You keep listening to your feelings instead of facts.

What is the difference between two people: one who procrastinates and waits until the last minute no matter how hard they try to be different, and someone who acts on their intentions without any hesitation?

Whenever someone who tends to procrastinate tries to change that habit, the moment they try to get started, they're overwhelmed with fear and uncertainty and stress, and so they choose to avoid instead. The only time they're able to override those feelings is when the deadline is fast approaching and they don't have any other choice.

Do the people who don't struggle to act on their intentions never feel those feelings? Isn't it human nature to prefer instant gratification over delayed reward? I know everyone just says it's about having discipline, and just pushing through, but that doesn't mean much in the moment when the idea of getting started just makes you want to sink into the floor.

There is an answer beyond just “be more disciplined,” and I'm going to teach it to you.

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But it truly doesn't make sense. The people who procrastinate the most are often very ambitious and very talented people, and they care a lot about the things that they set out to do. In fact, if they gave it their all, their work ethic would probably be better than those they're competing with.

Except they're stuck in the sick cycle  of waiting until the last minute to get started, always. And they're flooded with so much shame and guilt the next day because they brought so much stress upon themselves waiting until the last minute.

It's a twisted pattern. You get stressed when you try to get started early, and get stressed when you wait until the last minute. You just can't win.

It's not right that the people with the most potential and the most ambition are the ones constantly trapped by their own actions, or rather, inaction. Imagine what would be possible if you didn't always wait until the last minute.

Imagine how proud of yourself you could be.

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If people don't think the answer is discipline, they usually think it's a combination of motivation, dopamine, courage, or some other buzzword. But the truth is, it's much simpler than that.

One person treats those feelings as indisputable facts, while the other treats them as evidence of something deeper. 

But if you've been thinking about this struggle for a while, then you've probably already realized that knowing what you want to do and actually doing it are two entirely different skills.

And you don't bridge that gap with just wanting it more, or being more motivated, or of course, being more “disciplined.” 

Rather, what I've seen time and time again (first in myself and then in the clients I serve) is that procrastinators are treating the feelings of discomfort and uncertainty that arise when they try to initiate a task as real threats to their internal safety.

That's because they have no other choice. They don't know any other way to be. 

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The psychological term for what's going on here is state versus action orientation. In simple terms, action-oriented people are those who  easily initiate action, while state-oriented people do not.

The reason state-oriented people do not is because their internal state fluctuates and gravitates toward negativity, and they don't know how to tolerate those fluctuations.

What action-oriented people know is that those feelings are just data. Learning to become more consistent and learning to follow through on your tasks isn't about making that discomfort go away. It's about learning why it shows up and the fact that it is always going to show up, and learning to acknowledge it and move past it anyway.

State-oriented people trust their immediate emotional state more than their lived experience. They depend on the question of “how do I feel” before acting, while action-oriented people know that it is just a symptom of approaching something new and outside of their comfort zone. They have built the regulatory skills that they can lean on to bring themselves back to center and move despite those feelings. 

Their past experiences are a benefit because they recognize the terrain, and know that even if they are feeling uncertain and stressed and fearful, that it doesn't dictate their ability to act, and that there's no actual threat at play.

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The next time you feel resistance towards something important this week, try to notice whether you’re using the level of resistance to determine whether or not you're capable of acting, or you’re consulting your past of experiencing that resistance as data on how to proceed. 

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If this challenges the way you've been thinking about your struggles with follow-through, I'm going to be starting a live webinar class soon to explore some of the biggest misconceptions people have about why they get stuck. It’s free to join, and may be your next step once you start putting some more pieces together. Sign up for the newsletter here to be the first to hear about sign-ups.

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The reason that these “wildly” productive people get more done and don't procrastinate isn't because they're not feeling the same things of uncertainty and fear and uncomfortability. It's because they stopped treating those experiences as whether or not they should continue.

Maybe they never treated them like that to begin with. Some people are born action-oriented, like people who just don't understand why you can't do it, while other people build the skills and become action-oriented, like I did.

Action-oriented people consult what they already know to be true. But when you're figuring this all out for the first time, that creates an entirely new problem. Because understanding is not the key to becoming action-oriented.

In fact, most of you reading are probably very self-aware, and it's caused more problems than solutions.

You know that you're procrastinating. You know that you should be doing it. You know that you are not letting yourself continue. You know that your feelings aren't reliable indicators of what you should be doing.

And yet you still can't start.

So if awareness of those feelings is part of the difference between state-oriented people and action-oriented people, then why isn’t awareness enough to create change? 

Until you understand the difference, you'll keep collecting explanations for your behavior without ever changing it. That's what we're unpacking in the next video (to be released 7/14, check back for the link).

And as always stay in this corner of the internet as long as you need.