530: My New 5 Step Anti-Procrastination Process

Dana K White: A Slob Comes Clean

Dana K. White promotes her upcoming book 'Procrastinators Get Stuff Done' while detailing a new five-step anti-procrastination process designed to help overwhelmed

Key takeaways

• Dana K. White releases 'Procrastinators Get Stuff Done' on Tuesday, October 6th, offering pre-order bonuses including an excerpt and four exclusive strategy sessions.
• The five-step anti-procrastination process consists of: look, do the easy stuff, noncommittal experimentation, make a plan, and finish.

Main topics

• Anti-procrastination process
• Book promotion and pre-orders

Notable quotes

I am not saying I'm going to do anything with what I see. I am not making any decisions right now. I am not taking any action other than pointing my eyeballs toward the thing that overwhelms me and just looking.

Conclusion

Listeners gain a practical, step-by-step framework to overcome procras

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) Hey y'all, my new book, Procrastinators Get Stuff Done, How to Go from Overwhelmed to Finished, will be out in the world in less than a week. It comes out on Tuesday, October 6th. Yes, October is already here. This is your last chance to pre-order. You can order any format from any retailer and then fill out the form at danakwhite.com slash procrastinate to claim your pre-order bonuses. You'll get an excerpt of the book, access to five exclusive podcast episodes, and an invitation. to a book club. We're going to meet and talk about the book for four weeks starting on October 13th. Go to danakwhite.com slash procrastinate to learn more. Welcome to A Slob Comes Clean, the podcast. I am Dana K. White. I share my personal deslobification process. As I figure out ways to keep my own home under control, I share the truth about cleaning and organizing and decluttering and procrastination strategies. that actually work in real life for real people, people who don't love cleaning and organizing or decluttering, but seem to love procrastination. I know this because I am one. Thanks for joining me today. This is podcast number 530, and I am calling it my new five-step anti-procrastination process. So y'all. I think it's October 1st as this comes out. And I'm sure you've noticed I have been pushing really, really hard to get you to pre-order my new book, Procrastinators Get Stuff Done. So I'm really proud of this book. I am really excited about the people who have pre-read it, who are on the launch team out there to share about it. People are... beating procrastination just from the book and many of them just from what they're doing, right? Like the book doesn't do anything other than give you tools. But they are beating procrastination, even people who haven't read the book yet, but they have watched the pre-order bonuses, which include an excerpt of the book and four exclusive podcasts, meaning the only way to get to watch, listen, read the transcript of these specific podcasts is to pre-order the book. And I have heard from so many people. Who have told me, well, I mean, I'm going to read. 2. Okay. But I have heard from a lot more, uh, people who have told me these watching these sessions, I have already beaten procrastination in areas where I had been completely stuck before. Okay. All right. So here's one of the, um, Things that someone sent me said, already watched the photographer and the quilter. Guess what my hobbies are? It's priceless to hear you work through the overwhelm together as it rears its head in real time and to see the hope that emerges from identifying and taking the smallest action as a true success. And it makes such a difference to my own mindset to know I share my challenges with a community of bright, creative, committed, and oh so hardworking people. Here's another one. I pre-ordered last week. The four pre-order bonus videos of you working with others using this procrastination method already have me making progress, even actually completing 401k rollovers and financial details I've avoided for years. And that's just from watching the videos and reading the first chapter. I'm actually stunned that this stuff is getting done by me. As usual, you come up with the simple and life-changing methods. So grateful. Okay, I've got to read one more. I'm already making progress after watching the pre-order bonus videos. I started putting up my fall decorations, prepared for children's ministry, kickoff party tomorrow, and completed several new policies and procedures for my company. I had been procrastinating all of these things. I also checked the status of my teaching certificate. I'm an SLP in Pennsylvania working on becoming a certified dyslexia specialist. I haven't worked in a school, so I figured I'd have to convert all of my SLP training hours to Act 48 hours to reactivate my teaching certificate, which is expensive and time-consuming. I've put it off for years. Turns out my certificate from 1997 is still valid and active, which I discovered just by looking. Thank you, Dana. Okay, so why am I pushing this so hard? Because the book comes out next week on Tuesday. So if you want to pre-order... And you've been like, oh, I'm totally going to do that. I mean, come on. I know I'm talking to procrastinators here. This is the time. If you want to get to watch those videos, this is the time. Go to DanaKWhite.com slash procrastinate. That's in the show notes for this podcast. We've got a direct link. If you go to my site up on the very top, there's an orange bar that says, hey, do you want to get this book? So that's how you get access to these exclusive. podcasts. You already like podcasts. You want more. I think you're really going to love those. And my goal in that was to let you start wrapping your brain around this process that I'm actually going to teach today over the course of this podcast. And then after the book comes out next week, we're going to start probably the following week with a book club where we meet once a week for a month for four weeks to discuss the book and that's going to be live. So if you can come live, great. The recordings will be there if you're not able to be there live and you'll have access to those recordings through the end of November. So I think my goal is to help you break through that feeling of being overwhelmed, which is the reason I'm going to give you my five-step anti-procrastination process in this podcast today. Speaker 1 (6:03) If you know me at all, you know that I don't hold things back for books. Now, this book is different because I don't talk about procrastination as the subject matter all the time, everywhere, the way that I do decluttering. So there are going to be things in this book that you're probably not going to get elsewhere, but it's not because I'm holding back from it. It's just because you're here to hear about decluttering. But decluttering and procrastination. are related. And the way that I developed this process I'm going to teach you today is through helping people. face overwhelming clutter using the strategies I had to develop for myself facing my own overwhelming clutter when I felt completely stuck. Like I could not get started. Facing that situation. Speaker 1 (6:55) And doing the very simplest things first, the easiest things first, and identifying which things I can do without expending emotional energy so that I can get started, move forward, and keep going until I've actually finished. So that's how I claim procrastination expert, is that I've helped you over the years deal with the situation that has happened in the house. usually due to procrastination clutter. Okay. And I've taken all that. And now this anti-procrastination process can be applied to any situation that overwhelms you. So let's start with step one. It's a five-step process. Step one, look. Speaker 1 (7:44) just look in my no mess decluttering process. The first step is look for trash. Speaker 1 (7:52) With clutter, there's always going to be trash. There's always going to be the possibility of trash. And so I tell you to look for trash. But remember that I always tell you that even if you don't find trash, you will. But even if you don't, even if you didn't find trash. Speaker 1 (8:08) you would still have done step one by looking for trash. Why? Because it takes you from, oh my goodness, this is a huge pile. I can't deal with this right now. Oh my goodness, this is going to be so hard to actively doing something, looking. Seeing individual items as opposed to a pile. And just the act of looking for trash gets you started and gets you ready to keep going with the next step. So how does this work in any other situation? Look. So many times, the reason we're procrastinating is we are imagining. Speaker 1 (8:55) what this situation is going to be that we're facing. Because of what we're imagining it's going to be, we're scared to even look, to even open the email, to even read the instructions, to even open up the cabinet and see what do I have that I could all go ahead and already start on this thing that I want to do or that I have to do. We're afraid. to do anything because it feels like it's going to be so big and so daunting. We are overwhelmed and stuck. So making look, step one, is intentional. Speaker 1 (9:44) The whole point is kind of how embarrassing it is for look to have to be a step. And like for myself, I have to tell myself, this is what I'm doing right now. I'm not saying I'm going to do anything with what I see. I am not making any decisions right now. I am not taking any action other than pointing my eyeballs toward the thing that overwhelms me and just looking. So I talked last week, or maybe it's been two weeks. I get a little confused about which podcast went when with my editor, Lisa Jo. And we talked about this. We talked about. This fear, which is funny because I was speaking with Cass who, Cass from Clutterbug, she's amazing, right? And we were talking about my new book and she's writing a book too. And she was like, she had gotten her edits back and she was scared to read through them. This is the most normal thing in the world. I'm scared to open the email. Why? Because I see the... title. Like, Hey, there's edits from a new editor. I was specifically talking about my book. Um, when he's pile of pillows, I talk about this in procrastinators, get stuff done that as I was writing this chapter about the power of looking, I got this email and I was like, I didn't know I had a new editor. I didn't know all these things. And it started to build in my mind, my brain. started to feel more overwhelmed because of what I was imagining might be in that email. And so the step. is to look. The noncommittal part of looking, meaning I'm not saying I'm going to look and take care of it. Instead, I am giving myself permission to say that may be all I do right now. And if I will look, if I will open that email, if I will open that cabinet, if I will open that drawer, if I will. Read the instructions. Speaker 1 (11:54) then that is success. Speaker 1 (11:59) I will have beaten procrastination because I will have gotten started. Because here's the thing. If I ever do respond to the email, if I ever do go in and dig into all the edits and make the changes that I'm imagining are going to be huge and difficult and all that, I will have to have looked, right? I can't do those things without looking. If you are wanting to declutter, you can't actually. Declutter the space without purposefully looking at what is in the space. So therefore, looking is a legitimate action. It also is the thing. calling it a legitimate action, calling it a legitimate step, part of the process. Speaker 1 (12:48) helps me as the person who's like, that's not a big enough thing to do. So many times when I face a daunting situation, I know some things I could do. Of course I do. But I think, no, those things, I'll do those things later because those are easy. Oh yeah, I could totally, yeah, obviously I'm gonna have to look at it. But right now I need to do the hard stuff. I need to figure it out. Well, I can't figure it out because I haven't actually looked. So counting look as a legitimate step of a process, which is the reason I'm giving you a process so that you can say, hey, this lady wrote this book. Speaker 1 (13:25) And her decluttering stuff makes sense to me. So I'm going to try this book too. And she has look as a step. So that's like legitimate looking. I have heard from so many people over the years who told me the same thing that has happened to me, which is the same thing that happened with clutter. When I said, I can't do this. I am so overwhelmed. I'm completely stuck. I can't even get started. And I gave myself permission to just open it up and look at it. Something happened in my brain. And then I hear from others who tell me, I was so overwhelmed at the thought of this huge daunting task for work that I had to do. And I told myself, I'm just going to open the email and read it with no pressure. Now I have to actively shake off the pressure, but no pressure to actually do anything with it. I'm succeeding just by reading the email. What happens is the same thing that happens with decluttering where My brain starts to adjust because I've read it. I've been successful. I'm viewing this daunting thing from a perspective of actual success because I have achieved, I have completed step one of looking. I step away and this thing that used to be growing as more and more overwhelming in my brain is now so much less overwhelming and starts to become even less overwhelming because I know what it is that I'm facing. So step one. is look. Now this is different than research. I know we as procrastinators love the idea of research. I just need to do a little more research. We do a little more research. Looking is looking at the actual situation in front of me, not at all the possibilities, but what am I really dealing with? Okay. I'm going to give an example. Let's say you want to start walking 10,000 steps a day. Now I know. that as soon as I say that, some of y'all are thinking, I saw, I saw reels. I saw something about how somebody just picked that number out of nowhere and that that's not actually the number and that everybody has a different number and blah, blah, blah. And that we shouldn't be so obsessed with 10,000. that's research. What does that do? It causes me to spin out, right? Like I can do that. So instead of saying, well, let me figure out if this is even a worthy thing. I can go, you know what? I, I'm just picked that number because it's a number that I've heard and I know I need to start walking more. So look is not going and trying to find articles on this. That's research. Instead, look is going. and seeing what shoes I've got that I could wear to walk. Look is finding my clean socks. Speaker 1 (16:13) Look is walking out my front door and seeing, okay, where could I start walking? Look might be to drive around my block because I don't have a pedometer. I don't have this. This is what we did back in the seventies. I remember it with my parents driving around the block to see, okay, once around this block is a little bit over half a mile. That means two times around the block is a mile. Okay. That is looking, it's