Mastering The Fine Art Of Procrastination

If you’ve ever thought that procrastinating was bad…listen to this now.

In this episode Russell talks about mastering the fine art of procrastination. He talks about how procrastinating can actually help you get things done faster.

Here are some fun things to listen for in today’s episode:

• Why Russell says it’s okay to procrastinate.
• How Russell used his procrastination skills to graduate from college.
• And why procrastinating means you have pressure and a timeline that forces you to get things done quickly, and as long as you do it the right way, its an awesome tool.

So listen below to find out how you can be an expert procrastinator like Russell.

---Transcript---

Good morning everybody and welcome to marketing your car. All right, so the title of this podcast is one that I think is going to get met with some opposition, so it’s Mastering the Fine Art of Procrastination. We’ve always been told throughout our lives that we shouldn’t be procrastinating, like, “Don’t procrastinate. Don’t procrastinate.” We should be planning ahead and preparing and all these things. I agree to that to a point, but I also think that procrastination, if done correctly, will increase your productivity and help you to focus on just those things that are actually important. That is the title of this podcast.

One of the reasons why is, in about 6 hours from now I am boarding a plane to fly on a weeklong trip to New Zealand, Australia, and then Phoenix. It was funny because I had people on Friday at the office like, “Hey, so you started packing yet?” I’m like, “No.” They’re like, “Oh, ho, ho, like you’re probably going to wait until Sunday to pack huh?” I’m like, “No, I’m going to wait until Monday to pack. I’m not leaving until Monday.” Some of you guys are probably thinking, “You probably packed this morning before you head into the office, right Russell?” I’m like, “No! My flight doesn’t leave for 6 hours, why would I start packing right now?”

Okay, there’s some law, and I don’t know who’s the law is, Parato or some dude, I don’t think its Prato though, some dude. He’s got a law that basically says, “However much time you have to complete something, somehow magically, you will fill all that time up.” This is the problem with planners, they will say, “Hey, I’m leaving on a trip in a month,” and so for an entire month they will start packing. They waste so much time and energy and effort on the packing process that somehow they fill up the entire time with packing, and then they’ve wasted all that time. I want to do the opposite. I know that to pack, if I focus really, really hard, I’m looking at maybe 30 minutes. If I started packing on Friday, I’m looking at like probably 30-40 minutes on Friday and 30-40 minutes on Saturday, and 30-40 minutes on Sunday. Then today is when I’m actually flying out, I’m going to sit down and spend another 30 minutes making sure I have everything, right.

I could have just done that once, but because I was planning I felt this desire to fill up space and time with all this crap that doesn’t even matter. This is probably why I struggled at school because it was always my philosophy in school where in school I think there’s … I think it is good to study a head of time, I probably would have remembered things better if I did. I did graduate from college, so my mom is proud of that. This is what I did. This is how I graduated college. All the entire semester long I would focus on wrestling and on dating girls and then we’d have final week. My first year was at BYU and they have this really cool thing called the testing center, and you could schedule out your finals any day you want. I’d like, Monday is my math final, Tuesday is science, Wednesday is whatever and I would take the final at the very end of the day.

What I would do is on those days I’d wake up at like 6:00 in the morning, I would go down in the basement of my dorms and there was these little tiny room, and I’d lock myself in the room, I’d read the entire book in a day. Then I would go in and take the test. While all this cool stuff was on the top of my head, I would take the test and then 3 minutes later it was gone. I just deleted it, didn’t need it anymore. Boom, gone and I graduated that way. Okay. Again, I say that with a caveat knowing that had I been trying to learn something that I needed to know, that’s not the right way to do it, but to pass a test that is the right way to do it. Now, I could have studied for the entire semester and wasted who knows how many hours, where instead I was wrestling and focusing on girls where I think college, most people’s minds should be.

I don’t know, that’s maybe my opinion, maybe it’s misguided, but I think it’s true. One of my friends the other day came over to the wrestling at the wrestling room and he was talking about cutting weight. He cuts weight over a 2-3 week period of time, which I think is insane, because now for 2 or 3 weeks your body is going through this stress and this pain and this anxiety and all of the mental things that come with not eating. When I cut weight, I was losing 20-25 pounds every single week, week in and week out for an entire college and high school career. At first, I would spend a week trying to cut weight and when I found out I was miserable and angry and hungry and thirsty for a week. I figured out that if I wait 24 hours from match, start my weight cutting, I would kill myself for 24 hours and it sucked. It was so much pain. I was thirsty. I was hungry. I was tired. I was angry, but I only felt those feelings for 24 hours as opposed to an entire week. Then when I got on the mat, I’d eat and I was back to normal and I could compete because for an entire week I felt good. I felt strong. I felt energy. I felt amazing.

For me, I think that there is a place and a time for procrastination. I think a lot of you guys plan so much that nothing ever gets done. I would say stop planning, figure out the least possible time it’s going to take to do something, set a launch date and go because when you do that … It’s interesting, when we launched ClickFunnels or any of the things that we’ve rolled out, anything in the last, man, 12 years of doing this, we always pick a date, like this is our launch date. For us, we send out packages to our joint venture partners. We’re letting the world know so that that way that date is hard coded, you can’t change it even if you wanted to. That’s step 1. Now that date’s hard coded and I don’t push it out 6 months, I push it out 3 weeks so that I have this pressure, this timeline that makes me get things done.

It’s funny, we’ve had launches where we push things out 3 months, and then like 3 weeks, and then 3 days, and somehow magically everything gets done no matter what. I’m like, “How come this one took 3 days instead of 3 months?” That’s because I allowed 3 months for it. Somehow you are able to fill up time with all this crap because the time is there. Again, that’s that one dudes law, some old dude, I think he’s dead now. That was his law, however much time you have, you’re going to fill it up with crap. If you understand how to master procrastination, use it as a tool, you can reverse engineer how much time you think it actually is going to take, set the hard deadline, and then just do those things you have to get done.

It’s funny, in every one of our launches, we get down to crunch time, it’s an hour before launch and we start cutting things, “Hey, can’t get that done. Can’t get that done. Can’t get that done.” Boom, and then we end up with the minimum viable product that we need to actually make money, and wow, holy cow, we actually make money. Where otherwise, if I had have pushed that out 6 months, we keep adding things, and changing things, and tweaking things, and modifying things and waiting for it to be perfect and we never make any money. What I’m doing for you guys is twofold, one is I’m giving you guys the a-okay that it’s okay to procrastinate because I know that for your entire life you’ve been told that it’s a bad, evil, horrible thing. That’s gift number one.

Number two is you only are allowed to have that gift if you use it correctly because if you do use it correctly, you will be able to leverage it to get so much more stuff done. In fact, one of my major projects for my personal self is to start mastering procrastination on a daily basis. Right now, I go into the office and I work 8 hours a day because that’s how people do it and you go in there and you work all day. I just do that because … It’s funny because I always have stuff to do, I never run out. I’m not like the typical … Anyway, I won’t make fun of employees, but typical employees who come in and they work, they hang out, they talk. Not for me, I’m like the second I walk in the door, to the second I’m out, it’s hard core, 100% the entire time. I’m filling up my time, but what interesting is that I fill up that time because the time’s there.

For example, today, my flight leaves in 6 hours. I’m headed to the office at 10:00, 11, 12, 1. I’ve got 2 hours and I’ve got a 30 minute call with our coaching client’s rep, so I’ve got 2 1/2 hours. In the next 2 1/2 hours, I will get done as much, if not more, than I would in a typical 8 hour day. For me, I’m thinking, how do I start mastering this procrastination better? What if, instead of working 8 hour days, instead of coming in at 9:00 in the morning, what if I came in at 3:00 in the afternoon. I still leave at the exact same time, but magically I’ve got less time, so therefore I get the exact same amount of stuff done. It’s really weird how that works. I hope that helps. I hope that it helps you see my mindset of how things work.

For those of you guys who are planners, those of you guys who are probably A students in school who would study for test for months on end, this is probably going to make you feel really anxious and nervous and you’re going to hate it. For those of you guys who are entrepreneurs, who are the B and C and maybe D students, or some of you guys probably didn’t go, this will probably be a gift in thinking, “Wow, it’s actually okay to procrastinate especially when I use it as a super power.” There is a right way and a wrong way to do it. Now, procrastinating just to push things off until mañana and then keep pushing it forever is not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about setting a hard date and then procrastinating things so that you can just get the most out of every single hour.

That’s the game plan. I am getting in the office 2 hours to rock and roll. When that’s done, I’ve got 30 minutes to do my call, heading home and then I will start my pack. 30 minutes after my pack is done, my kids will be home, and I will play with my kids one last time before I jump on a plane. That, my friends, is the right way to procrastinate. All right, hope you guys have an amazing day. I’m going be broadcasting to you guys from around the world over the next week, so I’ll say, “Hi,” from New Zealand, from Australia, and Phoenix. I know that’s not very exotic, but that’s the last place my trip takes me this week. It’ll be fun. I should be on Periscope. I should be on podcast. I’m going to be having some fun with you guys, showing you guys the world. Tune in and I will talk to you guys all again soon. Thanks everybody.