How To Beat Procrastination Forever
the relevance integration framework (3 steps)
The second you realize procrastination is not a problem, but actually a symptom for something else entirely, is the same minute you’ll beat procrastination forever.
Procrastination is a relevance issue.
It’s actually a signal.
A signal that you’re doing poorly-defined work.
A signal that you’re working on the wrong goals.
A signal that your tasks are disconnected from the core vision of where you want your life to bring you.
Procrastination is not a discipline problem, but a relevance problem; you have all the discipline you need but you’re trying to force a square block into a circular hole.
And it’s not your fault.
Most people think procrastination means you lack willpower, you need better time management skills, and you need “more discipline.”
It’s all about time blocking your calendar and color-coding it for one hour each day, trying to balance every domain of your life equally.
The world is designed to make you think about “work” in terms of how long you work, and not what you inevitably end up producing. How long you spent doing an activity versus how many needles you managed to move (regardless of time spent).
Profound Idea: The only thing that matters when it comes to productivity is outcomes.
In the last few months, I’ve seen a lot of success with my newsletter.
Over 7.5k subscribers as of writing this, my YouTube channel at nearly 2.3k subscribers and closing in on getting my videos monetized too :) . My writing system finally feels good now after 6 months of daily iteration.
But I’ve also seen a lot of things go... backwards.
I’ve only been going to jiu-jitsu once per week. I’m still making great, high-quality progress, but I want to be going a lot more.
I haven’t been reading all that much anymore.
I’m not really checking my phone throughout the day (which is great) but I’m not consuming and researching as much as I used to, so I’m finding myself struggling to get ideas flowing each morning because I’m not learning new things in my evening times.
Profound Idea: If you are always addicted to output - newsletters written, videos made, outlines crafted - then you risk the chance of starving your levels of input. Everybody says you should create more than you consume, but nobody talks about the struggle to create when you don’t consume anything to fuel your creativity.
In sum, you need to make sure you are being productive in the right areas.
Because you do not need any more discipline.
Discipline feels easy once you develop better goal selection.
When you understand that procrastination is a signal and not a failure of your own behalf, you will finally stop fighting yourself.
Your brain isn’t broken, it’s just correctly identifying work you don’t fucking care about doing.
Let’s being, and discuss some profound ideas!
Your brain hates doing pointless shit
It’s actually like reading a book.
Your brain is hardwired to forget anything that’s not important with regards to your survival.
For example, if you think about everything you read in an isolated way (memorization-focused, no big picture integration) your brain won’t retain what you read. You will literally get bored as fuck.
The same thing applies to procrastination.
If the work doesn’t feel relevant to you, you will procrastinate.
And all of this is not a bug, but rather a feature of your own mind.
A feature that’s protecting you from wasting your energy.
Profound Idea: You brain is hardwired to avoid doing anything that feels pointless and this is why you procrastinate so much.
For the last few months, I’ve been trying to balance all my life domains equally.
Free newsletter, paid newsletter, digital product, YouTube video, Instagram posts, Substack notes, lifting, BJJ, reading, research, relationship, the lads, keeping my damn bedroom tidy.
And I wanted to succeed in each of them equally, but with half of them, I always felt resistance.
I always found it easy working on my newsletters, my YouTube videos, and lifting weights. But learning, BJJ, and building digital products always felt like a chore for some reason.
I can write a newsletter for 1-2 hours straight, but any interest in reading for 10 minutes and my mind wants to wander back to my newsletter. I can edit a YouTube video for 3 hours a day with no stress. But going to jiu-jitsu for one hour in the evening, even when all of my work for the day is done? Nope. I just want to do more editing work.
Why?
It’s because certain domains of work felt more relevant to me, while others didn’t.
When your work feels isolated from your vision - the ideal life you want to achieve in 3-10 years time - your brain won’t care to do it.
Writing my newsletters grows my audience, as does creating YouTube videos. Content creates traffic to my paid products. Lifting weights can be done at any time (usually after I write) and I often come up with my best ideas in the gym. These things feel integrated, and they all connect in amplifying one another.
Profound Idea: Interest is the best leverage you have in achieving anything you want in life.
My reading habit often feels pointless. As if I was reading just for the sake of reading (without realizing I should be reading to fuel my writing).
I have been doing very little research for my writing because I would rather spend time actually fucking writing (again, without realizing that research should be fueling my writing).
Going to jiu-jitsu feels harder because I’m not actively trying to fix mistakes on the mat. So, studying technique videos feels disconnected from my actual training.
Big difference between isolated and integrated thinking here.
Again, the difference:
Isolated
Reading for the sake of reading
Researching for the sake of simply knowing
Studying BJJ just to “get better” (whatever that even means!)
Integrated
Reading to spark new ideas for my writing
Researching for writing better newsletters, understanding new topics to write about, and building new things
Training jiu-jitsu to create new perspectives for my content and to test my own personal life philosophy
Connect, connect, connect.
I’ve said this enough talking about improving your reading skills and your learning practices, but the connection principle also applies to beating procrastination and getting the motivation to change your life for good.
Connecting everything you do to what interests you - your vision - will make your brain identify everything you connect as necessary for your survival.
Everything you do must feed one vision. If not, you brain will reject, reject, reject.
Profound Idea: Procrastination is not laziness, but rather it’s your brain correctly identifying pointless work. Your brain won’t do irrelevant work, and this is how it should be. Connection builds purpose, and purpose beats procrastination.
Learn to make connections, and how to integrate your domains of life, and you will build a purpose and prevent procrastination from ever stopping you.
This is why interest = leverage.
Once you understand the importance of connecting everything you do towards achieving a vision, now you must make sure you are doing productive work, and not just busy work.
Allow me to explain the key difference between being busy and being productive, because they’re not the same thing.
I’m also going to use a really fucking cool metaphor in doing this :)
You are built to hunt like a lion, not graze like a cow
We’d like to view the world as linear, which is, I’m gonna put in eight hours of work, I’m gonna get back eight hours of output, right? Doesn’t work that way. The guy running the corner grocery store is working just as hard or harder than you and me. How much output is he getting?… Outputs are non-linear based on the quality of the work that you put in. The right way to work is like a lion.
Naval
There’s a big difference between being busy and being productive.
And the difference is this:
needle-moving tasks with defined outcomes
busy work is for cows
You open your laptop to write.
Check your Substack stats. Scroll YouTube for ‘research.’ Watch a video for ‘inspiration.’ Then, three hours later you’ve written 200 words and feel exhausted.
Reflect on the last time you spent multiple hours “working,” and genuinely ask yourself how long you spent staring at a screen doing nothing, checking your phone, and what actual output you produced.
If you were like me in college I used to get 500 words written in 2 hours.
This is busy work.
This is what a cow does, it grazes all day without ever making measurable progress.
productive work is for lions
You need to hunt like a lion, not graze like a cow.
A lion is deadly specific. It identifies its target with absolute precision, the outcome it seeks to achieve. Then, it sprints. Using up all its energy. Absolute quality for short bursts, like training your muscles to failure in the gym; the same applies to the mind. Once you’ve made the kill, and achieved your outcome, it’s time to rest until tomorrow.
Charles Darwin worked for 2-4 hours per day and wrote 19 books and theorized the theory of evolution.
I repeat.
1 9 b o o k s.
With 2-4 hours per day of hunting like a lion.
For the past year, I’ve been experimenting with this system. I’ve used it every single day.
