Procrastination

So I met procrastination head-on today and it smashed the living shit out of me. I woke up with all the best intentions of launching my life's work this morning. Everything was kind of ready to go, and that's about as far as it got. My nervous system spiked, got overwhelmed, and I crashed. And it was all around the excitement and the energy that I generated around the idea of what I was about to present. And it was around this idea of — how is it going to start? It's always been: how am I going to start? How am I going to start exploring 30 years of what was basically an experiment in living in the now? And the navigational system, if you want to call it something, that came from that. And it's been a bugbear with me for years — trying to know where to start. And so I had this breakthrough during the night of how I was going to get up and do it. And I was really excited about it. But then as I went to sit down, all that energy just overwhelmed me. And I had to — funnily enough — put my own methodology into practice. And I had to wind everything back. I call it the power of opposites. You can generate power from an opposite, but you can also neutralise by exploring the opposite. And I won't get too much into that now, but it was basically — I had to wind myself back to neutral. And I realised what was going on: that the energy I generated around the idea didn't match the moment. And this is the key to procrastination. And it was something I'd never really taken much notice of before. And I was like — don't get too caught up in what I'm about to say, I'm oversimplifying — but it tends to activate the right hemisphere of your brain when you're emotionally overwhelmed. And so I knew I had to balance that: feeling with thinking, value with logic. And so I just started talking, and I started to record it. Because I was like, well, if I'm going to do this, I might as well do it — talk about it, talk my way through it. And then, yeah, as I started, I was like — okay, well, this is the start. This is how I'm going to start. This is how I'm going to launch. I'm meeting the moment. And this is the key: the amount of energy that you generate has to meet the actions that you're taking. Otherwise there's an excess of energy. And if you've got a sensitive nervous system — which I have — and a few neurodivergencies, which I won't go into because it's not important — it can quickly overwhelm your system. And that's what happened. And I shut down. And so I had to slow everything down. I had to take away all the distractions, because the distractions are just you trying to balance the energy with movement — mind movement. That's all distraction is. And so I had to turn everything off and just sit there until my system settled and all the stress chemicals left my body. And that left me at a very, very slow speed. I had to slow my mind down, slow my thinking down, slow everything down, and start pretty much from scratch. Which is interesting, because that was the first video in my launch sequence — starting from scratch. The idea that any kind of change you want to implement, you need to start from scratch. You need to start from neutral. And so I wound everything back, slowed everything down. And this brings in the experiment I've been working on for the past 30 years — that is, living as much as I can completely in the moment. I don't have any plans in my life. I never have. I've just done what is in front of me, or what presents itself. Even down to doing things around the house — the dishes and everything — all of that gets done. Because, you know, my intention is not to live in a pigsty. My intention is to live a clean, productive life. That's my overall vibe. And so if I just have that set once, then all these little things come to mind, and I just — I've stopped reacting to them. Instead of going "Ugh!" I just meet the moment. I don't try and wait for the perfect moment to do it. I just use whatever energy I've got in that moment. Even if it's shit — if I've got the shits, that's the energy I use to do it. So, after I'd slowed everything down, like I said, I had the idea: well, just record it, just speak it, just talk through what you're going through. And that's what I did. I ended up doing what became like a whole Instagram series on procrastination, and it all just tied in nicely. Because as I kept recording — I'd slowed my energy down — I just acted on the next thing that came up. And it was actually something I'd been putting off for three days. I just took that same slow, calm energy. I wasn't excited about doing it. I didn't really want to do it. But I just took that energy and moved through it, and I just held myself at that pace. As soon as I finished that, I was like — oh, I could go for a swim. Not "I have to go for a swim" or "I should go for a swim." Just: I could. That's what I do for exercise. So I just went with that energy. The very next moment I was out of my seat, walking slowly towards the door. I didn't want to go for a swim. But as you well know, once you start the action — and once you've completed it — you feel good. Otherwise you wouldn't be doing it. Even as I was walking down the street, I wasn't thinking anything. I just neutralised everything. I was just walking. And as I'm doing this, slowing everything down, I had this huge release — an emotional release. And then everything just stabilised. I was almost flopping around in my body because I wasn't excited, I wasn't happy, I wasn't unhappy. I was neutral. That was it. That was all I needed. And I think oftentimes the pendulum just swings too far the other way for what we can actually do in the moment. We get this big head of steam, and yet the very first action we need to take can't handle all that energy — it's not big enough. We're taking, say, the outcome of a five-year plan — us sitting on a boat somewhere — and then trying to stuff that into the boring task of writing the first sentence of a book or whatever it is. It's a lot of energy to try and put into one sentence. It's not going to fit. Whereas if you're just like — okay, what's the first letter? — that's kind of the energy you need. It's almost counterintuitive: that in order to get something done, you need to tone it down a little. At least, that's what I've found. Because what happens — and this isn't about belief, this is about perspective, and not just shifting your perspective from one thing to another — when you shut down, everything shuts down. Your perspective shuts down. It's like it collapses and almost lands in front of you in a big pile on the ground. Your vision, everything — it just collapses. Whereas if you're just meeting the moment — okay, what's the very next thing? — at that energy, your perspective stays open. You may not be jumping for joy, but that doesn't matter. Especially if you've just had a crash, or if you're trying to build something from scratch. You shouldn't expect to have over-the-top energy all the time. You may get an initial rush, and that's good — it tells you this is the right track for you. But don't expect that to last. Don't expect it to carry you through for the next week, two weeks, months, however long you're going to be doing it. It's just not realistic. You can build it — 100% you can build it. But there's a sweet spot. I call it the potential state. And it's literally — if you think of a clock — we think that if we want to do something, we need to take our energy to six, eight, ten o'clock to get it done. No. Again, we're generating too much energy, unless we're sprinting or doing something high energy. It's too much. Think more two o'clock, at the very most. When it comes to dealing with procrastination a lot, think two minutes past. That's probably more aligned with the energy you need to meet the moment and get through the day. So in the end, I went down, went for my swim, and my energy lifted naturally. My field was cleansed of all the crap I'd gone through in the morning — all the stress chemicals had left my body. And I just met the very next moment. I came back up. I wasn't thinking about what I was going to do when I got back. I was just staying in the moment. And then as I walked in the door, put the kettle on, saw that the computer was still on — and I was like: I could do a piece on procrastination and record it. And here I am. I didn't go, "Yeah, that's an awesome idea, I'm going to do that — and then I'll do this and that." That wasn't where my energy was at. It was two minutes past. So I just grabbed my coffee, sat down, literally turned on Audacity, and pressed record. Not — "okay, am I ready, am I doing that?" No. What's the very next moment? I don't have to think about it. Just hit record. Now, this idea of matching the moment — I learned this working with horses. I did natural horsemanship, and I had a couple of horses myself. I took a couple of horses to saddle, which means before that they hadn't really had a rider on them. And the one thing I learned — and I was shown this early on — was that the horse doesn't mind what mood you're in, as long as you don't try to be anything other than the mood you're in. So if you've got the shits and you go in and try to be nice, it's a mixed message. And the horse is like — what? You're asking me to do this, but your body's not saying that. There's a mismatch. But if you just go in and go, "Come on, horse — do it." If that's all you've got — you don't go overboard, you're not belting the horse — you're just holding that two degrees. If that's all you've got, then that's enough. The potential state only needs two degrees. I call it the angle of incidence. I don't know why — the name isn't important. That's just the initial name that came into my head when I first discovered it. And so that's where I live a lot of my life. Not all the time — there are these cycles. You almost think of petals on a flower. You're sort of circling around in the flower, and you might go out and then come back, out and come back. And you're circling around, sitting in this two degrees of potential state. And then you might — especially if you're going swimming — obviously you can't stay at two degrees, otherwise you drown. You have to go up a couple of harmonics, build that energy. And like I said, I don't always feel like going swimming. But if I don't, I've missed out. And as soon as I make the decision to go, I just go. A friend of mine — a surfboard shaper who surfed just about every day — I asked him once: "How do you get motivated to go every day?" And he said, "Oh, the only way to get motivated to go surfing is to get up and go surfing. The motivation comes. You build on it." Anyway — that's that. Stay in the moment. Meet the moment. And you'll make your day. And that's all I've got to say. Ooroo.