It’s Not Procrastination
We love that word.
“Procrastination.”
We slap it on everything and then reach for the obvious fix: productivity content, a 75-day challenge, or some guy on YouTube screaming at us about discipline and getting up at 4 am.
But procrastination isn’t one problem, it’s three, and most people are solving the wrong one.
In my experience:
10% of the time, you don’t know what to do.
You’re a beginner, you’re lost, you need more how-to information. Fair enough, go learn.
30% of the time, you’re just being lazy.
You know what to do, you have the energy, you’re just not doing it. This is where the Goggins or Harmozi motivational stuff actually works. You DO need to hustle and work harder.
But 60% of the time, it’s avoidance.
Something about the goal feels like a threat to you, and you don’t even realize it’s happening.
And most of us assume we’re lazy or lack information 60% of the time and we’re only afraid 10% of the time when the real ratio is reversed.
It’s a lot easier to say “I just need more discipline” than to admit you’re afraid of something. Discipline feels fixable, fear feels like a character flaw, and so we keep reaching for the productivity hacks instead of looking at what’s actually in the way.
And that’s exactly why the advice never sticks.
You cannot discipline your way out of something your nervous system is protecting you from.
Now there’s a deeper conversation here about getting to your core story. We’ve covered that before in past newsletters and I’ll keep covering it.
But if you know what to do and still can’t move, despite the inner work and awareness, let's zoom out and ask something most skip entirely.
Is This Even Your Goal?
When I was in my twenties, I moved apartments like four times in one year. Every time, I’d pack everything up, haul it to the next place, and unpack it all again without ever getting rid of anything.
One day I’m looking around my room and there’s this 5-foot-tall exotic giraffe statue sitting in the corner. Some random thing I bought years ago because it was on sale at Goodwill. And I thought: do I even want this- or have I just been dragging it from apartment to apartment because at one time I did?
Then I looked around the whole room.
I realized my entire room was just stuff an old version of me chose that I never thought to question.
We do the exact same thing with our goals.
“I need to start a business.”
“I should write my book.”
“I should make content.”
Year after year, we drag these things with us without ever stopping to ask whether we still actually want them, or whether some twenty-something year-old version of us made that decision and current us just never revisited it.
And I know this because I lived it.
About two years into college, I realized I hated what I was studying. Which, no surprise, made the last two years to graduate absolutely brutal. It took every ounce of discipline I had just to get through it.
Meanwhile, my roommate was studying psychology and I'd flip through his textbook for fun. I'd lose hours reading chapters that had nothing to do with my coursework just because I was curious.
I didn't hate learning. I just hated what I was learning.
That's not a motivation problem. That's an alignment problem. And no amount of willpower was ever going to fix it.
When you’re on the wrong path, discipline feels like Sisyphus pushing his boulder uphill. When you’re on the right path, the same energy feels like momentum.
This is one of the reasons I journal the way I do. Looking back at old entries is how I caught myself dragging old goals around for years.
The Hard Part
If you’ve had resistance around something for a long time, and I mean the kind where you keep telling yourself “this is the year” and it never is, I want you to give yourself twenty honest minutes with one question:
Does the current version of me actually want this?
Not the twenty-something-year-old version. Not the version your parents wanted. Not the version that announced it publicly and now feels like they can’t back down.
You. Right now.
If the answer is no, let's scratch it off the list.
Look, I’m the last person trying to talk you out of a dream you 100% want. But I’ve had to kill off goals that felt painful to release at the time, and every single one made room for something better that took half the energy.
And the relief you’ll feel letting go of a goal that’s out of alignment is a feeling you won’t expect.
No amount of 'how-to' videos or discipline fixes can fix being on the wrong path.
And maybe this is the day to ditch that goal that’s been out of alignment with who you actually are at this phase of your life.
So that sentence you all keep telling me, 'I know what to do but I can't get myself to do it,' might not mean what you think it means.
It might mean the thing you're forcing yourself to do was never yours to begin with.
See you Saturday,
CK
P.S. I filmed a video on this that goes deeper on a few more solutions I couldn’t fit here. Should be dropping this week, keep an eye out on your youtube feed.
P.P.S. If this piece hit and you want help auditing your own goals, My Best Journal is built for exactly that.