Ep 6 - Procrastination isn't always about avoidance...

Episode 6: Procrastination isn't always about avoidance... 

Episode Summary:
In this episode, Sarah discusses procrastination from a neurodivergent lens, exploring how it can stem from overwhelm rather than avoidance. She shares her own experiences with autistic inertia, ADHD tendencies, challenges with task switching and executive function. Sarah provides coping strategies like leveraging accountability partners, external deadlines, doing brain dumps, and using Human Design for self-awareness. The episode gives permission to redefine consistency based on your own patterns and needs.

Topics Discussed:
- Procrastination through neurodivergence (autism, ADHD)
- Autistic inertia and hyperfocus
- ADHD and executive function challenges 
- Procrastination masking overwhelm
- Strategies for overcoming procrastination
- Accountability partners and external deadlines
- Brain dumps and prioritization methods
- Applying Human Design for self-understanding 
- Redefining consistency for your own patterns

Timestamps:
00:00 - Introduction
01:30 - Procrastination and autistic inertia
04:15 - ADHD procrastination and executive function
07:00 - When procrastination masks overwhelm
09:45 - Using accountability partners
12:20 - Leveraging external deadlines
14:40 - Brain dumps and prioritization
17:25 - Applying Human Design strategies
20:15 - Redefining consistency for yourself

Key Quotes:
"Procrastination can be a whole different ballgame when looking through a neurodivergent lens."

"I go inwards. I don't outwardly ask for help."

"Consistency looks different for everybody. When you recognize your patterns, you can create your own consistency."

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Transcript

Sarah Atkins: 0:03

Welcome to the Energetics of Being Podcast, a podcast that delves into the fascinating world of human design and unravels the layers of conditioning beliefs and expectations that can influence who we become and how we show up in our lives. I'm your host, Sarah Atkins, and I'm really excited to share this journey with you. This podcast is for you if you're tired of feeling stuck, held back, or disconnected from your true self. My intention for this podcast is that we're going to shine a light on the patterns and behaviors that can prevent us from fully expressing our authentic self. Together we'll uncover the tools, insights, and practices that can empower you to release the limitations that no longer serve you. We are gonna tap into the power of energy, intuition, and self-awareness to unlock your true potential so that you can live a life that aligns with your authentic self. Join me each week as we engage in thought-provoking conversations with experts, practitioners, and individuals who have experienced their own profound transformations. We'll explore topics such as human design, gene keys, astrology, holistic approaches, coaching, neuroscience, and psychology. We're gonna draw from a rich tapestry of wisdom to help you navigate your own personal journey of self-discovery. So whether you are new to human design or have been on a path of self-discovery for years, this podcast is for you. This is your invitation to step into your power, embrace your uniqueness, and create a life that resonates with your soul's deepest desires. So if you're ready to dive in, let's go.

Sarah: 1:45

Hello and welcome to today's episode. Today, I've got a slightly different episode for you. I wanted to talk about procrastination and what it looks like. Because If you've been following my podcast, you'll notice that there's a bit of a gap in between episode five and this episode. Now, is that because I don't have any episodes? No, it's got nothing to do with that. And I wanted to bring this to light because some people might think it's procrastination. In my case, it's not really procrastination. It's more of an overwhelm thing, but it can get mistaken for procrastination. Now I grew up, developing a nickname of lastminute. com. I leave things to the last minute. Now I used to call myself, I used to refer to myself as being the procrastination queen. And it's only really in the last couple of years that I've realized and recognized what it is that I'm doing. And I'm not procrastinating because I'm trying to avoid doing something because that's what a definition of procrastination is. So the, the very definition of procrastinating is the act of delaying or postponing a task or a set of tasks, right? I'm not avoiding putting my podcast out there. Okay. I have really enjoyed, I've had some amazing conversations with some incredible people, which I am excited to share with you and share their amazingness and open up these conversations more. However, what happens with me is that I can get derailed. I can get distracted very, very easily. And I've had a lot of family stuff going on. I've shared before I've got neurodivergent children. I'm on the waiting list myself. My brother is also on the waiting list and we've had some family things going on. I've had stuff going on with my business. I've had some particularly intense stuff going on with a particular couple of clients. And when that happens, because right, if I look at this from a human design point of view, I'm a generator, right? I love being busy. I love doing all the things and I actually get more done when I'm busy, bizarrely. However, there comes a point where it tips over into, I get busy doing the wrong things or busy doing the things that I know what to do. And the reason I'm doing that is because I'm overwhelmed by some of the things that I know I should be doing, but I don't actually know how to do. So what happens then is I get overwhelmed and I don't know where to start. I don't know like how to get moving. So if we look at this through a neurodivergent lens, okay, procrastination can be a whole different ballgame. So we've got two sides of things here. If we're looking at things through an autistic lens, we have this. thing that gets described as autistic inertia. Now, if you imagine a train at a standstill in a station, it takes a lot of energy to get it moving. But once you kind of get it rolling and get the momentum up, it can actually keep going for a while. Now, when we look at this through autism, like Once you get started on a task, once they're in it, it's almost like a hyper focus thing, I guess. It's, it's why we go down rabbit holes. Like once you start that momentum and you kind of do things, it's really hard to kind of switch out of it. So for example, I was writing a sales page a few weeks ago. I'd procrastinated over it for a good few weeks. But once I started doing it, I could, I kind of got into this thing and it took me five hours. I was just like, I didn't have a break. It was just full on five hours of just sitting there doing the one thing, the one thing, and the one thing, and the one thing, and doing the next thing, and the next thing. Because I kind of got myself into the zone, if you know what I mean, but then I find it really hard and I get really annoyed with people if they try to distract me or kind of take me off task. So that, we've got that. Okay. Trying to switch tasks can actually be really difficult. Difficult which can then get really frustrating. And then if I get distracted, like what happened yesterday, I got distracted with something or interrupted by something, which when you have kids, you're always going to get interrupted. But this is where I struggle with switching tasks, switching from parenting mode to coach mode, switching from teaching mode into mentoring mode or, you know, whatever. When you run your own business and you're doing all of the jobs. Which I am, so I am chief salesperson, marketer I'm the service delivery person, I'm the website technical behind the scenes person I'm the accountant so I'm doing all of these things and I can struggle kind of switching from one task to the other. Sensory overload or overwhelm can cause other distractions as well. I mean, for me, it's at the moment, this time of year, it's being cold. If I get cold, I can't focus because all I can focus on is It's the very fact that I'm cold. So, the weather has a massive impact on me. Weather and temperature in terms of my motivation and my ability to focus. Okay. Now, if we're looking at procrastination through the lens of ADHD, ADHD procrastination can look quite different. So, the challenge around procrastination through this lens It's more to do with executive function, so, i. e., the mental skills that we need for planning, organizing, and starting tasks. Now, whilst a lot of neurotypical people procrastinate because they don't like the task, if you've got ADHD, one of your biggest challenges is going to be getting started. Okay. And quite often, this is why I think I have both. I have a combination of both in terms of neurodivergence. When there's the pressure of a deadline, like I actually quite enjoy that because I don't have the capacity to be distracted. I, when there's the pressure of a deadline, it doesn't really matter. I've done it ever since I was at school. They would give you like two weeks to do an assignment. I'd do it the night before, when I was at university, when it came to writing my dissertation. We had like six months to do it. Did I do it? No, I did lots of reading, but, I actually wrote my assignment, my final 20, 000 word dissertation or whatever it was. I can't remember what it was. It's too long ago to remember, but when I actually did my dissertation, I did it the week before and I finished typing it up, because we didn't have our own computers back in my day at university. We had to book a computer in the library in the, in the library centre So I literally finished typing my dissertation on the morning that it was due in. I was lucky there wasn't a massive queue for the printer, but you know, so, and throughout my entire life, I, I, hence the earning of the nickname, lastminute. com, I mean, it's not something that I'm particularly proud of. It's something that I've tried to teach my kids how to overcome, but I can see it in them already. And it's that pressure of a deadline. There's almost like a bit of a thrill about it. And I get this flurry of productivity and it's not even just with assignments to be fair. It's with most things, like if there's a job application, or if there is, I've just recently completed a certification. Again, I did all the assessment materials the night before the night that, like I said, the deadline's midnight. I submitted at half past 11. I've got a costume I've got to make for my son's production at school, right? They told us about it on the 29th of January. It's due in on Monday. Have I done it? No, I'm going to do it this weekend. I, I, I'm not proud of it. And it is irritating. I like, I find myself irritating. So I really don't need other people to kind of berate me for it, but because I'm incredibly hard on myself, but there are little things and tips and tools that can help overcome the perceived procrastination. So a couple of things that really helped me is. Having accountability and possibly in some cases, if it's a certification, I've had, I've been successful in two certifications in the last six months, because there was a really amazing level of accountability in there built in. And if I. Withdrew, or if I disappeared or didn't appear on some of the calls recently, they had a system in place where they would drop a message, just check in with you, because one of the things that I know I do, or I recognize I do, is when I'm getting overwhelmed or I'm really busy is I withdraw. I go inwards. I don't outwardly ask for help. I don't, you know, it's just something that I do. I go inwards. So having that level of accountability. So in my business, for example, I've got my amazing long suffering VA who, if she hasn't heard from me like she did this week she hadn't heard from me for a couple of weeks. She just drops me a message and say, right, what's going on? Are you okay? What do you need? I need that to kind of bring me back out of whatever brain freeze, brain fart, whatever you want to call it. Whatever it is that I'm experiencing, I need almost like a jolt out of it. I need somebody to kind of sit down with me and go, right. Okay. What is it that you actually need right now? What do you want to focus on? Because when I'm in my own head. I have no idea. All I know is that I've got lots of the things that I want to do and things that I need to do, but I don't know where to start. And quite often what happens is I'll start doing something and then I'll do something else and I'll do something else and then I'll get interrupted and then the email will come in and then, you know, and. I have a tendency to firefight which again, massively frustrating, but I've been working in the last sort of few months to kind of get systems in place. It's taking me a while because it takes me a while to work with these things, to figure out what works and what doesn't for me, but I've learned to be a bit more compassionate. I've learned to recognize what is going on and when it's going on. Now, as always. I can also relate this to human design. So I've mentioned before in a previous episode about the fact that I've got an undefined crown and undefined Ajna center, which does mean that I can be inspired. I can see lots of different ways to do things, which is great on one hand, but on the flip side, because there's a flip side to everything, right? I can get stuck in analysis paralysis. I can get stuck in self doubt worrying that I've got the right solution or the right answer. Am I doing it the right way? So one of the things, I mean, that's one of the things that I gained from My husband actually is that he becomes my sounding board when I'm in, my weird, like, I don't know what's going on insanity phase. He's very methodical with his defined crown and Ajna. He's very methodical and very. pragmatic with going through things and asking me questions, which is amazing. The other thing that I have, I've got a couple of things that feed the little procrastination tendency that I have is an undefined root center. Which has the energetic theme of ambition, pressure to succeed. It's one of our pressure centers. But it's also a motor center. So because I don't have that center defined, it's not a bad thing. It doesn't mean I'm not ambitious. What it does mean is that I need to draw on a little bit of external pressure, hence other people's deadlines. Because the thing is, right, I could try and set my own deadlines. I know that that's a lie, right? It's very easy to let myself down. However, when I get an external deadline, it's one of the reasons it works really well for me to have my VA because she's like, right, I need this by this time. Or when I'm working in collaboration with other people if they tell me, I need this by this time, I don't want to let them down. So. I do respond quite well to external deadlines. So it gives me that pressure, something to work towards. So that really works well for me. And, oh, I forgot to mention sort of just with the dealing with the overwhelm from the undefined crown and ajna center. One of the things that I do is post it notes. Post it notes are brilliant for me. I do brain dumps or you can use like a Kanban board, like a Trello or Asana, whatever it works for you. I quite like analog though, I love post it notes and one of the best strategies I've ever used is the do, ditch and delegate. So. It works from a generator point of view as well, because I just brain dump all of the things that I've got to do onto post it notes, separate them into piles of do, ditch, delegate, so things that I have to do, tasks that you have to do and nobody else can do they stay in the do pile. That need to be done that don't necessarily be done by me can go into the delegate pile. And then anything that I don't have to do or anything that I can't delegate, probably doesn't need to be done. So they can go into the ditch it pile or save for later pile. These are the kind of would likes now then what I now use layering in my human design on top of that is I go through that do pile. And ask myself, right, does this need to be done now? Yes or no. And I wait for my sacral to respond. So it's using coping strategies that I know work alongside my human design of knowing how my sacral works what that hell yes response feels like. And then if there is anything that, you know, I know needs to be done, but I wanted, you know, I don't want to do it right now that can go into my, like later on pile. So there's all these little strategies and I thought I'd explain procrastination in the wider sense through those different lenses because what I've been doing with my podcast is I've just been overwhelmed. I have several episodes, I think I've got about seven or eight episodes recorded, but it I had a bit of a technical problem. With the software, I couldn't work it out at the time which left me to have loads of episodes left to edit and. Because it felt like an overwhelming task and I didn't know what to do. I didn't know how to fix it. What I then do is I get busy with stuff that I do know how to do. Why do I do that? Because I don't like feeling useless. I have to feel productive. I have to be doing stuff. Now, what I then do is I, is it an avoidance thing? Maybe. I avoid the things that I need to think about. And to work out and you know what the weirdest thing this week, all of a sudden I was thinking about something. I was doing something completely different in the back of my mind. I've constantly got this. You need to publish an episode. You need to publish an episode. And I had this sudden brainwave. Literally epiphany while I was doing a meditation of, Oh my God, I wonder if I do that and I do this and that will work. So I tried it and it did. So now we're back in business. It means that now in my mind, that mental block has been removed so I can now go ahead and finish editing the rest of my episodes, including this one that I've just recorded. And I can put that out there again. I think there's so much pressure and I know I put a lot of pressure on myself to be consistent, right? Because I know that consistency works as a strategy in terms of like growing business and doing business even. However, Consistency is not always possible for me, and I know I've spoken to loads of business owners and they struggle with consistency as well. And I think there's a lot of unrealistic expectation around what consistency looks like. So I guess what I'm here and why I'm recording this episode is almost like a permission slip to say, do you know what? Consistency looks different for everybody. And. When you recognize what your patterns are, raise your self awareness about what is going on for you, demonstrating a bit of self compassion, you can create your own consistency. And look at what you're gaining from being consistent. So for me, it's, consistency is a way of creating trust, I guess. Trust that my clients know that I'm here. That I can continue to show up, that there might be some delays in my communication, but I haven't disappeared and I won't let you down. So yeah, I apologize for having not published an episode for a couple of months, but I am still working in the background. I'm not ghosting you. I haven't disappeared. And I'm definitely working on figuring out what consistent looks like for me and how I can manage that with my own ups and downs. So I hope you found this useful. If you've got any comments or any questions around procrastination, I'd love to know what your experiences are. You can always come over to my Facebook group, The Energetics of Being, and we can carry the conversation on there. In the meantime, be awesome, be you, whatever that looks like. Thanks for listening.

Sarah Atkins: 22:05

Thank you for joining me on this episode of the Energetics of Being. I hope you found our exploration today, both insightful and inspiring, and if you resonated with what you heard today, I invite you to subscribe, rate, and review this podcast on your preferred platform, whatever that might be. Your feedback is really invaluable and it helps us to reach even more listeners on their own journey of self-discovery. And remember, the conversation doesn't have to end here. You can connect with me on social media. I'm on Instagram under the handle sarah m atkins. Or you can find me on Facebook just as Sarah Atkins. You could even come and join my Facebook group, The Energetics of Being where you can share your thoughts, questions, or your own personal experiences. I would really love to hear from you and continue our conversation there. I am on a personal mission to bring you thought provoking conversations and practical insights to help you break free from the conditioning that holds you back, allowing your true self to shine brilliantly. And as we close out this episode, take a moment to reflect on what you've learned today. How can you apply these insights to your own life? What steps can you take to further align with your own authentic self? Thank you again for listening. I really do appreciate you choosing to spend some time with me. And until next time, remember that you are a unique once in a lifetime expression of the universe. Embrace your individuality, trust your inner wisdom, and keep shining your light brightly. Take care, and we'll catch you in the next episode of The Energetics of being. Stay curious, stay authentic, and stay true to you.