There is a lot of unhelpful advice out there for creative entrepreneurs regarding procrastination and overcoming resistance.
Have you heard these before?
💪 "Just Get Over It and Do It - You Need More Willpower"
🗓 “Just Set a Deadline and Stick to It”
🐸 “Eat the Frog - Just Do the Hardest Thing First Thing In The Morning”
🤬 “Get Harder on Yourself (Be an Asshole to Yourself)”
👁 “You Just Need More Clarity”
⚒️ “You Need Better Productivity Tools”
These are all bad (but common) tips for overcoming procrastination and resistance.
Grab your free copy of The Stop Procrastinating & Just Get Started Checklist and scroll down to learn more about why these are bad ideas...and what to do instead.👇
Don't let your most important work die inside you.
"The #1 thing holding you back from realizing the creative success you know you're capable of achieving is procrastination (and its underlying causes).
Understanding why you procrastinate, and knowing how to break through it as quickly as you can, is so important 🤘"
- Jeff Fajans, PhD
This advice is dismissive of the real struggles that creative entrepreneurs face when trying to overcome procrastination. It assumes that the problem is solely due to a lack of “willpower” and ignores the complex psychological, task, and environmental factors that contribute to procrastination.
First, address your environment and your tasks. These are quicker wins to make happen and can free up a lot of mental bandwidth. If you lessen the bombardment on your attention, your attention may just settle enough to naturally focus and get going.
Second, use the diagnostic tool part of the procrastination checklist to get crystal clear on the psychological triggers and reasons why you’re procrastinating. Reflect on the coaching questions for each trigger and do the self-work to identify customized strategies to help you get started.
Third, explore the mindset and limiting belief elimination tools at the end of my Creative Confidence guide to go even deeper. Procrastination is a complex psychological challenge - it may take time and deliberate, reflective effort to unwind.
While deadlines can be helpful, this advice again oversimplifies the problem and doesn't take into account the underlying reasons why someone may struggle to meet deadlines in the first place.
Setting deadlines for our creative work before we develop stronger mindsets, habits, and strategies may simply just trigger a dangerous cycle of doubt, frustration, and self-loathing when we constantly fail to meet these arbitrary (and often poorly estimated, unrealistic timelines).
Deadlines can indeed be motivating if done at the right time, for the right project, and with the right support. But deadlines also could activate that inner rebel within you who doesn’t want to be controlled. You’ll end up self-sabotaging and derailing and won’t know why.
Instead of setting deadlines, design smaller habits. Focus on making small (but consistent) progress without setting an arbitrary end date.
If the word “deadline” triggers a sense of dread or immense pressure for you that makes you just want to do anything else, focus on finding ways to make your work more fun and enjoyable instead. Watch your momentum skyrocket.
Identify “lighter” checkpoints or milestones in your work that don’t feel as heavy as a “deadline.”
If you do want to experiment with deadlines, do so with support. Join a group of like-minded, creative people or work with a coach for added accountability.
This is my least favorite productivity advice out there. I believe it is simply bad advice - especially for creative people.
Who the f*c& in their right mind wants to eat a frog when they get out of bed?!?!?
Of course, you procrastinate on "eating a frog" or doing the biggest, hardest thing first thing in the morning when you aren't even at your peak state of mind - this sounds horrible!
This advice also assumes that everyone has the same energy levels and productivity patterns, which is simply not true. Some people may be more productive at night, while others may struggle with early mornings due to their chronotype.
Find ways to make your hard tasks and projects more fun and enjoyable. Get creative and transform them more and more into something you WANT to do.
Be mindful of when you feel most focused, energized, inspired, and productive. Do your most creative or most intensive work during these times if you can.
Instead of jumping into the hardest thing first, do a “warm-up.” If you were a powerlifter, you wouldn’t just walk right into the gym and try to hit your personal record deadlift. You’d warm up first. Professional athletes ALWAYS warm up before their workouts, practices, and games. They don’t just jump in cold - that could lead to serious injury at worst, or suboptimal performance at best. As a creator or creative entrepreneur, what could your “warm-up” be?
Develop a “startup sequence or checklist” - a sequence of tiny, easy events that are so easy to start + complete that it would be unreasonable not to. This is a great way to build psychological momentum - it feels great to take on and check off a series of tasks.
Watch Unit 3: Lesson 3: Making “Getting Started” Easy from my Domestika course, How to Achieve Your Creative Goals (use code JEFF_FAJANS-15COACH to get 15% off)
A lot of people (younger men it seems like especially) come to me with hopes that I will treat them like a hardass drill sergeant to help them be “accountable.” This is a red flag because this approach almost always backfires. In the long run, this approach creates and strengthens resistance and increases your chances of complete "F it all!" derailment.
I understand why people feel this is a good idea - they’re usually angry and frustrated with themselves, and there is some part within themselves that feels the need to punish the bad behavior or lack of progress.
But adding more pressure and trying to force things typically backfires for creative people who tend to strongly value freedom.
Simply put, any time we start feeling too much pressure, obligation, or things forced upon us (even if this comes from ourselves), there is a part of us that wants to just rebel and sabotage it all.
More pressure and forcing things = more procrastination and derailment.
You need to lower the pressure - not raise it. Make things smaller, tinier, easier. Make it so simple and light to act on that it would be ridiculous not to.
Practice self-compassion - Procrastination is often accompanied by feelings of guilt, shame, and self-criticism. By cultivating self-compassion, you can reduce the negative emotions that often accompany procrastination and increase your willingness to take action. Self-compassion involves treating yourself with kindness and understanding, rather than harshly judging yourself for your perceived flaws and failures.
Get creative and take time to dive deep into your values, passions, and purpose. Identify what you want to move towards and why it is meaningful to you. When you amplify your authentic motivation things will feel lighter and more effortless for you, and you’ll build more momentum, faster.
Reward yourself and acknowledge your progress to create positive associations in your mind by taking action and sustaining momentum.
Clarity is a good thing - and one thing I help my clients with as part of my 3-pillar Creative Momentum (™) System and Coaching.
But sometimes I see people use a lack of clarity as an excuse to not get started or make progress today.
Uncertainty, ambiguity, and fuzziness are inherent in creative work. If you have 100% clarity in what you’re doing, you may not be operating at the edge of your comfort zone where your highest level of creativity and impact will come from.
Spending too much time overthinking and over-researching to achieve 100% clarity is just another form of procrastination.
More info and research may, ironically, just confuse and overwhelm you even more.
It’s often best to follow the path of action → clarity (vs clarity → action). Just take action using your intuition or best guess (after all, much of creative, entrepreneurial work is simply just making the best guess and going with it). As you learn and adjust along the way, clarity comes.
If you truly feel you need more clarity or insight before you go down a path (and this can definitely be justifiable), do Part I and Part II of my free comprehensive guide, Bigger, Bolder, Better: Designing Your Best Year Yet.
A sneaky way creative entrepreneurs like to procrastinate is to search for the perfect productivity tools before they get going. It’s just a tricky way to feel productive, but in many cases, you’re actually procrastinating on doing the work.
Building an elegant system of tools, systems, habits, and apps…it’s all good. But there is no silver bullet or one tool to rule them all.
It’s best to just keep things simple, flexible, and enjoyable - and pick something that you will actually use consistently.
Whether it’s Notion, Trello, Asana, Google Docs, or a simple stack of post-it notes…what works for you is the setup that you will actually use and enjoy.
You don’t need a sophisticated, complicated “stack.” Much of history’s most innovative contributions came from creators who had zero of the technology we have today.
All you truly need to do great work is to know:
Trust your internal GPS to get you through the fog of the creative road you are on.
You know your destination, just keep your eyes on what is ten feet ahead of you.
✅ Grab your copy of The Stop Procrastinating and Just Get Started Checklist below.
Or read more about how to stop procrastination as a creative entrepreneur in this series:
Don't let your most important work die inside you.
"The #1 thing holding you back from realizing the creative success you know you're capable of achieving is procrastination (and its underlying causes).
Understanding why you procrastinate, and knowing how to break through it as quickly as you can, is so important 🤘"
- Jeff Fajans, PhD
Jeff Fajans, PhD
Creative Performance & Leadership Coach
Leading Expert in the Art & Science of Creative Work
My name is Jeff Fajans (rhymes with "lions") and I help creative entrepreneurs bring their biggest ideas to life and reach their next level of creative success.
I have a PhD in Positive Organizational Psychology from Claremont Graduate University, where I studied under Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, the world-renowned author of Flow. My research focused on how to help people learn, develop, and lead more effectively to better achieve creative goals.
I am also an avid music creator and guitar player. 🤘
Through my 1-on-1 coaching, 30-Day Creative Momentum Challenge community, internationally acclaimed digital courses, and speaking engagements, I've helped thousands of people from around the world connect with their purpose, clarify their creative vision, amplify their motivation, and create actionable strategies that make achieving their most meaningful goals inevitable.
These are people who are pursuing big goals like starting or leading a business (and scaling it to higher levels of innovation & growth), writing + filming a feature film (and it winning a Sundance award), building an app or product (and getting accepted into Y Combinator or getting VC funding), writing a book (and hitting the Amazon bestseller list) or even exploring a meaningful side hustle or passion project.
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