1055: The One-Minute Trick to Defeating Procrastination with Dave Crenshaw

Pete Mockaitis
Dave, welcome back!

Dave Crenshaw
Pete, it’s great to be here. I always enjoy talking with you. We always have a good time.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, maybe too good of a time. You’ve introduced me to “Slay the Spire,” which has cost me hours of fun.

Dave Crenshaw
It didn’t cost you. You gained all that, right?

Pete Mockaitis
It cost me. There was gain and cost. And my son, Johnny, likes it now too. So that’s cool. Thank you for that.

Dave Crenshaw
Oh, that’s fantastic.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, we’re talking about procrastination and taking action despite, you know, internal emotional resistance and reluctance. And as a backdrop for this, I’d love it if you could kick us off with, you have a deeply vulnerable and powerful annual practice. And I bumped into a seven-minute video from you on LinkedIn. I wasn’t expecting, but was like, “Wow, this is this is powerful stuff.”

And the comments, likewise, were resonating and finding actionable wisdom for some of their own difficulties, but in terms of mental health or taking care of business when they don’t feel like it. So, could you share a little bit of that context?

Dave Crenshaw
So I’ve dealt with a variety of mental health challenges throughout my life. And a big element of that has been depression. And the way that I heard someone describe it is– and part of what I’ve dealt with, in conjunction with that, is pretty recurrent suicidal thoughts. But, in particular, one year, it was just bad. My body chemistry was completely compromised. And so, I had to work with a psychologist, to work with a psychiatrist, get medical help to solve the issue. And as I was coming out of that, Pete, there was a moment where I had one foot in and one foot out. Meaning I saw what I was like and I saw where I was going and the things were getting better.

And in that moment, I realized I had an opportunity to help people because I was in both worlds and I could see what it was like to not deal with that, but also the pathway that I was taking to get out. And so, I recorded one video, and then later on condensed it, and started to share the strategy that I used to get out of that with the goal that this is going to help someone.

Pete Mockaitis
That is beautiful, powerful. Thank you for sharing that. And, yes, I, too, have dealt with suicidal thoughts from time to time, and it is tough and unpleasant.

Dave Crenshaw
I’m sorry that you had to go through that.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, thank you.

Dave Crenshaw
It’s a terrible feeling. 

Pete Mockaitis
That’s right. And I think, like, this provides maybe perhaps the most intense or dramatically possible backdrop for thinking about procrastination or emotional reluctance, resistance to doing stuff. Because I’ve had, you know, more often than suicidal thoughts, like sort of just like a malaise in terms of, “Oh, I don’t feel like it and these things seem so hard.” And it’s like I’m thinking and moving slower.

And yet, even when th is happens, I have found it is possible, and often not fun, but sometimes surprisingly fun, to go ahead and take care of some business.

And you have a transformational tactic that you’ve shared, and folks are really vibed with. Can you tell us about it?

Dave Crenshaw
Yeah, and I’ll give a little bit of a context for this. As a time management guy, because that’s what I do, one day, I was coaching a client, this is where this thought came from. And he was talking about vacations, and about how he would take a vacation and he’d rush to get everything ready. At the end of the vacation, and then he would have to catch up and do all this other stuff at the other side of it.

And he said the phrase, “If it weren’t for the last minute, I wouldn’t get anything done.” And that is a very common thing for people who experience ADHD and a variety of different psychological challenges. And I think it’s just human as well. And I thought about that and I thought, “What if it was the other way around? What if it was, ‘If it weren’t for the first minute, I wouldn’t get anything done’?”

And that was something that I immediately made a part of my time management training. And the idea is simply this. When we look at a project, we look at a task, we feel overwhelmed, we say, “This is going to be difficult for me to do.” I was coaching someone who was in sales, and this was back in the day, I’m dating myself. He would actually open up the phone book and call people, right?

Pete Mockaitis
“Oh, cold call is not dead, Dave.”

Dave Crenshaw
I’ve got a mentor who still does it.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, Blunt’s in my ear right now.

Dave Crenshaw
So, he would say, “It’s really hard for me to start making cold calls.” And I would say, “Well, what’s the first minute? What’s the first action that you need to take?” And he’d say, “Well, I need to identify who I’m going to call.” I said, “No, no, no. You’re thinking five, 10 minutes in. What’s the first minute? What’s the first action?”

And he said, “I just need to open up the phone book.” And I said, “Okay. In your calendar, schedule that. Block out how much time you think you’re going to have to take, whether that’s an hour or two hours or whatever. Block it out. But in your calendar, write the phrase, ‘Open up the phone book.’” And the moment he did that, he was like, “Oh, I can do that. That’s easy.” And then he immediately was able to flow right into starting to make the calls.

And so, a big part of my training, and my processing, in my course, “Time Management Fundamentals” and elsewhere, I tell people to schedule the first action, the first minute of activity. And that’s a way to just jump over all that emotional baggage that we have and just trick yourself into starting to be productive.

Pete Mockaitis
I like that a lot. So, literally, on the calendar, we see, “Open up the phone book,” or whatever it is. Or, “Sit at desk,” in terms of, like, the first minute, the first action. And I think that’s great, even if you have not scheduled it or you’re in the midst of a thing, and it’s like, “Oh, I should do this task, but, oh, I don’t want to. It’s so complicated. There are all these different stakeholders, and then I don’t want to step on any toes, that I’m probably going to offend someone. And who needs to be included?”

So, you got all the stuff that pops up showing why this is difficult or unpleasant. And then I think it really helps, for me, if I think about the first minute, or like the tiniest step, it’s, I’m like coaxing myself like a child.

It’s like, “Okay, Pete, you know what? We don’t have to finish all those things. No, no, no. All we’re doing, we’re going to read that email. We’re just going to read every word of that email. And then we’ll just pause there. That’s all that’s happening.” And then if that feels too hard, it’s like, “I’m going to open that email. We’re just going to open it,” and then it’ll be on the screen, and then you can do what you want from there.”

And so, I am like coaxing and coaching myself into the tiniest step. If one minute’s too hard, maybe the first four seconds.

Dave Crenshaw
And there’s an interesting thing about emotion. Procrastination is driven largely by the emotion that we feel. Let’s say that there’s a big goal that you want to accomplish. Let’s run through the different time periods and the emotion that you feel, the emotion you feel about it.

So, let’s say that I’m going to create this goal that I’m going to get promoted. When I think about the goal, what’s the emotion that I feel? I feel good. It feels great. When I start doing the work, what’s the emotion that I feel? Usually, I feel pretty good once I’m in the motion of doing it. And then when I accomplish the goal, how do I feel? I feel really good when I did that.

So, emotion is good when you think about it. Emotion is good when you do it. Emotion is good when you complete it. Where is emotion not good? Where does the emotion feel the worst? Just before we start the work, right? So, we have to trick our brain to jump over that emotion, to just ignore it and start the process.

And that’s what the first minute does. It just helps us remove emotion from the equation so the brain can’t bog us down. And then once we start working, we start feeling good again.

Pete Mockaitis
Boy, Dave, I’m seeing in my mind’s eye sort of a graph or infographic or picture. Maybe you’ve made one and I’ve seen it in one of your books or courses, I’m not sure.

Dave Crenshaw
I haven’t, but I should. That sounds good. I’ll make a note of that.

Pete Mockaitis
On the X axis, it’s like we’ve got time, and the Y axis we’ve got feel good. And then we can sort of see, like, at the start, or stop watching Netflix and begin doing the thing is our lowest, most unpleasant time. But then there are several maybe milestones of feel good in terms of, it’s like, “Okay, I’m in the groove,” “Okay, I’m making some progress,” “Okay, I’ve got an insight,” or, “Okay, I’m looking back and feeling kind of proud about what I’ve accomplished over this period of time.”

So, it’s like there are numerous phases or eras over the course of this thing. And yet, our brains can vary adeptly, zero in on a short sliver of a minute or two or three that is most unpleasant. And that’s kind of a distortion in and of itself. That is not an accurate representation of the overall emotional pleasant or unpleasantness of the whole arc of the thing.

Dave Crenshaw
And let’s tie just a little bit of science into this. Our brains are hardwired to resist change. That’s an evolutionary advantage. That’s a good thing because it allows us to take things that normally would take a lot of work and make them easy. For example, brushing your teeth. I don’t have to think, anymore, about how I’m going to brush my teeth, and that’s because the brain has created a pattern that says, “This is how it’s done.”

And so, because my brain doesn’t like change, it also makes it easy to continually do the things that it should do. The problem is whenever we try to do something new, our brains go, “What are you doing? You’re messing up the system. I didn’t exercise at 6:00 a.m. in the past. Why are you making me do it now?”

And so, that first minute of activity can play an element in forming new positive habits.

Pete Mockaitis
I dig it. So, by thoughtfully, conscientiously designing, selecting, choosing what we’re doing with that first minute is very powerful in terms of trajectory. It sends us down and the habits and patterns and grooves that get formed.

Dave Crenshaw
Yeah. And we can trick ourselves into creating new habits, new patterns, just by doing that first minute over and over. And you do that repeatedly for a month, and pretty soon what used to be something your brain resists is now something that your brain embraces and just pushes the momentum to it.

So, you can use that that gift both directions. You can use it to prevent yourself from doing what should be done or you can use it to create a new habit, and then your brain locks in and it becomes easier in the future.

Pete Mockaitis
That is really solid. And thinking, linking it back to the suicidal thoughts, I deliberately chose a replacement in terms of, if I was feeling super tired, stressed, overwhelmed, just, “Aargh,” I might have the thought like, “Ugh, I want to die.” And so, it was like, I’ve said, “Well, no, no, no. More accurately, what I want is rest.”

So, that’s the new thought. The “I want to die” thought, I am choosing to replace with, “I want rest.” And it is more true and accurate. And it creates a much better internal vibe for me, you know? It’s like, “Okay, well, let’s make a plan to figure out how to get some rest in the near future.”

Dave Crenshaw
It’s interesting. I hadn’t planned on bringing this up, Pete, but I think there’s another principle that I teach that relates here. I have a book called “The Power of Having Fun.”

And there’s a principle that I teach in that called head-heart-mouth. And head-heart-mouth is designed to program your brain. Because a lot of people now, if you say, “What do you like to do for fun?” and, first, they’re going to have a hard time with it, but maybe they do something that’s a break, that’s relaxing, but they don’t feel it. They don’t take it in. And, boy, I can relate to that as dealing with depression, right? I’m doing something that’s supposed to be fun and I’m feeling miserable.

So, head-heart- mouth says, “Do something and then…” head, “…think intellectually, ‘This is a good thing.’” “It was good for me to do that work.” Intellectually, I say in my head. You don’t have to feel it, right? You just say it.

Heart means, “Why was this good?” You ask an emotional question, “Why should I feel good about this? Why would this feel like a good thing?” Well, it’s good to make progress. It’s good to move forward. And I feel like I’m a productive person or I feel like I am adding value to the world. There a lot of reasons why.

Mouth is expressing it in some way. So, you might say, “Hey, I did some work today, it was really hard and I did it anyway.” Or, you might write down in a journal, “I did this thing and it was rewarding to do that.” So, you just get it out of your head. And the more you practice head-heart-mouth with the things that are difficult, the more you start to retrain your brain to feel the positive emotions that are occurring. And then you start to recognize them.

So, whether it’s doing work, you start to feel that work is more rewarding. If it’s having fun, you start to feel that “Slay the Spire” is more gratifying and it’s giving you positive impacts in your life. Whatever it is, spending time with family, you can use that head-heart-mouth to reinforce the power of that first action that you took in the first minute.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s lovely. And this reminds me of the practice of savoring, which is so powerful and yet so easy to not do. So, the head-heart-mouth approach, I like it just makes it explicit in terms of “What are we doing here?” with regard to the savoring as opposed to, “I guess this is cool.”

Dave Crenshaw
It systemizes it.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, it’s so easy to just skate right past it, and yet when you systematically have these three pre-planned moves, it just locks it in.

Dave Crenshaw
It’s easy to skate over these things when we are constantly doing multiple things at the same time, when we are media multitasking, when we are not paying attention to the people around us, we start to just create this surface-level skimming of every experience in our life, and I’ve tried to make an effort to not media-multitask anymore, where I’m using my phone and I’m watching a show at the same time.

And I’ve been like, “Okay, I’m not going to do this.” And it’s interesting, like, all of a sudden, these shows that I was watching to take a break started to become more rewarding. And I started to feel happier just simply by not playing “Gems of War” while I’m watching “Severance.”

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, you know, it’s so funny, Dave, when you said “Severance,” because I love this show so much. I was, like, “Sacrilege! Media-multitasking during ‘Severance.’” Part of me is like, I guess my philosophy or current practice is, “I mean, if the show is, you know, whatever, you know, some 10-year-old sitcom that just has some laughs here and there, you know, no big deal. But if it’s a work of high art, oh, it must be savored.” And you’re saying, “No, don’t media-multitask on anything.”

Dave Crenshaw
Yet, that’s not just about shows, it’s about everything that’s happening around us, the people around us. Even the work that we’re doing, the meetings that we attend, everything starts to become just a little more meaningful and we start to feel more connected when we choose not to multitask.

Where we’re trying to do two attention-requiring tasks at the same time, things take longer, we make more mistakes, we increase our stress, and we damage relationships.

And, you know, I’ve always talked about in terms of those four things, but having this conversation, Pete, I think there’s a fifth cost. And the fifth cost is the impact on our mental health. We damage our mental health and we train our brains to skim through life.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Okay. Well, so let’s zoom right back into the moment of, “All right. I got to do a thing and I don’t want to.” Any other pro tips for us in that moment?

Dave Crenshaw
I think the other thing that you want to consider, we’ve talked about the negative emotions that stop us from doing things, but there’s also a positive emotion or a positive mindset that keeps us from doing it, and that’s imagination. So, a lot of people who listen to your show, Pete, they’re highly intelligent, they’re imaginative, they’ve learned how to set goals probably for many of the guests that you have.

And so, we set these goals, we create these resolutions, right, every year, and we say, “I’m going to do it.” And again, the emotion is fantastic because we see this big picture of how my life’s going to get better. The problem is, along with that imagination, we’re also seeing all of the work that needs to be done to get that.

So, I think what I would weave into this is what I teach about goal-setting and achievement, which is just keep splitting the thing in half until it gets as small as possible. So, if I say, you know, I could use any example, let’s say, “I’m going to write a book in a year.” So, then the question is, “Where do I need to be six months from now? Well, six months, I should probably complete my first draft.”

“Where do I need to be three months from now? Well, maybe I should have completed the first chapter. Where do I need to be one and a half months from now? Well, maybe I have a table of contents,” and I just keep splitting it down and down and down and down, until I’m down to “What do I need to do today? What do I need to do in this next minute, in this next second?”

And we take these big goals that we want to accomplish and we break it down into just turning on the computer and looking at the first page.

Pete Mockaitis
Absolutely. That’s super. And so, then when you’re feeling the overwhelm, that’s a great thought, “Well, how could I cut that in half?” And until it’s halved enough times that it’s easy.

Dave Crenshaw
Eventually, you’re going to get to a place where it’s just so darn easy, that’s “Why won’t you do it?”

Pete Mockaitis
Certainly.

Dave Crenshaw
And we can do it for the next day, “What do I need to do tomorrow? What do I need to do by the end of the week? And then what’s the one minute that’s going to move me closer to that thing this week?” You know, it’s interesting, this is kind of related to the concept. I did a podcast, I’ve wrapped it up now, and I also have a course on LinkedIn Learning called “Success Stories with Dave Crenshaw.” And I interviewed a really, really interesting character.

Are you familiar with the name Ed Greenwood?

Pete Mockaitis
I think so.

Dave Crenshaw
Many people aren’t but they probably have seen his work. Ed is the creator of “The Forgotten Realms” for “Dungeons and Dragons.”

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, okay.

Dave Crenshaw
So, all of the characters that you see, the world that you see, all of that was created by Ed. And he was talking about his writing process. And I know that most people here aren’t writers, but you can apply this principle to what you do. He said that he would not finish at the end of a chapter. He would finish with, like, the first paragraph of the next chapter.

So, what happened was, when he would sit down to write the next day, he already had some words on the pages. And I think that’s a great thing to do is sometimes we look for those natural break points, which we should, but then at the end of it say, “What do we need to do to just push this 1% further, just a little bit more so that tomorrow when I pick it up, I can look at it and go, ‘Oh, this is exactly, I know where I’m supposed to be’?”

I thought that was a great principle that I had never heard before, but I think we can do that in a variety of different ways with our work and the projects that we’re approaching.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. And I like that it’s almost like when you have an open loop in your brain, like unfinished business, then there’s a push to want to close it, to get that kind of wrapped up and into a good stopping point. But to intentionally flip that on its head, it’s like, “Let me go to a terrible stopping point because that is an outstanding starting point.”

Dave Crenshaw
Yeah, it’s going to make that first minute a lot easier. It’s just sort of an extra little tool in the belt to make that simpler the next time you come.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. And you can apply that to all sorts of things in terms of if there’s a project, I am going to open up all of the windows associated with doing that task. And so, that’s just there waiting for me when I return to the office the next day. Or, I would lay out all of the physical items necessary to complete a thing. And then, if like the phone book is open, and a sticky note with an arrow is affixed to the name, or the CRM, as the case may be in 2025.

Dave Crenshaw
Yeah. And the other thing that’s really interesting, too, is I’ve started using AI that way.

Pete Mockaitis
Go on.

Dave Crenshaw
So, maybe I have to work on a project and I’ve got all of these random thoughts in my head. What I can do is just dump them into ChatGPT. That’s what I use, and we have like a team thing. And the great thing about that is when you own a corporate plan, it protects it, right, that keeps it from going out there. So, we can put everything in there.

And I’ll have all these ideas, these random ideas, and they’re just not quite cohesive. And I just dump it in, and I say, “Can you put this into a logical order,” right? I’m not asking it to do the work for me. I’m asking it to order my thoughts for me and give me a starting point. And then I see the order and I go, “That is exactly what I was trying to do with all that chaos that was in my head.”

And now I can take that outline, or whatever it is, and I can start to order. It can’t replace my creativity, but, boy, it can make it really, really easy to give me that starting point so that I can get to work.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s cool. And we’ve had Jeremy Utley on the show talking about AI stuff. And I think that what you’re doing is dead on in terms of thinking about it as a collaborator that’s a cool way to collaborate there.

Dave Crenshaw

And it’s a cool way to beat procrastination, which is the topic, right?

Pete Mockaitis
Well, now can you share with us a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Dave Crenshaw
“Every time you devote time to practice, you haven’t lost. You’re always a winner.” And that is from Bob Ross.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

Dave Crenshaw
Well, certainly, lots of work by David Strayer of the University of Utah about multitasking. I cite that a lot in my books, and the importance of focusing on one thing at a time.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite book?

Dave Crenshaw
I like “Creativity: A Short and Cheerful Guide” by John Cleese. It’s a great little book that teaches you how to come up with new ideas.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite tool?

Dave Crenshaw
Everybody asks me, “Dave, what’s the best app to use?” And the best app to use for productivity is your calendar. I just love the calendar. It’s so simple and it’s probably underused by most people.

Pete Mockaitis
Tell us, what’s something people are not doing with their calendar that they ought to?

Dave Crenshaw
Two things. One, they’re not scheduling all the things that are happening in their life. And so, that’s like spending time on a credit card. You don’t really know if you have the ability to do the things that you’re committing to. So, when you use your calendar for everything, it shows it. But that also has to be accompanied with one that seems contradictory, but it’s important, which is scheduling buffer time. Scheduling lots of time for nothing so that you have room to breathe for all of the interruptions in between.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite habit?

Dave Crenshaw
I used to not do very well with exercise. I started to exercise very simply, just a little bit more each time, which kind of goes back to the thing. I just started shooting baskets, and then I started to shoot jump shot baskets, and then I started to use the treadmill, and I just added a little bit more and more over time, and now it’s pretty consistent. And I’m probably in the best shape of my life and it makes a big impact on everything.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And is there a key nugget you share that really seems to connect with folks and you hear quoted back to you often?

Dave Crenshaw
And this could be a quote as well from one of my mentors, David Winford, “Do what you said you would do by the time you said you would do it.” That is the most important rule of success, and most people, if they just did that one thing, they’d be more successful than 90% of the people around them.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And if folks want to learn more or get in touch, we would you to point them?

Dave Crenshaw
I love connecting with people on LinkedIn, Dave Crenshaw, connect with me there. I put out updates all the time, and that’ll also, I share videos from all of my LinkedIn Learning courses as well.

Pete Mockaitis
And do you have a final challenge or call to action for the listener looking to be awesome at their job?

Dave Crenshaw
Just put into practice what we talked about. Think about something that’s difficult for you to do, something that’s daunting, maybe something that you’ve been putting off, and just say, “What’s that first minute?” and immediately put this into practice. That way you move from just hearing this conversation to making it a part of your life.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Dave, thank you.

Dave Crenshaw
Thank you, Pete.