Today’s episode is all about the difference between procrasti-planning and planning properly as a perfectionist with Power Planning. This will help you understand the real reason why you’ve been struggling to follow through on your plans and what to do about it.
If you struggle to do the things you know you need to do to build your business, this episode is for you.
Perfectionists Getting Shit Done (PGSD) is now open for enrollment but doors close on Wednesday, 24 June at 11:59pm EDT. This is your last chance to get lifetime access. Get instant access to everything in the program as soon as you sign up at samlaurabrown.com/pgsd.
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FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Introduction
This is the Perfectionism Project, the only podcast created specifically for perfectionists who are building businesses. I’m your host, Sam Laura Brown, perfectionism expert and entrepreneur. I teach perfectionists how to plan properly, consistently follow through and rest without guilt so they can build profitable and fulfilling businesses without burning out.
I’ve helped over a thousand perfectionist entrepreneurs do exactly that inside my program, Perfectionist Getting Shit Done. If you’re tired of procrastinating, overthinking and half finishing your ideas, you’re in the right place. Now, let’s dive in.
Custom Introduction
Welcome to today’s episode. This episode is about the difference between procrasti-planning and planning properly as a perfectionist with power planning. So if you have been struggling to do the things you know you need to do to build your business, you want to listen to this episode in full and you want to join us inside perfectionist getting shit done.
PGSD is currently open for enrollment, but the doors are closing at 11:59 p.m. Eastern time on Wednesday the 24th of June. So that’s not very far away. This is the last time your last chance to get lifetime access to the program when you sign up.
So you want to join us inside to start planning properly as a perfectionist with power planning so you can finally do all the things you know you need to do to build your business. You can go to samlaurabrown.com/pgsd to sign up today and I hope you enjoy this episode.
Sam Laura Brown
Let’s talk about what that means to plan properly as a perfectionist. So planning properly means that you are making plans that are easy to follow through on. I know this can sound a little scary at first, because you might think, well, I’m not going to be very productive if it’s easy to do the things that I had in my plan. But you will be planning in a way that solves your follow through problem without you having to have more willpower or be more motivated.
So right now, you might be feeling like you’re just not the kind of person who can follow through
with your plans. And if you do, you’re not the kind of person who can do that consistently. So
right now, if you make plans, so say you sit down every week and you write a plan for the
week, and you’re doing that for a few weeks in a row, you might be thinking, how long is this
going to last? How long is it going to be before I fall off the wagon again and then back to my
old ways?
So that’s a sign you’re not planning properly. I’m going to be talking about more of them in a minute, but we want to have you planning in a way where it’s easy to follow through, which makes it easy to build that self trust that you need in order to be decisive in your business that you need in order to be able to handle failure. If you don’t have self trust, those things are going to be very challenging, and it’s going to be almost impossible to be able to build a successful business when you’re planning properly. You’re also getting your perfectionist mindset on your side.
You are learning how to really see that deep perfectionism work that you need to do, and you are able to do that work with the help of your planning tool because it is going to help you notice where are you still getting pulled towards overwhelm? Where are you still procrastinating? Where are you in that all or nothing mindset you’re going to be planning in a way that brings up your level of self-awareness. So you can do that. Work on your perfectionism to get in that growth mindset and get out of your own way so that you are really showing up fully and living into that potential that you know that you have as a
business owner.
Because my bet is if you’re anything like our PGSDers is that you know that you are meant to be doing more with your life than just going through the motions and ticking the boxes and doing what everyone else is doing. And yet there is something there that’s making you get in your own way. And there’s this gap right now between who you see yourself as being and how you’re showing up in your day to day. And it’s so frustrating. It’s so like, I have been there. I have been there for so many years. I was in that place where I felt like there’s so much more for me than being in this accounting job and just doing what everyone thinks I should do, and yet I’m not able to get myself to do the things that I need to do in my
business so I can actually live the life that I want to live.
And if someone had come and told me, hey, you actually just have a planning problem, like you’re just not planning in a way that works for your mindset and is helping you to follow through easily and helping you to ultimately get out of that perfectionist mindset and into the growth mindset. It would have been so helpful. It would have been completely life changing for me for someone to have told me that, but no
one did. I had to really piece it together and figure it out and just really see how important it is that as perfectionists, we are planning properly. So that includes goal setting. That includes planning in a way that makes follow through easy. So in PGSD we teach power planning and also clean rest. And when you have the three of those combined and you’re doing it in a way that gets you a perfectionist mindset on your side enough that you can do the work to get out of that perfectionist mindset, then being productive is so easy. Like not procrastinating and not feeling overwhelmed and getting out of burnout. Those things become easy and actually following through consistently and being able to trust yourself to make decisions and making those decisions without second guessing, without going back on them, without needing to outsource that. So you’re always wanting a teacher or a mentor or a friend or someone on YouTube to tell you what to do. You’re able to actually make those decisions. That all starts
with planning properly.
So let’s talk in this episode about planning versus procrasti-planning. So when we think about procrastinating, I want you to think about it in two ways. The first is that procrastinate planning is when planning becomes a form of procrastination. So we perfectionists love planning, and when we’re not planning properly, we end up with this love hate relationship with planning, where we love sitting down and figuring out what we’re going to do. And yet we hate planning. Because when we’re not planning properly, we kind of secretly know already we’re not going to be able to follow through with those plans, that we’re just going to end up feeling bad because we’re so far behind, and there’s all these things that we haven’t done and what we can really do when our perfectionism handbrake is on is that we
plan so long, we rewrite to do lists, we try and get so nitty gritty with the detail.
We think, if I can just have this perfect plan, then everything else will be easy. Now you might think I’ve just been saying that, that if you have this perfect plan, then everything else is easy when you’re
planning properly as a perfectionist. You are planning in a way that makes follow through easy.
Following through involves doing things that might not work. It involves being courageous and
scared. It involves putting yourself out there when you might be judged. And I know you probably don’t want to hear me say that. You want to hear me say that. If you’re planning properly as a perfectionist, you are making the right plans that are guaranteed to work and get you the exact result that you want. But that’s what we’re thinking about when we’re procrastinate planning. We are trying to make the right plans so that we never have to experience failure and the shame that might come with that. We never have to experience success.
We don’t want to be too successful, because that might mean that we aren’t relatable anymore to the people in our lives. And then we might feel disconnected, abandoned, ashamed. So we’re trying to like, constantly walk this line between failure and success. So we’re successful enough but not too successful. And then we haven’t failed. But at least we can relate to people in our life who are struggling. So it’s really exhausting to be trying to walk that line. But that’s going into this procrastinating. That’s part of it that we are really trying to plan in a way where we can avoid any kind of negative emotion, because we don’t trust ourselves to be able to experience that. We’re trying to avoid making the wrong decision because we don’t trust ourselves to make the right one.
So also, we can spend so much time planning and replanning and replanning and planning to plan that we don’t actually have any time to do the things. And it can feel like we are actually spending a lot of time on our business because of how much thought we’re putting into planning. But if we’re not executing, we’re not implementing, we’re not doing the things. We’re actually not really working on a business. And I’m not saying that super thinking, thinking in a high level and all of that isn’t part of building a business. It most definitely is. But once that goes on for too long, it becomes a form of procrastination. So that’s one way we can think about procrastinate planning. The other way is that we are planning in a way that stops us from taking action. So it enables procrastination. So let me just make this distinction a little bit more clear.
So when we are planning in a way that stops us from taking action, that might mean you’re not actually spending that long planning. Maybe you’re not even planning at all because you don’t even think you’ll follow through with your plan. So why bother? But you are planning in a way that puts you in the all or
nothing mindset without you even realizing it. That makes you feel overwhelmed. That’s making you procrastinate. That’s making you burned out. And you might be thinking that you’re planning properly because you’re following all the advice out there about planning and how to do it. And I’m going to be giving a very specific example in a second of some really common advice around planning and why it doesn’t work for a perfectionist like the pieces that are missing. But if we go back to this definition of procrastinating, it’s when planning becomes a form of procrastination.
So we’re doing it for so long that we’re not taking any action. There’s no time left for that. Or we’re planning in a way that stops us from taking action, that turns that perfectionism handbrake on. And this can really happen without us intending for any of that to happen. And again, this isn’t because there’s anything wrong with you, it’s just because you’ve been following advice that doesn’t work for a perfectionist. So let’s talk about some of the signs that you’re procrastinating. In case you’re not clear yet on whether this is you. Now, I just want to preface this with if you can relate to everything I say, don’t feel bad about it. Self-Awareness is so important. That’s the first thing that you need in order to be able to change. And also the fact that I can articulate it so clearly means a I’ve experienced it. B you’re not the only one. Because if it was only you, no one would be able to explain it in a way that actually clicks with
you.
So here are some of the signs that you’re procrastinating. The first is feeling guilty because you haven’t done enough, even though you’re always working. So you always feel behind, and yet you’re always doing things for your business. You’re making a long to do list, but then you don’t even know which task to work on first, so you end up doing nothing at all. You’re rewriting your plans from scratch because you fell too far behind by the third day. So maybe you sit down, you do this big planning session, and you follow through perfectly for a couple of days, but you can’t sustain it. You fall behind. Then the list of unfinished tasks is just so long that it becomes overwhelming and you just scrap it, you wipe the whole thing and you rewrite it. You’re deleting the Instagram app off your phone to try to stop yourself from
procrastinating. So you’re kind of at that point where you’re just trying to like that desire to procrastinate is very strong, and you’re just trying to do every trick and tip and tactic you can to try to get yourself to stop. So maybe you’ve used those internet blocking apps. Maybe you have used an app on your phone, for example, where there’s this one that I used to use actually, that you like a tree grows on your screen. And then if you exit the app, the tree dies.
And the idea is you can’t look at anything else while this app is open on your phone. So you might be doing things like that where you are just trying to get yourself to stop procrastinating. You’re kind of doing the equivalent of if you’re trying to eat healthy, then you remove all the junk food from the house. You are trying to do that. When it comes to procrastination, you’re trying to be focused by just like willing your way to be there because you don’t know how to stop procrastinating. Part of that is you’re just planning in a way that makes it easy to procrastinate. So you’re working three extra hours. When you told your partner you’d only need five more minutes. So it might be the end of the day. And they’re like, hey, you ready for dinner? Like, yeah, just five more minutes. Five more minutes. And then before you know it,
the whole night’s gone because you were just still working away at your business. You’re pushing off tasks because there’s no boss relying on you to get your work done.
So you probably have done quite well, and maybe you’re still working in a full time or part time job with
someone else managing you. And sure, it might, it might be procrastinating while you’re in your job, but you always get it done by the deadline for your boss. But when it comes to business, there’s no deadline. There’s no external person, a boss, a manager who’s saying, hey, where’s that? I need it by this date. And so you just push things off because you aren’t able to honor your own deadlines with yourself. Also, you have notebooks full of ideas for your business that you haven’t done anything with. Those are just some of the signs that you are procrastinate planning. So you’re planning for so long that it takes away time for you to actually do things, or you are planning in a way that stops you from taking action and is actually enabling procrastination. So let’s talk about why perfectionists can’t follow the same planning advice as
everyone else.
So what I did just before recording this is I googled how to plan your week or a similar phrase to that, and I just wanted to see like what advice would come up when I Google that. And obviously there’s a lot of advice on the internet about planning. And I want to mention a couple of the things I saw on the first article I read, and explain why this advice that is so common doesn’t actually work for a perfectionist, and it actually makes our perfectionist mindset work against us. So then it’s this uphill battle. So first example was they said, spend fifteen to thirty minutes planning your week on a Friday afternoon or a Sunday evening. So basically, at the end of your week, spend a couple of minutes to plan your next one. So there’s a couple of problems with this. The first is that fifteen to thirty minutes is not enough time to
plan your week properly. It’s enough time to write a fucking long to do list that never gets done.
It’s enough time to overwhelm yourself with all the things that you need to do and kind of do
that brain dump, but it’s not enough time to actually think it through. Prioritize it. Part of
prioritization is deciding what you’re not going to do, deciding what you’re going to leave for
later to make contingency plans, to figure out how long the tasks are going to take you, how
much time you need for rest. And I’m going to talk about that more in a second, but fifteen to
thirty minutes, in my experience, as someone who’s been planning properly as a perfectionist
now for I’d say at least three years, that that’s not enough time. It’s enough time to get you into
overwhelm. It’s not enough time to get you out of it again. So when we’re power planning as
the first step of that, we are writing a huge brain dump of the things that we need to do, just
getting it out of our brain and onto the page. But it can’t stop there. The other forty five minutes
is spent getting out of the overwhelm, making the plan workable. Considering contingencies.
Like what happens if my child is sick? What happens if I need to stay back at work? What
happens if I don’t have the energy after I get home from my full time job to do the thing I know I
need to do for my business? If we just spend fifteen to thirty minutes, then we are not going to
actually set ourselves up for success. And so while you might have a few lists of things in your
planner that to do list, you’re not actually going to be able to follow through with those plans.
Also, it being on the Friday afternoon or Sunday evening, that’s great. You can do your
planning then. But when we think it has to be then, then if something comes up on Friday
afternoon or something comes up on Sunday evening or whenever it is, then we don’t get it
done at all and we just kind of skip the whole week.
So in power planning, we do the power
hour and we also do a weekly review. And I tend to do my weekly review immediately before
my power hour. So that combined, and I don’t always do that on a Sunday. I don’t always do
that on a Monday. I don’t always do it on a Tuesday. It’s just kind of within that realm of the end
of my week and beginning of the next one. And for example, today I’m recording this, it’s
Tuesday and I haven’t done my weekly review yet. I already have my power planning in my
calendar, but I haven’t done the weekly review. I’m going to do it this evening. But something
came up and so I had to adjust. So if we are in this mindset that it needs to be at this specific
time and we’re in that all or nothing way of thinking, then if something happens, we just don’t
do the weekly review at all. We don’t do the planning session at all.
And then we’re just winging
it for the whole week, hoping we’re going to be productive. The other thing that I want to talk
about in that article, there are many that I could have mentioned, was, this is what it said. Start
by making a list of everything you want to get done that week. Then look at each item and
decide on your four or five biggest priorities for the week. If you plan your week but fail to
prioritize, you don’t know where to start. Agree. Prioritization is important, but first of all, there’s
no mention here of the importance of prioritizing rest. But that aside, you need to decide what
you will and won’t do. So the way this is talked about is that there is this long to do list, and
then you’re probably highlighting four or five things you want to get done this week. Now, on
the surface, cool. That sounds great. That sounds helpful.
But what tends to happen is we
think, well, yeah, they’re my priorities, but I should be able to get all of this done. And we don’t
intentionally decide what isn’t going to happen this week. What are we going to leave for the
next week or for next month? We don’t have a framework to actually make that decision. So
we just kind of have this whole thing hovering over us. And even if we got those four or five
biggest priorities done, we still wouldn’t feel like we’d done enough because we’re focusing on
what wasn’t done rather than what was. Also, do you actually have enough time in your week
for those priorities and are they too vague? So for example, these priorities, if we do what’s
taken, you know, what’s in this advice? We would write this long to do list with vague things
like, you know, work on Instagram strategy. Write posts, whatever, like these vague things.
And
then you might highlight a few of them, but you don’t know, some of them might be this big
project, so it might be like work on launch of my product. That’s so vague. You’re gonna feel so
overwhelmed. Promote my business. That’s so vague. You’re gonna feel so overwhelmed with
that. And do you even have enough time to do that? Like, what else is going on in your week?
What are your commitments? How much rest do you want to have? Do you need to exercise
and work out? Like, what does that look like? Do you have enough time to do that? That’s why
I love with power Planning. We work from a digital calendar. So you are really, really
confronted with the constraints of how much time we have in a week, and also the abundance
of how much time we have in a week when we use our time well.
So this advice here really
doesn’t pay any regard. And I read the rest of the article. It wasn’t mentioned there either
Figuring out how long things are going to take. And spoiler alert, none of us know how long a
new task we’ve never done before is going to take. It’s not like everyone else knows exactly
how long they need to work for to get something done, and you’re the only one who doesn’t
know. You’re the only one who’s bad at judging time for how long it will take. It’s a skill. It takes
practice, and there’s a lot of different approaches to that. But you need to actually have a look
at do I have time? Like, am I setting myself up for failure from the get go? If those four or five
biggest priorities that I am committing to doing, if they I’m not even gonna have enough time.
Even if I was a robot who didn’t need to eat or sleep or do anything else.
And also, are those
four or five biggest priorities, like where do they fall into in terms of the bigger goals that you
have and what you’re working towards? This is something we often forget as well. I think this
article did mention, like you have your long term vision, but we want to make sure that your
plans are actually going to get you closer to your goal. Now, as I said before, that doesn’t mean
that everything you put in your calendar is going to work and get you the desired outcome, and
you’re never going to fail and any of that, and that’s one of the reasons we procrastinate is
because we think we should only put things that are right into our calendar, but we need to
make sure that we are actually planning in a way that sets us up for success and makes follow
through easy.
Rather than having these four or five vague priorities that are usually worded in
such a way that it’s almost impossible to even tell if you did it or not, and then beating
ourselves up. Because even if we got them done, there was still more to do. If we didn’t get
them done, we’ll look at all these other things I still have to do. And I didn’t even get that stuff
done. A huge problem with this as well is commitment that when you’re planning in this way, it’s
really challenging to commit because you can’t even see what you’re really committing to. So
like, I hope I’m productive. And also this is this whole, you know, all of this advice, those two
points and everything that’s encompassed by that is written as if you’re meant to feel like doing
it.
Like you feel like planning your week, you feel like doing your weekly review, you feel like
choosing what those four or five biggest priorities are. And that’s easy. And that is such an
important part of planning properly is to plan for your unmotivated self. As in, if you weren’t
motivated, you could follow through on those plans. What we tend to do, especially when we
follow normal planning advice, is that we think we’re meant to feel like our planning session.
Because trust me, when you’re planning properly as a perfectionist, you will have some
resistance to that planning session because it requires a lot of brain power. That one hour of
brain power in the power hour is going to set you up for such an incredible week, with ups and
downs and all the things that business involve, but it is going to set you up for success, but
you’re going to resist it.
The same with the weekly review. You’re going to want to put it off. The
same with any task in your business that requires courage and requires you to do something
new, you’re going to want to put it off. So if we plan as if, oh, well, that’s just so easy. And you
just sit down and make these decisions and do the things, then we end up creating this idea
that it should be easy and there’s something wrong with us because it’s not. It’s going to be
challenging, especially in the beginning, to practice making decisions and backing yourself and
to practice having constraint and not writing this huge to do list and then trying to do it all, but
constraining yourself to these are the things I’m going to do. I have looked at my calendar, I’ve
looked at how much energy I have in a day, and I’ve made an assumption that you’re going to
test.
So what you do when you’re power planning is you will make your plan. You will. And I’m
talking about this in the next episode, the the three steps. So it’s a power hour, little tweaks and
the weekly review. So you’re going to make your plan. Then every day you’re going to tweak it,
keep it workable, make adjustments as needed, and then you’re going to review it. What
worked or didn’t work, what to do differently so that you can plan better the next week. So it’s
going to take practice to really be in this place where you’re in this groove with it. And it’s so
easy. It’s fun that you can get that.
Like, trust me, as someone who used to be so frustrated
with planning and having that love hate relationship and feeling like there was something
wrong with me because I should be smarter than procrastinating all the time and being
overwhelmed and being burned out like I knew better. And yet I wasn’t doing better. And that
was so frustrating. But when I was able to really see the planning problem and make those
tweaks that I needed to make so that I could plan properly as a perfectionist, it doesn’t mean
that it was all easy. There was no challenges ever.
But when I was able to be in a growth
minded approach, I was able to do that, things got so much more fun, so much more fulfilling.
It also brought up challenging perfectionism, work that I’ve been able to avoid by working from
a to do list. But it all really that’s where my business really started to take off is when I got this
planning piece down. So let’s talk about why we procrastinate plan. So we unknowingly follow
advice that doesn’t work for perfectionists. That’s one of the biggest reasons that we
procrastinate plan. Plus, spending time planning means we don’t have to be doing, and doing
feels scary because we might fail, we might succeed, we might be rejected, all of those
different things. We’re also trying to compensate, often for lack of belief in our goals or
ourselves by trying to make these plans that are just right.
We’re also trying to compensate for
lack of self-trust. We don’t trust ourselves to follow through with our plans. We don’t trust
ourselves to be okay with failure. We don’t trust ourselves to make decisions. So we
compensate for that and think, if I can just plan everything just right and I can just get enough
willpower to follow through with it, then maybe I can actually do all these things that I want to
do. When the irony of that is when we’re trying to compensate for lack of self-trust by procrasti
planning and planning in a way that doesn’t actually work for a perfectionist, often the result of
that is that we’re making plans we can’t follow through on, which further depletes Self-trust.
We also love procrastinating because when it comes to planning, especially when we’re doing it in
this kind of unintentionally indulgent way that we get this sense of catharsis. Like it’s really
soothing, especially when we kind of know we don’t have to follow through with the plans
anyway. We’re not really committed. We hope we’ll be productive, but it’s cathartic in this sense
of like, okay, well, maybe I will get this done. And like, we can tick those boxes and kind of get
this sense of order and control. Also, I like to think of this like buying a lottery ticket.
So even though, you know, your chances of following through are slim, it gives you a sense of hope for
a better future. So when it comes to an actual lottery ticket where you could win money, but
you literally know the chances are so, so tiny that you would win, you’re buying the hope of a
better future. You’re buying the dream. The opportunity to dream that many people feel like
they don’t have, unless they have that lottery ticket of, oh, this is what I buy. This is what I gift.
This is what I do with that money. And that’s kind of what we’re doing when we’re
procrastinating. We know we’re not going to follow through with it, but we’re like, but what if?
And we just got to live in that place of hope instead of stepping into a place of courage and
being growth minded and actually doing the things and learning how to experience that failure
and bounce back from it and experience the success and be okay with it and all of those
different things.
So when we’re procrastinating planning, there’s a few problems with that. The first is that we think the reason we’re not following through is because there’s something wrong with us. And when we’re in this place of shame and inadequacy, that’s when burnout happens. That is when we aren’t able to be resourceful, when we think that the problem is there’s something wrong with us and that there’s nothing we can do about that. That’s really what shame is. It’s there’s something wrong with me rather than I did something wrong. So when we’re in that place of shame, our resourcefulness just evaporates. It’s like, well, it’s just something wrong with me. There’s nothing I can do about it. And we try and do things about it by trying to achieve all these things and make up for it with success and all of these other strategies that we have that don’t work. But if we are thinking that there’s something wrong with us, and it’s easy to think this when you’re procrastinating and you’re a human being, and we have this tendency to think there’s something wrong with us, we don’t belong, and everyone’s going to find us out.
That when we are not able to really identify, it’s a planning problem and there’s something that can be done about it, and I can just learn how to plan properly. We’re then kind of just stuck in this rut. And this is where there really becomes this big gap between what you know, you have the potential to do and what your day to day life looks like. Another problem with Procrasti planning is that if you’re procrasti planning, you’ll be thinking you’re doing more to build your business than you actually are doing. And this is especially if you’re doing the form of procrastinating where you’re spending a lot of time
planning or maybe spending a lot of time planning to plan learning different planning systems
and all of that kind of thing where it’s just like, maybe you have like these five different methods
you’re trying to piece together. So it actually works for your perfectionist brain.
When we are doing that, we feel like we’re working on the business, but we’re not. A lot of times when it goes into that procrasti planning, it’s no longer productive. And this then creates entitlement. So it’s
kind of like if you are, you know, you want to get fit. You buy a gym membership and you think
about going to the gym. You buy workout outfits. Um, you write up a meal plan. You do all
these things that are like periphery activities. You’re kind of like getting ready to get ready, but
you don’t actually go to the gym. Then you will feel like, why am I not fit yet? Like, why don’t I
have the body I want? I joined the gym three years ago like I should be fitter. But it’s because
you’re not doing the actual work.
So we can do a lot of these periphery activities that feel like they’re important, but they’re not actually helping us. And so when you are procrastinating, you are going to end up feeling entitled that you should be further along. So if you’ve been feeling like, I just know I should be further along in my business, if you’re feeling frustrated that new businesses are already more successful than yours. So you might see someone who started their Instagram account after yours and they already have more followers. This is a sign that you’re procrastinating. This is a sign that because of that procrastinating, you think you’re
doing more in your business than you actually are, which means you think you should be
further along than you actually should based on how you’ve been showing up. So it also
creates a lot of shame when you think you’re doing more than you are, because it’s so easy to
have that story that, well, I’m putting all this time and it’s not working. There must be something
wrong with me when that’s not the case.
It’s just the procrastinating and not planning properly as a perfectionist. It also creates quitting when we procrastinate, plan, and we think that we are doing more in our business than we actually are. And we have that entitlement and that shame and all of those other things. Because we’re rational, we decide it’s best to quit, and quitting often doesn’t look like a blatant quit. It’s usually, oh, I have this other idea. Instead, I’m going to explore it looks like jumping around from one goal to the next. This is why in PGSD you set one goal, your impossible goal for your business, which fits in with power planning. You need
that impossible goal in order to power plan effectively. But if we have so many goals and a lot
of perfectionists when they’re not planning properly, they will have a big goal for every area of
their life. And this means that you will be jumping from one goal to the next to the next.
Whenever any of them get uncomfortable, which they all will. If you’re doing anything properly
with goal setting, you’re going to be in that dip where motivation is gone and you haven’t yet
got results. So when you get to that dip, you’re going to want to jump to focusing on the next
goal. Oh, actually, I thought I really wanted to work on my business this year, but my health
and fitness, like that’s actually the work I need to do first. And then that’s going to create a
really solid foundation of habits. And then when I have better habits, I’ll be able to show up for
my business more fully. Maybe you’ve been thinking something like that. It’s not to say when
you have an impossible goal around your business that you don’t have things you’re working
on in other areas of life, but because how you do one thing is how you do everything. By
having one goal that really brings up your perfectionism. Work brings up the business work you
need to do as well. Those benefits flow over into every area of life. But when you’re in this
habit of jumping from one goal to the next to the next, and this is common goal setting advice.
Set realistic goals. I won’t go into it in this episode where I don’t agree with that, but set
realistic goals is what we’re told. And also to have a goal for every area of your life.
So set three goals, set seven goals. Like there are, you know, people teach these, um, what are they
called circle thing that has all these different pieces of the pie for your life, a circle, a life
wheel, something like that. Anyway, it’ll have like relationships, spirituality, health, um, mental
health, business, career, whatever it is, all these different things say have a goal for every
area. We love that because we get to feel again. It’s like that lottery ticket. What if, what if,
what if. And then anytime we get uncomfortable, we get to jump between things. And that is a
form of quitting. We don’t recognize it as that. We think, oh no, I just had this great idea. But
often we’re quitting on the idea we had. And a lot of times we weren’t even committed to that in
the first place. We really want to be setting goals as perfectionists in a way that actually gives
you that opportunity to commit. But we are really creating this with procrasti-planning we’re
creating this idea that we should be further along.
And that really stops us from being further along. Also, when we’re procrasti-planning, as I’ve mentioned, it destroys self-trust rather than building it, which makes it harder to handle failure to make decisions, to follow through with our plans. And it eventually leads to not wanting to plan at it all because of the way that precast planning and following advice that doesn’t work for perfectionists, that destroys self trust so
much that we think, what is the point? Why even bother? I’m not even going to do any of this
anyway. And you might know, like you have a history of being a great planner when it comes to
your job, perhaps where you have a boss who you are ultimately reporting to, or maybe you
manage other people and you can plan in that context.
But when it comes to just me, myself, and I, when it’s just you planning for yourself and your goals and your business, and sometimes that might mean disappointing others and what requests others have of you throughout the day or throughout the week, when that might mean you’re not able to people
please and do all the things to keep everyone happy and liking you. Like it can be really
confronting for that, like for that to be happening. And so we love being in this procrasti
planning, but then we end up in this situation where we just decide why even bother. I’m just
gonna wing it.
And often this will look like saying things like, you know what I, I just don’t like I’ve been putting all this pressure on myself. I just don’t want to put any pressure on myself anymore. And I’m just going to, you know, have this really simple list of things, and I’m just gonna focus on doing that and letting that be enough. And there’s so much nuance to this. I probably don’t have time to go into it all, but that is another way we quit. And in power planning, for example, when we’re using that, we are kind to ourselves. We don’t burn out. We’re able to notice procrastination and do something about it and do it in the most effective way. Not having to delete the Instagram app or doing things like that. And we recognize that it is our brain that is thinking pressure e thoughts. It’s not the plans that are making us feel
pressured. And so what can happen? And I’ve seen this in PGSD as well. And PGSD will say,
you know what? I just don’t want the pressure of this impossible goal. I just don’t want the
pressure of these plans.
So I’m just going to wing it and go with the flow. But that isn’t helpful either. We want to be self-compassionate in a way that actually works, that helps us have a better relationship with ourselves when we are being self-compassionate, quote unquote, in a way that is actually ignoring ourselves, dismissing what we’re here to do and what we’re capable of. It doesn’t help. It doesn’t help us build self-trust. And we only further prove that we aren’t as capable as we thought we were. So we want to really have productivity be an active self-care. And often self-care will be an act of productivity doing something that you don’t want to do because you know that it’s in your own best interest. And that’s why with power planning, you make the plans. We often can be a bitch to ourselves. We will make plans that if someone
gave them to us, we would think like, do you even know that I need to sleep and eat and do all
these other things? We do that to ourselves just because we haven’t learned how to plan
properly as a perfectionist. And so if that is happening when you start power planning.
So we do that for three months and probably in the first few weeks, you are going to plan in the way
that you’ve always planned before, and you’re going to feel like you’re not able to follow
through on your plans. And there’s a lot of pressure, but that’s just because you’re
overplanning or under planning or both. And with the help of that planning method, you’re
going to be able to notice that and get coaching and get support and actually do something
about it. And that’s why we have that three month commitment. But when we are in this
mindset that, well, if planning isn’t working for me, then I should just not plan at all and wing it
and go with the flow. Then we’re really denying ourselves such an opportunity for growth and
such an opportunity for really just having that solid relationship with ourselves. It makes me
think of, say, for example, if you are wanting to lose weight and you need to change the way
you’re eating in order to do that, that you might think, okay, I’m going to follow this really, really
strict diet. And then you, you know, you set that up in a way that wasn’t sustainable.
So of course, you’re not able to sustain it. And then you’re like, well, that was too strict. And I’m just
gonna learn to, you know, love myself, whatever I eat and all of that. And I’m all for intuitive
eating. But there’s a difference between that and ignoring yourself. That’s not what intuitive
eating is. Intuitive eating is being in tune with yourself, not ignoring yourself and your feelings
and your relationship with yourself. The same with power planning. We’re doing it in a way
that’s self-compassionate and being tuned in instead of being tuned out and ignoring the
growth and the work that there is for us to do. So that is why procrastinating is a problem. I
know I went into that a bit, but let’s talk about how to plan properly as a perfectionist.
And this actually sets up the next episode really nicely, because I will be going into the three steps of
power planning. So I’m just going to give you a very brief overview in this episode. I’m going to
go into it in more detail in the next one. So the first step is the power hour. So in your weekly
power hour, you’ll put your needle moving tasks into your digital calendar, and you’ll create
contingency plans that make it easy to get everything done without feeling overwhelmed. So
you’ll know exactly which tasks to do now, which tasks to leave for the future. And you will start
feeling. Start the week feeling on top of your business. Even if you have a full time job or you’re
raising children, or there’s any kind of uncertainty in your week.
The second step is little tweaks. So every day you’ll spend a little bit of time tweaking your calendar so you can get everything done without feeling behind, without burning out. Even if something unexpected
comes up. And you’ll know when changing your plans is self-sabotage and when it’s the right
thing to do. This is something that’s really important because we feel like everything is
important. So when you can really start to see, okay, what do I need to prioritize and leave for
later? And in the moment, throughout the week, you can see, okay, me changing the plan right
now is self-sabotage or me changing the plan right now is truly an act of self-compassion and
is truly my own best interests. That makes such a big difference when it comes to following
through, showing up fully all of those things. Then the third step is the weekly review. So at the
end of the week, you’ll do a weekly review to really reflect and discover what worked, what
didn’t work, and what to do differently so that next week’s plans are even easier to follow.
So here are some of the key elements of planning properly. There’s a time limit on your planning
session, so you don’t spend a whole day planning out a week. Now when you start planning, it
might take you more than the sixty minutes. It might take you maybe ninety minutes as you’re
learning that, but you want to have a time limit on your planning session. You’re also not over
planning or under planning when you’re planning properly as a perfectionist. So over planning
looks like putting too much on your plate. We love to do this. This is again, like that lottery
ticket. The hope of being productive has such a pull to it that we put so much on our plate, but
by doing that, we’re actually setting ourselves up to fail and setting ourselves up to feel bad.
Part of the reason for that is we’re so used to feeling bad and feeling behind and feeling
overwhelmed that that’s normal for us.
So we kind of recreate that. And that’s something that planning properly will help you to get out of, out of this addiction to feeling behind and this addiction to feeling overwhelmed. But then there’s under planning, which we often do after over planning. So they can sometimes kind of go on at the same time, which is having plans that are too vague. So the advice I mentioned before about having those four or five priorities and that kind of thing, when you do that, you’re going to end up over planning and putting too much on your plate, probably because those four or five priorities, depending on what they are,
might take more time than you have in the week, or you’re subconsciously or even consciously
thinking, well, these are my priorities, but I should be able to do everything. And then you’re
under planning by having plans that are too vague. So it’s like work on this project, write posts
for Instagram or whatever. That is not actually very clear about what you need to do and how
you will tell you’re done.
So another important part of planning properly is course correcting during the week. So you don’t fall behind. So this is keeping your plans workable instead of just kind of throwing them out the window the moment you don’t follow through, or if you know you’ve followed through perfectly for a couple of days, and then you start falling behind, and then the list of unfinished tasks is just so long, you’re like, nope, I’m just gonna start over because I feel so behind. I feel so stressed. I feel so much pressure. Having a framework that allows you to figure out when to change your plans and when to follow through with the plans that you made during the power hour. That’s really important part of planning properly. Also
making plans for your unmotivated self rather than your ideal self, so that even if you’re not
motivated, you’re able to follow through with them rather than planning as if you have this
limitless amount of motivation and then feeling confused when you get to the time of doing the
task and you’re like, huh, I don’t feel like it. Oh, that must mean I shouldn’t do it.
So many of us interpret resistance as like this signal from the universe that it’s not in alignment with us, and we shouldn’t do it. When so often it’s just a sign that we’re going to grow, and we’re not used to
actually just being with that feeling and working through it. This is often why we leave things
until the last minute, because we haven’t practiced how to be with that resistance and just keep
working. We end up needing to have that, you know, last minute rush, because when we’ve left
it to the last minute, we tell ourselves this story of, well, it’s at the last minute.
So if I don’t do as well as I want. Well, we can blame the last minute. We don’t say ourselves that to ourselves consciously, but if you and maybe you did this in school, I definitely did. I left everything to the
last minute. I had this whole story that I did my best work at the last minute, and then if I didn’t
do well, I usually did, though, and it kind of reinforced the whole thing. And the fact was, I just
hadn’t even experienced my best work. But I thought I did my best work under pressure, And
so I was like, okay, well, I could have done even better if I didn’t leave it to the last minute. Got
to feel extra smart.
And then if I didn’t do as well as I wanted, I could say, well, you know, I did leave it to the last minute and we need to get out of that when it comes to business, because there’s no last minute. And even if there is a last minute in terms of maybe you’re doing a promotion or something like that, where there’s a time you’ve publicly announced it’s not sustainable, it’s not enjoyable, and it’s one form of getting in your own way. And like in PGSD, we help people who are committed to getting out of their own way and who have been through that and are ready for something else. So we want to have you planning in a way that actually makes it easier to follow through, even if you’re not motivated. Clean rest. I’ve talked about it
on this on the podcast already resting without guilt. That’s such an important part of planning.
You need to plan that if you are a perfectionist, you’re not going to want to rest. You’re going to
want to rest in the leftover time, which never happens because there’s always something more
to do. So clean rest is a really important part.
Having a clear goal in mind. So you know what’s important and what isn’t like. That’s your North star. That’s how you figure out what the needle movers are. That’s how you figure out whether you should just rest or you should push through or whatever that looks like. That’s, that’s part of it. Also, planning in a way that lets you feel a sense of accomplishment every single day, even when there’s still more things to do. That’s such an important piece of the puzzle. And that advice I shared earlier about, you know, your
four or five priorities and, you know, highlight them or whatever it is and then just work on
them. You’re not going to feel accomplished because you haven’t decided what completion
looks like. You haven’t decided what success looks like. It’s just this vague get everything done
kind of thing. So I’ve said a lot. I hope this has been helpful.
Outro
If you’re ready to start doing the things you know you need to do to build your business, then I want to invite you to join us inside Perfectionist Getting Shit Done. To find out more about the program and sign up, go to samlaurabrown.com/pgsd. The doors are currently open but won’t be open for much longer.
Enrollment is closing on Wednesday the 24th of June 2026 at 11 59 p.m eastern time. And this is your final opportunity, your final chance to get lifetime access to the program when you sign up. So go to samlaurabrown.com/pgsd to join today.