Yeah,

I mean, I definitely use humor.

And like you mentioned, stage and page, we have this two-day event for speakers and writers.

And we haven't ever advertised it because it's pretty small.

It's 20 people.

It's in my office.

It's an intensive.

Okay, back to you.

Yeah,

I mean, I definitely use humor.

And like you mentioned, stage and page, we have this two-day event for speakers and writers.

And we haven't ever advertised it because it's pretty small.

It's 20 people.

It's in my office.

It's an intensive.

Okay, back to you.

How to stop waiting and start doing right after this quick break.

I live and

That's Q-U-I-N-C-E dot com slash N-B-I-D.

Hey, this is John Acuff.

I'm a New York Times bestselling author of 11 books.

I've been married to my wife, Jenny, for 25 years.

We live outside of Nashville, Tennessee.

We have two adult kids, which makes me feel very old.

[laughs]

So four is related to that marriage thing I just touched on.

Four is they believe remarkable is a limited resource, meaning if I choose it in one part of my life, the other parts of my life have to suffer.

And, and th- this one starts because often we have an example of that.

Like, we worked with a leader who was the top leader at the company, but had a train wreck of a marriage, or had a series of bad marriages, or their kids didn't talk to them, or their health was really, really terrible 'cause they're always on the road.

And we think that's what, to get that level of excellence or remarkable, I, I have to be that.

And what I like to argue is discipline is contagious.

Hmm.

[upbeat music] Every little thing you think that you need.

Every little thing you think that you need.

Every little thing that's just feeding your greed.

Oh, I bet that you'll be fine without it.

Hoarding is a form of procrastination, right? So is there a small action that your average listener can, who's listening to this right now, can, can take today that, that will genuinely interrupt whatever procrastination cycle they're on with respect to the clutter in their home?

Yeah, I'd say I love finding the first 15, like, because people go from not doing anything to thinking they'll have to change their whole life.

Like, I like to say people bou- bounce from the comfort zone to the chaos zone.

They're not doing anything, and then they ricochet to the other side, and they go, "I'm changing everything." And they buy all the supplies, and they're like, "I'm decluttering down to 10 items." The reason we have the phrase yo-yo diet in our country is that people yo-yo back and forth between those two extremes, and in the middle to me is, is the best place to live.

How do we even give ourselves permission to start to write down that vision or goal?

Well, first of all, you recognize that permission used to matter a lot when we were young.

We don't talk about that word as adults, which is a mistake.

But when you were a kid, a permission slip was a passport.

You got to join the soccer team and go on a field trip and come to school late or get out early.

And so if you start to look at the word permission, you start to see it in every great story.

Think about Lord of the Rings.

How do we step forward in that confidence and actually make a plan, move our dream to action?

So when you first started blogging, for example, how did you develop connection? How did you develop community? And then how have you seen that over the years and how do you do it now?

Yeah, I mean, so at the very first start, it was really about responding to comments.

What I've learned, a simple principle is people will read if they know you're listening.

So I got really dedicated at responding to comments people left on my blog.

That person had taken the time to write this comment and I was going to read it and not only read it, but I was going to respond.

So that was kind of the first level.

And then the next thing I did was I did work on an email list.

And then the events avatar, because it seems like what you're doing or what I found works as well is that you're anticipating what they're going to need next and you help them move to it without overwhelming them.

So do you ever find yourself at an event and feel like, um, "I'm not qualified to be here," and dealt with kind of imposter syndrome?

Oh, 100%.

I mean, if I step into a room full of hedge fund managers, and I know the majority of them are all ma- like, they're all worth or they've all earned a quarter billion dollars, and I, I come into that, then, then I definitely feel that sense of imposter syndrome or the inner critic.

Um, but I, again, but I've just worked at it, where I'll say things like, "They invited me here on purpose.

I didn't break in.

I didn't break into this room [laughs] and, like, I stole the mic.

Like, they hired me on purpose." Um, also, the only thing that I've found that beats imposter syndrome is effort, is evidence, meaning it's really hard for imposter syndrome to tell me as I write book 13, "You're not a real writer."

It's really bad.

[laughs]

And so, but one day after a meeting, he pulled me aside, and he was like, "Do you wanna know why you're frustrated?" And I was like, I was about to blame all these other people.

And he goes, "Here's why you're mad." And he took out this napkin, and he said, "Bose doesn't make products.

We make music, and that's a special, amazing thing." Like, he said, "We're the songs at weddings.

We're the, you know, a rock, rock anthem in an arena." And he drew this huge, like, full rectangle.

And then he said, "But the problem is when Dr. Bose tells the CEO, 'Here's what we do,' he draws it a little bit smaller 'cause he doesn't wanna get in trouble.

He doesn't wanna go over that line, so he draws it a little smaller.

Yeah.

And so what kind of courage did it take and what kind of sense of calling did it take for you to leave a secure paycheck and a, and a notable job to start your own company?

Well, I, I, I knew I wanted to do it on my own.

I mean, it was...

That place is an entrepreneur factory, and so I wanted to be an entrepreneur.

Um, you know, I kind of got that itch of like, oh, I wanna try this fully on my own.

And I wasn't a financial guy, either.

I could write about it and talk about it, but I'd, I'd be exaggerating if I said, "You know what? I am an expert on finances." And so I started to kinda have this heart tug to write about the things I felt called to write about and to see if I could do it, um, and, you know, see what the next step kind of looked like.

Yeah.

What about people who, who seem to procrastinate because, as you had said earlier, they like the rush of working under pressure, they like to work against the deadline, that that gives them fuel? And I sort of understand that, but, uh, uh, yeah, I don't know if it really makes sense.

Well, the, I mean, the first thing I'd say is they've studied that up and down, and it's just not true.

Scientists have studied that particular thing again and again and again and again, and it's just not ultimately true.

And what I mean by that is nobody's first draft is their best draft.

You might wait until the last second, you might skid across the finish line, but nobody's best draft is their first draft.

If you had the freedom of 24 hours of reflection or three days off from the project and then you came back, you're going to find mistakes.

You're going to find improvements.

Yeah.

And that's it, the permission to do now.

now.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.

If I may, can give you three more things that can go in a portfolio to get motivation cooking.

[laughs]

Yeah, I mean, you already know you're really motivated by it, so just, I love to take something and turn it to good.

So I, you know, for something like that, I go, man, if I'm already wired that way, the lie is now I have to become the opposite.

Now I need to become a monk, and now I need to kill every desire I have and not be wired that way.

You go, "No, no, no, I'm really short burst motivated, let me just create a lot of short bursts." I like to stack finish lines.

Like in a ma- in a marathon, there's only one finish line.

26 miles, it's a long, like...

Um, can you talk about the power of stop asking what you currently believe and start asking yourself what you want to believe?

So I'd love for you to just highlight for people so that we can all understand, 'cause we all procrastinate, why are we doing it? What are the five reasons that you identified?

Yeah, so one is task.

The task feels overwhelming, and you'll hear people say, when this is a broken soundtrack, "I don't know where to start." And it's a broken soundtrack because what you're really saying is, "There's a perfect place to start, and if I pick the wrong one, it'll be harder.

Or if I find the right place to start, it'll be easy." And so that I don't know where to start, the task feels overwhelming, and sometimes it's because we've made the task overwhelming.

Like, we've made it too large, we've made it too gnarly.

A lot of New Year's resolutions fail because we commit to doing something for a year we've never done for a day.

That's like marrying somebody you just met at speed dating.

And my last question is what is remarkable? What is that for people?

Mm-hmm

... it'll be annoying enough that it's like, "Hey, just so we're clear, I am not going away 'cause I am w- I should be on the list," [laughs] like, and I don't...

You know.

So that's where dreamers get stuck.

Perfectionists get stuck planning.

They're gonna change the world as soon as the plan is perfect, and so they say things like, "I'll make a decision as soon as I have enough data." And we live in a world where you'll never have all the data.

It's too much data.

Mm.

Yeah

... you know, if I re- if I think something, it's like all of a sudden in my search history." So I think we just have to say, okay, it has gotten easier to procrastinate.

I think we've always struggled with it because, you know, if you actually do the thing, you open yourself up to criticism.

Think about how many people you know come up to you and go, "Annie, I'd love to write a book like you," but the reality is as soon as you do, that's when it gets real.

That's when you get criticized.

I never got a single one-star review from a stranger on Amazon when I was a copywriter for Home Depot.

Yeah.

Like, "Why don't we go ahead and, and do that?" You know, for me, we talked about this a little, like my favorite def- definition of generosity happened from this, this couple.

So tell us what you mean by soundtracks, because what I'm hearing and what you're saying is your soundtrack matters to your motivation, right?

Oh my gosh.

Yeah.

So mindset's really easy.

We've made it kind of woo-woo in our culture where you think you're going to light a sprig of sage in a drum circle and kind of manifest the universe.

Like there's a lot of like woo-woo language around it, but mindset's very practical.

Your thoughts turn into actions.

What if I took a right turn? What if I am? And a lot of times I notice with folks who have them, they're really deeply ingrained in Sometimes it's just what if I'm, right? Just what if there's a possibility that I can, you know, it doesn't even have to, I don't even have to be totally bought into it yet, but I can be open to.

Let's begin with Jon Acuff's story.

[gentle music] I grew up in the church.

My dad's a pastor.

He planted a church in Massachusetts in the '80s, which was kind of unheard of at the time.

So I got to watch him use a lot of humor and personal stories and connections because in New England, you don't have cultural Christianity to lean on.

Not everybody grew up going to Sunday school.

So he had to be really creative in the way he wrote sermons and the way he communicated.

Leland shares the deeply personal story of growing up with autism, the profound sacrifices his father made to help him navigate the world, and how that dedication gave Leland the foundation to flourish.

[laughs]

... nobody works best last second.

What you're really saying there is, "This is the best solution I know." Like it's not the best.

It's not you're at your best.

No one would honestly say, "If I have time to look at it a third time, I never find a mistake." No, you do.

We all find mistakes.

Or, "If I look at it again, I never have a new idea that makes it even better." You do.

It never gets easy

Yeah.

There'll be some days where you go, "The finances don't matter to me," like I...

Or you'll hit your financial goal and you go, "Okay, now what?" You see successful people that only have one form of motivation quit all the time 'cause they go, "As soon as I have this amount of whatever, then I'll..." And then they get it and they go, "Oh, there, there's nothing else to keep me going." And so what I like to do is collect forms of motivation.

So you know, you mentioned paying for my kids' college.

That's definitely one of them.

Um, the ability to take them on trips.

Like, you know, I used my Delta Sky Miles to upgrade us on a flight to Italy, and that was really fun 'cause I could tie the all the times I'm delayed for a flight in Atlanta to my kids.

That's K-N-I-X teen.com, code 1000hours.

[laughs]

"And then I did." So the only reason people leave their comfort zone is there's something outside it worth being uncomfortable for.

So the first step is to kind of plug into that because what happens...

Here's how it happens.

The desire or the disappointment creates discipline.

It's not the other way around.

Like, when I got really disciplined, it was because I started to write a blog, and I found out, oh, my gosh, there's this whole world out there that I can speak to, and I can impact people.

Mm

That's so good

...

I, I didn't have to reflect a week later.

This morning, I took my daughter to coffee.

She's going to college in two weeks, and we went on a, a walk around our little town.

And our friend's daughter just opened up a boutique.

She's 20 and just opened a boutique called The Statement Society, and it was open.

[laughs]