Skip to content 
Show Notes
Background
Nadège Saysana, known as Nan, is a former English teacher from Paris who turned her personal struggles into a passion for helping others transform their lives. After quitting her stable job as a civil servant, Nan took a leap of faith to start her own coaching business—and she hasn’t looked back.
Nan works with English-speaking clients from all over the world, with her adorable cat Eva by her side. Her philosophy is simple: Change doesn’t have to be hard. With the right mindset and tiny, healthy habits, transformation is not only possible—it’s inevitable. When she’s not coaching, Nan enjoys reading self-help books, exploring Paris on foot, weightlifting, and watching The Big Bang Theory with her husband and their bilingual two kids (and of course, Eva the cat).
What is Procrastination?
Procrastination is the act of delaying or postponing tasks, often choosing short term comfort over long term benefits. For example, instead of doing what you had planned to do, you find yourself sitting in front of Netflix or the TV, eating chocolate or some chips. There is nothing with this but if you had other plans, then it can lead to missed opportunities. Procrastination feels like an escape, but it often creates bigger problems in the long run.
How To Stop Procrastination?
To stop procrastination, you have to acknowledge that you are doing it. If you notice that you are not actually doing what you what you had planned and doing something else instead, this is what we can call procrastination. So first of all, it’s very good if you are aware that you aer procrastinating. It’s the first step.
Understand Why You Procrastinate
Understand why are you scrolling your phone, playing video games, contacting your friends instead of reaching out to clients? There must be a reason why you are doing that. It’s not bad but it’s a signal that something else is going on behind the scenes. Be curious about the reason behind your procrastination.
Are you overwhelmed? Are you afraid of failure? Is the task boring? You need to get to the bottom of it so you can address the issue. If the tasks seem big and challenging, break it into smaller steps instead. Change your mindset and don’t be afraid to make some mistakes along the way. Mistakes are learning opportunities for you. If the tasks bore you, see to it to reward yourself afterwards if you have done it. It can make you feel more motivated to do a boring task.
Start With the Hardest Task
If the task is hard, chances are, you are going to “delay” doing it that you end up procrastinating. There is a famous author, Mark Twain, that said, eat the frog first. The idea, of course, is not really eating a frog but it’s doing something that’s really uncomfortable for you to do it first.
If you do it first in the morning or in the week, then it’s done. You can feel that relief after doing it, and also how proud you can be because you’ve done something hard this morning and it makes you feel unstoppable all day long, all week long, because you’ve done the whole thing. You feel like you are a superhero.
Do Frequent Little Reminders
Start small. Instead of “Do a workout today” start with “Stretch for 5 minutes”. It’s easier to do it and it doesn’t feel like it’s tiring even before you start. You will be surprised that after that, you will find yourself doing a complete work out! Instead of having a big goal, break it into smaller ones. After that, you have to constantly remind yourself about how good it will feel if you do it every day. You might not get the results that you want instantly but hey, the ocean is made up of lots of little drops so that the one drop can actually make quite a difference, and particularly when it breaks a habit.
So if you have had this habit of working out in the morning every day and then you don’t for a day and you think it’s okay. And then it’s two days and before you know it, it’s a week. It’s two weeks and you haven’t work out. Then your habit is gone completely. So, it’s those constant little reminders that will push you to continue your habit and a great way to stop procrastinating.
Improve Your Mindset
When the task seems hard and you’ve done it and the result is not what you expect, it’s far more positive but you are expecting a negative reaction. It becomes a case of okay, that’s not quite so scary. Our brain is amazing. It protects us from terrible things. That is why, we tend to be afraid. It’s our brain’s initial reaction to protect us from the potential danger that we could get. When you do the thing and then result is fine, you’ll be amaze. For example, if it is your first time doing a video, you will think you can’t do it because you will look funny to people. When you do, people are reacting in a positive way to your video then you will realise that it’s fine.
Our mindset is everything. We tend to jump into conclusion first without doing the task first. Sometimes, that’s how we act with procrastination, isn’t it? Why make it so much bigger that if we just actually did it, press the button on the email or hit the record, or it would be all over and done with it, and then we could move on.
Use Accountability
We need the nudge of something external, somebody external to actually take action. It’s just that accountability or something like that. Somebody else is watching what you are doing. Somebody else we know and that that can help. Why not use it? Just tell somebody or ask them to check in or that kind of thing because we can let ourselves down. We can just shift it around in a diary. Nobody’s going to know we didn’t do it, but we’ve got to put it up on a live and somebody else is going to check it, or we’ve got to send it to somebody or any kind of accountability.
You can also use your future self. Is it helpful that I did or didn’t do what I wanted to do yesterday or it is helping me today? So, having this relationship between the different versions of ourselves can help. If I’m doing this right now, will it help my future self in five minutes? If the answer is yes, maybe I want to have this future version of me.
Believe In Yourself
Imagine your future self at the end of the year, congratulating you for doing everything you had done. Pretend to be your future self. Same voice that tells you with certainty how you did it, how you accomplished this and this and that she was proud of you. You listen to that voice on regular basis. When you do, you will have this boost on your ego and you will believe she was actually calling you from the future and telling you how proud she was with you.
Isn’t it powerful? You’ve got that external voice, even though it’s your own voice congratulating you and motivating you and making sure that you are staying on track.
Find a Strategy
Your brain will come up with a lot of excuses. Anticipate all these obstacles that your brain is going to throw at you. For each try, find a strategy. For example, if your task is to do a video and the kids are going to school. You won’t do the video because of the conflict of time. Then do the video before school time. Or maybe you don’t like doing the video because it is windy outside. Is it because of the noise? Will it really affect, the video, or is that just an excuse? If it doesn’t affect the video, then what are the other options?
If you look at it closely, it just an excuse not to do the video so always make a strategy to contradict what your brain is telling you.
Act as if
Imagine being someone else. For example, thinks about Michael Jordan. Imagine being hi. What would Michael Jordan do? Take action from what you think his mindset would be. Think about somebody else. Maybe your coach, maybe, somebody in a movie or somebody you believe that you admire, and stepping into their shoes and pretending to be them. How much faster would we move forward instead of being just us?
It will take away some of the fear because you know that they’ve done it before, so they are not going to be fearful of it. Just like the expression “fake it till you make it. Think about what the person is doing is they earned $100,000 or $1 million.
Would they be driving up the highway week after week? Would they be going out to dinner every night of the week and staying out late, and then not being able to get up for the meeting in the morning? Would they be sitting around on the TV watching TV, implying Netflix when they’re supposed to be sending emails to the client? Doing this can be super powerful.
Links
Contacts
How to Stop Procrastinating With Cathy Smith and Nan Saysana
Listen to the full episode of Small Business Talk episode 289.
You can also find the video versions of the Small Business Talk Episodes on YouTube.
