Unstuck: Persevering Through Procrastination - I Will Not Lose Podcast - #0034

Transcript

[00:00:07.440] Run it back, run it back, run it back.
[00:00:09.400] Good morning, good evening, good night, good afternoon.
[00:00:12.060] Whatever time you're listening in, wherever you're listening from.
[00:00:15.100] Shout out to my Spotify listenership, Apple and Google Podcasts, Stitcher, and YouTube if you're watching in.
[00:00:21.060] Thanks for giving me a reason to get dressed.
[00:00:23.180] Coming live from my voice to your phone, headphones, TV, or car stereo.
[00:00:27.440] Your attention could have been anywhere in the world, but it's here right now.
[00:00:30.920] Take a moment to be present and recognize that it is now, right now.
[00:00:35.020] Whether you're right now is running, working, cleaning, exercising, flying, laying down,
[00:00:39.760] driving, be grateful we're alive.
[00:00:42.910] Failure can be frightening.
[00:00:44.210] However, as Winston Churchill reminds us, success is all about going from failure to
[00:00:48.490] failure without losing enthusiasm.
[00:00:50.970] This is I Will Not Lose Podcast.
[00:00:53.010] We set out to learn.
[00:00:55.040] Everything is perseverance.
[00:00:57.720] Everything's about learning from failure and recognize it as one step closer to success.
[00:01:02.960] I'm your host, Tony Ortiz.
[00:01:04.840] let's jump right in. This week we're diving into a topic that's close to my heart and one that I
[00:01:10.600] suspect many of you guys have grappled with, but this is the battle between creating quality
[00:01:15.140] content, the pull of digital distractions, and the ever-lurking monster of procrastination.
[00:01:21.620] So I'm sitting there, I enjoyed Father's Day weekend, we're recording on Juneteenth, so
[00:01:28.320] big holiday weekend lots of barbecues lots of things like that going on and so i said i'm not
[00:01:35.160] going to record on sunday i'm going to enjoy father's day and um that got me to procrastinating
[00:01:41.760] but it was well worth it and i'm sitting just a few hours ago uh this episode is due to drop
[00:01:48.800] three hours from now so really procrastinated and i'm scrolling through facebook into that black
[00:01:55.520] hole and i hit a moment of realization like the answers to what i'm going to talk about tonight
[00:02:00.800] are not going to be found in the endless feed but within my own experiences and struggles
[00:02:06.000] so i like to kind of go with whatever's on my mind at the time and procrastination really hit so
[00:02:12.180] uh it's really a struggle in this digital age because you have the pull of social media the
[00:02:19.440] demand for consistent content, it's like a ticking clock, you know, it's like a balancing act. So
[00:02:25.580] do you share, do you post, do you work on creating a quality post? You just post something with the
[00:02:32.360] dog, taking the dog for a walk, you know? Um, and then finding yourself scrolling and looking
[00:02:39.420] through other people's content, you know, uh, it's really can be a time sink. Like it really
[00:02:45.400] can be a time sink. I've had experience from taking a complete wash out from social media
[00:02:51.400] and just walking away from it completely, as well as being active and having something to promote.
[00:02:57.740] So I had to take a step back. And, you know, whenever you feel the pull of, wow, I got to
[00:03:03.720] drop something and you don't know whether or not it's going to be the greatest thing you ever
[00:03:08.420] created because, you know, they say the greatest inspiration is a deadline, but sometimes it can
[00:03:13.680] cause stress. And at least when you see people podcasting, they appear very relaxed. And even
[00:03:22.680] if you have a production company taking care of everything for you, you know, it seems like just
[00:03:29.580] talking. I mean, at the end of the day, that's what it is. It's talking. But there's a lot of
[00:03:33.640] back end that goes into it. There's a lot of preparing for the episode topic. There's a lot
[00:03:39.420] of formulating how the flow of that episode is going to go. And so it really does take a lot of
[00:03:44.640] time. It's not really something you can just whip together right beforehand. So I was going to post
[00:03:50.340] late, but I think we're in a good frame. I realized that I got into podcasting to relax, to kind of
[00:03:56.700] set a personal anecdote. And it became something that I'm writing the script as I go. You know,
[00:04:03.160] we listen to viewers and we listen to stuff, but the biggest and greatest feedback is the personal
[00:04:09.280] anecdotes. And that's what sets this podcast apart from the hundreds of thousands of other
[00:04:15.960] positive mentality podcasts that are out there. I mean, I don't even know what I'd be categorized
[00:04:20.880] as. But the truth is, is you're going to deal with procrastination. You're going to deal with
[00:04:27.820] some days where you're like, man, I just don't want to get up and go through and do that.
[00:04:31.380] So having to remind myself why I got into it was pretty good. But join me. I'll continue with the
[00:04:37.780] personal stories, lessons learned, and strategies developed along the way. So first thing is to
[00:04:44.360] identify distractions. So like I said, a few hours ago, I was just endlessly scrolling and I don't
[00:04:51.900] even know how long, but I found myself just aimlessly scrolling through Facebook and I saw
[00:04:57.200] somebody else had posted their podcast. I said, oh, that's right. I got to drop tonight, you know?
[00:05:01.840] Um, and the fact that I don't even know how much time I put into sitting there scrolling,
[00:05:07.840] it's, it's kind of scary.
[00:05:09.940] So you have to realize what is a distraction?
[00:05:14.500] What is the normal promotion and the stuff that you have to do?
[00:05:17.220] Cause you can't, your stuff can't just sit in a box.
[00:05:19.880] I mean, I've tried to go a long time without posting anything and people tend to forget
[00:05:25.880] or they ask you, are you still doing that?
[00:05:27.540] Hell, even if you are posting what you're doing, people still ask you if you're still
[00:05:30.900] doing it.
[00:05:31.420] It's, it's strange how real we think Facebook and social media is, but the algorithm really
[00:05:37.820] creates an echo chamber.
[00:05:38.980] Like you don't see absolutely everything your friends are doing.
[00:05:42.120] They don't see everything you're doing.
[00:05:43.580] So understand the impact, understand how the pressure to release content or release an
[00:05:49.260] episode every week can be a struggle between like, you know, some people are smart and
[00:05:54.380] they have months worth of content planned out, ready to go.
[00:05:58.940] they have an idea of what they're shooting. And I could imagine that at some point you want to
[00:06:05.120] create something fresh during that time that something comes out. So it's great to have a
[00:06:09.920] hybrid schedule of a whole bunch of stuff set up and be able to drop consistently without putting
[00:06:18.140] a ton of effort and putting yourself of what if I don't have something to come up with this week,
[00:06:23.240] what am I going to be able to do? So I I struggled with the high quality content versus meeting the
[00:06:31.230] deadline versus how do you go and promote the episodes? You know, I took a break from promoting
[00:06:38.210] the episodes, focused on some other things and just made sure I hit my drop date every week
[00:06:42.890] and the drop in my viewership. I definitely felt it. So people do need to be reminded,
[00:06:49.470] even if they're subscribed to you, people need to see what's going on. So it's a very real struggle
[00:06:55.510] between do I have to be online? Are people going to forget what I do? I can honestly say in about
[00:07:03.250] 12 years of business, very few, and I'm absolutely grateful for all my clients that did come through
[00:07:12.020] Facebook, but very rarely is it a referral where somebody reaches out to you and you build a huge
[00:07:17.980] relationship of somebody through Facebook. So I know the realities. I know what's there.
[00:07:23.100] I know that there's a whole market for people who just want to see the short stories and the content.
[00:07:29.140] So you find, you know, I originally created a long form podcast and now you have to find ways
[00:07:36.560] to chop that down into little 30 second or 60 second bits. And people won't go back and listen
[00:07:42.720] to the full episode, but they'll still feel like they kind of get a gist of what you're saying. So
[00:07:47.660] i understand the game that i'm playing and i will get better at it you know so some strategies for
[00:07:54.540] overcoming procrastination um i am honestly thinking and you guys let me know in the
[00:08:00.710] comments what you think about it but switching to a bi-weekly format to maintain quality where
[00:08:06.910] i would still be recording every week i would not get into the see it's so seductive to try
[00:08:13.050] to fall into just recording every two weeks, but I'm just not going to see the sort of growth that
[00:08:20.760] I want to see being that inconsistent. So if I switch to every two weeks, I would use the other
[00:08:26.700] week to continue to record content as well as promote the previous week. So it doesn't have
[00:08:34.400] people feel like it's in such a rush to listen to the content before next week's episode comes out
[00:08:40.800] or feel that they can't go back and listen to content from there.
[00:08:44.380] So, you know, set your goals, set your boundaries,
[00:08:48.980] know what you can do to avoid burnout, know how much you can do.
[00:08:53.220] And this comes at different times in your life.
[00:08:55.660] I mean, I could definitely put a lot more energy in my 20s
[00:08:58.960] when my kids were younger into doing things than I can at 36 years old.
[00:09:05.660] You know, that's just the truth of things.
[00:09:08.080] You deal with lacking energy at that point, but you don't want to fall into the procrastination
[00:09:14.540] trap.
[00:09:15.080] The worst thing you could do is have a deadline that's at the deadline and push everything
[00:09:19.520] right till the end of it.
[00:09:21.720] You know, there's a whole series, there's a whole thought called the Eisenhower matrix
[00:09:27.240] that lets you shift things between whether or not like what the priority is as well as
[00:09:32.700] the urgency.
[00:09:33.400] So how fast is it due and how important is it to your overall goals?
[00:09:38.080] And if you have any of those AI tools that kind of go through and organize your calendar for you, they ask you the same thing.
[00:09:45.800] How long is this going to take you?
[00:09:47.120] How urgent is this?
[00:09:48.820] So don't fall into the trap of trying to let everything become urgent and important and be stuck in that quadrant because you're just going to drown.
[00:10:00.020] It's a terrible feeling, you know.
[00:10:02.320] So this is me learning from failures as well, too.
[00:10:06.340] You know, I spend you talk about recognizing social media as a distraction.
[00:10:11.860] YouTube is a social media as well, too.
[00:10:14.200] And it's a whole game and it's a whole algorithm.
[00:10:17.060] And if you're looking at your viewership and looking at your how long people listen to
[00:10:22.080] your episodes and things like that, you may want to make some changes based on that.
[00:10:27.600] But I got myself playing the game of YouTube for a gaming channel, and I was spending more
[00:10:35.620] hours than I put into the podcast a week of putting together a highly produced video every
[00:10:41.280] week. And it was getting barely any views. And I continued to do that for months. And I'm glad I
[00:10:48.560] did because I learned things about video editing. There's, you know, when I didn't have clients,
[00:10:52.800] I was able to work on my own stuff and get closer to that 10,000 hours. But it was really something
[00:10:59.860] that distracted me from something that I could have been doing or something that's going to be
[00:11:05.000] living on forever. I mean, those videos are still up, but they're not highly viewed. They're not
[00:11:10.020] the greatest. So I, here's, you know, maybe, I don't know if it was four or five months of my
[00:11:16.580] life that I just put towards creating that, but Hey, no, no regrets. You got to learn from your
[00:11:24.580] failures. You got to move on, you know, so didn't pan out as expected, but created such valuable
[00:11:31.180] experience that i know how to upload and create a channel and maintain a channel on youtube so
[00:11:36.620] this i will not lose podcast can exist on spotify and all the audio platforms but also on youtube
[00:11:43.240] if you guys like uh watching me talk or watching guests i think it's especially important for guest
[00:11:49.540] episodes we have a few of those coming up as well but it's weird i'm gonna switch perseverance and
[00:11:56.690] say one thing that helped me persevere through social media was just taking a complete break
[00:12:01.870] from it um like march maybe around february or march of 2021 maybe it's 2022 i don't even remember
[00:12:12.840] but i just made a post saying you know i'm enjoying taking my dog for a walk focusing on
[00:12:18.620] my mental health and facebook isn't leading towards those goals i'm not really finding
[00:12:23.780] anything there. So I was going to take a break from it. I was right around when Musk bought
[00:12:28.640] Twitter. So I don't know if that was last year or the year before. Been so busy, time has really
[00:12:34.980] been flying. But so it definitely had an impact on my algorithm. There's traffic that I'm working
[00:12:41.500] on building back now that probably had I been posting consistently for six months, I would
[00:12:47.880] have had an audience to promote the podcast. Now I'm kind of, oh, hey, who's this guy? You know,
[00:12:54.060] people remember me. It's not a huge impact, but the amount of things I was able to create during
[00:13:01.620] those six months were worth promoting. You know, we started the podcast during that time. We
[00:13:08.340] incorporated Tony Ortiz, the designer LLC, got a lot of things done and set up. So now coming back
[00:13:17.260] on social media, it's a lot easier not to get sucked into looking at what everybody else is
[00:13:23.940] doing and using that as a measuring stick to my own success, as my own worth. That's not what you
[00:13:29.740] want to get caught into. It's not that I'm anti-social media, but right around 2016 with
[00:13:38.640] Snapchat and things like this, people got into kind of just posting content that wasn't curated,
[00:13:45.640] like filters and things like that came later to make your pictures look better your video your
[00:13:51.740] skin looks smoother but for the most part it was just people talking into their cameras
[00:13:55.840] and so during that time i took a lot of pictures i have them saved as hard drive on hard drives
[00:14:03.000] and i just haven't edited yet but i like to crop photos i like to color them i like to really do
[00:14:09.380] photo editing so sometimes i don't want to look back at a memory i wonder you know will our kids
[00:14:15.480] look back at digital photos and the way that we look back at photo albums and you know those
[00:14:21.660] weren't the greatest photos but they were tactile like you could hold them they meant a whole lot so
[00:14:27.660] I mean I don't it's very easy not to get stuck into procrastination or feeling like you have
[00:14:35.940] to post everything that you do feeling like you have to document your entire life there still is
[00:14:41.520] room for being able to talk to people in real life go to real life networking things be out
[00:14:49.100] you know there's a world that exists beyond digital media but i can feel myself rambling
[00:14:55.870] we're going to start to land the plane soon let's see announcements got a couple of guests coming up
[00:15:00.730] i just got through editing heidi markow's episode so i'm going to touch base with her and sync when
[00:15:07.030] her new website goes up we'll launch that around then i have mr jonathan rocker headed in this
[00:15:14.150] friday so four or five days from now we're going to record his episode i don't have a drop date for
[00:15:19.630] any of these but i have been curating content so doing the opposite of procrastinating uh we had
[00:15:26.050] v alvarado over last weekend so i've got tons of hard drives of stuff to edit um but it's going to
[00:15:34.510] be good we'll close out season three with a bunch of guest episodes and um i'll take a break during
[00:15:41.570] that time i'll edit the content schedule it out and then hopefully get back to creating some
[00:15:48.630] quality content for i'm not going to talk season four yet we're like just starting into season
[00:15:54.530] three but let's just say the end of season three is going to look way different than the beginning
[00:15:59.810] of season three so it's a little bit that i'll give you now uh other than that enjoy your summer
[00:16:06.510] stay safe happy juneteenth everyone this is i will not lose podcast where we set out to prove
[00:16:11.710] everything is learned from failure and we must persevere and recognize it as one step closer
[00:16:16.050] to success to support the show visit the website shows.acast.com slash i will not lose and subscribe
[00:16:23.290] on your favorite podcast player share this episode link leave a comment your contribution is
[00:16:28.790] appreciated. Thank you for listening.