Jon Acuff

What if procrastination has been working exactly as intended? 

Not as a character flaw, not as laziness, but as a solution you invented for a problem you were more afraid of than the thing you kept putting off. That reframe changes everything about how you approach it.

Jon Acuff has spent decades thinking about why people with real ability, real ideas, and real desire still find ways to delay the work that matters most. His newest book, Procrastination Proof, is the result of working with hundreds of thousands of people on this exact struggle. He brings both the humor of someone who has personally been inside the loop and the precision of someone who has studied the patterns long enough to see what’s actually underneath them.

In this conversation we get into:

Why procrastination is a solution, just not the best one, and what that distinction means for how you actually change it The four permissions most of us never gave ourselves: to dream, to plan, to do, and to review How desire creates discipline, not the other way around, and why willpower is the wrong tool entirely The broken soundtracks that sound like reasons but are really just fear in disguise What “the opposite of procrastination” actually looks like, and why it has nothing to do with productivity

If there’s something you’ve been wanting to do for months or years, and you keep finding new reasons why this isn’t quite the right time, this conversation is worth your hour.

You can find Jon at: Website | Instagram | Episode Transcript

Next week, we’re sharing our conversation with Emiliya Zhivotovskaya to talk about what’s actually happening when you can’t stop the spin cycle in your head, and more importantly, what to do about it.

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photo credit: Cameron Powell

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Episode Transcript:

Jonathan Fields: [00:00:00] So there’s something most of us have been putting off. Maybe it’s a project, a creative pursuit, a conversation, a chapter you’ve been meaning to write. I mean, literally or figuratively. And here’s the thing. You probably already know what it is. It’s been with you for a while. You’ve thought about it. Maybe you’ve gotten excited about it, and still somehow it keeps not happening. I have been there and I will be again. I think most of us have. And my guest today, an old friend, Jon Acuff, has spent years studying exactly this. And he’s really arrived at a take that honestly surprised me. Procrastination, he says, is not actually a problem. It’s a solution. Just not a very good one. And when you understand what it’s actually solving for, everything about how you approach the work, you care most about changes. Jon is a New York Times best selling author of 11 books, including Finish and Soundtracks, which have together sold over a million copies. His newest is Procrastination Proof, Never get stuck again. He’s also one of Inc top 100 leadership speakers, and someone who brings a rare combination of just deep research and genuine warmth to a topic that most of us take very personally in our conversation. We get into what he calls the four permissions that most of us are waiting for without realizing it. Why desire creates discipline and not the other way around, and what it actually looks like to finally close the gap between who you intend to be and what you actually do each day. So excited to share this conversation with you. I’m Jonathan Fields and this is Good Life Project.

Jonathan Fields: [00:01:34] You share a story about how you used to listen to one particular song over and over and over in your car. Take me into that.

Jon Acuff: [00:01:51] Yeah. So I went through this for probably a year. I was listening to Colin Hay, who’s the lead singer of Men at Work? Um, land Down Under was their biggest hit in the 80s. He has a song called waiting for My Real Life to Begin, and I felt like I was in a rut and I, I guess I thought, why don’t I just dig it deeper and listen to a musical version of it constantly? And it’s a beautifully written song, but it’s not helpful in the sense of the main character is just waiting, like he’s looking over the horizon. He’s waiting for the phone to ring. He’s gonna slay the dragon someday. And every day he gets up and it’s like the same exact thing. And I felt like I was stuck in that own loop in my life. And so I, yeah, I probably listen to that song hundreds and hundreds of times. Um, that year.

Jonathan Fields: [00:02:36] Yeah. I mean, in your case, um, what was the waiting that that was resonating with you? Like when you’re listening to that over and over and over. All right. So, you know, I happened to be a huge men at work fan. Um, great songs, great musicality. He’s got a very cool voice, but still, like, what were you waiting for?

Jon Acuff: [00:02:55] I was waiting. I mean, part of it was I felt like I had ideas worth sharing and I didn’t know how to do it. So I felt like I was waiting for the internet to catch up with what I wanted to say. Meaning like, I don’t have a platform. I have all these ideas. I mean, I think my wife once said to me, it’s hard living with a writer who isn’t writing. And I think that’s true of most crafts. It’s hard living with a painter who’s not painting. It’s hard living with a woodworker who’s not woodworking. And so I felt like I look back on my life and go, man, this is my 11th book. The 12th comes out. I’ve got another one coming out this year and later this year. Like, where were all those words going before they had a home? Like you talk about a frustrated, you know, log jammed writer. Like I, I had all these things to say and all these questions to ask and all these threads to pull. And I wasn’t and I didn’t know what to do with that. So I felt really kind of like creatively constipated in that moment. I think that’s what I was waiting for was was like, where is an outlet? Where is an audience? Where is a chance? Where is there a microphone?

Jonathan Fields: [00:03:59] Yeah, I mean, I think that probably resonates with so many people. Like maybe you’re not a writer, but whatever it is, there’s a pressure that builds. I think inside all of us, there’s an impulse that we all have to do something to invest our energy in a particular way. Um, we often deny that it’s there because, oh.

Jon Acuff: [00:04:15] And you push it down or you get successful in another thing that doesn’t really matter to you, but it comes with a lot of rewards. Yeah. And you’re like, well, the rewards don’t really matter, but at least I’m in motion. And yeah, I had Brian Koppelman, uh, who’s a friend of mine, he, he, uh, co-wrote, uh, rounders and billions billionaire. Yeah, yeah, just great guy. And he, his kind of theory was like unexplored creativity kind of mutates into something else. And sometimes that’s anger, sometimes that’s bitterness, sometimes that’s disappointment. And so I think that’s the moment I was in.

Jonathan Fields: [00:04:46] Um. So when, when you’re sort of spinning this as we have this conversation, if I remember, like, you’re right around 50, right?

Jon Acuff: [00:04:54] Yeah. I turned 50 last December.

Jonathan Fields: [00:04:56] Yeah. Um, but this has been, this was happening for a really long time before this was kind of like your mid to late 30s when.

Jon Acuff: [00:05:02] Yeah. Mid 30s. Yeah.

Jonathan Fields: [00:05:03] Right. Um, when you’re in that state and you’re kind of sitting there spending, you’re kind of waiting for the world to be ready for what you have to share or for you to have the, the permission, the assets, the resources, the platform. You’re just like, um, when you say like in that moment, you’re waiting, you’re not letting it out. Um, did you have a sense that this was just waiting for the right time or that there was actually something called procrastination that was sneaking in?

Jon Acuff: [00:05:34] No, I, I think the biggest thing was I realized I was wrestling with mindset things that weren’t physical, real things, but felt like it to me at the time. Meaning perfectionism, procrastination, overthinking. Like no one ever taught me how to think and I felt like I was wrestling all these tangled thoughts, all these tangled desires. And then also, if I’m honest, I wasn’t taking personal responsibility like I was. There was a part of me waiting for someone else to do it. Like someone, you know, like someone, a boss should recognize that I’ve got this. Or, you know, someone else will kind of tap me on the shoulder and say like, no, you are special and you are capable. And so that was part of it too, was kind of coming to grips with that of like, I don’t know that that person showing up necessarily the way I want them to. What if I showed up? Like, what would that look like for me to start to try some things that are risky or creatively? And that’s when I started to really blog and talk online.

Jonathan Fields: [00:06:34] Yeah. I mean, it’s interesting, right? Because I think what you’re describing is, um, a sense of having a sense of something that was inside of you that you were drawn to, that you wanted to explore. Um, but maybe not having clear shape or form, um, and waiting even to get clear about what it was and how it might show up before you sort of like had these different things offered to you. I think for so many people, when we think about what we put off in life, um, we start to look at the things that are right in front of us, like the immediate tasks that are clear, that are defined. And we’re like, oh, I’m not doing that because I look at that and it feels like a burden to me. It feels onerous. To me, it feels too complicated. I just I’ll do anything but that. Um, and we look at that and we’re like, okay, so that’s the type of thing that we procrastinate, but when we look sort of like bigger or deeper into the sort of like the mercury areas of our life, which are actually where like the really juicy stuff often lies. And it’s not clear. Like we don’t associate the experience of procrastination with that. We’re just, we tell ourselves all sorts of stories that justify inaction, but we’re not like, oh, I’m not procrastinating the rest of my life. It’s something else happening here.

Jon Acuff: [00:07:45] Yeah. And it’s funny. We, we, we kind of do this weird victim thing that I’ve seen in myself where it’s like, you go, well, I can’t do that because I’m so busy with my kids. Or like, I’ve had people that I could tell they had the entrepreneurial bug. They wanted to start a side hustle, maybe a company, and they go, but I don’t want to be a workaholic and never see my kids. And I’ll go, whoa. Like, there’s a huge gap between not do the thing and sit on it and become a workaholic that doesn’t know their kids first names. Like there’s so much land between those two things and your kids aren’t telling you that, or I’ve seen it in marriages where they go, well, my wife really wouldn’t want me to do this, and the wife hasn’t said that, or the husband hasn’t said that. In fact, in a good marriage, the spouse often sees the thing before you do, and they’re going, I wish you could see what I see in you. I wish you could see what I think you’re like, what? And so because we’re afraid of the thing, you’re right. I think we do write really elaborate stories.

Jonathan Fields: [00:08:39] Yeah, 100%. You make an interesting argument. Um, that I think will surprise a lot of people. And it’s that procrastination is not actually a problem. It’s a solution. So unpack that for me.

Jon Acuff: [00:08:56] Yeah, it’s a solution. It’s just not the best one. So I believe if you ask people why they procrastinate, they say things like, the task is so big. I didn’t have time. Um, it’s my style. I got an A in college once when I turned in a paper at the last second. It’s how I produce the best. Um, I shouldn’t have to do this. That’s ego. But ultimately it all boils down to it’s solving a problem you’re more afraid of. So the alternative of doing the thing feels more dangerous, more challenging, more awkward, whatever. So you go, I don’t want to tell my mom I’m not coming to Thanksgiving this year. So procrastination steps in and goes, you don’t have to do that for like seven months. Like, no, no, no, like, let’s put that off. Like I got you. And it quote unquote solves the problem for seven months, right up until it’s an emergency and it’s the week before. And she says, hey, you guys are coming next Tuesday. And, you know, actually, I’ve been meaning to tell you this for seven months. No, I’m not, or I want to write a book, but I’m afraid of the criticism. So like, the way I think about it, I never had a stranger on Amazon write a one star review about me. When I worked for Home Depot, when I was writing rug headlines, no one ever said, Jon Acuff is terrible at sitting in his cubicle.

Jon Acuff: [00:10:04] He writes the worst rug headlines. You can tell he doesn’t understand rugs, but when I actually did the book and I got it across the finish line and I stopped procrastinating it, I got criticism. So in that moment, criticism would approach me and go, man, criticism would cripple you. I’ll take care of this. I’ll make sure you never get criticized publicly for anything you create. It doesn’t tell you the full truth, which is you don’t get to create, by the way. You don’t get to know the thrill of somebody coming up to you at an airport and going, your book changed my life. So it solves problems. It’s just not a great solution in the same way that like, if you meet somebody sober, they’ll go, yeah, alcohol solved a lot of my problems for a while, but when I dealt, when I stopped drinking and I dealt with them, oh my gosh, I got real solutions. Like I got a long term solution. So that’s where my theory is, is like, it’s a fine solution. It might have served you for a time. It’s no longer a helpful solution because you’re not doing those things that you know you’re capable of.

Jonathan Fields: [00:10:59] Yeah. I mean, it sounds like what you’re describing isn’t really solving the problem. It’s delaying. It’s avoiding it.

Jon Acuff: [00:11:06] Yeah, it’s, it’s numbing it, it’s delaying it. It’s dampening it. Um, you know, it’s quieting it for a, for a period, but it, it doesn’t get better on its own. Um, you know, and that that’s the, the frustrating work about the work you and I do for people is people will go, well, hey, what, what’s the shortcut? Or they’ll say, uh, I have writers tell me all the time. Everybody keeps telling me I need a platform to sell a book, but I don’t need a platform. Right. And they want me to go, no, not at all. Like who said like, and they don’t want to hear like, man, a publisher is going to want to know who’s going to buy your book. And it’s a much easier answer if you’ve done the work of building a podcast or a blog or whatever, or like where people make me laugh is they’ll go, what software do you use to write your books? And they’re so disappointed when I say Microsoft Word because they were hoping I had access to like a secret one that just like spits out books easily. And I go, I got this crazy program I use. No one’s heard of called word. Um, and I type it in and because it just, it does take work. And that’s the reality of the things we really care about.

Jonathan Fields: [00:12:06] Yeah. I mean, and that, I think is one of the things that so many of us tend to be allergic to. Um, and look, I’m raising my hand also, if I look at something, I’m like, this is going to be a hot mess of work for a long period of time. And not just like I don’t care about, I’m, I’m, I’m all in on effort. I’ll work really hard for something I want. But if it’s the type of work where I look at it and I’m like, I just want to curl up fetal ball and have nothing to do with that particular kind of work, you know, um, it’s, I will do anything not to have to do it. Um, And I will be the one pestering you and saying, is there a hack? Is there a shortcut? Um, yeah. But, you know, at the end of the day, I mean, what you’re saying is, okay, so we keep putting it off, putting it off, putting it off. That doesn’t mean it’s still not the work that’s necessary to be done to, to, to get to the thing that we actually want to make happen.

Jon Acuff: [00:12:56] So I think you have to in life go like, I do want to play this game. I don’t want to play that game for me though, if I want to say like, there’s things I do that are uncomfortable to me in the pursuit of serving a book, like I interviewed Steven Pressfield, the war of Art author who I love, and he said he’s leaning in on marketing. And that was kind of contrary to some other things he’d said. And I said, why? And he said, I had a book that didn’t sell, and I realized I had abandoned my characters on the shelf. They can’t market themselves. And for me as the author, to not promote it, I’ve abandoned those characters who I care about and who I have a relationship with. And so I love that at his age, he was like, I gotta, I gotta to go play that part of the game in order to serve the bigger purpose. So I think you’re always kind of negotiating with life, with creativity, with the results you want. And if you figure out that there is something that matters to you, you have to find ways to talk yourself into doing those things. Like that’s what I tell people is I’m the greatest Jon Acuff salesman in the world. And I should be because before every decision I’ve ever made, first I talked myself into it. Good, bad decisions, same thing. So I think a lot of accomplishment is talking yourself into things you don’t feel like doing, but you really want to do. And that can be writing, that can be repairing a relationship, that can be trying to lose weight. Like there’s a lot of sales going on in a life that’s well lived and full in my opinion.

Jonathan Fields: [00:14:22] Yeah. Totally agree. And I think oftentimes it’s like, can we tell ourselves a different I mean, if you look at something and you’re like, I don’t want to have to do this thing, but I want what’s on the other side of it. Yeah. It’s like, what’s, what story am I actually telling about how I’m going to experience the work that I’m. I’m procrastinating. I’m avoiding. I’m putting off. Can I tell a different story without altering the work itself in any way? Can I tell a different story about that? I find that’s often something for me. I’m like questioning the story that I’m telling about it that’s stopping me from acting. And if I can.

Jon Acuff: [00:14:52] Identifying it or even recognizing it, that, I mean, that’s self-awareness, like that idea of pausing long enough to go, whoa, I got a wild story about this. Like I, and I’m good at storytelling. Like we’re great at telling ourselves stories. So like, okay, what do I, what is the story? So for you, when you avoid work that you know you want to do, what do you think is your story?

Jonathan Fields: [00:15:13] For me, it’s often, I mean, it’s funny, I’ll, I’ll resort to sort of like my whole Sparketype idea, which is, I think, I believe and we have a huge amount of data now that shows that we all have a certain imprint for work that we are just innately drawn to for no other reason than the feeling it gives you and the work that we are kind of innately repelled from.

Jon Acuff: [00:15:35] Yeah.

Jonathan Fields: [00:15:35] And, you know, maybe that can change over time. Maybe it can it may or may not be malleable, but for me, there’s a certain type of effort. Um, which I call it essentialist work, you know, which is about systems process order. Um, and I love benefiting from that kind of work. I love working with people who help create that in the context of what I do when I actually have to step in and do that kind of work. It feels so innately against the way that I like to operate. Um, no matter how skilled I get at it, and I’ve had to get skilled at it over the years because as an entrepreneur, you have to like, you’re bootstrapping most of the time. Um, no matter how competent I get at it, I still, I loathe having to do it. Um, and I will wake up in the morning and literally do anything not to have to do it, even though I know it may in that moment be the unlucky, the one remaining unlucky to get me to the thing or the place or the experience that I deeply want. What about you? Yeah, I know same.

Jon Acuff: [00:16:36] Um, I used the way I sometimes say it is. It’s. I’m not a systems thinker, meaning if there’s three cars in our driveway and we need to move one to get it out, it takes me 11 moves and one car ends up on the lawn and my wife can see it immediately and move the one car. And it’s like Sudoku. Like she just does it. And so I, I know that any system I create usually has 60% complication that needs to be removed. And I wish I could do the simple, efficient version first. It’s just not how I think. And so I’ve had to learn the value of systems and not creating a new system every time and letting the system be simple. It’s not, but it, it feels so foreign to me. And it feels like somebody speaking a different language, even when they try to explain it and go, no, this is if you do it this way, like it’s hard for me, but I see the value and I grit my teeth through a lot of it. But I’m so glad I did it because I can see the rewards of of where it serves, the things I do care about.

Jonathan Fields: [00:17:38] And we’ll be right back after a word from our sponsors. You spent years now working with tens of thousands of people, maybe even more than that at this point, um, working towards basically accomplishing things that are that, that matter to them. Um, and a lot of that is also addressing the whole idea of procrastinating, putting off the work that is a part of that. Are there patterns, common patterns, like common reasons that you see that people think they procrastinate, um, but aren’t real?

Jon Acuff: [00:18:09] Yeah. So one is like, uh, what I would call a broken soundtrack. I wrote this book called soundtracks about our mindset and a broken soundtrack would be, I don’t know where to start. And what they’re really saying is there’s a perfect place to start. And as soon as I find it, I’ll know and I’ll go all in. And there’s not like there’s just not or, um, I have so much going on. I don’t want to pick the wrong thing as if there’s, if you’ve got a 20 item list, as if there’s a right thing that will unlock it. So like, I know for me, one of my broken soundtracks is if I have 20 things to work on and I am I deliberate about picking the right one, I pick it and my brain immediately goes, this is this is the wrong one. This isn’t what you’re supposed to be working on right now. And I go, oh, and then if I pick another thing, it goes, this is crazy. This is also the wrong thing. And if I pick another one, it’s like still wrong. So I no longer check my brain for that validation. It’s just not good at validating this was the right thing to work on. I have a system that helps me with that. Um, the another broken soundtrack would be, um, I’m going to do this someday when I have the time. And it’s kind of this someday myth that someday a week without any obligations will show up. Like you’ll open your calendar on a Monday and go, oh my gosh, this is the someday week.

Jonathan Fields: [00:19:19] I’ve been waiting for that week for decades now. Yeah.

Jon Acuff: [00:19:22] This is the week where I’m going to learn AI. I’ve been saying for a year, I need to dig into AI and I’m gonna I’m gonna. And then this is the week. So you see things like that. And then the we touched on this a little bit. It’s that like, this is my system. I only do my best work at the last second. And there’s some truth to that where like a deadline can inspire creativity. I’m that way. I use a lot of deadlines in my work, but the idea that you waited until the last second and you did your best just isn’t true. Like they’ve studied that forever. And also nobody’s first draft is their best draft. Meaning if we’re honest, if we gave ourselves 24 hours to look at it again, you find a mistake, you find an improvement, you find an enhancement. Um, and so, but people will go, well, no, that’s procrastination is actually a tool that really serves me. And it’s just, that’s just not true. Like if we’re really honest, we know with a little bit more breathing room, with another look at it, you find something that you didn’t see before and or if somebody you have somebody review it and they find something you didn’t see before. But those are the patterns I see again and again and again. Um, that just bump up.

Jonathan Fields: [00:20:33] Yeah, that makes sense. That last one really lands for me. Um, the, like the whole I’m really good under pressure thing. Um, so wait to the last minute and I can knock it out. And um, and especially in the context of writing, I’ve learned it’s so not true. I think like it used to be I’d have a book to write. They give me nine months to write the book and I’d write it in the last four or honestly, probably three. Yeah. Yeah.

Jon Acuff: [00:20:55] Um, and you could do it. You could execute it.

Jonathan Fields: [00:20:57] Yeah. Um, but then I look back at it, you know, a year or 2 or 3 years later, I’m like, wow, this was absolutely not my best work. This would have benefited so much from building space in to let it breathe and then come back to it and let it breathe and come back to it and think about it more. And, um, but, or.

Jon Acuff: [00:21:16] Ask a bunch of people for feedback or like even saying to your wisest friend, poke holes in this. Would you read this chapter and poke holes in it? Because as soon as it’s released, readers are gonna. I’d rather you poke them now and let me figure out great responses to those holes. Then launch it. Yeah, we’ve all written that book. Like, so what you just described was like, oh, I know the book I’m thinking of.

Jonathan Fields: [00:21:38] Yeah. But I think, you know, and we’re talking in the context of a book, but this is really about anything. And if you, oh, yeah, if you, if you do this enough times, you cycle through like delay, delay, delay, procrastinate, procrastinate, procrastinate. And then the final minute you do the thing, you turn it in and you get some kind of like decent feedback on it. You’re like, okay, that tells me I can do this and still be rewarded for it. But like, what you’re not seeing is what could have been possible had I done this differently. Like, how much better could I have felt about what I created, what I offered out into the world? How many more doors could it have opened had I done this at a different level? Like you’re you, you just you wipe that off the table and you don’t think about it because you’re like, good enough is good enough. Like things are okay.

Jon Acuff: [00:22:20] Well, and so I would say what’s interesting about that exact situation, whether that’s a business, whether that’s, you know, an album or a book is, I think where it shows up is you get it done at the last second, and you talk about it less than you would if you had really worked hard, because, you know, internally, I could have taken this to another level always. And so like, so for me, the times where I’ve done a project that I know I could have done differently if I’d put more into it, my desire to talk about it and be proud about it and share about it and post about it, like diminishes on the other side, because I know. So like for that’s part of why this book is book 11. Like if I had written this on book two, it would have been an arrogant young man’s guess at procrastination because I didn’t know. I hadn’t, I hadn’t lived the life that was productive. But by book 11, I feel good about going, hey, I’ve got this body of work. And the way even in my distracted, busy brain that I’ve been able to do 11 books is because of this type of system. I think it will help you to. I have the confidence of a decade of wrestling these things versus. I had an idea about procrastination and six months later, here’s a book, you know.

Jonathan Fields: [00:23:31] Yeah, that makes a lot of sense to me. So let’s talk a little bit about solutions then about actual effective solutions. Um, you landed kind of on a single word for the basis of an approach, which is really permission. Why permission?

Jon Acuff: [00:23:48] Yeah. I mean, I, for me, I do love a simple solution. I, even the book, the way we frame the book is 71 short chapters because my, as I research procrastination books, I’d read like a 300 page book on procrastination. I think no real procrastinator wrote.

Jonathan Fields: [00:24:05] It’s going to read or it’s going to read or it’s going to read it.

Jon Acuff: [00:24:08] Like if you have a 90 page notes section in your book about procrastination, you’re not a procrastinator. Like that’s Jane Goodall writing about monkeys. I’m a monkey writing a book for other monkeys. So even in the formatting, I was like, no, I want to win constantly. And I feel like I won when I finish a chapter. And so permission was what I kept seeing come up when I talked to people like they were waiting for the permission to be who they knew they could be or to do the thing they knew they could do, um, or to go on the venture they knew they were capable of. And I, and I kept seeing it come up, but I kept seeing people not talk about it. It’s a big word when you’re a kid, but it’s not a word you really talk about as an adult, like a permission slip was really important as a kid. And so then I started to explore the permissions, and that’s where it ended up with this framework of permission to dream plan, do review, where like, if you do those four things in a row, it’s almost hard not to produce a life you like.

Jon Acuff: [00:25:03] It’s almost hard to not, you know, enjoy what you’re capable of. So permission and, and it’s funny, um, I, as I created it, I would be in meetings with like CEOs that were talking. They wanted me to come speak at their company and they’d go, we’ve got a new directive, and we’ve changed some things, and we’re trying to give people permission to own their part of the business again. We used to have this manager who was really tight fisted, and he made them all into executors. None of them are thinkers anymore. And we want to open the permission back up to go. You get to do this. You have permission to try. Like we’re trying to give them permission to risk. Like they’re really scared right now. How do we give them permission? And so it was a great validation in conversations like that of like, oh, how do, how do we give each other permission? How do I give myself permission to try something that probably won’t work the first time? Maybe not the 10th time.

Jonathan Fields: [00:25:53] Yeah. And I think that last part for me is most resonant, you know, because the idea of somebody else giving you permission once you’re sort of like in the middle years of life, it feels like I’m, I’m in a season where I shouldn’t be asking permission anymore. I shouldn’t be seeking somebody else’s permission anymore. So if there’s permission. It’s got to start from the inside out. And yet we don’t give ourselves permission to do most things also.

Jon Acuff: [00:26:19] No. And we’re really unfair and unkind to ourselves. So, like, even the permission to expand your definition of what counts. So you see that and you see that in health goals. People go, John, I want to get in shape. I go, great. And they go, yeah, I’m going to run. I go, oh, do you like running? They go, no, I hate it. I hate it so much. That’s how I know it’s good for me. And I’ll go, you know, you have permission to like, you could do ballroom dancing. You could do pickleball, you could do gravel biking. Like you could do whatever. And they’re like, no, I can only give myself permission to do health things that are miserable because I have some soundtrack that to get in shape means you have to be miserable while you’re doing it. And you go like, no, you can actually have a lot of fun with that. Like you, you know, the camp you ran was covered in permission. Like even just the idea of like, hey, adults, you know, this fun, magical thing you did as a kid, you have permission to do it in your 20s and your 30s and 40s and your 50s. And I guarantee you saw campers come in and go, are you sure we get to do this? Like I get to. And you would go, yeah, you have permission to have a delightful summer camp experience. And I guarantee it took them a few hours or a day to kind of like, all right, this seems too good to be true. And hopefully by the end of the experience, they’re like, no, I want this type of thing coming home with me. What does it look like for me to give myself permission?

Jonathan Fields: [00:27:36] Yeah, I think that’s so true. And it’s so it’s, it becomes so much more alien to us as we get older. Um, you listed out four different permissions. Walk me through each one of these dream plan do review.

Jon Acuff: [00:27:48] Yeah. So the dream is really figuring out what you want, what you desire. So I’ve helped probably a million people with goals. I’ve still never met somebody who said, John, I just decided today to have grit. I decided to have willpower and sacrifice and persistence. No one ever changes that way. No one ever willingly leaves their comfort zone. What usually happens is there’s something worth, there’s something outside of their comfort zone worth being uncomfortable for. Like one of my big theories is like, desire creates discipline, not the other way around. So in my life, mid 30s, I start blogging and I start going, oh my gosh, there’s a world out here I can use my voice. And that led to discipline. I didn’t start getting up earlier because I was like this psycho. Mark Wahlberg 2 a.m. burpee guy. I started getting up earlier because I bumped into a desire writing and I wanted more of that. I had two kids under the age of four, and the only time to write was before they got up. Like, I didn’t stop watching so much TV because I was disciplined. I just realized that I had this little fire of blogging and writing, and every hour was like a log, and I wanted to throw as many logs into that fire as possible. And that that led to me being more disciplined. So that’s the dream you got to figure out, okay, like, what do I want to do? And it doesn’t have to be perfect. It doesn’t have to be like, we’ve mutated Stephen Covey’s habit. He wrote, you know, begin with the end in mind and we’ve mutated that into you can’t begin until you know the end. I meet people all the time that go, I want to start a business, but I need like a three year business plan or I want to start a podcast. But I don’t know what episode 99 is going to be. I don’t go like you’re writing.

Jonathan Fields: [00:29:23] And you won’t until it happens.

Jon Acuff: [00:29:25] Yeah, exactly. And so, so that’s where dream is. And then the second one is permission to plan. You’ve got to start dealing with some of the realities. And where people get stuck is dreaming runs on optimism, planning runs on realism. And they have a hard time making that transition. But it’s not enough to have the dream. You’ve got to start to kind of at least get a loose plan, and then permission to do is like, are you doing it? Are your hands dirty? Have you moved beyond just dreaming and planning and then permission to review is, is it working? Am I headed the right direction? And as a small business owner, the times I haven’t reviewed, I’ve done a ton of effort. I’ve made a lot of progress right off a cliff. And it was really exciting and it was really dramatic. And if I had paused and said, hey, all this ad revenue we’re spending, all these things we’re doing, is it helping people? Like, are we seeing real like returns on it? Like I might have recognized like, oh, no, it’s not. We need to like, even just this dude, the one that’s recent for me, I’ve been telling myself over and over, Instagram is fun. Linkedin is profitable. Instagram is fun. Linkedin is profitable. I have my clients are on LinkedIn.

Jon Acuff: [00:30:31] But for years I was kind of like a it’s kind of the nerdy brother of social media. I don’t. And then I had this eureka moment where I realized LinkedIn is the only social media platform where people can be on it all day at work and not get in trouble. So if you work in an office and your boss comes in, you’re on Instagram, you close it, Facebook, you close it, TikTok, you close it. They want you to be on LinkedIn. They want you to connect with clients. They want you to share what your company is doing. Like I talk to teams that will say, our team is trying to IPO. So we have to do constant LinkedIn updates like, look how good we’re doing. And I realized, oh, my people event planners, I do corporate speaking are all on LinkedIn, but I’ve been so focused on trying to go on Instagram that I missed this other thing. If I had reviewed it for a second and said, I wonder where event planners have long conversations and share content and are are present? It’s not for me on Instagram necessarily. It is on LinkedIn. When I reviewed it, it changed my my strategy in a tactical way. So those are the four that I think matter the most.

Jonathan Fields: [00:31:35] Yeah. Dream plan do review. What occurs to me when you lay it out like that is that there’s a certain activation energy, for lack of a better word, that that first one dream has to provide for you to actually then plan do and oh yeah, like, like.

Jon Acuff: [00:31:53] Do the.

Jonathan Fields: [00:31:53] Work. Right? But here’s my curiosity about the dream part of it. Um, because dream give me like, there’s a risk of going too small and a risk of going too big. Yeah. Yeah. And so you find a sweet spot.

Jon Acuff: [00:32:07] Yeah. I mean, I think often you find it by you, you get a wound that you bandage. I mean, I wish I could tell you like the way to know you’re in the middle of the dream and the sweet spot is this like, here’s the formula. But so often in my life, it’s like I go overboard and then I pull it back, or I go under and then I amp it up like in all. And I would say at 50, I’m getting better at that. Like I do this men’s workout called F3. That’s in the morning. It’s a boot camp style. It’s held outside rain or shine. And my wife and I talked about it and she was like, I think you should only go three days a week because you’ll be tempted to go five days and then you’ll get hurt, and then you won’t get to do it for three months. So now I’m at the age, like hopefully with a little bit of maturity where I go, the thing I really want is long term sustainable health. I want to be able to run till I’m 80. I want to be able to do whatever. So let me let me do it three times versus five times because in the past I would have overdone it, gotten hurt, and then not be able to do it for three months and maybe quit altogether. So I think there is that element, but I just think you’re constantly tinkering. But that’s why the review matters. The review can be during week two, right? The review can be during week three where you go, this is not working or it’s not big enough or I’m already bored of this. I’m already bored of this. Like, you know, anybody who’s done a long project, hopefully you have some checkpoints where you go, yeah, it’s worth it. Or it’s just, it’s just not worth it. I need to do something else, even if it’s a little bit profitable or even if it’s I’m getting some attention for it. This isn’t this isn’t what I want to do.

Jonathan Fields: [00:33:37] Yeah. I love the idea of not waiting till the end of whatever time you reserve to do this thing, to do the review of just saying, like, if you’re a week or two weeks into this thing, you’re like, this isn’t clicking. And I’m really tempted to just blow it off again or start procrastinating and start not doing it. Like, do you review then and figure out what.

Jon Acuff: [00:33:55] Is it telling me.

Jonathan Fields: [00:33:56] Right? What’s going off the rails here? Um, I mean, along those lines, you also described that each one of these four different permissions has kind of like a corresponding trap.

Jon Acuff: [00:34:04] Yeah, yeah. And the traps are so funny and obvious when you look at them. So the most obvious one is dreamers get stuck dreaming like they have a thousand ideas of zero actions. Um, and they have a really hard time progressing to the plan. They don’t want to pick the wrong thing. They’re always brainstorming. And the challenge is like, your imagination is bigger than your calendar. It’ll always be that way. Your calendar is a fixed, stable thing that’s existed the same way for like 900 years. And you bring this infinite imagination to it and you go, I got to try to fit it all in. And it’s hard to leave some dreams in the dream state like I don’t.

Jonathan Fields: [00:34:39] That’s my issue, by the way. Like I raise my hand right there I am just like, there are so many things that pop that I’m like, ooh, this looks amazing. And yeah, but wait, that doesn’t actually work with my life.

Jon Acuff: [00:34:50] Yeah. See, like the, the reality is you’re not supposed to do, in my, my opinion, 100% of your dreams like. And if I hold myself to 100%, I never move forward. But if I give my myself permission to go, I wrote down way more things than I’ll ever do. I came up with way more dreams than I’ll ever execute. I’m an imagination guy. I’ll always be able to find a different, a different thing I want to do. And if I give myself like a smaller percentage, then I can move it forward and go, okay. And that one I left behind. If it’s really the one, will often make the case. Like it’ll be annoying enough that it’s like, hey, just so we’re clear, I’m not going away because I am. I should be on the list. Like, and I don’t, you know, so that’s where dreamers get stuck. Perfectionists get stuck planning. They’re gonna change the world as soon as the plan is perfect. And so they say things like, I’ll make a decision as soon as I have enough data. And we live in a world where you’ll never have all the data. It’s too much data. It’s too fast. Like you just think I love AI. Like, I’m having a lot of fun with Claude right now. But man, I feel bad for perfectionists with AI because you can like my team right now is what I’d call like we’re in like a document arms race where like we’re, you know, I’ll assign something to somebody and they’ll come back an hour later with a 25 page document. I’ll go, no, no, no, no, you haven’t even read it. I know, I know, AI created this, you assigned me like you haven’t thought about it.

Jon Acuff: [00:36:13] If I give you an hour to work on something and then later you’re like, hey, here’s a 25 page document. I know, like, and so perfectionists get stuck in kind of that moment. And then hustlers, the funniest one to me is hustlers because they’re obsessed about doing and they hate planning and they hate reviewing. So where that gets me is I’ll go right from dream into doing and I’ll just start going, going, going, going, going without even a plan. I don’t know what our goal is. I don’t know why we’re I don’t know the second order consequences. Like I’m just like, and one thing that’s helped me, this guy Keith Cunningham, who wrote this book, the The Road Less Stupid, said it this way that I’m not smart enough or talented enough to be unprepared. And man, that stepped on my toes and it that bruised my ego a little bit. Because there are some things where I can show up and kind of do the Jon Acuff show and it works okay, but in real projects, I need the plan. Sales team sales teams struggle with this one because a sales team will say, like, I don’t want to fill out the paperwork. Like just let me sell. I want to sell, I want to sell. And the leadership team will go. It’s three fields. Like we just need to know the name and the address of the person who sold the thing to. And they’re like, ah, it’s so much bureaucracy. And then the last one, analysts get stuck over reviewing, and they tend to lean in toward negativity and over review mistakes and predict failure in the future.

Jonathan Fields: [00:37:34] And we’ll be right back after a word from our sponsors. I mean, the way you’re describing it, it’s like the four different permissions can exist both within a person. It can exist within a group, a family, a team, um, and the four traps that you fall into, um, can all exist again within one person, one consciousness, or a group of people who are bringing sort of like a different energy to the table. Um, but don’t you kind of need all of them at some point? Oh, yeah. Both the permissions and the traps to sort of like figure out how to, how do I do this in a way that’s sustainable?

Jon Acuff: [00:38:08] Yeah. And that’s a word I think that I think you just used a word that I think as you do this a while, you fall in love with that word sustainable. Like I know, like when I was young, I was enamored with like the person that had the hot YouTube channel for six months or the author who wrote one book and I would go, oh my gosh. And now the people I look up to are the people that have done it for 30 years. And they’ve like, they’ve got a, they’ve got a great marriage or they’ve got great relationships or they’ve got, they’re connected to their kids and they produce a lot of work and they have a company and they, I go, wow, they’ve done it for 40 years. So that it is sustainable. Yeah. I think you need, you definitely need all four. And I think you need discussions about all four. And I think you need part of it’s just labeling. Let’s take the team. Even just labeling a meeting for what it is gives you freedom. Meaning this is a dream meeting. We’re not reviewing details or like this is a review meeting. We’re not like coming up with new ideas. We’re reviewing what we just did and trying to understand what what happened. Even just labeling it gives people permission to go, oh, okay, I gotta put my review hat on or I gotta put my doing hat on because the joke I do about like dreamers is right.

Jon Acuff: [00:39:20] As you get ready to launch a project, they say, you know what would be cool? You know what would be cool? And they introduce a completely new idea and you want to kill them because you’re like, you were there. We had dreaming meetings for like a month and you didn’t mention any of these ideas. And they’re like, yeah, I know. But now that we’re on the finish line, I’m gonna throw some creative grenades right into this. And on an individual level, I guarantee you’ve had this experience, you get ready to finish a book and all of a sudden, this creativity that’s been hiding in the shadows comes out and goes, hey, I’m a whole new chapter. You need to try to wedge in there somehow. And I’ve just learned over the years to go, I see you. That’s awesome. You’ll be in the next book. You’ll be in the next book. I’m not. This isn’t the last helicopter out of Nam where I have to jam every idea into this book. And we’ve both read books like that where you’re like, oh, this person, like they jam this thing because they didn’t have a process or a system to go, hey, thanks for showing up. I love this idea. You’re going to be in the next book and that’s going to be great.

Jonathan Fields: [00:40:16] Yeah. And like you’re, you’re so describing this in the context of, of work, but this is, this is also about life. This is about our personal relationships. It’s about things we want to happen in, in a, you know, in a marriage, a long term partnership and parenting and friendship in our health and our well-being, in our state of mind. It’s like it’s the same process on a deeply personal level. Once we hit midlife in particular, you know, there’s so much reckoning and reinvention and And reclamation that’s on our mind on a really regular basis. You know, so it’s not just the career that often gets thrown up in the air. It’s sort of like we’re reexamining everything because we’re starting to say, what do I really want from this moment forward, you know? And so there are new dreams about all parts of life. There are new senses of possibility. And also at the same time, new reasons for us not to say yes to any of those that we can conjure up.

Jon Acuff: [00:41:12] Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, even just friends. You mentioned that like the older you get, the less tolerance you have for friendships that aren’t real or friendships that aren’t meaningful. And you say like, hey, I have a limited amount of time and a limited amount of like friend slots. And I want to make sure that I’m, you know, and this, this one is like, we’re in very different places and that’s fine. But like, I want to pour into this one, and this one is no longer the type of friend that I’m trying to do. I’m not in a like, cut toxic people out of your life like Instagram way, but just in a. I recognize how little time I have and little. You know, and even just marriage, like you learn. You learn how to talk to each other. Like the other day, I was so kind of dialed in on my schedule. My wife was like, hey, I need you to drop me off at the oil change. I gotta get my car picked up. And I was like, yeah, I could probably fit that in on the calendar. And she was like, oh, hey. She was like, hey, whoa. Pause. Just so we’re clear, you don’t pencil me in. Like, that is not how this works. And she was right. Like, and I was like, oh, you’re right. Like, I’m sorry that I, because I treated her like a task. And so like, even having the emotional room to have that conversation with somebody and go, yeah, I’m not, I’m not a task. Like I’m your spouse, I’m your partner. And, and kind of wrestling that out and going, oh, you’re right. I, I put you in the wrong category. Like that happens hopefully the older or older you get.

Jonathan Fields: [00:42:38] Yeah. So let’s say somebody joining us right now and the kind of listening along. And as we’re talking, they’re starting to realize there’s something that’s been on their mind. There’s something that they’ve been thinking about doing that they’ve really, really wanted to do that they, they think would be super enjoyable. They, they really, they’re excited about what’s on the other side of it. They believe they kind of have a strong sense of what it might be, even though it might not be crystal clear. Um, and yet they keep putting it off and off and off and off and giving all sorts of different reasons. You know, on any given day, it’s going to be a different reason as life changes. Walk me through sort of like the early steps of how to, how to change this, like what are the first couple of steps into shifting this from procrastination, from putting off, from constant delay into this might actually happen?

Jon Acuff: [00:43:28] Yeah. So for me, my favorite definition of discipline is make tomorrow easy today. Like, how do we make this easy? I want this to be easy for you to do. Like, and what are the things today we can do to make it easy for tomorrow and Friday and. And so probably what I’d do is I’d try to interview a win, meaning I would help them remember a time where they did accomplish a thing, anything. So it could be they lost weight. It could be they got their finances in order. It could be they put on a great marriage, a wedding, whatever. I would get them to interview a win, and then I would try to help them see patterns in that. Like how, how do they get things done? How do they dream? Is it, you know, because what happens is we’re really quick to forget what works and really quick to remember the failures, like with negativity bias. So like last year, the entire year, I kept what I called an owner’s manual. I just wrote down things that made me perform better and feel happier. So for a solid year, and they were silly things. They were big things because I just realized if somebody should own a John Acuff’s owner’s manual, it’s me. And I feel like I’m the only adult who didn’t get one. So why don’t I just create one? So sometimes the first thing that’s really fun is to go, I want you to re-experience emotionally that win.

Jon Acuff: [00:44:43] I want to I want to remind you you’re capable of things because there’s something in your life that you’ve really done well. And then I want to see if there’s any things that we could bring forward that would help make this thing really easy. And then I’d make it really small. I’d say, what could we do 15 minutes a day for the next seven days? Just audition it. I like the word audition. Um, like let’s audition this goal. Part of the reason new goals or resolutions fail is that people try to do something for a year they’ve never done for a day. And that’s, that’s really unfair to yourself. It’s like marrying somebody you just met at speed dating. So I’m always trying to go and that’s where the permission comes in because I go, well, that doesn’t count. Like I need to like they believe, you know, I need to go big or go home. And the reality is most people go home. And so I would try to get them to do something really small that they could start to get some momentum, start to believe in themselves, start to see some progress. And those things become naturally addictive in the best possible way.

Jon Acuff: [00:45:39] Mhm. Yeah. So it’s really sort of, um, revisiting those prior experiences where you did something meaningful, um, that may have been hard and complicated, and yet you kind of like give just a bit of proof that like, okay, so even may have been a different thing, but I am capable of doing hard things or big things or meaningful things. I’ve done it in the past. It’s different, but, but it’s and what.

Jon Acuff: [00:46:02] Were the tools like? Not just the feeling of I done in the past, but like, what were the tools, the resources, the things that made it possible? Let’s bring those forward to make it possible again. Yeah. That’s, you know, and it’s the same like we would, you know, if you told me about a business idea that really worked for you, I would ask you about like, well, what was, what was present. And often we forget it. But then if you, if you, if you dissect it, you find some truth there that you can bring forward. But the most people go, they say things like, don’t look back, you’re not going that direction. And we lose all this personal knowledge and all this personal expertise, and then it does feel overwhelming, like I have to be a brand new person. I don’t get to bring any tools forward. Like that’s intimidating.

Jonathan Fields: [00:46:45] Yeah, I think for all of us, what you’re describing is basically, you know, a shift in mindset and the shift in sort of like the way that you look at creating a plan and crafting the steps that makes it so your brain starts to say, oh, I can do this, I can do this. Next thing, I can do this, next thing I can do this next thing. And eventually you realize you’re doing the thing, um, that your actions match your intentions. You, you actually, you say, actually in this book, the opposite of procrastination isn’t productivity. It’s being remarkable. But you define remarkability not as being like the most extraordinary person in the world, or like you define it largely as just allowing your actions to match your intentions.

Jon Acuff: [00:47:27] Yeah. To me, that’s a much more manageable, agreeable definition because then it’s you’re the person you want to be like. Your actions reflect the person you want to be, where you know you’re the mom you want to be. And your actions show that you’re the. You’re the writer you want to be. You’re the business owner. You want to be. And, and it becomes this, like the Venn diagram gets so close between actions and intentions that it’s like an eclipse. And I think those are really sweet days where you go, man, I did the thing I really felt called to do today. Like I can see the overlap like I was for, for that moment. I was doing that thing like, and I and it’s not that you don’t do other things that, that are challenging. Like I spend 52 weeks a year to be on stage 50 times at a 45 minute pop. Like I do a lot of things to get to that moment. But that’s how valuable that moment is to me. Every delayed flight, every travel thing is, I know that’s my favorite thing and the thing I’m best at, and it’s worth all the other stuff. Like so for me, like when I, when I follow up with a client, when I’m deliberate about, you know, how I do LinkedIn, that’s an action matching my intention. I intend to be the greatest public speaker I can be. And there’s a lot of actions I do to overlap with that intention. Um, and it makes the little things that I might be don’t feel like doing. Nobody likes a delayed flight, but like even that I’m able to go, ah, that’s an action that matches my intention. Like for me to be the best speaker in Vegas this time, guess what? I had to fly to Vegas. Like that was that was an action. And so it changes even the things that maybe you don’t enjoy.

Jonathan Fields: [00:49:06] Mhm. Yeah. That makes a lot of sense to me. It feels like a good place for us to come full circle. I have asked you this question, but it’s been a little bit of time, so I’m going to ask it again in this container of Good Life Project. If I offer up the phrase to live a good life, what comes up?

Jon Acuff: [00:49:21] Yeah. For me to live a good life. Uh, there’s a couple buckets I think about, um, I have the financial freedom to bless a lot of people. And that might be my parents above me to like when they’re in an age where they need some financial help to bless my own kids, like they graduate without debt. So I have the financial freedom to bless a lot of people. I have a marriage that gets better and better every year and gets deeper and deeper and more honest every year. I have kids who want to hang out with me when they don’t have to. Like I’ve got adult children now, and there’s nothing sweeter than like a 22 year old who asks you to go to coffee or or comes home on a weekend. They don’t have to. So that’s how I think about that. Um, and then then with my business that I’m a good steward of the gifts I feel I’ve been given. Like I feel like I, I have a gift to write. I have a gift to speak. Um, and I’m a, I’m a good steward of that. Um, and then the last one is that I’m generous. I had this really, somebody redefined generosity for me.

Jon Acuff: [00:50:22] Um, I was, I was speaking at an event and I mentioned I have a Lego Porsche and some day would it’d be great to own a 911 Porsche. And they came up and they’re like, hey, we have one. We have one here. The event’s going to shuttle us around this weekend. Just take it for the night and bring it back tomorrow. And I was like, I can’t take your what are you talking about? And they’re like, no, take it, take it. And then finally the wife, they were probably late 50s, early 60s. The wife said, we share it all the time because if we can’t share it, it has too much power over us. And I love that definition of generosity. So that could be like we’re doing a two day event called Stage and Page in our office in downtown Franklin that’s for speakers and writers. And so like, generosity might mean I share what I’ve learned about this, this thing, it might be I share my time, it might be I, I share my wisdom. It might be I share my finances, whatever. But like a generous life is really appealing to me.

Jonathan Fields: [00:51:12] Mhm. Thank you. Hey, before you leave, be sure to tune in next week when I sit down with Emiliya Zhivotovskaya to talk about what’s actually happening. When you can’t stop the spin cycle in your head, and more importantly, what to do about it. So be sure to follow Good Life Project wherever you get your podcasts so you don’t miss any upcoming episodes. This episode of Good Life Project was produced by executive producers Lindsey Fox and me, Jonathan Fields. Editing help by, Alejandro Ramirez and Troy Young. Kris Carter crafted our theme music. And of course, if you haven’t already done so, please go ahead and follow Good Life Project wherever you get your podcasts. If you found this conversation interesting or valuable and inspiring, chances are you did because you’re still here. Do me a personal favor, a seven-second favor, and share it with just one person. If you want to share it with more, hey, that’s awesome, but just one person even then, invite them to talk with you about what you both discovered to reconnect and explore ideas that really matter. Because that’s how we all come alive together. Until next time. I’m Jonathan Fields signing off for Good Life Project.

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