1155: How to Escape the Procrastination Trap and Achieve Your Goals with Jon Acuff

Pete Mockaitis
Jon, welcome back!

Jon Acuff
It’s good to see you again, Pete.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m excited to talk about procrastination. You got a whole book about this. Tell us, what do you know or have discovered about procrastination that’s new and fresh and surprising and interesting that we should know?

Jon Acuff
Well, I think the really interesting thing to me is that it’s not necessarily a problem. People use it as a solution. It’s just not a good solution. Meaning, if they don’t want to tell their mom they’re not coming home for Thanksgiving, procrastination goes, “No problem. We don’t have to do that for, like, seven months. We can wait until the last second.”

Or, I’m afraid of getting negative reviews of my book. Procrastination says, “No problem. I’ll solve that. You’ll never get a negative review. I mean, you won’t get to write a book, but you’ll never get that.” So it’s not a laziness problem, which is why so many of the willpower discipline things we do don’t ultimately work.

It’s really more of a figuring out how to give yourself permission to do those things that you really want to do or really need to do.

Pete Mockaitis
Permission to do the things you really want to do or need to do. I’m also curious about the things we don’t want to do. I guess we need to do them, but we don’t want to do them. I think that’s where it gets me. It’s not so much…

Jon Acuff
Like what? What do you procrastinate on?

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, boy. Well, I think there’s tax things. It’s a joke, every year, my accountant is like, “Yeah, we’re deferring, right? Yeah. Didn’t need to ask.”

Jon Acuff
Yeah, that’s funny.

Pete Mockaitis
So, yeah.  there’s plenty of things in terms of, “Oh, it would be good to have…” I think that’s for me, like, “It’d be nice to have the result of that thing, but, ugh, doing the work seems exhausting and overwhelming, and I just don’t want to right now.”

Jon Acuff
Yeah, I think that’s 100% fair. I love that you admitted having the result would be great. I think a lot of people won’t admit, “You know, I’d really just like to have done the thing, but I don’t want to do all this.” For me, entitlement is when I go, “I wish my LinkedIn profile, and I had a better LinkedIn presence.” And you’re like, “Yeah, you haven’t used LinkedIn for, like, five years.” Like, “Yeah, it’s really suffering somehow with my complete lack of effort.”

Pete Mockaitis
“Yeah, go figure.”

Jon Acuff
And to me, that’s entitlement is when I go, “I want blank, but I haven’t done any of the work.” I just think, as far as doing stuff you need to do, but don’t want to do, it’s about selling yourself into doing it. Like, in the book, one of the ideas is, like, you’re the greatest, Pete, salesman in the world because, before every decision you’ve ever made, whether it was good or bad, first, you sold yourself into it.

So I think a lot of goals comes down to your ability to sell yourself into doing something you want to do or need to do, but you don’t feel like doing.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, we’re going to need to talk about that at length, but I want to zoom out a smidge and get the big picture. What’s your overall message about procrastination and the latest insights from your in-depth research here?

Jon Acuff
Yeah, so the overall is there’s four permissions you need, and if you do these permissions in this order, it’s almost impossible to not be successful. And I want to say very clearly, I couldn’t have written this book as book two.

If, at 36, Jon Acuff wrote a book called Procrastination Proof: Never Gets Stuck, I’m an arrogant guesser. I’m going, “Maybe, I don’t know. I’ve written one book before. Clearly, I’m great at not procrastinating.”

But by book 11 at 50, I’m like, “Yeah, for someone as distracted as I am, for somebody who has such a hard time focusing to have written 11 books, I figured out how to kind of do some difficult things that maybe you shouldn’t put off.”

So the ultimate idea behind the book is permission, and the four types of permission are permission to dream, permission to plan, do, and review. So those four actions – dream, plan, do, review. And if you do those in that order consistently, everything gets really easy and often really fun.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, yeah, I want to hear about these permissions. And can you tell us a bit about the research process by which you landed there? So you did some substantial surveying, right? And talking to folks and identifying some real themes and patterns that appeared at high frequency.

Jon Acuff
Well, the benefit to my job, Pete, is that the way I write a book is I find a problem in my own life and I figure out if there’s a solution for it, and I spent a few years doing that. And then I ask, “Do other people have it?”

And if a lot of other people have it, then I go research to figure out, “Okay, how does it apply to other people, not just me?” It’s not a helpful book if it’s, essentially, how Jon Acuff beat Jon Acuff’s procrastination. That’s not a good book. That’s a manual for me.

So what happened with this book, I worked with this PhD named Mike Peasley, he’s a professor at MTSU. And so it started with, we did a study on, “How many people think they’re living up to their full potential?” meaning there’s something they really want, but they’re not doing it.

And we asked 3000 people and 96% of them said they were not living up to their full potential. So then I go, “Okay, there’s this huge audience.” And then the research kind of goes from there into testing it in a community online, testing it with real live audiences. Like, it’s one idea.

It’s one thing to have an idea in this office, it’s another thing to take it to a Fortune 500 company and go, “Hey, here’s how this permission works.” And you can tell instantly, “Oh, no, that’s not their world at all,” or, “Oh, no, the permission to dream is not helping the cattle ranchers,” or, “Permission to plan is not helping the engineers.”

So a lot of what I do is then go test it on the road and then, eventually, it ends up in a book. So it’s a longer process than my other books used to be, but I think it turns out a better product.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So then could you speak to us about these permissions?

Jon Acuff
They’re really, really simple. I mean, the first one, permission to dream, you have to have a reason to change. No one ever changes just because. I’ve helped a million people with their goals. I still haven’t met somebody that said, “I woke up today and decided to have grit. I just woke up today and decided to sacrifice.”

No one willingly leaves their comfort zone, and they shouldn’t. It’s comfortable. The only reason people leave their comfort zones is there’s something outside it worth being uncomfortable for. And it’s usually one of two things – desire or disappointment.

Desire, meaning they bumped into something they really want. Disappointment, they woke up at 42 and their career wasn’t where they wanted it to be. They lost their job to AI and they don’t have much of a choice. The disappointment finally got loud enough to go, “I got to change some stuff or this isn’t going to work.”

So that’s the dream. You got to have a sense of why you want to do something and what you want to do before you even move it into planning. And planning is you answer the question, “How will I do it?” Doing is, “Are you doing it?” And review is, “Did it work? Are we headed in the direction we want to go?”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, now let’s talk about the word permission in terms of it’s just me. I don’t have to appeal to some authority as the principal or a government official for the permission, the access to do any of these things. So can you unpack this word here?

Jon Acuff
Yeah, so I’ll give you an example. Somebody the other day told me they had a weight loss goal, but if they lost weight, they’d be breaking family norms. Because in their family, they grew up in their family of origin, food was comfort. Food was security. Food was family. Food was tradition.

Big Southern family, like you had big Southern plates of food, and to be health conscious felt like divorcing the family you were from. And so he needed permission to go, “No, I have permission to love my parents where they are, but I don’t have to repeat my childhood. I don’t have to. I get to lose weight. I have permission to have a healthy lifestyle. I have permission to care about what I eat and how I look and how I exercise.”

So a lot of times, even if you’re an individual, that doesn’t mean you’re free of kind of hangups that are getting in the way. So a lot of times it is that sense of like, “What are some of the broken soundtracks I believe?”

Take money for instance. Money is the last taboo we have in our country. Like, I know men that’ll tell me the worst things they’re dealing with. But if you go, “Hey, what’s the financial number you’re thinking about retiring with?” “Whoa, whoa, whoa, no, we don’t talk about that. That’s super sensitive.”

And some of them have hangups about money because they grew up in a family where money was considered evil or must be nice or, “They’re rich, we’re not.” And if you get to a certain level of success, you therefore, become greedy.

So they need a permission to go, “No, I have permission to do. I have permission to go as hard as I want at this business on this job.” So there’s so many different areas where the lack of permission holds you back.

Pete Mockaitis
I hear that. And talking about money, I guess, I’m thinking in terms of you hear so much, at least I do, in terms of scams, and scandals, and swindles, and crypto rug pulls, and extractive private equity yuckiness that feels gross to me, such that I think I’m vibing with what you’re saying is I do feel a little bit of resistance internally in terms of really going after some money-making opportunities, because it’s like, “You know what? I’m doing fine. And I don’t want to be like those mean private equity dudes. Hmm.”

Jon Acuff
Yeah, “I don’t want to step on next. The only way to get ahead is you have to take advantage of people.” Or, the one that I saw somebody asked the other day, it was like, “Why is it binary where I can either have a really great business or I can be a great dad? Why does our culture present it as like…?”

Because I’ve had friends, and I’ll go, “I think you should really start that business.” They go, “Ooh, I don’t want to, like, forget my kids names. I’ll never see them.” As if there’s only two options – not pursue your dream or get a divorce and not attend your daughter’s first communion.

And it’s like, “Whoa, there’s a lot of options. It’s just you’ve made it very binary.”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So how do we grant ourselves or acquire this permission if we’re feeling some of this conflictedness?

Jon Acuff
Well, part of it is identifying it. Some of it’s just labeling it. Like, there’s a really great exercise that we talk about a lot where it’s like you write down a goal and then you write down your reaction to the goal. So you write down, “Okay, I want to retire with $5 million.”

And you write down like, “Oh, that would be impossible,” or, “Oh, I don’t have enough time for that,” or, “Oh, I’ve already made too many bad decisions,” or, “Oh, somebody who has that amount of money is always like this.”

And you start to identify, “Oh, these things are going to hold me back.” Most of the things we wrestle with in life are mindset issues. They’re not physical problems. Where we live, like at least in the Western world, I never have to fear a tiger.

I never leave my house and I’m like, “Just, hey, be careful. There’s a lot of physical predators out there.” It’s only things like procrastination, imposter syndrome, inner critic, overthinking, you know, perfectionism.

And so a lot of times, it’s identifying those things so that you can actually start to work with them. That’s a great first step to go, “Oh, this is holding me back. I’m overreacting in this situation because I have something that’s holding me back. Let me identify that so I can actually deal with it.”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, let’s talk about that weight and big Southern cooking plates situation. Let’s say someone has identified that, “Okay, I would like to be slimmer, but, ooh, that feels hard, that feels risky because of these beliefs, these associations, this history,” what do I do with that?

Jon Acuff
Well, I mean, I guess it would depend on, like, if it’s an event you’re talking about, meaning, “I’m trying to be in shape, and I’m going home for Thanksgiving,” or, “I’m going home for Christmas, and I know that there’s going to be a lot of food, and a lot of food discussion.” Like, having a game plan and going, “Okay, what do I want to do with that?”

My favorite definition of discipline, which I put in the book, is “Make tomorrow easy today.” Make tomorrow easy today. What can I do today that makes tomorrow easy? That’s constantly how I’m thinking, “What can night me do to hook up morning me?” “What can Monday me do to hook up Friday me?”

So in a situation like that, if somebody said to me, “Okay, I’m trying to break these family norms,” I’d go, “Okay. Well, is it, like, related to a specific thing? And if it was, then we’d come up with a plan for that thing.”

If it was related to the decisions you were making of like, “Oh, man, every time I feel stressed, I do this and I know it’s a short-term solution.” Well, let’s change that. You know, like, let’s change the rhythm of that. Let’s find a different way to deal with stress than that. Like, if you know that’s where you tend to go, you have permission to make different choices.

And then maybe it’d be, let’s get some community. So now you have a communal sense of it. Like, for me, I worked out alone a long time, and I joined a community called F3 where it’s a free men’s workout in the morning.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yeah, that’s fun.

Jon Acuff
And I love it. And that changed my approach to working out. Like, that gave me new norms. Now I’m with a bunch of other dudes at 5:30 in the morning. That’s a new norm for me. What’s fun is if you do this long enough, not doing it becomes weird.

Meaning, when you first work out, when you first write, when you first build a business, whatever, it’s hard and it’s uncomfortable. But then you get into such a rhythm that, if you miss a week or two, you’re like, “Oh, this isn’t right.” There’s this really sweet spot where the good habits, when you miss them become weird and it flip flops.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, I totally feel that, experientially. And I think about it almost, like, a dirt road when you got the groove established. It’s easier to be in the groove than out of the groove. Like, today, I had an odd early meeting. And I knew, and actually set multiple alarms because it deviated from my regular schedule so often.

And so I dropped the kids off, and I knew I got to get right to the office for my early meeting. And, mindlessly, I’m driving to the church for, because that’s usually what I do is I hang out in the chapel for some prayer, post-kid drop off.

And I was like, “Wait, no, no, not today. That’s not…We do that almost every day, but today, I have an early meeting. So I got to get to the office right away.” And so it’s so funny how the autopilot move is just, “Oh, I turn here toward the church.”

And I think that is the case with, well, almost everything in terms of, “Oh, I’m working out in the morning, so that’s what I do.” And then it’s like, “Oh, no, no, today is a different day. We don’t do that.” And so it really tracks that, like, the first one or two or three times it’s like a force of will, effortful, intense. And then it’s easier and easier.

And I guess different people put different numbers on it. But, Jon, if I may, when do you think the groove has more momentum than the new groove?

Jon Acuff
Yeah, like, I love if you Google “How long does it take to start a new habit?” there were nine million answers, and it’s like 30 days, 90 days. I mean, for me, I think, at least, it takes a season, meaning like it takes a fall, it takes a summer.

Like, it takes a, you know, for me, three to four months chunk of time of like now F3 for me, like getting up at 4:55 is crazy. For, like, the first eight weeks, I was like, “This is the dumbest thing ever.” Now, I’m like, “Oh, yeah, I’m looking forward to it. Now I’m into it.” So, for me, it usually takes at least a season.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Got you.

Jon Acuff
How does it take you? I mean, what’s your number?

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, you know, well, it’s not binary, you know? It’s hard for me to, like, establish the cutoff because I’d say the second day is easier than the first, and third’s easier than the second, and the fourth, and so on and so forth. So I don’t know where I would draw the line. But, I don’t know, maybe 40-ish.

Jon Acuff
Yeah, that feels good. I’ll hold you to that, 40-ish.

Pete Mockaitis
At this point, it feels harder to not do the thing that I started doing 40 days ago.

Jon Acuff
Yeah, yeah, I can see that.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, so permission to dream. And let’s talk about planning.

Jon Acuff
Yeah, so where people get stuck there is dreaming runs on optimism, planning runs on realism. So dreaming, “Anything is possible. This is going to be amazing. It’s going to be huge.” And then you have to transition kind of into the real world, into reality.

And one of the simplest tools you can do is really just be honest about your calendar. I meet people all the time that’ll go, “I have these 30 different goals. I have 10 different dreams.” And I’d go, “Well, let’s put a number associated with them.”

And then they put an hour or timeframe with them, and I’ll go, “Well, how many hours of free time do you have in your week?” And they go, “Free time? What are talking about? I’m very busy. I’m slammed right now.”

And you go, “Well, you have a 12-hour goal chunk and a week that has zero hours, like that’s why you’re going to keep procrastinating. It’s not because you’re just delaying. It’s because you don’t have the time to pay that bill. Let’s figure that out.”

So that’s a big part of it for people with planning is, “Okay, how do you actually pay the price of the thing you want?” And maybe you don’t want the thing. Like, I would argue, if you won’t spend half an hour with Claude or ChatGPT having it interview you about the thing, you probably don’t really want the thing.

And maybe you’ve just carried that goal along for a long time of, “I think I need to write a book,” “Someday I want to start a business,” “I’ve always wanted to run a marathon,” but if you won’t even spend, like, half an hour kind of just investigating what would that take, maybe it’s not a goal you care about. And that’s fine. Like, I love getting rid of fake goals.

Pete Mockaitis
Tell us about this half-hour AI interview protocol. How does this go down?

Jon Acuff
Yeah, so, for me, if I have something I want to do that’s new, that I don’t know how to do, I often will say, “Okay, one, I love the whole, like, tell me how to write the best prompt to get the thing I want.” So then I’m not even really writing the prompt.

But if I might say, okay, like, an example for me is I’m doing something called Stage & Page, where it’s a one-day intensive for speakers and a one-day intensive for writers. So I might say, “Hey, you know, I’ve been doing this for 18 years. I want to be able to help people that have just started. Interview me about my first year of public speaking because I know these things, but it’s been a while.”

“You’re the best journalist in the world. You write for a magazine called Stage & Page, and I want you to ask me 10 really insightful questions about my early experience as a speaker.” And then it interviews me, and then it’ll summarize that, it’ll create content out of that. But it’s a really easy way versus just a blank piece of paper.

So if I was going to run a marathon, start a business, you know, figure out how to lose 10 pounds, I would say, “Interview me,” so that I really have a sense of why I want to do it, what I want to do, what are my limitations, “Oh, you’ve got a couple injuries. Let’s figure that out.” Like, the interview format is so much easier than just trying to willpower your way into a blank piece of paper.

Pete Mockaitis
I hear you. So you are engaging in that conversation to get the beginnings of some kind of plan going. Is it fair to say, you don’t expect the AI to spit out the perfect plan, but rather it gets you going so that the planning has begun and the ideas are multiplying?

Jon Acuff
Well, and, no, the problem with AI, the fatal flaws, I still have to do it. Like, I keep working with people and they’ll like give me like, there’s like this AI document arms race that happens in small businesses where I go, “Hey, I think we should try blank.”

And then somebody comes back with a 30-page document that they haven’t even read. Like, AI just created it and now we’re going back and forth on documents. So, yeah, I don’t expect AI to come up with the plan because it’s never really been a lack of information.

Like, if you don’t do the thing, you have a great library in your town. Every town has a great library. So I still have to do it, but it gets me from stuck. The book is designed deliberately to move people through it quickly, meaning it’s 71 short chapters.

And I did that deliberately, and they’re short and they’re punchy and they’re all connected. I did it deliberately because nobody wants to read a thousand-page book about procrastination. Like, if your procrastination book has 90 pages of notes, you’re not a procrastinator. You’re a monster.

Like, that’s Jane Goodall writing about monkeys. I’m a monkey writing for other monkeys. So I just want the person to get started. And if they go, “I have to figure out the perfect plan for this goal,” they’re never going to do it.

But if they say, “Can I be interviewed for a half an hour?” even a podcast, they could take you and go, “I really like Pete’s show, and here’s an episode. I like his style of asking questions. Interview me about a book that I want to write as if you’re Pete.”

And then, like, that’s the easiest, most casual way to go, “Oh, okay. Now I’m feeling a little bit.” It’s not that intimidation of like, “I got to figure this out.”

Pete Mockaitis
And then, so that gets you started. How far do you go with the plan before you do?

Jon Acuff
Yeah, so, for me, I like to do what I call audition a goal. I think a lot of goals fail because people try to commit to something for a year they’ve never done for a day. That’s like marrying somebody you just met at speed dating.

So if you told me, “Hey, I have this thing I’ve been putting off that I want to do,” and it was sizable. Like, we’re not talking about, like, you got to clean out one closet. Like, we don’t need to roadmap that. It’s like one closet. Like, I don’t want you to interview yourself. Like, “You run California closets and are asking me about how I store my socks.”

But if you had a goal that was at least a month’s worth of time, I would say, “Hey, let’s do a one-month audition. Like, what if we just tried this thing for 15 minutes a day for 25 for the next 30 days?” Because I don’t want to trigger perfectionism.

But if we tried that and it was like, “Let’s just see.” And then at the end of the 30 days, you can double down and do half an hour. And at the end of that next 30 days, you can add more time, more time, more time.

I would try to ease you into it. I wouldn’t try to get you to plan an annual thing, like, right out of the gate. Or, “From start to finish, here’s how I’m going to write and publish and market my book.” Like, no way. No way. I’d try to get you to write for 15 minutes a day for 30 days in a row, and see if you even like writing, and see if you even like this exercise at all. So, yeah, that’s the next thing I would do.

Pete Mockaitis
Audition a goal. So, like, the goal is auditioning before you, the director, who will determine if it gets the role.

Jon Acuff
“You’ve made it through. You now get to be part of my summer. Like, I gave you May and, congratulations, I just picked you up for the summer. You’ve now made it for the next summer. And not only have you made it, resources will be dedicated to you. I’m going to give you time and maybe even money. Like, oh, that’s exciting.” You’ve won the audition.”

Pete Mockaitis
Do I need to have a director’s chair and beret when I’m auditioning a goal?

Jon Acuff
I don’t think a beret ever makes a situation worse. Like, maybe a funeral. Like, if you don’t own a beret and then, all of sudden, at your mom’s funeral, you show up in a beret, lot of questions, lot of questions.

Pete Mockaitis
These are the key insights, Jon, that we count on you for. Thank you.

Jon Acuff
Yeah, I hope people are taking notes right now. I hope they pulled over. Probably pulled over on that one, like, “Wait a second. We’re going into berets now, Pete.” And you probably didn’t even put that in the description, if I know you. It’s just a surprise.

Pete Mockaitis
No, not yet. And let’s hit the permission to do now.

Jon Acuff
Yeah, so the first two are great, but if you don’t actually do it, it ultimately doesn’t matter. So the thing that I like about doing that I think people have a hard time with is maintaining motivation. We tend to think motivation will grow as we work on a goal. That’s just not how it works. Motivation is often the first thing to leave.

So I spend a lot of time helping people make it through the middle, or what I call the montage. Like, we love a montage in a movie. We don’t like being in one in our own life. Meaning, we love to watch Rocky IV, and there’s an eight-and-a-half-minute scene where he trains against Drago.

A prize fight training camp takes eight to 12 weeks. So we saw 1% of the experience, but when we try to write a book, start a business, you know, parent teenagers, whatever this big goal is, there’s a lot of middle.

And so a lot of what I do is teach people how to build a motivation portfolio. Meaning, collect enough motivation so that when you’re discouraged, which you’re going to be, you have a long robust list, not just one thing.

If you only have one why, like that why won’t show up most of the days, and you’ll go, “Ugh, I’m not even going to do the thing.” But I’d much rather you have a whole list where you can go, “Oh, it took me till number nine.”

And here’s a silly example, because you said, it seemed like you were familiar with F3. Like, one of my motivations for doing it is, the night before I text three friends and say, “I’ll give you a ride tomorrow,” because I’ve just put myself into a corner.

And I know in the morning I’m not going to text three guys and go, “Hey, it turns out I’m a wimp. Never mind.” Like, I now have some accountability there. I now have that motivation to fulfill what I promised to those three guys.

So that’s what I try to help people when it comes to doing. I’m never, like, anybody who listens to this show or reads the kind of books I write, it’s not a question of whether they’ll do it. It’s a question of whether they’ll keep doing it. And that’s where you really have to lean in.

Pete Mockaitis
So I like that. A motivational portfolio, we’ve got multiple sources of support pulling upon you. One was some of that accountability. People are expecting you to show up and give them a ride there. You said nine. Give us a quick rundown of maybe a bundle of things that might go in a portfolio.

Jon Acuff
A couple others? Yeah. I mean, for me, like, I wrote this book, Soundtracks, and we ended up turning it into a Soundtracks card deck, so it’s 52 cards. So sometimes I’ll have these in my pocket, and one will say “Hills pay the bills.”

And it’s a reminder to me of, like, when I have to do the hard things, if I do them and if I climb the hills, other people don’t, I get to see vistas other people won’t. And that could be something like a canceled flight in Chicago in January, where I had to spend the night, like, at the worst airport next to O’Hare. Like, nobody wants that. Nobody.

But, it’s like, “Oh, yeah, hills pay the bills.” So sometimes it’s a soundtrack. Sometimes it’s a literal song where I know when I hear this type of music, I always feel this type of way. Sometimes it’s a movie clip. Sometimes it is a friend that I go, “This is my most uplifting friend. And anytime I’m stuck, if I call so-and-so, 30 seconds of conversation, I feel like I can conquer the world.”

Sometimes it’s 10 minutes of walking around the neighborhood because I need some endorphins and some sunshine. Sometimes it’s caffeine. Sometimes it’s like, yeah, an espresso would really help at two o’clock when I’m struggling.

So I think everyone should be a great note taker about themselves. I think you should be the best documentary filmmaker about your life because, then, you figure out how you work best, and then you can repeat that. And so that’s what I mean by a motivation portfolio.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, I like this a lot. We had Dr. Ethan Kross on the show, who wrote a book, Shift, about your mood, and so this is kind of reminding me of that because he mentions music specifically as a tool. So when you say portfolio, you just have a big old list of options in terms of, “This is the thing I could remember or do to take the action.”

Jon Acuff
Well, because I know I’m not going to want to. Like, why pretend I’m always going to feel motivated to write a book? I’m not going to. Someday, the financial motivation will motivate me, I’ll go, “Oh, it’s how I pay the bills. It’s how I put my kids through college. Great.”

Some days, I won’t care about that. Some days, showing my kids an example of hard work will motivate me. Someday, it won’t. Like, sometimes I’ll be like, “They’re not even really watching. Like, I can take it easy on this,” you know?

So, yeah, collecting those and that’s, to me, part of that is just self-awareness. Like, if you have self-awareness, it’s a lot easier to accomplish your goals, because then again, you figure out, “This works. This doesn’t work. I should repeat this thing that does work. I should stop doing this thing that doesn’t work.”

Like, a simple example. Pete, if my phone is in my bedroom, I stay up later. I don’t need another test of that. I’ve checked that box. I know that. So a simple hack for me is I leave my phone downstairs when I go to bed.

Like, imagine me going, “Man, I found a sleep hack. It’s unbelievable. Here’s how to like…” It’s the simplest thing. I just realized over and over and over again, if I have my phone near me, I’m going to look at my phone, and I’m going to stay up later than I really want to.

So I found a workaround, which was leave the phone downstairs. Like, it’s not complicated. That motivates me to go to bed earlier. Like, “Eureka!”

Pete Mockaitis
You know, Jon, I love that specific example. I was once, true story, in Vanderbilt’s Sleep laboratory, having all sorts of things attached to my body. And I said, “So what are the top sleep tips?” And she’s like, “Oh, yeah, it’s don’t bring your phone in your bedroom, but no one wants to hear that,” as she continues strapping electrodes to me.

Jon Acuff
Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Pete Mockaitis
Simple as that, “Okay, that was that.”

Jon Acuff
Yeah, jeez, that’s so funny. Were you doing it for money or to fix your own sleep? Like was this a…?

Pete Mockaitis
Well, we were curious if I had sleep apnea. It turns out I had mild sleep apnea. I’ve since overcome that. That was fun.

Jon Acuff
Survivor. Survivor.

Pete Mockaitis
I am. So that’s really cool. The motivational portfolio, it’s like layers upon layers upon layers of backup systems.

Jon Acuff
Yeah, I want it to be easy. I want, like, again, make tomorrow easy today. So I know, like, because nobody’s job is easy. Like, writing a book has a lot of, like, identity and emotion around it.

I’m right now in the marathon part of the book release, meaning I’ve already released the book. I sprinted to the finish line and now I’m in the marathon part, and I need to talk about it constantly and I need to promote it.

And every author loves writing a book. Most hate selling a book. But guess what? If you don’t sell it, you don’t get to write other books. And so now I’m like, “Okay, for me, in the next six months, how do I motivate myself to do 500 different types of promotion around Procrastination Proof versus I hide from it. I hope Oprah discovers it in her dentist office, whatever.”

And I was like, “No. For me to do that thing will be difficult, how do I make it easy? How do I motivate myself to stay on top of this book?”

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I think this is so good, if I may. Could you give me three more things that can go in a portfolio to get motivation cooking?

Jon Acuff
Oh, yeah, 100%. I mean, an item you want to buy can go in a portfolio. There’s a woman I know that grew up in Indiana, kind of small town, and she always wanted to buy a Louis Vuitton purse. That was her thing, like, “When I make it, when I become an executive…”

Like, that was her symbol to the point that when she went to Paris, France with her husband, he tried to buy her one, and she said, “No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.” She was like, “I don’t want you to buy this for me. I need to do this. This is something I’ve thought about.”

So sometimes it’s okay, “I want to buy this thing,” or, “I want to be able to give this person this thing.” That’s a great one. Another one can be, “By this date, I want to accomplish blank.” Everybody has had the vacation moment where you get a lot of work done right before vacation.

Because you’re going, “How do I make tomorrow easy today? I want to have a really peaceful vacation. So if I clear these things off my plate, I will.” So you get a boost of energy. You could just say, “Where are some deadlines like that that I want to say before I go to this, I’ve done these three things before I go to this. I’ve done these three things?” To me, that’s another one.

And then the third one, I’d say, is like this principle of do difficult things in beautiful places. Meaning, if there’s something you’re putting off, go do it somewhere beautiful. Like, don’t try to crank on something in your office. If you’re stuck, go to a coffee shop.

Don’t run somewhere ugly. Like, make that part of the reward, like, “Oh, I’m going to go to, you know,” I don’t know, “Pinkerton Park, because I love that park,” versus, “I’m just going to run around this treadmill.” You’re already doing a difficult thing. Why add more difficulty?

And so, again, you just get creative and curious about yourself, and you’ll start to notice. Like, last one I’ll give you, I bought a Timex watch. I don’t mean to brag, but, obviously I’ve achieved some success. I bought a Timex watch that has Snoopy on it jumping into a pile of leaves.

So on the days when I feel tempted to write a boring, serious book devoid of humor, I can wear that watch and be like, “Oh, that’s charming. That’s delightful. Like, look at Snoopy having so much fun. He’s with Linus. They’re jumping in the leaves.” Very silly trigger for me. Wouldn’t work for most people. No problem.

One year, I wanted to write a book faster, so I bought carbon fiber Nike running shoes. Bright green. Obnoxious. The most expensive shoes I’d ever owned from a running perspective. Wore them every time I wrote that book. Ridiculous? Totally. Totally ridiculous. But it was another one of those things.

And the more you study high performers like you do, the more you find they’re playing games like this all the time. They’re playing little games behind the scenes to do the things that most people don’t do.

Pete Mockaitis
So if I perceive that I have many lucrative opportunities and I just need to go to work, I should put a large pickaxe in my office because there’s a gold mine that just needs me to go to work on it.

Jon Acuff
Gold, you could do that. Yeah, or get rid of your chair and do a little cart, like one of those carts they carry the gold in. Maybe you just sit in that. Maybe you, overalls, like Yosemite Sam or something. I don’t know, we’re just spitballing, Pete.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good. That’s good. Well, I want to hear the one-minute version of permission to review and then how procrastination is the most well-funded fear in human history.

Jon Acuff
Yeah, so the one minute is, I’ll give you the soundtrack for it, “Data kills denial, which prevents disaster.” Data kills denial, which prevents disaster. All the review is telling you is what’s really going on. And we hate a review, dude. We hate it.

The first time I saw this, I was at a restaurant in New York, everybody was going to get a crazy meal. They opened the menu and they had put the calories next to the menu. And everybody’s order changed. Everybody changed their order to sad grilled chicken salads with dressing on the side, not the side of the plate, the side of the restaurant.

So all that to say, if you want to go the direction you really want to go, become friends with data, become friends with a review.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, understood. Now this well-funded fear, what’s the scoop?

Jon Acuff
Well, yeah, so Netflix doesn’t fund perfectionism, Hulu doesn’t fund inner critic, but every single one of those modern-day services funds procrastination. In 2017, the CEO of Netflix said, “Our number one competitor is sleep.”

They are actively funding procrastination, meaning they don’t want you to go to sleep. They don’t want you to get in shape. They don’t want you to write your book. They don’t want you to publish your podcast. They want to turn your time and attention into ad revenue.

And I like those services. That’s not a criticism of them. Just know the score. Like, it’s easier now to procrastinate than it ever has before because you have a pocket casino. Like, that’s a real thing. And in the same way that Dr. Vanderbilt told you, “Yeah, the trick to sleeping is to leave your phone in another room.”

If you said to me, “What’s the trick to writing a book?” I’d go, “Well, why don’t you open your screen time and take an hour back from your greediest, hungriest app, and apply that to writing.” Like, that’s not, even the busiest people, if you ask them to open their screen time will go, “Oh, my gosh, I had no idea I spent six hours on Facebook last week. I would have said, I would have guessed an hour.” Like, that’s what I mean by it’s the most well-funded.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Got you. Well, Jon, tell me, anything else you want to make sure to mention before we hear about your favorite things?

Jon Acuff
Yeah, so we have a quiz. If you go to JonAcuff.com/quiz, that’ll show you where you might be tempted to get stuck and what to do about that. So it’ll put you into one of the four categories. You’re a dreamer, you’re a perfectionist, you’re a hustler, you’re an analyst. So JonAcuff.com/quiz will be a whole lot of fun.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Now, could you share a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Jon Acuff
I love Jim Rohn’s quote, “Don’t wish it was easier. Wish you were better. Don’t wish you had less problems. Wish you had more skills.” Like, that’s one of those, that’s in my motivation portfolio. Like, when I go like, “It’s so hard.” Like, “No, I wish I had more skills to deal with this challenge. Am I being invited into a skill?” That’s one of my favorite quotes.

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

Jon Acuff
Daniel Kahneman wrote about it in Thinking, Fast and Slow, where they had college kids make sentences out of words. And one group of college kids had words related to being old in their collection: slow, retired, bald, Florida, etc.

And when they tested how fast they walked later, the students who had read the words about being old physically acted old. They, unknowingly, acted like old people just from reading the words. My favorite study because it speaks to the power of your mindset.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite book?

Jon Acuff
I always say War of Art, Stephen Pressfield. That book, for me, really kicked off my own writing journey.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite nugget, something that Jon Acuff shares that gets quoted and tweeted a lot?

Jon Acuff
I often say, “Starting is fun but the future belongs to finishers.” So starting is fun but the future belongs to finishers is one of the things. And then the other one that gets tweeted a lot is, “Be brave enough to be bad at something new.”

Pete Mockaitis
And if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Jon Acuff
JonAcuff.com is my site. I have a podcast called All It Takes Is A Goal. And I’m big on LinkedIn now. If you listened to the whole episode and just didn’t skip to this, I’m big on LinkedIn. Hit me up.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a final challenge or call to action for folks looking to be awesome at their jobs?

Jon Acuff
Yeah, so I would find somebody 10 years ahead of you and 10 years behind. The 10 years ahead, we know. It’s a mentor. It’s a time machine. Somebody who’s been to the future you want to get to, and will tell you how to do it.

Person 10 years to 20 years behind, they grew up in the new way and can teach you the new way very quickly. I grew up in the old way. I’m 50. For me to do the new way, I have to unlearn the old way first. When I connect with a 27-year-old and they show me something about AI, like, it speeds me up.

So I would just encourage you, know somebody 10 years ahead of you, somebody 10 years behind you.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Jon, thank you.

Jon Acuff
Yeah, thanks for having me.