The research says, research shows that chronic procrastinators have higher levels of acute health problems, sleep disorders, lower life satisfaction. But again, these are different studies in different contexts. And it’s assuming that procrastination is not possible and not a reality of life. So I think if you’re procrastinating everything that’s reevaluate.

If you’re procrastinating something related to a big presentation, or some big piece of work that is a bit daunting or challenging, that’s absolutely normal. And it’s beneficial, you just need to flip the script a little bit. And for those that want to peek behind the curtain, I think I’m pretty open about this. But like I said, I’ve dealt with this, not only when working on my book or my doctorate, but before a big presentation, heck when dealing with these podcasts. And I think of a time recently, we are giving a presentation to a big client. I mean, a massive client and they’re all, yeah, I remember my readiness, if those of you that look at your sleep score, I have one of these aura rings, and no, they don’t pay me to say that I’m not in love with it either so that’s not a cosign.

But it was basically this ring was telling me, Hey, you got crap sleep today, you’re probably gonna die, all these other things. And I still had the nuts and bolts of this huge presentation that I needed to go over. Because we were essentially trying to get people two days worth of information, boiled down into like, four one hour calls. And I was sick that day. And I was trying to get everything but I just, I kept falling asleep. I was just out of it. I could barely sit up. So I had like 30 minutes to piece everything together. And you know what the irony is, I didn’t even get it all done. I got the first third of it done.

But then here’s the trick. When we’re into the presentation, there was a point where I had to take my shared screen off, because I was interacting with the other people that were on the call. And they asked a question that allowed me to customize the presentation in a way that made it so much better. Here’s the rub. So I had more than 300 slides that were going to be covered in the course over these four one hour meetings. And I had about where we’re at in this one I had about 20 of them done. But I’d gone down a rabbit hole on one topic, but they started to ask questions on something completely different that I wasn’t even going to get to, until way later on.

Or what I did when I was looking at them, is I moved all those slides up. And I said, Hey, guys, we’re gonna get right to that right now. And I flipped it on. And I was able to get to those slides. And what I thought to myself afterwards was, if I would have just, if I would have gotten this done way earlier, not only would I have basically gone down way too much of a rabbit hole on something that we weren’t even going to cover, because I underestimated how confusing one part of the presentation was going to be to them, how interesting another part was going to be, but like it would have thrown off the whole flow.

So sometimes releasing a product that isn’t fully baked, especially if you have the time to iterate it and customize it later, is the best thing. And you see a lot of the huge companies do this, Tesla will send over the air updates. Apple does that not everything has to be fully baked. And not everything should. And I just remember afterwards, we asked them for their feedback and they said it was like you had a sixth sense, the way you took that presentation after that question. And I kind of just laughed at myself. And not because we pulled one by them. But because you know, circumstances were such that I was sick. And I was just in an awful situation that day. And it led to procrastination and things that were outside of my control.

But the reality is it less it led to a better outcome. Allow some of that stuff to happen a little bit more in your life, allow you, allow yourself to not always meet your expectations, because it’s impossible anyway. So let me wrap it with this, I want to wrap something in a bow for you guys.

 

Brett Bartholomew  31:41

The only time procrastination hasn’t helped me, aside from the fact that I did it in a wide variety of areas, which I try not to, at least not at one time, is when I would let what I would call procrastination guilt wash over me. Now this guilt was brought on by and I think Josie already touched on it. Previously believing something was wrong with me. And I think it really took until the last year of my life to understand that it’s not, I used to think something was wrong with me because everything I also read or heard online or in books, or by famous people, which many of whom, just from my time in LA and having had the chance to work with some and friends that have worked with them.

Most people don’t know this, but a lot of these famous people that tell you all this great life advice have numerous assistants, and members of support staff even just for one part of their life. And they help them prep in every way imaginable. I mean, there are some major podcasters that have like 15 people that help them prep for a show. There are people that you know, everything is delivered to them and all that.

So I always love it when they’re giving life advice. I’m not saying it’s invalid, I’m just saying you have to take it at context. But almost everything I had heard read, blah blah blah said that if you did this, and you procrastinated, then it was clear, you haven’t found your true why or you were broken. And frankly, that type of nonsense, as well as the nonsense that I talked about on my recent social media posts that I put that was going out the quote, how you do anything is how you do everything.

That is everything my next book is dedicated to giving a black eye to because what I’ve learned in the last decade of my life in particular is that there are way too many people in every profession, who have been made to feel like outcasts or underdogs, or like they’re broken, simply because they do things in an unconventional way. When in reality, they know how to play in the gray area better than most.

There are far too many books and podcasts that tell people there a one size fits all right and wrong way to do things. And then if you don’t fit the mold, you’re likely to not find success, or you’re not fit to lead or something else. And I just feel like if you’re like me, you believe the opposite. More specifically, if you believe somebody can do good, somebody can accomplish great things, somebody can make a difference, even if they have a bit of chaos, darkness and self doubt in them. Then do me a favor and make your voice heard by going to artofcoaching.com/book now and tell us about you.

We want to learn more, we want you on our list so we can connect with you more. That’s artofcoaching.com/book, artofcoaching.com/book because in the coming months, I’m going to be releasing more topics. Just like the one we cover today and others that battle the leadership BS we’ve been told so often because I want us to be able to avoid burnout. I want you guys to be able to navigate the gray area and the chaos in your life and everything like that more effectively. I want you to become the leaders and more importantly the people you have the capacity to become.

I don’t want you to feel like I felt alone on my journey, where, when I needed information that was hard hitting, straight to the point and taught me everything from how to deal with less than, let’s just say, ethical people in my life to really odd situations. I didn’t always know how to navigate. I want you guys to be able to navigate those things. Because it’s not about perfect. It’s not about optimal. Everything we do, if you want to do it at the highest level, is about being adaptable. And that requires failure, that requires chaos, that requires a little bit of self doubt, that requires understanding the dark side of ourself.

So if that’s you, remember, go to artofcoaching.com/book. I really appreciate you guys joining me for this one. And thank you once again to Josie for being brave enough to ask this question.

Procrastination can be your friend. Don’t fall for the leadership guru stuff. Don’t be scared to do things your own way. I’ll talk to you soon.