Procrastination

Here’s an embarrassing fact about me:

I’ve always thought myself well-versed in everything technology-related. After all, I’ve gone through 6 years of a digitally focused university program (lots of information systems, systems architecture, and even AI stuff before it was cool).

And yet, for the life of me, I couldn’t figure out how to get my WordPress post tags and categories to look the way I wanted them to when I tried some months ago.

So I gave up on tagging and categorizing my emails (which I post to my blog whenever I send them out). Something that I was ok with back then, but recently got reminded of just how much of a waste that was. All those posts, ideas, and valuable pieces of content, just sitting there, not categorized, no reasonable way for anyone to look them up, and least of all no efficient way to repackage them or reuse them in any way, shape, or form.

Very much an enormous case of what Dan Kennedy called “unused capacity”.

I simply couldn’t keep on wasting all that content like it was nothing. And so, yesterday, gave it another go. And what do you know? I finally figured it out. I almost did so by accident and it was so unbelievably easy I can’t help but feel like my whole life and everything I thought of my ability was a lie.

Anyway.

Long story short, to make use of this I now have to tag and categorize every single email I’ve ever written—manually that is. I’ve looked for a way to automate this somehow. And while there are a few solutions to doing this, none of those do it in a way I like and would want to keep doing in the future.

(Yes I can be extremely stubborn in those situations)

So what am I left with?

A long list—604 to be precise—of emails and valuable pieces of content I have to re-read and manually sort into categories and tag them with keywords I find valuable.

Moral of the story?

If you have an idea you know is important, valuable, and will pay off in the future, don’t procrastinate (or give up altogether) on implementing it. You’re only giving yourself more work in the future when you finally get to it.

Now, this example might not mean much to you.

But another application for this lesson, which I have been doing from the very beginning, is to note down, categorize, and link important topics, people, places, animals, plants, or historic events in my world-building when it comes to fiction writing.

I’ve been doing so with a neat little tool called Obsidian.

It’s like creating your personal Wikipedia inside of a text editor, allowing you to highlight keywords, create separate notes for them, and go from note to note just by clicking on them (among many other extremely useful options I almost can’t live without when it comes to creative writing).

I don’t get paid a single cent to promote Obsidian.

This is a pure and honest recommendation for anyone still looking around for a place to call their home when it comes to writing software.

And while it might be a bit confusing to get it running and set up how you like, there are many great guides and tutorials—including from fellow published authors—about how to easily and efficiently use Obsidian.

Enough yapping.

Here’s the link: https://obsidian.md/

If you followed me back in my Twitter days, you might remember how long my hair used to be whenever I shared a picture or some video of me bouldering for example.

In case you don’t, you’ll just have to believe me for now.

In fact, I once let my sister straighten my hair with some sort of steam-powered hair straightener (I think she called it a steam pod but don’t ask me about that type of stuff, I know nothing about it at all). Anyway, I still have a picture of how I looked back then and I’m not joking when I say my hair was so long it went all the way to my nipples and beyond (you’re welcome for making you think about my nipples by the way).

That said, this was when my hair was at my longest—I also exclusively walked around with a low-hanging man bun at that time (strange times those years were).

As of late, my hair was quite a bit shorter, but still quite long for men's standards.

Anyway, that’s a lot of context just to make you understand the drastic difference when I tell you I completely shaved my head to the point of almost going bald (my mother would probably have gotten a heart attack if I did, in fact, go completely bald).

The running joke used to be that my everyday “style” was that of an intellectual hobo—whatever that looks like in your mind.

Nowadays, I’ve been told I resemble Justin Timberlake's appearance in the movie ‘In Time’.

A drastic change to say the least.

And yet, it took me no longer than a few hours to go “Oh that’s what I look like almost bald, alright that’s nice.” and roll with it as if nothing even happened.

But that’s not at all how the events leading up to me getting an incredibly short buzz cut went.

You see, while not that serious and somewhat half-jokingly, I’ve had the idea to get a buzz cut for probably over 6 months, potentially even longer than a year (I can’t remember when I first thought about it, but it’s been a while).

Whether it’s fear, uncertainty, doubt, or something else that kept me from doing so, I can’t actually tell (probably a combination of all of the above), but the most important part is realizing how much I ‘suffered’ (constantly thinking about it, doubting the decision, and never going through with it) and how much time I wasted that way.

And for what?

Worst case scenario, I don’t like it and it just grows back, no big deal really.

Now, this might just be a silly little story for you, however it’s about much more than just “some hair”.

In fact, I’m guessing that this story will hit close to home to you in some way, shape, or form. I can almost guarantee there’s been something in your life or something on your mind that you’ve been thinking about, wondering whether to go through with it or not. Something you have many, many doubts about, even though, when it comes down to it, relatively little bad can ever happen (especially considering nothing bad ever happens to a writer), and in most cases, something you’ll be immediately glad you did afterward, yet you’ve been making yourself suffer immensely for far too long.

Something else.

How often have you procrastinated doing a task you really didn’t want to do for days, weeks, or potentially even months, yet when you finally got to it didn’t take longer than 5 to 10 minutes to complete and be done with for good?

Yeah…

Nothing to feel bad about though. We’ve all been there. Nobody is special when it comes to these types of experiences. Sometimes it’s as if we’re all living the same lives just in different times and places.

If there’s one thing to take away from this email, it’s to just get on with it and shave your head, because who knows, you might really end up enjoying it…

Speaking of which, if you’ve been on the fence about building an email and writing daily emails that get you paid and keep your readers reading day after day (which I know many people are) then this might just be the one thing you needed to hear to get you going.

Even more.

Check out Email Valhalla here to shave your figurative head and learn everything there is to know about writing simple and entertaining daily emails just like this one.

For more information, click here: https://alexvandromme.com/valhalla/

Well, then here’s a fun fact for you:

So did the man, the father of modern-day fantasy and author of still the number one best-selling Epic Fantasy series of all time, the legend himself, JRR Tolkien.

In fact, his procrastination was so bad it often took him over six months to revise a particular scene or fix a certain plot hole (which his manuscripts were filled with—he was THE master of plot hole writing).

What about his perfectionism fueled by anxiety and insecurity?

Well, it took him TWENTY YEARS to “finish” Lord of The Rings after The Hobbit was released. I say “finished” because he wouldn’t stop tinkering with the damn thing and was basically forced to put it out there by his fellow colleagues.

It’s a miracle The Lord of The Rings got published at all.

Seriously.

Tolkien easily made over 50 revisions—each time rewriting the whole damn thing from scratch basically.

Even more.

If it wasn’t for C.S. Lewis, the author of the popular Narnia books, the Lord of The Rings as we know it today wouldn’t exist at all. Lewis was the person who convinced Tolkien to write about more than just “Hobbits sitting around talking to each other in the Shire all day” (which is what fascinated Tolkien the most).

You can read more about the story behind the Lord of The Rings, the writing, Tolkien’s inspirations, and C.S. Lewis’s contributions to the whole thing in the book “Bandersnatch”.

But I hope I could at least give you some sort of hope that you’re definitely not alone.

Writing is hard.

Any creative type of work is hard. It feels like you’re never finished, sometimes you absolutely despise your own work, but at the end of the day, none of it matters if you don’t get it finished and put it out there into the world for everyone to see.

Who knows, maybe you have a new best-selling series in your hands without even knowing it?

Or maybe you have your next best-converting sales letter or launch emails ready to go without even realizing it.

One way to learn how to write better sales emails (and actually get them out there) is by checking out Email Valhalla.

More information can be found here: https://alexvandromme.com/valhalla

Well, not literally of course.

See, I’ve previously spoken about “lighting a fire under your ass” and the benefits it brings.

In fact, I haven’t found any other way that’s better at effortlessly increasing your motivation, discipline, productivity, and everything else that goes along with it (including your enjoyment of the process) no matter what kind of work you do.

It’s like jumping out of an airplane and crafting yourself a self-made parachute while you’re falling.

Which sounds scary, and it can be, but it doesn’t have to be nearly as life-threatening or career-destroying as you might think (which, trust me, I know isn’t something you‘ll likely want to do)

No, instead, there’s a few methods you can use to light the proverbial fire under your ass to get you going and increase your productivity (and feeling of progression, aka, enjoyment) without risking your career to go to waste.

I use these methods all the times.

And I teach them to many of my students and clients alike, with great success.

In fact, one of these “strategies” is one of the foundations of the product creation framework I teach in “Product Creation Made Easy” where I teach people how to easily and effortlessly ideate, create, and launch digital products in 21 days or less.

And it works absolute miracles.

It works so well that even I, the self-proclaimed king of procrastination around town, am able to use it to actually get shit done on time.

So you better be sure that it’ll work for you as well.

Anyway.

If you’d like to learn more about this strategy, you can do so by checking out Product Creation Made Easy here: https://alexvandromme.com/product

I’m always working on something.

Whether it’s writing an email, reworking a sales page for the 10th time, crafting a new offer, batching social media content, working with clients, or updating a product I made a while ago.

This might look overwhelming to many people.

More.

Some might fall into the trap of working on their stuff indefinitely, trying to get it “just perfect”.

Yet this is the least productive task you could probably spend your time on.

That 100th revision won’t make the difference. That one typo you fixed in your 2,117-word email won’t make you more money. That logo you redesigned won’t magically land you more clients.

Creating more content, launching more offers, and talking to more people. Now that will make you more money.

Which brings the question: how do you handle saying to yourself “it’s good enough” and just go with it.

My answer?

Public deadlines.

See, I’m a big procrastinator.

Always have been and always will be. I never get anything done unless it’s absolutely necessary. This has put me in a lot of trouble in the past. But it didn’t need to.

I realized it last year that I could use this to my advantage.

How?

By setting deadlines.

Whether artificial or real—setting deadlines is the secret to getting things done. Especially for a procrastinator—they get extra productive when those deadlines come close.

So imagine I have to write an email that has to be published by 8pm.

There’s no way I’m procrastinating on that one when the clock strikes 7.30. Neither will I avoid researching a topic for a coaching call an hour before I’m supposed to hop on the call.

But there’s one problem.

What if there is no deadline?

Imagine if you wanted to launch your newsletter or create and sell a new product. It’s your own project. You don’t have a boss to tell you when something is due.

But you do have (potential) customers, readers, followers, or whatever you call the people who like your stuff.

The solution?

You announce that you’ll be launching a new product before you even start creating it. Tell your followers that your course will launch in 2 weeks. Even stronger. Announce that your product is available for early purchase at a discounted price.

Now you have no choice but to 1) create a sales page 2) write those promotional emails 3) create a curriculum 4) design your product 5) figure out your pricing and most importantly 6) get everything done in 2 weeks.

No time to mess around. No time to procrastinate. And no chance for you to “keep gathering information and not take action”.

Now I’m sure this might not be possible with everything in life.

But so far I’ve found a way to apply this trick to everything that’s functional and important in my life.

Try it out for yourself and see how much you can truly get done in a short amount of time.

On another note.

If you’d like to discover my framework for writing high-converting emails that keep your readers engaged and coming back each and every day, without having to spend hours writing them (in fact, you could easily start writing emails in less than 5–10 minutes), then check out Email Valhalla here: https://alexvandromme.com/valhalla

Here’s a weird observation I made recently:

The more responsibility I take on, aka the more stuff I have to do each and every day, the more work I get done each and every day.

Which, while reading it right now, you might think “uh, yeah, no shit Sherlock.”

But if you’d look at every productivity book out there or listen to any so-called productivity experts, you’ll always hear the same advice of only taking on a couple (2 or 3) of tasks each day, as to not to overwhelm you with the amount of stuff you have to do—for which the reasoning is, the more stuff you do, the more stress you have, the less stuff you get done, so you better take on less responsibility and make sure to only do the important stuff.

But that’s not at all what I found to be true in my own life.

In my experience, it goes something like this:

The less I have to do, the more time I have to do these things, the lazier I am, the less I do, and then because of that laziness I sometimes even procrastinate on those 2 or 3 important things I was supposed to do.

That’s something that, once again, never ever happened to me when I had a lot, some might even say way too much, stuff on my plate.

In that case, I knew there was no time to fuck around, no time to be lazy, and I’d get to work all day every day

Resulting in me getting ten times as much stuff throughout the day as I would otherwise.

Goes to show you to not blindly trust other people’s advice and test things out for yourself.

Anyway.

I thought this might be an interesting observation to share with you.

Speaking of which.

Another observation I made is that people who bought Email Valhalla have, on average, a much more successful business and write much better converting emails that make sales and keep their readers engaged and wanting more.

If you’d like to learn more about Email Valhalla, then click here now: https://alexvandromme.com/valhalla