Next Level University

#1661 - Can Procrastination Be Good?

• Kevin Palmieri and Alan Lazaros

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Have you ever felt overwhelmed by your to-do list? In this episode, Kevin Palmieri and Alan Lazaros discuss how our world always pushes us to do more and do it faster. However, they introduce a counterintuitive concept: slowing down can propel us forward. It’s not about the quantity of tasks completed but the quality of the functions we focus on. This shift in perspective can lead to a more meaningful and productive life, offering a new way to approach our daily responsibilities.

Links mentioned:
Next Level Group Coaching - https://www.nextleveluniverse.com/group-coaching/
Group14 starts on April 9th, 2024; Discount Code for NLGC (30% off): NLULISTENER
Next Level Monthly Meet-up - https://www.nextleveluniverse.com/monthly-meetups/

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NLU is more than just a podcast; we have many more resources to help you achieve your goals and dreams.

For more information, please check out our website at the link below. 👇

Website 💻  http://www.nextleveluniverse.com

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Next Level U Book Club - https://www.nextleveluniverse.com/next-level-book-club/
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Alan: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alanlazarosllc/

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Show notes:
(2:09) It brings more clarity to what’s important
(4:18) Two types of procrastination
(6:53) E.A.D.P. - Focus filter
(13:21) Meet like-minded people and jumpstart your journey to achieving your dreams while optimizing your life. Join Next Level Group Coaching. https://www.nextleveluniverse.com/group-coaching/ 
(14:57) ‘What if’ factor
(17:31) Productive procrastination
(22:03) Developing self-worth and time management
(27:44) Outro

Send a text to Kevin and Alan!

🎙️ Hosted by Kevin Palmieri and Alan Lazaros

Next Level University is a top-ranked daily podcast for dream chasers and self-improvement lovers. With over 2,100 episodes, we help you level up in life, love, health, and wealth one day at a time. Subscribe for real, honest, no-fluff growth every single day.

Speaker 1

Next Level Nation. Welcome back to another episode of Next Level University where we help you level up your life, your love, your health and your wealth. We hope you enjoyed yesterday's episode, episode number 1,660, a reason some of us are afraid of success. Today, for episode number 1,661, can procrastination be good? 1961, can procrastination be good? One of the keys to my long-term quote-unquote success is to-do lists. Alan taught me that very early on in this journey.

Speaker 2

To-do lists are the way.

Speaker 1

To-do lists are the way. I know not everybody likes to-do lists. I know it can feel restrictive, it can feel overwhelming, it can feel boring. I understand that. It can feel all those ways.

Speaker 1

But one of the beautiful things about having to-do lists, checklists, whatever it is is you make a bunch of stuff or you get a bunch of stuff, you write it down and eventually it might get to the place where you say, hmm, I should really send that email. Well, you know what? I'm not going to send that email today, I'll wait till tomorrow. And then tomorrow comes and you say, man, I should really send that email today. And you say you know what? I'm going to wait till tomorrow. There's something that's more important. And eventually it might get to the place where you realize that you don't want to send that email at all. I've had so many times where there's something on my to-do list for a week and then that week turns into a month, and that month turns into two months, and then it turns into three, and then it turns into six, and then it gets to the place where I say, you know what, obviously it's not that important, because I haven't done it in six months and nothing has changed, it's not really that important. And then I just get rid of it off my to-do list Rather than saying, well, these are the 15 things that must get done today.

Speaker 1

Sometimes procrastination if it's productive can actually be a good thing, because you're figuring out what's important in real time and it's almost like what's a really good way to look at it. Let's say you're grocery shopping and you say, well, you know what a really good way to look at it. Let's say you're grocery shopping and you say, well, you know what, I really should get this. No, wait, I'll get that next time. And the next time comes and you say, yeah, I should really get this. Well, I'll get it next time. If you haven't bought the thing in six months, you probably don't need the thing that much, and that's how something that was once procrastinated ends up being something that you just don't do anymore. So that's kind of the jam that we're going to talk about today. Can procrastination be good? Yeah, as long as it's not something that's super, super important. And when you procrastinate, it actually brings more clarity to what is important around that thing ultimately, I sent Kev a TED Talk on productivity recently by a man named Rory Vaden.

Speaker 2

How to Multiply your Time is the name of the TED Talk. If you want to look it up, it's a famous one how to Multiply your Time by Rory Vaden, r-o-r-y-v-a-d-e-n, and it has this idea of there's two types of procrastination. The one type of procrastination is the one that everyone thinks is the killer of all success. It's the. It's the I don't want to go to the gym, so I'm not going to go to the gym, even though the gym is really important and I want results. So that's the bad kind of procrastination. The procrastination where something is important, something is urgent, something is significant and I don't feel like doing it, so I'm going to, I'm going to not do it. That's not what we're talking about today. That type of procrastination is not good and you do have to inject self-discipline, inject self-belief, find a way to get it done. The type of procrastination we're talking about is the thing that Kevin mentioned, which is I'm not sure this is even necessary. I'm not sure this is that important, I'm not sure this is that urgent, I'm not sure this is that significant.

Speaker 2

And in the TED talk he talks about those three sort of parameters. He calls it 3D productivity, which is three-dimensional productivity. So the three questions are this is this urgent? Urgent means how timely is it? So one of the reasons why Next Level Live is challenging is because everything that has to do with the event in the weeks coming up to the event, that's the most important, most no, not most important most urgent thing. So, all of a sudden, peak week is what we call it. During the week of Next Level Live, everything else falls to the back burner Because the most urgent thing is Next Level Live. That's why it can be so challenging when you get a new pet or you have a baby or you buy a house I've never had a baby but when you first move, everything that has to do with the move or the house, setting up the house.

Speaker 2

I told Amelia this because we're going to be getting another house next year. We're going to sell this one, one, to be getting another house next year. We're going to sell this one. One thing I'm concerned with is we just spent the last two years setting this house up for success and that's been a hell of a process. Honestly, behind the scenes, and when we move, that's a whole thing, and then setting the next house up, getting the office set up, getting her office set up, getting the studios set up, making sure that everything's set up in the kitchen and we know where everything goes. That's going to be a whole learning curve.

Speaker 2

And so, whether it's moving, having a kid, getting a pet, things that normally aren't urgent all of a sudden are super, super urgent and they get in the way of the things that you want to be consistent at. And so the other thing I want to mention I told Kev this is my kind of episode. I love productivity. If you ever are curious, please reach out. I love this stuff.

Speaker 2

But the four questions that I try to ask myself and this is from the TED talk as well it's called a focus filter. I think he calls it a focus funnel, emilia and I call it a focus filter, and we have it written on our whiteboard downstairs EADP, edip Not the best acronym, edip E stands for eliminate. So let's say you have a task. What's a task? Pull up my Dreamliner. Okay, full monthly meetup promo is the number one most important task on my MIT list. Okay, let's go through the focus filter number one. Can I eliminate this? The answer is no, unless I want no one to know about our meetup on thursday. So no, I can't eliminate that I could.

Speaker 1

But speaking of. We have a meetup tomorrow. If you're listening to this, yeah, yeah on self-worth tomorrow, yeah, today's wednesday, today's episode is wednesday. Today's episode is wednesday oh my god.

Speaker 2

Yeah, that's right. Yeah, got it. Okay. So we have a meetup tomorrow. My bad, okay. Can I eliminate this? No, can I automate this. Is there a way to get this automated? Like what's a good example, I was telling kev about how emilia and I bought these feeders, mostly em Emilia.

Speaker 2

Emilia is the automation queen. She automates everything she can to save her time. So we have these three feeders for Tucker Tilly and Tigo Tucker Tilly, tao, our two cats, and dog. We have to feed these. We have to fill these feeders once per week and they, at 7.15. Every day they go off and the cats go eat and Tucker eats and it's all good. So we only have to fill them once a week. So it's that's called batching, um, so can I automate this with the monthly meetup? The answer is no.

Speaker 2

Now the third one is can I delegate this? So maybe hire landscapers instead of doing it yourself. Maybe hire painters instead of doing it yourself when we painted the deck. That kind of thing delegation is. Can I pay someone else to do it instead of me doing it?

Speaker 2

Now, delegation's dangerous and here's why I often joke with my clients. Don't delegate a task and then like, go to the beach, because that's not going to save you money. It actually does save you money if you can delegate a task while also working, and so we live in a specialized world. So I'll go briefly with this. But let's say my most profitable activity is speaking. Let's say I'm a speaker, okay, and I have a speech for $5,000. If I focus on that speech and make $5,000 while I pay someone else to do the landscaping, I'm actually making more money, but that's presupposing I actually have a speech for $5,000, and that's where it gets a little wonky.

Speaker 2

So the first one is how can I eliminate this? Second one is how can I automate this? Third one is how can I delegate this? That's the E-A-D. And the last one is is P, and that's the point of this episode, which is can I procrastinate this? I have a rolling back burner of MITs on my phone. I use Google Tasks on my phone and it's called rolling back burner. Surprise ending. And I have. I mean, I just scrolled. I probably have 50 things on here. Now, why do I keep a rolling back burner? Because every now and then I'll look at this. If I ever have any free time, which is very rare, I'll look at this, like if I ever don't know what to do.

Speaker 2

So let's give an example Amazon affiliate program for book club. We have a book club and everybody buys their book. Every time we have a new book, we have a new book coming up and we wanted to create an Amazon affiliate program where, if you go to our website, you can buy the book through our website on Amazon and then Amazon will give us a percentage in the business. It's just extra passive income. Why not? It's a referral program. I just haven't set it up yet.

Speaker 2

So I've been procrastinating that for probably however long. Book club's been around three or four years. Now here's the thing why didn't I take it off the list? Can I eliminate it? I can, I don't want to. Can I automate it? Yes, but it takes a long time to set up, and by long time I mean a couple hours. Can I delegate it? Yes, probably Okay, and then can I procrastinate it. I've been doing that for about four years Now.

Speaker 2

The focus filter the cool part is what I should do is bring that thing back to the top. So if you do procrastinate something and that's the point that Rory was making in the TED Talk is, bring it back to the top of the funnel, so you'll notice things like what's a good example? So our YouTube? Right now, if you are on YouTube, you can look at our banner. Our banner and our icon are actually old branding still, which does bother me. By the way, fyi, you're the producer of the show. Please change it. But at the end of the day, he has other, more important things to do, and that's why I think it's so important to understand this procrastination piece, because all day, every day I don't know if this is a unique to me thing, it might be I just see things that need to improve all day, every day. It's just this needs to like all the time, but you can't improve everything all at once.

Speaker 2

You have to improve everything little by little by little. Now here's the question Am I going to go set up Amazon affiliate program for book club versus going to the gym today? That's a terrible idea. Exercise and health is more important than Amazon affiliate program, and so you have to. And this is the very last piece of this is you have to filter it through your core values.

Speaker 2

If you spent the weekend with your family this past weekend and family is your number one core value, then obviously you shouldn't spend Easter weekend or whatever. If you celebrate it or not, we don't personally but if you celebrate Easter weekend and you value that, that's your prerogative. You should not be at home setting up Amazon affiliate program while you should be with your family. And so a lot of people feel bad constantly that they're not doing the things they quote unquote should do, when in reality they're not aligned anyway. And so hopefully this is very permission giving for people, because there is no fairytale candy land thing where you go to bed where you got everything done. That doesn't exist. And I would love to hear from you, Kev, because as a business owner for the last seven years, you know for a fact. You've never had your head hit that pillow, having gotten everything done. There's no such thing.

Speaker 1

No, no. And I think that requires it requires courage to be okay with that. It requires courage to have something on your list and say, alright, I'm going to get rid of this and it's just going to be gone Forever. I had an idea one time it was going to be called RateMyCoachcom. Remember that, yeah.

Speaker 1

You and I were talking about something. You were like, yeah, there's RateMyProfessorcom, where in college you can rate your professor and everybody can look at it and say, oh, this is an awesome professor, I want to take this class. And I said what if we did that for coaching? There's so many coaches out there who aren't good coaches, or there's so many coaches out there who are really good that nobody knows about. What if we did that? And that was on my to-do list for like a year or a couple years.

Speaker 1

And then I got to the point where I was like this doesn't make sense anymore. It was a cool idea at the time. If you want it, take it. Ratemycoachcom I don't even know. Beauty of it is other things. Now it's like I want to create a Facebook group for Podcast Growth University. That is very high on the top of my list, but that'll get procrastinated for the next couple months, most likely because there's other things that I'm focused on. But it does take courage to see something on that list and say, yeah, this has been on here for like eight months. It's just like the clothes in the closet. That's one of the reasons it's super hard to donate clothes or whatever it is, throw away clothes that are wrecked and you're never going to wear again is because it's the what if factor. Well, what if I need this?

Speaker 2

You haven't needed it Every now and then two months later you're like, oh, I really wish I had that shirt. It's fair, that happens. Yeah, it does.

Speaker 1

It does, it's bound to happen, it does.

Speaker 2

I throw out a bunch of not throw out. They're in our garage still, luckily, this shaker cup that I'm using for my protein shake. I clean the cupboards out all the time. Em, I'm really good at eliminate, she's really good at automate, so I like to get rid of stuff. Kev, you know that.

Speaker 2

Just get rid of it, get rid of it, donate it, donate it, donate it. We got rid of most of the cups in our cupboard one time and not three weeks later. I was like, oh you know, I really should start doing protein shakes in the morning.

Speaker 1

And then I'm like seven of them and Taryn said do you need seven of these? And I said, well, I might. And then we had a conversation and we got rid of because a lot of them were junk and they were leaking and they were years and years old.

Speaker 1

So now I think I have like two. Nice. But I think that's the beauty of it is, as you change and as things around you change, your priorities can change too. Something that might seem super important right now might not be important at all in six months. Something that doesn't seem important at all right now and it's just like ah, whatever, it'll get done when it gets done. It might next week, it might need to get done. You just don't. You just don't know. But I think it's really important to have a list of stuff, because I'm the type of person I say this all the time to myself. I'll remember that you have a really good idea. Okay, let me connect it to another thought. I'll remember that. And then I wake up the next day and it's like what was that again?

Speaker 1

I don't remember anything. If I wrote that down somewhere, then at least I'd have the opportunity to look at the next, to look at it the next day. But I guess my memory is not as good as I would like it to be.

Speaker 2

So yeah, and that brings us to the next level Dreamliner.

Speaker 1

Yes, where you?

Speaker 2

can write down all of your most important tasks. Yes, you can Continue. I interrupt, no, no you're good, you're good.

Speaker 1

It's very rare that when I finish I don't want to say everything done, because it depends. It depends on what you quantify as everything. If you have a list of 15 things to get done and you get 15 things done, you might say I got everything done, but in theory, another 15 things should go on the list when you get those 15 things done.

Speaker 2

Yeah, there is no end state.

Speaker 1

Right, yeah, yeah, you can always accomplish more.

Speaker 2

That's one of the hardest things in the world, brother. The thing in the 21st century that I think bothers people so much and why we're all filled with so much anxiety and struggle, is there's so much opportunity, there's so much you can do. I mean, there's a reason my to-do list has 50 things on there, and that's me being very discerning. I comb that list all the time. I combed that list two days ago. I got rid of 13, 14 things off there and every one of those took courage to delete. Or every now and then, and I know everyone knows this feeling it's like oh, I did that Nice, Ooh, that got done.

Speaker 2

Oh, I don't even have to do that anymore. Sometimes things just get done, you know.

Speaker 1

That's the beauty of it. Yeah, it's real nice.

Speaker 2

That's the beauty of it so, for example, I wanted to text so emilia's sister, ella. She came to next level live and I wanted to text her and say thank you for coming. Ended up going to lunch with her. She I didn't even know she was going to lunch. We went to her parents my mom, and she was there, I was like, oh good, I already thanked her in person, done deal, check it off the list, right? So that feels good too.

Speaker 2

So sometimes when you procrastinate, things actually end up getting done as well. And so, kev little side tangent, here you had the rate, my coach rate, my coachcom idea. I remember that. That was years ago, four years ago, something like that, five years ago no, probably like three probably in the studio days we had a studio.

Speaker 1

I think that conversation was in the studio right, I don't know, I don't, I don't know. I just remember seeing it on my on my to-do list I think that came out of a conversation.

Speaker 2

So before campus libre. So for context, for those who don't know, my very first company was called campus libre. It was a campus specific textbook uh, campus specific craigslist for textbooks and I me and three college friends of mine started the company together. I was the chief marketing officer, ceo, cto, all stuff um we had. We were profitable out of the gate. We had a website. It was really quite awesome, honestly, and we won a bunch of business awards. A bunch won a couple, we won a couple of business awards. And it was before that it an idea.

Speaker 2

When I first pitched that idea, before we decided to do the Campus Libre thing, I went to lunch. I remember I was working at iRobot at the time and I went to lunch with one of my business partners at the time. His name's Manu and I remember I had a whole slide deck printed out for the lunch. Now I know I don't have any friends, so I pull it up to him, I show him and it was rate my landlordcom, because back in college I didn't like our landlord and he wasn't terrible but he wasn't good and I figured you know what it would.

Speaker 2

It would hold landlords really accountable, particularly in these college areas too, because some of these places you don't have to take care of your place at all for the tenants because the demand is so high, and so we paid a decent amount of money, and again for a not so nice place, but the location was everything because it's right next to campus and so, anyways, that's where that started Interesting. Yeah, so RateMyProfessorcom was something I used in college to make sure that I didn't get the ridiculously hard do extra work all day, every day type of thing. Back in my party days, nothing could get in the way of a good party right, and then I used I wanted ratemylandlordcom, and then fast forward years and years and years later, kevin considered ratemycoachcom.

Speaker 1

So I don't know.

Speaker 2

It's just a cool little thing of none of them ever happened but, if you want three good ideas but there you go.

Speaker 1

Who knows, we might have rate my podcast I. Who knows what will happen in the future? That's the thing you never know. You never know, if something gets procrastinated long enough, it might evolve into something different, something better, into something different, something better, something more aligned, something more powerful, valuable, whatever.

Speaker 2

Last. Thing.

Speaker 1

Yeah.

Speaker 2

After Next Level Live we talked to the NLU team. Kevin and I talked first and we were like dude. So the, the car that Emilie and I have is it has a chill mode. It's a Tesla, it has a chill mode and it has a sport mode. And the sport mode is super fast. And I don't like driving fast. I'm not a, I don't like that at all, I don't like fast cars, but anyways. So I always put it in chill mode Always. And I told Kev, I said we need to put some of these departments in chill mode, man, because we're going to burn out Me, I'm going to burn out and so we are purposely putting.

Speaker 2

We changed it to coast mode and growth mode at NLU, so it's green, yellow. We put some of our departments in coast mode and it's kind of like procrastinating a little bit on those departments For now. For now I don't want to get rid of them. They're still going to be valuable in the future and that's the problem. We don't. It's all or nothing thinking, it's I have to get rid of this completely or I have to do it now. That's not the way the world works. That's not helpful. It can be very detrimental.

Speaker 2

So to sum up here my next level lesson. No one hits their head at night feeling fully accomplished. There's no such thing. No one gets a 100% day because even if you get to 100%, you always could have done a little bit more. So give yourself the permission slip to decide in advance, and that's why I love the Dreamliner. I do it first thing. When I wake up, it says three MITs, not 50, not 40, not 100, not 10, three. And then if I do get those three done, amongst the other things I'm doing, I just add another three and it makes it manageable, so you're not constantly overwhelmed by all the stuff. And my next level lesson is EDIP Eliminate, automate, delegate, procrastinate. And the very last thing I'll say. I told Kevin this before the episode. I'm so excited to do this one.

Speaker 2

Every one of us gets spam emails. We all do, and we don't want to take the time to unsubscribe. But if you unsubscribe once or put it, mark it as spam, you save a bunch of time in the future. So there's urgent. How quickly do I have to do this? There's important. How important is this? Which is how much does this matter toward my goals and dreams? And then the third one is how significant is this, which is how long is this? Which is how much does this matter toward my goals and dreams? And then the third one is how significant is this, which is how long is this going to matter? So, if I unsubscribe from one email and take those five minutes now I'm going to save 30 seconds, 30 seconds, 30 seconds, 30 seconds and within a month I saved my five minutes. I've already gotten a return on my investment of time. So hopefully that's a good example. Or Instagram blocking people, whatever. So hopefully that's a good example. Or Instagram blocking people, whatever.

Speaker 1

So protect your time. Protect your time Mine would be. It takes courage to say you know what, I'm not going to do this now because it's not the most valuable thing to do. Again, that's the point of this, right, if you're procrastinating things that are the most valuable, you're probably Jeffing, but if you're procrastinating things that just don't matter that much right now, it takes courage to do that. But I think over time it gets easier and easier, because you don't have negative it's not negative feedback. It's not negative feedback of okay, I procrastinated that and then everything went off the rails. That's my next level nugget. Alan's going to call it next level lesson. I'm going to call it next level nugget, just so if you hear us talking about two different things. That is why.

Speaker 2

And here's the cool part you get to choose. You get to choose. Choose whichever one you like better, I like next level nugget son. Well, now we've got to figure out which one to from the listeners. Okay, Because, at the bottom of the Dreamliner it says next level nugget currently.

Speaker 1

I like that Okay. I feel like a nugget is 1%. It's little, lesson's heavy. For today's lesson we're going to learn. You know what I mean. No, no, I don't want to learn a lesson, I want to learn a nugget. Give me a nugget, all right listeners.

Speaker 2

let us know, yes, let us know.

Speaker 1

We got to go because I have a coaching call. If you have not signed up for group coaching and you are interested in doing so, it starts in six days, so today's Wednesday If you're listening to this on Wednesday it starts next Tuesday at 6 pm Eastern Standard Time. Use promo code NLULISTENER for 30% off and ends up being $96.60 per month, and you get four calls per month, so it ends up being like $25 a call Super, super affordable, and it is designed that way so it's sustainable for you wherever you are financially. And then we also, as we mentioned, we have a meetup tomorrow. What is it? Five Ways to Build Self-Worth.

Speaker 2

Self-Worth. Yeah, Our listeners I don't want to project, but our listeners, our community tends to have struggled with self-worth, Kevin and myself included. Yes, we learned how to build it and we want to help teach you that as well. It's the two most important things in NLU beliefs, what we believe Number one, self-belief. Number two, self-worth. So half of the equation of your future bigger, better, brighter future, I think is self-worth. I would concur.

Speaker 1

I would concur with that. Tomorrow for episode number 1,662, doubling down on your strengths or working on your weaknesses? I get asked that question often on podcasts. If you're very good at something, should you just get better at it, or should you work on the weaknesses, potentially the room for improvements that you have? So we're going to talk about that for tomorrow's episode. As always, we love you, we appreciate you, grateful for each and every one of you, and at NLU we don't have fans, we have family. We will talk to you all tomorrow. Keep up the edip.

Speaker 2

Thanks, Elvenage.

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Alan Lazaros

Host
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Kevin Palmieri

Host