179 Permission to Procrastinate with Carol Clegg

 In this episode of Connect Inspire Create, I explore the power of giving yourself permission to procrastinate. I challenge the common perception of procrastination as a negative habit and share how intentional procrastination can lead to creativity, focus, and better decision-making. 

Grab some practical tips for embracing productive procrastination, including setting small goals, using procrastination as self-care, and tracking time with techniques like Pomodoro.

Tune in for a fresh perspective on procrastination and how it can enhance your productivity with ease and flow. 

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Hello from your host, Carol Clegg – your mindset and accountability coach for women coaches, entrepreneurs and small teams!

As a coach or heart led entrepreneur, you know all the right tools and strategies to support your clients—but when it comes to applying them to yourself, it’s easy to get stuck. You might find it hard to prioritize self-care, stay motivated, or maintain a positive mindset, especially when juggling the demands of your business. That’s where I come in.

I love helping women reconnect with their own practices. Together, we’ll explore what’s getting in the way, reignite your motivation, and put the right tools in place to support your well-being.

If you're ready to start prioritizing your own mindset and motivation, take my complimentary “Insights into You” (aka Saboteur discovery assessment” and follow up with a free coaching session to explore your results. Take your assessment here, or visit carolclegg.com for more details.

BOOK your ✅ 30-minute complimentary exploration call HERE

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Transcript

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Well, hello and welcome back to Connect, Inspire, Create and Season 6. This podcast is where we dive into topics that empower you to live with intention, embrace your creativity and move forward with some ease and flow, some clarity and some joy. I am your host, Carol Clegg. A mindset and accountability coach working with women coaches, women entrepreneurs and small teams to shift that mindset just a little bit every day to create more joy and more happiness in your day, your relationships and your work. But today we're going to explore something that might just surprise you. Giving yourself permission to procrastinate. Now, I know you're thinking procrastination. Isn't that, we hear this so many times, the enemy of productivity? Well, not necessarily. What if I told you that procrastination could actually be a tool for relaxation, creativity, and even your productivity? So let's just explore. I know we've all had that feeling, that nagging feeling, probably pretty much every day, that we're not doing enough or not doing it fast enough. And procrastination is often painted as a bad habit, something that slows us down. It causes us stress and it makes us feel guilty. And I must admit, absolutely, and looking at this from a different point of view, it's not going to remove all of these other feelings when they do pop up. But we can take that opportunity sometimes, maybe frequently, maybe it's a habit that we could learn. But what if we reframe the mindset? What if there were certain days that you could just give yourself permission to procrastinate and not think of it as a way of, I'm going to avoid doing this, I don't want to touch this, but rather a way of actually recharging and recharging your mental and your emotional batteries. So here's the thing. When we give ourselves permission to procrastinate intentionally, we actually are opening the door to more clarity, focus and creativity. So let's just cover a couple of points and see if any of these resonate with you. And maybe this could just be something that you could give it a try. So let's just first look at some of the surprising benefits of procrastination when it's done with intention so enhanced creativity you've probably heard the term let's sleep on it i know that i like to do that with big decisions as always say let's just take 24 hours let me just ponder let me just think about this And sometimes the same thing. If you can step away from a task, you could have some new insight. So when you procrastinate with purpose, you can allow your mind to relax and then just process some ideas in the background. Maybe this is where some creative solutions can come up. Maybe this is an opportunity for a little mind mapping. So procrastination can actually be your brain's way of coming up with new ideas that you're not forcing yourself to focus on. And sometimes when we find yourself trying to work nonstop and your brain just feels like, oh, my goodness, I just I can't do this anymore. I'm running on empty. Well, taking a short break, a productive procrastination can actually give you a dose of success. don't know, maybe just a fresh perspective, a little bit of energy. So it's that whole giving ourselves permission because we so often beat ourselves up that we have to, should do. And no, we need to allow ourselves to tune in to what our body and our mind and our intuition really wants. So sometimes you come back to a space and you might actually make a better decision rather than making a quick one and go, oh, I need to get this done out of urgency. Perhaps you might find as you reflect back, ah, that was actually a better decision. So here's something just to think about, but you can be mindful. So it's not avoiding that responsibility or allow that long to-do list, the tasks to pile up, the chores at home. Oh my goodness, I need to get on top of this and it's really bugging me. But Here are some productive ways. So how about just setting, and you'll hear this time and time again, the baby steps, the setting small, achievable goals. Because honestly, if we break that overwhelming task down into the tiniest, tiniest step possible... The pressure is so much less. And once you start, often you say, I'm going to do this for five minutes and the five minutes turns into 30. So giving yourself permission just to take that baby step and see how it goes. And then this is an important one. Procrastination can be a sign that you just need to take care of yourself. So let me say that again. Procrastination. Thank you so much for joining us. with the sun on my face, and I'm going to just enjoy this moment doing absolutely nothing. And by just giving myself permission to be there instead of saying, oh, get to work, you need to get to work. I am, I'm starting today with a real positive mindset, a real positive, yeah, just excited for what's going to unfold today. So you can also, When I think about this, because I have my little, I know people call the Poma Dora technique, but I do just have a little timer and I don't do that all the time. I don't set the timer for the entire day, but I do set that for, for instance, this morning, I wanted to work on some tasks for my business and I set it for 30 minutes and I did just that. Will I go back and turn the timer on later this afternoon? Maybe, but even just using it, to keep you focused for a period of time to just balance things out and to get things done. So bringing that back in is remembering to celebrate. Yeah, so recently I did, I had such a long list of things that I wanted to get done last week. And I just, instead of pushing myself to tick them off, which I enjoy doing that, I have an app on my phone called TickTick where I put the most, pressing things on there. I just gave myself permission to procrastinate and I started exploring and I went, wow, this is quite different. I am focused now today on what I want to get done, but it just brought such a sense of ease and flow and just, yeah, I just found it empowering. I wrote a blog post. You'll see that on my LinkedIn profile for my newsletter. And it just took me in so many directions. And then I thought, well, why not? record an episode for the podcast. So really just something to contemplate. Procrastination doesn't have to be your enemy. So look at it as just giving yourself permission to use it mindfully. So there are times that you're going to want to knuckle down, put the timer on, start with the baby steps, but there are times that you can give yourself permission. So next time you feel the urge to procrastinate, don't beat yourself up. Just remember that it's not about avoiding. It's about taking a moment to recharge, contemplate and come back from a place of ease and clarity. So thank you for joining me today on Connect, Inspire, Create. And I hope this episode has helped you just rethink procrastination a little and perhaps find a time in your week that you can turn it into a tool that serves you rather than holds you back. And I will be back next week with a guest, my first guest for season six. And while we're talking about firsts, I'm excited to say that I will be launching my new program. It's a group combined with one-on-one coaching using the positive intelligence method. It's 90 days long. And if you head on over either to my website at carolclague.com or I'll pop a link in the show notes, this is the perfect place if you find yourself pouring into others, you have your list of tools, you know what you're meant to be doing. But often as coaches, we do not take care of ourselves. So if you want to join me for 90 days, I'd love to have you on board and all the details are in the show notes. So until then, just remember to be kind to yourself, give yourself permission to pause and keep creating from a place of joy and peace. So until the next episode, thanks for listening.