"If people defeat procrastination en masse, then we can make a real dent in some of the problems we face as a civilization."  -Peter Shallard

Have you always wanted to spend a month traveling through some foreign land? Or how about skydiving? Or building your own business? Is there something you've been itching to do but have put it off repeatedly for one reason or another?

If you said yes, buckle in because this show is for YOU! AOC welcomes Peter Shallard, a business psychology expert slash psychotherapist gone rogue. In this episode he discusses why procrastination is an epidemic of catastrophic proportions today and how it's ruining our lives, how to tell if we're wasting cognitive bandwidth and what that even means and why you should care and keys to permanently eradicating procrastination in your life.

More About This Show:

Known as the shrink for entrepreneurs, Peter Shallard has made it his life's work to study human potential. And he's discovered some startling things about why procrastination is happening today and at such epidemic levels.

Peter's start up studies how to move the dial on human potential, including why some of us aren't. 

One of the primary reasons we procrastinate today versus in the past is because we can. Since the dawn of time there has been on previous era where we didn't have to work to survive. Because of the knowledge economy, as Peter calls it, we're now able to go to work that doesn't physically exhaust us and we have plenty of time, energy and availability to create anything we want. We actually have time to play - something none of our previous ancestors experienced.

Think about it, as hunter-gatherers we had to hunt to eat. We had to gather our food to eat. And we had to keep do it repeatedly, day after day. If we didn't? We died. Pure and simple.

When we developed agriculture and grew our own food, we still had to work according to the seasons. We had to plant, tend, monitor and harvest. It was a year-round process and it stopped for nothing. If you didn't plant, come fall and winter you would starve.

The finer details of this show include:

• What is cognitive surplus and why should you know? Peter gives an example.
• Are there links between depression and lack of purposeful cognitive use?
• Maslow's Hierarchy: where are most of us today?
• What an 80-year old's first flying lesson can teach you about life.
• The glorification of start-ups and entrepreneurship: the downfalls.
• And so much more!

But today we go to our jobs, work on some problems and solve them. And then have plenty of physical energy, brainpower and time to work on other problems. So why don't we? Because it's an entirely new experience for the human population. We have no idea how to handle all the opportunities, ideas and information available to us - so we tune them out and bingewatch TV on Netflix or hop on Facebook.

We are just beginning to wake up to this new era of free time plus human potential, not all of us have figured out how to cope let alone thrive in it. But Peter has suggestions on how to change that.

Before Peter and I discuss those suggestions, we talk about how to know if you're procrastinating and could be more productive. Here's the key according to Peter: if you are someone who has a regular gap between your best intentions and what you're actually producing, then you're procrastinating. If you have great ideas and great desires, then you actually do have the cognitive bandwidth (or the mental capacity) to do them. In other words, if you really do want to skydive than you have the capacity to make it happen, regardless of any excuse you may have.

But why does it matter if you put off a dream or a goal? Peter contends that if we could put aside our excuses for not doing something - whatever it is - we would make the world a better place, not just for others but also for others. To that end, Peter and I discuss the potential link between depression and lack of action towards fulfilling work and dreams.

Now that you know if you are one of the afflicted (and most of us are to some extent), what does Peter and his start-up suggest doing to change that and get into action?

A few of the keys to eliminating procrastination for good are as follows:

1. Specificity: one of the biggest issues people have when they think about intentions and things they'd rather be doing is that they don't think about them in ways that are conducive to anything completed.

And there's a term for this! It's called implementation granularity, which means the level of specificity in which you think about your goal. If you are overwhelmed by all the pieces of something, think about just one piece of it and complete that. Then move on to the next piece.

2. Measurement. Keep it very simple: think of the chore chart from when you were a kid. Create a gold star system for yourself and you're highly likely to continue doing what you've been working on.

3. Accountability. This tool is super, super powerful according to Peter. When you're doing something new or creating a new habit, get some of your friends to join you. We as humans are hard-wired for social acceptance. In our history, if you were accepted in the tribe you received some of the bounty of the tribe. That same programming runs us today, so use it to your advantage.

Peter gives a few other keys to ending procrastination once and for all; he is a vast resource on this topic and you'll get plenty of knowledge from him when you listen. But don't stop with just a listen, take action on what he has to say and get a leg up on every other schmuck out there!

Resources from this episode:

Peter's web site
Peter's gift to AOC listeners
Peter on Twitter
I Am Alpha's web site
I Am Alpha on YouTube

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-The Art of Charm Toolbox

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