Breaking the Procrastination Cycle w/ Taylor Jacobson
Welcome to Journey to the Sunny Side, the podcast where we have thoughtful conversations to explore the science of habits, uncover the secrets to mindful living, and, of course, inspire your own mindful drinking journey. In this episode, Taylor Jacobson, founder of FocusMate, shares how his struggles with procrastination and focus led to building a global community to tackle these challenges. We'll uncover why procrastination isn't a personality flaw, how stress impacts focus, and practical tips to boost productivity. If you're looking to stay on track and achieve more, this episode is for you. I'd love for us to jump into your story a little bit because this your story is so relevant to what we're talking about today, about procrastination, about what are some of the solutions, how it's linked to behavior, our nervous system and focus.
Speaker 1:So I'm gonna pass the mic to you to give a little bit of foundation to your background on sort of where you started in your career, where it went, and where you are today.
Speaker 2:I'm really excited about the stuff we're we're talking about today. You you could say that procrastination has had a massive impact on my career, and I'd say, fortunately, I've I've really turned that around, and a lot of what we'll talk about today, you know, will hopefully be getting into that. But, yeah, one of the kind of scariest moments in my life, in my career, in my early twenties, I got fired from a job because I I basically, I wasn't doing my job. It was the first time I was working remotely, which ironically is something I begged my boss to let me do. And then and I I couldn't do it.
Speaker 2:And that that led me to a pretty dark place. You know, getting let go from my job and, you know, I spiraled for a bit. But, ultimately, it it led me into not really the beginning, a deepening of looking at behavioral science and eventually leading me to, you know, learning more about the nervous system and trying to find solutions for myself and eventually building a business whose entire purpose is helping people focus. So, yeah, happy to happy to share more, but that's kind of that's where things started and kind of where things led to.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Some of the best products come out of solving problems for yourself that you find along the way. You're you're doing this thing. You were basically in corporate life, and you're transitioning into being an entrepreneur, and you were running into some issues. So what was happening in your life where you really started to notice this impact of procrastination on your work and maybe inside your personal life as well?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So, yeah, as you mentioned, I I started out in a corporate job doing management consulting, and I wanted an adventure. I joined a startup NGO in India. And so that's the job that I mentioned earlier where I went from working in their office to working from home. And my flavor of procrastination once I once I was out of the office and kinda nobody was looking over my shoulder to see what I was doing, like, somehow I could spend hours and hours just answering emails or doing busy work, basically.
Speaker 2:Things that made me feel like I was working, but I never I wasn't making good choices about what to focus on. And so that eventually led to me losing that job. But then I started out as an entrepreneur right after that, you know, in part because I just couldn't imagine going going back into that kind of environment that I didn't really trust myself to be a good employee. And, you know, I had created a a story that that made sense to me of, okay. I wanna be a I wanna be an entrepreneur.
Speaker 2:But, ultimately, I spent years spinning my wheels as an entrepreneur as well. And I can think of this moment where one of the first entrepreneurial ventures I did was starting a blog, a personal development blog. And so I needed to write a lot and I'd take myself down to the Starbucks, which was like the closest decent place to work out of the house and and just kinda like make myself try
Speaker 1:to write.
Speaker 2:And it really felt like weeks month would just vanish in this kind of I felt like I was doing my best, but I was clearly making poor choices and not able to take consistent action to build that that business, that blog. And, you know, I I I don't wanna be promotional here, but but literally one of the things that most changed my life was when I started doing coworking where this was 2015, and a friend of mine a friend of mine was struggling with procrastination. He reached out, and we're sort of trying to figure out how we could help him. Of course, me thinking, gosh. I, like, really need help with this too.
Speaker 2:And so he and I came up with this idea. We're gonna get on a video call, and we're just gonna keep each other company while we stay on task. And we did that, and it was really just a, like, an moment for both of us where we both stayed on task for a couple hours. At the end, it was like a huge relief to 2 lifetime procrastinators. And so he and I did that, you know, all week, and, eventually, that blossomed into the idea for the business that I run today, which is called Focusmate.
Speaker 2:And the point of that is, you know, you or I or anybody around the world can find somebody to another member of our community to just keep them company while they're both working on their on their task. And that kind of structure has been transformational for me and and and lots of other people. And, Yeah. I'll leave it I'll leave it there for now, but that's a little bit more about that.
Speaker 1:Yeah. No. I wanna talk about Focusmate because and it's it's not promotional. Of course, it's fine to talk about something that's beneficial to other people. And I think it helps people also who are listening understand understand where you're coming from, your background, and what that all looks like.
Speaker 1:And so tell me a little tell us a little bit more about what Focusmate, like, does in a little bit more detail.
Speaker 2:Focusmate is a online global community of people who generally work from home, students, freelancers, remote workers, homemakers. And a lot of people who work from home struggle with procrastination. They struggle with follow through. They struggle with just doing the most important thing because there's nobody there to watch us. And there's a 1,000 other things that feel more enticing.
Speaker 2:And a lot of our community also struggle with a feeling of isolation. And so where Focusmate comes in is our members use our platform to book video call with each other 1 on 1. And the purpose of the video call is just just to keep each other company while you're each working on your own stuff. So the call is either 25 minutes, 50, or 75. And at the at the beginning of the call, you just share, hey.
Speaker 2:Here's my goal for the call or my intention of what I'm gonna work on. What's yours? Right? And so after about a minute, both people have shared what their plan is. A lot of people will write it down as well in the chat.
Speaker 2:And then you just get to work. You know, your partner's there on the screen, on your on your phone, if you're doing it on your phone. And so they're there kind of with you just working on your stuff. And there's something about having that person's presence there that you just told what you're gonna do that is it's like just the right amount of pressure mixed with support. And it is, like, magical in its effect on the body, on the psyche in terms of just doing what you said you're gonna do.
Speaker 2:And then at the end of the session, there's a bell that goes off and that signals you to come back and check-in with your partner and say, hey. How'd it go? And, you know, it's not a it's not like a boot camp drill sergeant sort of kind of accountability. It's just I I have to tell this person if I did the thing that I said I was gonna do. That's it.
Speaker 2:But, again, that gentle pressure, that gentle accountability is just is just massively impactful. So that's the that's the basic premise of Focusmate. You, you know, there's a bunch of preferences you can express over the type of session you have. If you like working with somebody, you can save them as a favorite partner, and it would make it really easy to kinda build a tribe of your favorite coworkers so that over time, you're seeing familiar faces on Focusmate. People are kinda checking in.
Speaker 2:You know? How's this project going? How's your cat? Whatever. A lot of people are sharing their animals with each other, of course.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, it really becomes, like, this kind of warm, supportive community, and, you know, people also love it. Like, you you know, you make friends that are on the other side of the world who are, you know, just like you. They're just, like, trying to trying to be a little bit better, trying to take action on the stuff that matters to them.
Speaker 1:I didn't know about Focusmate until recently. We were both introduced by mutual investor of ours. So I went and checked up the site and I looked at it, and it makes total sense. I mean, we do a lot of the same here at Sunnyside with peer support when it comes to behavior change and and forming new habits and in in very much the same way, but in a different focus and and field. You're using peer support to be able to stay on track to have better habits.
Speaker 1:Let me ask you though. You know, one thing that I thought when I came to the site and I thought, would I feel weird being on camera with somebody that I've never met just sitting at the keyboard? Is that something that is it a certain type of personality or is everybody just kinda get over that first time and it's like no big deal after that?
Speaker 2:I think this is, like, everybody's question. So it's good that you asked it. It's funny. Even I felt that way before I did this for the first time, and it just kind of goes up in smoke the second you connect with that. There's, like, this other human over there and you feel their humanity.
Speaker 2:They go from being a stranger to this other person that you feel some kinship with. So pretty universally, what we hear from people is I was scared. I did it. And right away that, you know, that concern melted away. And and, like, I felt a great connection, and I, like, really enjoyed meeting all my partners.
Speaker 2:You know, of course, sometimes you meet people that that wasn't your favorite person. It wasn't the best session ever. But the most part, it is a very warm, supportive community. I think in part because there's a vulnerability that's inherent in showing up on Focusmate that says, yeah. I I wouldn't mind, you know, being a better version of me, and I could use your help.
Speaker 2:And, of course, you don't have to say that, but to use Focusmate in the first place is a admission of that, and it's a own you know? I think it's also, like, a really brave ownership of, like, I wanna do better, but that just fosters a certain kind of culture that that's that's really positive and powerful.
Speaker 1:That's great. So you obviously think about procrastination and getting past that an awful lot. So what do you what do many people get wrong about procrastination, especially in the context of you always hear, you know, I'm ADHD, and I can never get things done. What do you think we get wrong, or how do we approach it in a way that with with misconceptions?
Speaker 2:Yeah. Probably the biggest misconception about procrastination is that it is a mental problem where the truth is that it is it's really a nervous system problem. So our culture, we we kind of talk about it like it's this personality trait, and it's a very, like yeah. It's very mentalized or cognitive concept. But, actually, what we know about the nervous system is that focus is only available when we're in a state of safety, when the body feels safe.
Speaker 2:Focus comes online along with creativity and collaboration and communication skills. When we don't feel safe, we drop down into what's called fight or flight, freeze, or shutdown even below that. And in all of these states, we cannot focus. And it turns out that a lot of us have more or less traumatized nervous system bodies, and we operate in a state of hypervigilance all the time. And we learn to function, and we normalize it in our own experience, and we don't even really realize that we're experiencing this elevated stress state all the time.
Speaker 2:But all of the different symptoms of ADHD and and many other conditions for that matter are really just byproducts or symptoms of being in a state of stress, a state of hypervigilance. That's the that's the biggest one. I think it's really powerful for people to shift out of, I have a diagnosis and the personality thing and mental thing to, oh, I have a nervous system that is stuck in a state of hypervigilance. And the other thing I think people get wrong is that there's something wrong with them. Yeah.
Speaker 2:I mean, just going back to what everything I just shared, there's nothing wrong with you. You're like this for a reason. You know? You you very likely you're you grew up in an environment where your nervous system needed to operate this way in order for you to survive in some way. That that was the adaptive response was to day and night in state of stress.
Speaker 2:So that's super normal. It's super common. It doesn't mean anything's wrong with you. And I think why these two misconceptions are, like, are so meaningful to me is that a lot of people just assume this is something you can't change. Right?
Speaker 2:Goes back to, like, a personality trait. I am I I have ADHD. And as soon as we apologize and add these diagnoses, it starts to create this kind of fixed mindset about the thing. Right? Like, I just have to live with this forever as part of who I am.
Speaker 2:And, certainly, you can't snap your fingers and heal your nervous system, you know, come out of hypervigilance, but it provides a lens and I think a rather straightforward one actually to start to shift your experience and and hopefully experience focus and a whole bunch of other benefits of a regulated nervous system.
Speaker 1:It's an interesting concept because when it comes to procrastination and ADHD and things of that nature, it is truly a label that people use as, like, that's just what I do. It becomes part of their identity, you know? And the same thing can even happen with alcohol. It's part of your identity. It's what I do.
Speaker 1:I, you know, I always go out on Friday nights. I always go out on Saturday. I'm I'm the wife of the party or whatever you identify with. It it's also there's some crossover there. And how do you how do you approach it to disconnect from that identity?
Speaker 1:And what are some things steps you can do to actually address the underlying issues related to the nervous system?
Speaker 2:First, I just wanna affirm, like, the huge connection that you you mentioned for folks listening that, you know, do have whether you're a procrastinator or you struggle with alcohol, both of those like, alcohol is a coping mechanism for, you know, a stressed out nervous system among other things. So so which of those you relate to or something else, you know, looking at the nervous system can be a really helpful approach. Yeah. I would say just understanding, number 1, that your body goes through these different states. They are they all serve a purpose.
Speaker 2:Right? When you're feeling safe, you can you can perform these more creative and, you know, collaborative and focused functions. But when you're not feeling safe, your body is just trying to help you survive a dangerous situation. So just understanding that, normalizing that. And, like, one really simple tool you can do is just kind of an audit of, okay, what in my life makes me feel safe and grounded?
Speaker 2:What in my life adds stress or doesn't feel safe? Are there people and situations in my life that either promote a feeling of groundedness or a feeling of stress? And just doing an audit and, like, okay. How can I have more of the stuff that makes me feel safe and less of the stuff that is activating for me? And then the second thing that I think is really helpful for people to look at is people pleasing tendency.
Speaker 2:Now this isn't everybody, but it's extremely common for people with an activated or traumatized nervous system is that people pleasing tendencies and to basically be, abandoning yourself on a very regular basis in order to avoid conflict and move things over, and that can look like just doing way too much. It can look like being in a relationship that just require you to abandon yourself on a regular basis to keep the peace. But people pleasing is like this continual message that it's like a self reinforcing loop where I need to take care of you because this situation is not safe. And so by people pleasing in any situation, you're telling your body we're not safe enough to actually take care of ourselves right now. And so it just reinforces the kind of the spiral of not feeling safe.
Speaker 2:So that's the other place that I would encourage people to start is trying to tackle people pleasing tendencies.
Speaker 1:That makes sense. So I'm curious to know because you probably come across a lot of people and you've done a lot of reading and studying and interaction. Are there some people that are just some people that are disposition to just be more less procrastinating? Or do you think that things change throughout the year? Like, sometimes somebody can be really regimented and get the right things done?
Speaker 1:Or do you think that they really need to get shown how to do that at some point? You know, I I guess my question is a little out there, but basically, I'm just saying, what are there just natural abilities out there? Or do you think that everybody sort of has a little bit of a level playing field, but some people just are are more tapped into their nervous system like you're saying here, and so they're not going uphill quite as much.
Speaker 2:I think there is absolutely not a level playing field that yeah. We're talking about you know, we've talked about the nervous system, but then, yeah, absolutely. There's a huge life skills component as well. Like, you combine those two things and so okay. You have a more or less healthy nervous system and you have, you you know, you had parenting or schooling or any number of things that provide you with with life skills in terms of discipline and structure and organization and all these things.
Speaker 2:So I I really like this question because, again, it comes back to, like, a lot of us use identity as a way to kind of hang out in a victim mindset. And it so, you know, we might say like, I am just, I am a procrastinator. I have ADHD. I am like this. Or like alcoholism runs in my family.
Speaker 2:Right? These are identity based narratives that they give us some comfort. Right? Because it kind of takes us off the hook for these poor behaviors. And it's, it's good to be gentle with ourselves about our poor behaviors because they absolutely a 100 freaking percent came from a place of adapting to a childhood situation that we needed to adapt to.
Speaker 2:There's nothing wrong with us. But when we ascribe ourselves these labels of being different and being a certain way, we are taking ourselves off the hook and we are adopting a victim mindset about that thing. And I think it's much more empowering and useful to say, okay. This is my starting point. There's a good reason that I'm at this starting point, but I need to learn some new skills.
Speaker 2:And that's it. And, yeah, maybe you have a really sucky starting point, and I'm sorry. That sucks. I relate to that massively. You know?
Speaker 1:Like, I can too, by the way. I'm an online entrepreneur for 17 years and I've known the struggle of procrastination and lack of focus.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And by the way, a lot of entrepreneurs are entrepreneurs because they have some sort of, you know, shit in their past. But, yeah, I think just grounding it in, like, okay. So there's, like, there's more skills that I need to develop than other people, but life is short and, like, let's make the most of it. Let's just, you know, take the steps and learn those skills.
Speaker 2:That's that's been really empowering for me personally.
Speaker 1:Yeah. One thing is I'm not, like, a natural speaker. I'm not a natural person that would wanna get up on stage. But at some point, I had to say, if I'm gonna wanna do this, I gotta start somewhere. And, yeah, maybe I'm not gonna be ever be Tony Robbins up on a stage, you know, that his his baseline started much higher than mine.
Speaker 1:But the more I practice, the more I address it, and then not just telling myself I'm never gonna be a good speaker. I'm never gonna be able to reach that heights. Kinda keeps you trapped back down low. I mean, I knew that I know some people are just naturally better at being organized, and that's just it. Like, they're always ahead I mean, my wife's always has her list ahead of everything, and I'm I'm packing on the way to the airport.
Speaker 1:You know? So, like, totally different kinds of people. So this has been great, and I think it really is an eye opener to how we can look at procrastination that we don't have to write it off. It doesn't have to be just something who we are. So if somebody is listening now, what's, like, one great tip just in general from our conversation that you would like to leave with?
Speaker 2:Okay. Tip number 1, absolutely please try Focusmate. We would love to have you in the community. It is amazingly effective. So, yeah, this is the hard sell, but, yeah, I really stand behind it a 1000%.
Speaker 2:It's changed my life and many others. And, yeah, I just wanna really validate that, you know, we get this way. You are that way. If you're if you are a procrastinator, you are that way for a good reason. And I really think that using the lens of resourcing your nervous system so that you can break out of these patterns of, you know, a vigilant and experience more safety.
Speaker 2:I just wanna really encourage everyone that is a journey well worth going
Speaker 1:on. Awesome. Perfectly said. Well, Taylor, thanks so much for coming on today. This podcast is brought to you by Sunnyside, the number one alcohol moderation platform.
Speaker 1:And if you could benefit from drinking a bit less, head on over to sunnyside.co to get a free 15 day trial.
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