Don't Put This Off! - 7 Days to Eliminate Procrastination | Part 1

Inhale, exhale. The salty breeze carries promises. I close my eyes and there it is. The echo of laughter from friends and family, the taste of ripe fruit and the warmth of companionship. My heart swells, for I've built a life that's brought me here. A mosaic of sunrises and morning walks, of shared sunsets and quiet conversations. This is my dream. What's crushed more dreams than anything else in our world? Procrastination. Today we'll talk about procrastination and a seven day plan to overcome it and regain your motivation to go after your dreams. I'm Curtis. My pal over here is Joe. And we are dudes in progress. Joe.

Hey, her.

Good morning. Good morning. Good Friday morning.

Good morning to you, my friend. Man, I love that, man. I just feel good and relaxed and laid back from that introduction.

You like my dream? Swelling hearts, palm trees in there, sunrises.

I love it.

Yeah. All your good feels is in there.

Yeah. The only thing missing, the only thing I think is missing is a pair of Mickey Mouse ears. Yeah, that's.

I struggled a little bit with that, too. I do love the beach, but my dream does include Mickey Mouse and Disney World as part of that with the friends I've built over the last ten years. Podcast. I did celebrate ten years of podcasting with my geeking on Walt Disney World podcast this week. Joe, congratulations.

April 2. That's awesome.

Yeah. I think I may have overcome some procrastination to produce a podcast consistently every week for the last ten years.

If you're putting out an episode every week, and I know you've done it every week for a long time, you do have to have some systems and mindsets and attitudes in place to make sure you get it out there and get it done. But isn't that funny that here is something that you've done consistently every week for a long time, and there's stuff that I'm sure you have in your life that you've probably put off for five years, right?

Yes. Isn't that the mystery of life?

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's so strange.

For sure. I still struggle with procrastination. Do you struggle with procrastination, Joe?

Sometimes I do, if just to be honest. And we could joke about this a lot and say stuff like, yeah, I put off, but I struggle so much that I put off. Putting off.

We joke. There's a wall behind Joe in his studio, and it's got white. It's like you patch the walls back there and the white stands out.

Yeah, I have this. The walls that I've patched, I just haven't painted it yet. And that's probably three years going now. But what do you do? Right.

I have now.

It's kind of part of my background, and people that, that meet with me would be disappointed not to see it. Right. It also funny to talk about when see, they see it in the background. What is that decoration you have in the background? Patched holes are what they are.

It's modern art.

Yeah. So that is something that, that is, that is one thing. I have put off a lot of, like, home things, a lot of small home things that, yeah. That just nag at you. And then if you just get it done, you think to yourself, why didn't I just finish it?

Yeah. I'm going to ask you to think of a project or task, something that you're trying to accomplish that you've been procrastinating on. We'll use that in. I have a couple in mind, and this is all inspired by a series of books. And I don't know if I can say this guy's name, Thibault Maruz. I'm probably really butchering his name. But this is in the Kindle Unlimited series. I bought the first one. It was called Dopamine Detox, which caught my eye, and I almost wanted to talk about that for this episode. But dopamine detox and Dopamine is part of this seven day immediate action book that I want to talk about, this seven day plan, overcome procrastination. So I thought I'd combine the two, and they're very short books, which is fun to get something accomplished each time you read one of these books, as I think there's a four of these in this productivity series, and you'll hear in my resource how I got the Kindle Unlimited, too.

So how do you feel as we go into the subject? How do you feel about this author, his style, the tempo of his writing, the tone of his writing? Is it, does it keep you engaged? Does it keep you moving? Is it practical?

Yeah, I think it's more in the, it's not so much in the style of writing. It's more of, like, straight at you. This is what we're doing, and this is the action steps that we're taking. I like that kind of structure to give you the strategies, the reasons why. And here's what to do. Here's your action steps and this particular book. That's all it is. And you could read this maybe in one sitting. If you're better than me, you can do it probably in one sitting. There are, like, 60 pages. It's hard to tell how many pages these books are when you're reading on Kindle, but they're quite short. You could do definitely in a couple days, and that's what I did a couple mornings. I read through this. I spent as much time writing down my thoughts here as I did reading it.

It's interesting that we're talking about books and procrastination, and I don't know if this falls into the procrastination realm, but I have so many books that I've read 25% of, because I'll read a book and I'll be into a book, and then I'll hear about another book, and I'll just do something. I'll just check it out. Okay, well, I'll go ahead and get this book now, and I'll just start leafing through it as you leaf through on a Kindle reader. And then before you know it, I've started reading this book, and this other book is left behind.

Yes. This has happened to me recently, and I'm telling you, I'm giving myself some grace on that, because if it's lost my attention, then that's okay. I'm done with it.

Yeah. But I'm all. I have this fear of missing out, Kurt, that the secret to life is in that 75% that I've not read. And there it is, nagging at me, just screaming at me, I'm here. I'm here. All your whole life will change. All you have to do is finish reading. Last eight chapters.

Yeah. There's something to be said to be focused on one thing at a time, for sure. I'll define procrastination. It's knowing there's a task you should be undertaking, but find yourself unable to do it. Simple as that.

Yeah, that's interesting. Unable to do it by your own choice. Not because you don't have necessarily the talent, not because you don't necessarily have the ability to do it. You're just doing it because you're not doing it right. It's a weird thing about procrastination, because you know you can do it, and you know you have to do it, and you know that it would make a dramatic change in your life at some level if you do it, even if it's just lifting that burden off of. Off of your shoulders for completing something. But still, you just don't.

I think a lot of in his action steps is he probably questioned that. Do you really know? Because he talks a lot about writing down your reasons and getting really clarity on what it is you're trying to accomplish that can help you get past some of the procrastination. All right, day one. This is the seven day plan to overcome procrastination. Regain your motivation. Day one, declutter your mind. I like this concept. He talked about our minds. They hate open loops and all the unfinished tasks we have. When you're accumulating unfinished business, you create multiple open loops that take up mental space. Now you're feeling overwhelmed. Your mind's natural reaction is to shut down and as a result you find yourself stuck. I've heard you say that so many times, Joe. I'm all locked up. Yep.

All locked up. Yep. Yep. Certainly happens. Certainly happens. Yeah. I understand this comment. My mind hates open loops. I just talked about it a second ago about not finishing a book. It's back there. And there does come a time I think you have to part of decluttering your mind. And I don't know if the book speaks to this or not. I've not read the book. In fairness, if the book speaks to this or not, but you said it just a minute ago, there are some things that you just have to say. I'm giving myself grace that's not important enough for me to even think about or finish.

Yeah, so we're gonna get into some of the action steps just for this one. It is just really clearing your mind. We've talked about meditation and getting quiet and getting really clear on what it is that you want to accomplish. The first action step, Joe, is what's a big test or project you've been procrastinating on?

We just talked about the patches on the back of my wall. But I do have a bit of a home project that I have to finish and it's a result of some unfinished contractor work from the flood and there's some baseboard work and some quarter round work that I have to do on my floor. Yet where the baseboard was not completed, there was some miscommunication on who's finishing the baseboard, whether it was the floor contractor or my general contractor. And one person was pointing the finger at the other and there's no movement on it at all. So I've come to realize that, that it's something I'm just going to have to finish myself if I want to get it done.

That's the first thing to get clarity on. I'm going to talk about my bathroom renovation. I've had great moments of clarity and great moments of procrastination all through this project. But I totally get that. When there's a little bit of question in your mind and you're not resolving it, it just keeps going on and on.

Well, with this particular project, it's pretty easy work. I know how to do all of the things required to put this baseboard on. Number one, it's a clunky project, right? You have these long pieces of baseboard that you have to bring in and set down, and you have to make a decision. Do I want to replace the baseboard or just to use the old baseboard? And then the emotional attachment of. Or the emotional aggravation of thinking that garnit. I shouldn't even have to do this anyway. All just leads to being put off. Now, when I have a situation like this, what always helps me is to have an event ahead of me. And I don't know if we're going here or not, but I will water drop this in case we are, is to have something ahead of me that motivates me to do it. I'll give you an example tomorrow morning. This is Friday. Tomorrow morning, I'm almost certain that I will put this baseboard on and I'll be done with it. And the reason is because tomorrow afternoon, my wife is having a bunch of friends over. A bunch of friends over for a painting party. She's going to teach them how to paint this still life. And that's a whole other subject. But my wife is having friends over to have this painting party, and they'll be there. And what I don't want is that baseboard laying on the floor and her saying, yeah, Joe's not. It's been a year. Joe's not done that yet. It's not been a year. But so that's a motivating factor to me.

You are getting ahead. We are going to talk about that. So save that some more. I think you just said a lot of things there that are definitely the things that have promoted your procrastination. It's just like my project, a simple little thing. I find that there's different stages to this project. The last thing I just did last weekend, it was a long. I had a long weekend with Good Friday. And I was really not motivated to rip out this closet. And when I say rip out the closet, it's like these two by fours that were built into the wall that framed a closet. And I had fear. I had. It was not a motivating thing for me, too, because my goal was to do the floor and to get the toilet back in and those kinds of things. Ripping out this closet was not my choice. It was my wife's choice. And it's a lot of work. So that was demotivating. But I knew I had to do that first. She made it clear that had to be done first before we did the floor. I got that done now I got that done. I got motivated. And the next project, really, is to start painting. And just to do, what do you call the paint, the white paint you put in there. The primer kills Primer. Thank you. Yeah, I had to prime. I gotta do the priming because I've done most of the walls and the patching. And my daughter had primer somewhere in the house, and I didn't want to go out and buy because my wife keeps complaining about the cost of this project every time she gets the Home Depot bill. Like, you spent another $25. And honestly, that little thing was like, I got, okay, before I start this project, I gotta find the old primer. But anyways, that was, I got past it, and I didn't end up going out and buying some new stuff. And I really started it a little bit yesterday. So I'm making progress, but I'm just making the point that there's these little things. I'll accomplish one thing, and then I got to get remote again to do the next part of the project.

Right? Yeah. This baseboard project has been going on incrementally for a long time with me, and I don't. There's a click. And if somebody can solve this click, and we may talk about it here, I don't know what it is. I'm calling it a click, but it's that moment that you take action on. It's that moment that you say, okay, I'm going to do this thing. If somebody can solve that, that micro second, that micro microsecond, that click that happens, that moves you forward. Yeah, I'll take that pill in any day.

The other thing I want you to think about as we go through this is what's. I started this with my intro. What's a dream? What's your future self look like, Joe? And you don't have to answer that right now, but we've got some big dreams we've been talking about. And keep that in mind. How are you going to accomplish that big dream that you have if you don't do something about it every single day? Don't procrastinate on those. And that's the one that's usually the hardest to stay on track with because so many things get in the way. And why do you procrastinate? I'll give you a bunch of reasons. Lack of clarity, ignorance of how, avoidance, indifference, timing mismatch, academic adventures, low self confidence, anxiety, structureless lives, rumination and fear. Any of those resonate with you why you procrastinate?

Hey, when I was looking at this list, as you're reading through this list and I'm looking at it in our notes, this particular project, rumination falls into play because, or comes into play because I'm thinking about this isn't even something that I should be doing. And that just rolls through my head. I shouldn't even be doing this. This should have been done by the contractors. I shouldn't even have to do this. If it's going to get done, I'm going to have to do it now. It's a lesson. It's a lesson learned. It's not necessarily ignorance of how, but there is that complexity to it. It's a pretty easy task. You still have to cut the baseboard and you have to match up the 45 degree angles at the corner and put the quarter round in. So those are the big ones for me because I'm confident that I can do it. It's that rumination and not ignorance of how, but frustration in the process of, when I look towards the process, all the little things that I know I'm going to have to do for that process and I'm looking at the list to see where that might fall. Maybe unstructured list life, but, and it's not necessarily ignorance of how, but it's just the complicated, the complication of the process for me.

Yeah. As you're speaking to this particular project, it might depend on the project.

Right.

Or the task at hand.

Right.

Which one of these fit in? Any one of these can produce procrastination.

But I've had all these guarantee, I have had all these and I can see where this list is. This the one or a combination of multiples directly points to procrastination.

I was thinking again, for that big dream that you have structureless, live without a roadmap, we wander aimlessly. Procrastination thrives in the absence of structure. If you can structure those things that you want to accomplish, you're going to be much better. Chance. So action steps, Joe, you've already started them. Think about those tasks that you procrastinated over the last month or year. Write down why you procrastinated. So again, it's all about revealing some of these things and realizing what you're doing and what can you stop? How can you stop procrastination?

I want to back up a little bit, but this is on this same subject, if you don't mind, Kurt. When I think about the long term goals, like the life planning goals, where do I want to be when I'm 75 years old? What kind of. How am I going to retire? Where am I going to retire? And all of those long term planning goals. Once you set down a path, you're down that path. Right. And one fear, if I'm reading my mail out loud here, that I have as I go down any of these long term planning goals, is that I'm heading down the wrong path. That, oh, boy. What if I go through. What if I go through all of this and it doesn't work out because I went down the wrong path? And that's part of rumination. Maybe, but that's why you have to pay attention to what you're doing and have those little touchstones in place as you're structuring your life. But that's part of the reason that I procrastinate on some of the stuff I need to do for long term planning.

Yeah, that's a good one. I was just reading. Maybe anxiety is part of that.

Yeah.

What if I mess up?

Right. What if I mess up? Exactly.

Good observation. Day three is deepen your understanding of procrastination. There's a couple points here to make when you're trying to deepen your understanding. The key is to realize that motivation doesn't lead to action, but action leads to motivation. I feel like we've talked about this before. I thought this was such a profound concept. Because you think you'd have to get motivated before you act.

Right.

But isn't it interesting? You can think of lots of examples of where you actually got started and it generated more motivation. I think that's so true.

Absolutely. Absolutely. And the one thing that we. When I say we, I mean me, that I have to be careful of is trying to make that first step too big. Action definitely defeats procrastination. Action creates motivation. It's not the other way around. I. We have talked about this a lot.

Yeah.

But for me, if the action is too big, it almost has to. Sometimes it has to be a ridiculously tiny step just to say, okay, I've defeated the blank page here. I've written one sentence in this presentation, or I got out the paint in order to. That's all I'm going to do tonight. I'm going to get out the paint. That's all I'm doing. I'm not going to paint. I'm just going to get out the paint. And sometimes that action of getting out the paint causes you to maybe get out the brush, too.

You're exact. You're describing exactly what I did yesterday about this priming the bathroom. These were the steps that got me motivated. Now I'm in a groove. Like, I'm after this. Now, the one in my podcasting world, there's a couple things that are not fun to do. One of them is I do my intro. I'm usually doing it on a Sunday, and I really want to change my workflow. So I'm doing my intro, and it is a blank page. I'm trying to defeat the blank page. You're exactly right. I do have a little bit of a structure to it, but because I'm speaking into a microphone, it's just me. I struggle with that every week, and I have to beat that. Procrastination for that particular task seems every week. Yeah, I do. But it is about getting starting. We always talk about Stephen King. Just start writing, even if it's crap.

And don't be afraid to take the tiniest of steps. And so much of this, I do want to say this over and over again during this particular podcast. Kurt, is procrastination is a real problem for me, just to be honest with you in it. And I bet you it's a problem for a lot more people who didn't admit it. Yeah, we all like to be motivated. We all like to think that we're achievers, and we just move forward through life, task after task and goal after goal. That's not me, dude. That's not me. I really have to put some intentional structure and processes behind. Behind what I do, or else I'll completely flake out. And there's more than I'm. There's so much more that I'm not doing than what I'm doing. And that's probably. That's. Maybe that's the way life is, right?

This book does say procrastination has crushed more dreams in this world than anything else. It's prevented some great things from happening.

Absolutely.

Than anything else. Another way to deepen your understanding of procrastination, your present versus your future self. We see ourselves better than we are, but the truth is, if we don't do the work, becoming better, stronger, wiser today, there is no reason to believe that our future self will possess all the wonderful qualities we attribute to them.

Well, that cuts, doesn't it? Doesn't it, Kirk?

Yeah, that thinks you're better than you are, but if you're not doing the work, you're not going to be any better than you are.

I like what he says here, what he said about people think that they're better than they are. Say that again for me, will you?

Yeah, we see ourselves better than we are, but the truth is, if we don't do the work, becoming better, stronger and wiser today, there's no reason to believe that our future self will possess all the wonderful qualities we attribute to them.

Wow, that cuts, dude.

Yeah.

So true.

Truth hurts.

That's so true.

One last point. In this day three. Do you want to just survive like our ancestors did, that primal thing that we talk about? Or do you want to thrive? Because we're humans, we have a choice.

The initial reaction, I think everybody would say, I want to thrive, I want to thrive. I just don't want to survive. I just don't want to live a bare minimum life. The truth is, the proof is in the pudding. Right? What are we willing to do? What actions are we willing to take in order to do more than just survive and to actually thrive?

Yeah. How many people are just going through the motions? They're really just trying to survive day by day. They're not really taking the actions to really better themselves. And yeah, use the word thrive, but you do have a choice, and that's an important.

That's an important mindset to say that regardless of whatever situation that you're in, you can take one small step. Right. You can take that small action to move you from being better than you are right now. But I think, gosh, realizing that. Hey, Joe. Hey, Kurt. Probably not as good as you think you are, right?

Yeah. Yeah. You could push the limit a little higher.

Gosh, I like that. That's something for me to really meditate on. We see ourselves better than we are, but the truth is, if we don't do the work, becoming better, stronger and wiser today, there's no reason to believe that we're going to be. We're going to be better.

Was just last week we were talking. Was it Albert Einstein quote we were talking about?

Yeah. The not craziness. That's not the. What word am I looking for? The definition? Yeah. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.

Yeah, there it is right there. Same thing we talked about last week, action steps. Just write down two things you could implement to avoid procrastination. Now, you know, some of the things that are getting in your way. See what you can do. Definitely think about your future self.

Yeah. And when thinking about your future self. I heard this thing. I don't know who said it, but it. Whoever said it, it's genius insight. And I wish I knew who said it because I would have made this one my, my quote of the week. But we overestimate what we can get done in a day. We dramatically overestimate what we can get gonna get done in a day or a week. And we underestimate what we can get done in a year.

Oh, yeah, the consistency is so true. We're going to get into that. Definitely. That's like in day seven to build a plan of consistency. And Joe, I think we were talking about this. This is a pretty big list. It's pretty meaty. I'm going to carry this on into a separate podcast for my next awesome. So we got through three days of this. Day four is going to be gaining clarity. Day five will be develop laser sharp focus. We're going to talk about releasing your fear and then implement a daily routine and build consistency.

I really like this list, Kurt, on why we procrastinate. Because as we, as I look at these eleven items, they're all there, right? They're all there. And sometimes understanding why you're not doing something helps you get beyond that step. Right? Helps you get beyond that moment of procrastination. And admitting that you're procrastinating and admitting that you're not going to be the person you want to be unless you take some kind of step forward is a big motivating factor for me.

Yeah, it's simple things. Again, I'm using a stupid simple thing. Like, I took the paint from outside the paint bucket that was primer, and I showed it to my wife. It had tons of dust and dirt on it. And I said, sweetheart, how old is this stuff? This is all I can find. And she's. And I said to her, I'm just going out and buying another gallon. And she was okay. And I overcome that. Right challenge right there.

Yeah, yeah.

And I was on to going over to Home Depot, getting my pail of primer. I had a brush at home, and I'm off to the races.

So I've.

I've.

I've committed to finishing this baseboard this.

Weekend in today's episode.

Thank you.

You're welcome, man. It better be done next week or Sunday. When I tell you what, if it's.

Not done if it's not done tomorrow, I won't be doing this show next week. My wife will be on the show telling you about my. About my funeral. Cause she has killed me.

I'll motivate you. I'll tell her you've made this commitment.

That's funny.

Well, let's hold it right there. We'll get into the rest of these steps and try to get us to be more productive and stop procrastinating.

Good stuff, Kurt. I like. I like where we're going with this subject in this episode. And I'll go ahead and pick up the book and sit down and read it. So I'm prepared for our conversation next week.

Yeah, it costs you less than $3 if you want to buy the book.

Awesome.

Or you just read my notes, and then you'll be ready to talk about more books.

Should be like that.

Yeah. That's why it's nice bite size material that you can really take some action on, too.

Right?

What's your win for the week?

You know that I've started a coaching business, and I'm moving in that direction. And it's a bold statement for me to say, I've started a coaching business. Right. That's getting over a mindset hurdle in and of itself. And just this past week, you were engaged in it as well, Kurt, I started helping somebody plan and release a podcast. We're going through the whole process, and I'm building the curriculum as we go and the study sheets as we go. But it was a blast, man.

Yeah, it was a blast. Good. You were in your element. It was interesting. We were enjoying that. We were getting into the technical aspects of setting up a microphone and the recording gear that we use or you use, and he was really enjoying and needed the information that you had. I got a message while we were engaged in that meeting that I had promised to help one of my listeners answer some questions about podcasting. So I had to hop over to another call, and I had a similar fun, another hour conversation with a listener about podcasting, which is getting me thinking. And if anyone's out there and wants to learn about podcasting, reach out to us. We may be doing something in the future in this area.

Yeah, I think we definitely will be at some level. I'll probably have three or so subjects, two or three subjects that I will coach on, and those are soon coming. One of them is, of course, podcasting, and the other one is some sales coaching and some just general life skills coaching. While you don't have to necessarily have it all together yourself to be a coach. You certainly have enough skills and knowledge to help somebody else move forward as you're moving forward.

I agree that. Don't let it stop you. That imposter syndrome can be a procrastinator.

Absolutely.

My win for the week is we've been talking, Joe and I, on our Saturday morning sessions about things that we want to accomplish. And one of mine is to become a youtuber. My first step starting to learn about YouTube, which I don't know a lot about, creating videos and publishing videos, but my first kind of easy step to get started was to get my geeking on Walt Disney World podcast posted to a YouTube channel. One of the things that was hanging me up was my son was building me a logo that I needed, and it's the widescreen logo that shows in the YouTube channel. And he finally sat down and did it for me. So that helped me finish that off. But, yeah, so I got that up and running, and the last one I posted on Monday is out on my YouTube channel. So if you want to listen to my podcast on YouTube, it's out there now.

Awesome. Congratulations.

Got one listen. One listen by me. And it wasn't very long just to see that it was there, but you got to start somewhere, right?

The geeking on WDW brand is certainly out there on YouTube. You've been featured on other podcasts, and so your brand is definitely out there. If I do a quick YouTube search, I certainly see something about your grand geek and gathering from back in 2022. You see where you are on the Disney Crush podcast, and. And I certainly see your new channel here. So congratulations, dude.

Thank you. Yeah, I'm exploring this amazing new.

And just now, Kurt, I have subscribed to your YouTube channel. So there you go.

I have one subscriber. Thank you, Joe. I gotta start promoting it.

My resource this week is a podcast and a blog post by the podcast and blog post. The blog is called near and far, and it's by an author. Near iya is. I think that's how you say his name. He wrote a book called Indistractable. And I've read some of the book, but not all of it. But this is a really good podcast and blog post. The five productivity myths ruining your life. And I'm not going to tell you what those five productivity myths are, but they're very interesting that may be ruining your life. So I would, and I'd invite you to check out the podcast. Just look it up. Near and far. N I r and far. F a r. So it's a play on his name. Nir. His name is spelled n I r e y a nir ey. And he's the author of a book called Indistractable. But it's really good. This particular podcast and blog post is really good like that.

You've teased it too. I will definitely check that out. I gotta get out walking. It's. The weather here has been just horrendous. I like to go out and listen to podcasts when I'm out walking. So thank you for the resource there. I will check that out.

Good stuff.

I might. Then I'll create a podcast here about those. If you don't my resource tip or hack this week is an Amazon fire. So what happened, Joe, was my old Amazon fire just locked up. I dug out my old Amazon Kindle and of course the battery was drained and I fired it up. I got it working and I was reading this book, these two books on the Amazon Kindle, my little one, it's a paperwhite. It's quite old, but it was working. I went down to Staples because I was thinking I had $100 gift from work for Amazon and I was really thinking I'm going to replace my Amazon Kindle. I was going to get your advice on this because I know you love the Kindle and I think you have the paperwhite. Is that true? And that was in the back of my mind. And of course the no glare reading outside features and just upgrading on a new one. I went down the staples, put it in my hand and I went, this doesn't look much different than what I have. And, and then I started thinking, I started looking on Amazon. The Amazon fire was on sale for $94. I think it was bigger and it's got a bigger screen, of course, all upgraded, more memory, the battery's going to last longer. They had it another if you bought it and you turned in some old devices. And I had two devices, I had this one that wasn't working, that had an older one that was smaller. I got $20 for sending those back and I get another $20 off. So really I got this new Amazon fire for about $60.

Awesome, awesome.

And the bonus was after I probably could have got this with the other Kindle, but they gave me three months free of Kindle Unlimited. Wow. And I'll use to read these books. We've been talking about this it productivity series.

That's what about a $30 value by itself?

Yeah, that's right.

Fantastic.

I think it's like $11.99 now. Fantastic. The Kindle Unlimited. So for $60, I got the Amazon fire and I got it open. I was setting it up. My daughter says, like those cause of the glare it gives.

She likes them because of the glare.

No, she doesn't like the Amazon fire as much as the Kindle because of the, quite honestly, most of the stuff I'm reading in the morning sitting in my living room.

So the difference, the biggest difference, just to be clear, the difference between the Amazon fire and the Kindle paper, Amazon Kindle paperwhite, both made by Amazon, is the Amazon fire is more of a tablet style. You can, you can surf the Internet and check your email and it has apps on there and you can play Tetris and Angry birds and all that other stuff on there if you want. Right?

Yeah. At the candy crush. And it's a nice big screen.

Yeah, yeah. Stuff like that. It's so tablet. And then of course it, on the tablet, it has the, the Kindle app that you can read your books. What I do like about reading a book on an Amazon fire, even on any other tablet, is the reading experience is enhanced a little bit, but it's not enough. I'll tell you in just a second. The reading experience is enhanced because you can actually highlight in color. You can, you can change the color of the page. You can do some aesthetic things on a fire, on the Amazon fire that you can't do on the Kindle paper, white. But talking about being distracted and talking about being, about procrastinating. What I do like about the Kindle paperwhite is that it's just books. It's just the book. And it's a really, I really liked the reading experience of the Kindle paperwhite over the fire. But man, what a deal you got on that Amazon fire. And if it works for you, if the reading experience works for you, then that's an awesome resource.

The other thing the Amazon fire does, you can scroll down, like the whole chapter. Instead of flipping the next page, you have an option to scroll more. And then when you get to the next chapter, you flip it to the next, which was an interesting, I'm liking that too. Yeah, but you're right. I'm thinking too, I'll use this. I call it my iPad. I said to my, I said to my wife, my iPad's broken, which was that I bought for a $100 like four, three years ago, whatever it was. So I got this one for $60 and yeah, I'll take it on the plane. You're right. It may distract me from reading, because I could watch movies on the plane. It's got a browser. Of course. I could. On my southwest app, I could watch the. The movies using my Amazon fire hut. Yeah, I think it's snappier. And of course, it's. I like the fact that I can return the old ones, too. Yeah, they're not gonna be sitting here.

In my drawer, now that I think about it. I think I probably have one or two Amazon fires laying around the house here somewhere.

There you go. Maybe you should upgrade, check out the price.

I know my wife has been asking or wanting a paperwhite reader herself. So we're getting ready to go on a trip here in May to Lisbon, Portugal, and she'd like to have a paperwhite to take on the plane and instead of carrying a bunch of books with her.

So, yeah, I think I waited too long, and then the deal that was happening for the paperwhite was gone. Yeah, that was another thing that happened.

Yeah. They decreased the price. I saw that. And I missed it. They decreased the price for the paperweight from 149 to 119.

Correct.

And I missed out on that. I'm hoping between now and the end of May, something jumps back.

Yeah. So keep an eye on the Amazon devices.

Definitely.

What's your quote for the week?

My quote comes from Olin Miller. Now, this is an interesting quote, and it'll remind you of a quote that. That I say a lot. But I do like the take on this. On this quote. Olin Miller is interesting, though, because I've heard this quote, and I've always liked this quote, and I heard it was by this guy by the name of Olin Miller. But I went to look up who Olin Miller is, and I don't think anybody really knows who Olin Miller is.

I don't know.

L I n m I l e r. He's. A lot of quotes are attributed to him, but I don't know if anybody really knows who this guy is. Olin Miller. So, anyway, whoever you are, Miller, I like what you said. I love what you said when you said, if you want to make an easy job seem mighty hard, just keep putting off doing it.

That is so true.

How many times. Talking about procrastination, Kurt, how many times have we had this job at this task ahead of us? And I know this is the way it's going to be. When I put up this baseboard this weekend, it's going to take me a few hours, and then I want to think back, I said, why was I putting that off? It was just. It was pretty simple, and I got it done. And here I've been ruminating about it for the past six months, and it could have been done this whole time. If you want to make an easy job seem mighty hard, just keep putting off doing it.

How you build it up to be so difficult, and after you've broken it down into some simple steps and get started and you get into that groove and you're thinking, you're sitting there going, you, boy, do I feel like an idiot. And get this done before I think perfectionism.

I don't know if this is. If this falls into our discussion either next week or this week, but I think perfectionism is a problem as well. I know it has nothing very little to do with the quote, but it does have to do with me putting things off, because I'll put something off for a long, long time if I think I can't do it perfectly. And sometimes you just gotta. You gotta be willing to be messy. Right?

I know. You told me that has been one of your challenges in the past. I understand that for sure. Great one, Joe. I think I picked this one because I think you would like it. And everyone knows who said this. Lisa, you'll. You'll know the author. It's the job that's never started as takes longest to finish.

Boy, that'll preach.

J. R. R. Tolkien.

Of course. That's J. R. R. Tolkien. Yeah. Love this guy, man. Love this guy. Of course, we've talked a lot about he and cs Lewis being good friends, and this guy's just. Both of them are just a wealth of wisdom. And this is right there. It's the job that you. That's never started as takes longest to finish. As it takes longest to finish. Did I say that?

Rough? Yeah. It's the job that's never started as takes longest to finish.

Awesome. Yeah. And that's so true. It is funny how when you start something, how that. How that little bit of momentum just kind of gets you to the finish line faster, but you gotta start. Cause you're never gonna finish if it doesn't start. There's a book called Finish, and I can't remember the author's name that I think I want to pick up as I think about it. And he's a. He's a pretty well known author in the entrepreneurial space. John Acuff is his name. I think. I want to check out that book finish, but I'll read. I got to read the other 20 books that I've not finished yet before I pick up a book called Finnish. Right.

I was thinking of this closet that I ripped out. I stared at that thing for quite some time, wondering, what am I getting into? First of all, is this a weight bearing wall that's going on? Was my first thought. I didn't want to rip out something. And then the floor cave in was my first fear. But speaking of getting started, you were talking about the baseboard. It was the same kind of material that was edged around this one day. I just said, all right, let's pop that off. That's one thing I can do. Let's see what's behind this edging that's there. And that came off pretty easy. And then I could, I think, pretty much I popped off a little bit of the sheetrock and looked and went, oh, look at this. It's just two by fours nailed together.

Hmm.

And then just little by little, ripping a piece out, going, oh, I see what this is doing. This can't be load the load base for the. Or anything. This is just framing around this. Why they did it, I have no idea.

Right.

And there was some challenging. I'll tell you one funny thing about this that cracked me up. I. One of the things I had with the two x four is I took one of those saws. You call it reciprocating saw, I think you call it.

Yeah.

It's got that blade where it really shakes, goes back and forth really, really fast. That was a tool that Sawzall style. Yeah. It was something that you helped me with. The ryobi package I bought a couple of years ago. It was part of that package, and I hadn't used it that much. But the funny thing is, I used that, and it. I mean, it shakes like the whole house practically. So much. So later in that day, I was upstairs in the bathroom, and I see this strange thing in my toilet upstairs. I'm like, what the heck? So I put my hand down there, reach down and grab it, and it was part of the bottom of the ceramic for the toilet had chipped off and fell into. Oh, my gosh.

No kidding.

And because this saw that I was doing was directly below the toilet from upstairs.

Wow. So the. Is the toilet compromised at all?

No, I don't think so. It's just like the ceramic his. You can't even see where it chipped off of. It's a big piece, too. I'll have to show it to you later.

That's funny.

It's hard to understand, but yeah, it's right where it goes down the drain. The top part of that whole, like, curved piece fell down.

Wow. Wow.

That's. But, yeah, so anyways, that was the one thing that's the biggest damage I've done in ripping out the closet, and it's looking pretty good. I got it all patched up and, yeah, I'm pretty proud of it now.

Well, you're moving forward, right?

That's it. Making progress, Joe.

Kurt, our website is dudesinprogress.com. Dudesinprogress.com. If you want to reach out to us for coaching services or just chat about the show, or if you want to, if you have an idea about the show and maybe you want to be a guest on the show and talk about some tip or hack or thing that can improve everybody's life, we would love to. We'd love to have you on it. Just email us. Dudes in progress.com. Dudes in progress.com. Remember, let's not put it off, right. Progress is better than perfection. Let's keep moving forward.

Let's stop that procrastination. At least the week coming up, right, Joe?

I got to do the baseboards tomorrow because I'm heading to Texas next week. Talk to you soon, my friend.

Good luck.