Stuck Procrastinating? Maybe you just lack clarity

“I am just being so lazy about it.”
”I am procrastinating on it”
”I can’t find the motivation for it”

Sound familiar? Disparaging yourself as lazy, useless, or unmotivated? Even when, in reality, you KNOW you’re so NOT lazy?

It’s just that there’s items on your to-do list that you can’t seem to get done for one reason or another… and an easier copout is to blame yourself and make yourself the bad guy rather. Here’s a alarming secret for you: the more you call yourself these words, the further it propels you down a path of NOT getting things done.

It’s like a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Personally, I’ve been in this place before. When I started my first company in 2015 I grasped onto this idea of “I’m a procrastinator. I’m lazy” and spent a lot of time beating myself up for it. I’d spiral into a hole of self-hate and poke at myself with questions like, “how did you let this happen? In high school you used to manage to do like 156 things at once and now you can’t even do one thing?!”

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From that place, the chances of finding motivation or willpower seem to slip away and you just create a cycle of wanting to do the thing, not doing the thing, feeling terrible about it, and so on.

In time, as different things shifted in my business I became very BUSY. I started working 12-14 hour days and it seemed like maybe I had “beat the laziness” and let myself feel really, honestly, inflated by that. I let this stamp of busyness mean I was ‘a good person’ or ‘doing it right’ — which is a whole different issue to be address, right? My worthiness has nothing to do with how many items I cross off a to-do list.

When I reflect on why it felt easier to work those long hours though, one big thing comes up for me: I had more direction. I had more clarity. Before when I felt “so lazy” it wasn’t really about my work ethic, or anything like that — it was just about the direction. The clarity. Getting started felt impossible because I didn’t know what I was starting. I couldn’t see how all the moving parts fit together or made sense. I didn’t really have a vision or end destination in mind. And some part of me — a much wiser part — didn’t want to waste time or energy doing work that didn’t ultimately matter. I didn’t really want to ‘do nothing’, I just wanted to do things that made a difference and I had no idea what those things were.

If that is feeling resonate for you, then I’m sure the next question is: how do we resolve this? How do we find a way to move forward instead of falling into re-watching Gossip Girl for the 52nd time?

Before we did into that, let’s make a quick disclaimer over who this is NOT for. If you’re someone with a lengthy to-do list and you fully believe and know that all the items on that list are essential and are managing to do all the things… this actually isn’t going to be as helpful for you. What you need help with is found inside my free guide Master Your 20-Hour (Or Less!) Work Week.

This is more helpful for people who barely have the list, who aren’t even suer what to do let alone feel inspired to do it. Let’s find that clarity! So the first step here is coming back to your why — AKA why you started your business. It’s okay if it’s not a grandiose answer like solving world hunger. It’s okay if it’s because you wanted to wear yoga pants and work on your couch. But to figure out the wHAT we need to come back to the WHY first.

Then, equipped with that, I want to invite you to daydream and visualize a year from now. What do you want? What do you want your life to look like? Your business to be like? Create that vision — no rules, just whatever you desire. Now between these two concepts (your WHY and your vision) you can begin to use those like ‘bumpers’ (like in bowling) to filter ideas, tasks, to-do list items through. This will help you stay focused on what you really desire.

This simple exercise creates less mental chatter, less overwhelm, and less shiny object syndrome. It helps create more clarity, more focus, and more intentionality with your work. Your work literally becomes more inspiring to do because you can see the link between it and where you are going with it. And in my experience, the “laziness” or “unmotivated feeling” seems to drift away easier when we can make that connection.

In my past I used this exercise to help propel my first business into consistent income and clients. I had been focusing on a lot of moving parts, unmotivated to do any of them well, and through this exercise actually ended up stopping like over 90% of my daily work to get hyper focused on the needle-moving tasks. I did LESS and made MORE because of this.

So here is your permission slip: stop beating yourself up for laziness, or procrastination, or lack of motivation. You are not flawed or destined for failure. You’re overwhelmed because of this lack of clarity and with a simple exercise you an begin to create more clarity.

I'd love to hear what clarity this exercise creates for you! Send me a DM on Instagram!

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