Motivation follows action, not the other way around.
Table of Contents
Why Procrastination Isn’t Laziness
What if procrastination wasn’t laziness? What if it was fear wearing a mask?
Every founder I know has struggled with this. You delay the tough call, the launch, or that bold move not because you’re lazy, but because you’re scared of the outcome. Once you see procrastination for what it really is, you can beat it.
1. Identify the Real Fear Behind Procrastination
Procrastination isn’t random. It’s your brain trying to protect you from discomfort. The first step is naming the fear.
Ask yourself: What am I really afraid of?
Is it failure, rejection, or success itself?
Write it down and label it.
When you label the fear, you take away its power. Most entrepreneurs confuse delay with “waiting until it’s perfect.” The truth is perfection is just procrastination in disguise.
Whatever that decision you’re looking to make, whatever scares you about it, I need you to give it a name. Give it a label. Be clear about it.
2. Use the Two-Minute Rule to Create Momentum
You don’t need a huge plan to move forward. You just need a small action.
Apply the two-minute rule: Ask, What’s the smallest action I can take right now to move this forward?
Examples:
Draft one sentence of an email.
Buy the domain.
Open a new doc and title it.
Here’s a table of examples:
| Fear | Smallest Action (2 min) | Why It Works |
|---|---|---|
| Launching product | Write the headline of landing page | Creates momentum |
| Reaching investor | Draft first bullet of pitch email | Reduces overwhelm |
| Posting online | Record 30-second voice memo | Lowers resistance |
That two-minute rule gets me to default to action, not slow down, not overthink it.
3. Stack Micro Wins to Fuel Motivation
Motivation doesn’t spark action. Action sparks motivation. The fastest way to win is to create a streak of small wins.
Celebrate every micro win early in the day.
Use your mornings when your focus is strongest.
Build momentum with tools like Pomodoro or even body movement.
Pro tip: Charlie’s winning streak method is gold. Each time you check off a task, call it a win. You’ll build confidence on top of confidence.
Action created the momentum. Momentum created motivation.
4. Shorten Deadlines to Force Action
Most projects drag because you give yourself too much time. Time expands to the container you give it.
Set deadlines 20–30% shorter than your instinct.
Break big projects into 48-hour sprints.
Within each sprint, work in 25-minute Pomodoro bursts.
This is how you create a forcing function, a constraint that pushes you into execution.
Often times it’s just because we give ourselves too much time to get something done that we could get done sooner.
5. Treat Inaction as an Expensive Cost
Procrastination compounds regret. Every delay creates a heavier burden, financially and emotionally.
Assign a value to your time: $500, $1000, or more per hour.
When you procrastinate, calculate the cost.
Reframe inaction as an expensive mistake.
This mindset shift turns procrastination from a “neutral” delay into an active loss. Entrepreneurs hate losing more than they love winning. Use that psychology to your advantage.
Procrastination compounds regret. It’s like a negative spiral.
Take Action Now
Don’t overthink it. Don’t wait for motivation. Pick one thing you’ve been putting off and move it forward in the next five minutes.
Procrastination is fear. The antidote is action. Small steps, stacked wins, shorter deadlines, and treating time as the most expensive currency you’ve got. That’s how you beat it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why is procrastination more about fear than laziness?
Procrastination is often misunderstood as laziness, but in reality procrastination is rooted in fear. Many people delay important actions because they fear failure, success, or judgment. By labeling the fear and acknowledging it directly, you can address the real reason behind procrastination instead of blaming laziness.
How does the two minute rule help stop procrastination?
The two minute rule helps stop procrastination by lowering the barrier to action. Instead of overthinking, you commit to taking the smallest possible step that can be done in two minutes. This shifts your mindset from hesitation to momentum and builds progress quickly.
Does motivation come before action or after action?
Motivation follows action, not the other way around. Waiting to feel motivated before taking action creates endless delays. When you start with even a small action, it generates momentum, and that momentum naturally builds motivation.
How does procrastination compound regret over time?
Procrastination compounds regret because the longer you delay an idea or project, the more opportunities you miss. Every delay increases frustration and can cost money, growth, or success. Treating inaction as a major cost helps prevent this downward spiral.
How can deadlines help reduce procrastination?
Shortening deadlines by 20 to 30 percent creates a forcing function that drives focus. When you give yourself less time than you think you need, it eliminates wasted effort and helps you prioritize immediate action over perfectionism.
More Resources
Tools Mentioned
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Pomodoro Technique – A time management method using 25-minute focus sessions with short breaks to boost concentration.
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AirPods – Wireless earbuds useful for listening to focus music or ambient beats during deep work.
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Spotify or similar music apps – Platforms to stream EDM or instrumental tracks that help sustain focus without distractions.
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Two Minute Rule – A simple productivity rule encouraging you to take the smallest possible action within two minutes to overcome procrastination.
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48 Hour Sprint Framework – A project-management approach where large tasks are broken into short, actionable two-day blocks to create urgency and progress.
Full Transcript
You’re not Lazy. You’re scared. Here’s how to fix it. – YouTube
Transcript:
(00:00) What if procrastination wasn’t laziness? It’s fear in disguise. What are you delaying because you’re scared of the outcome? What are you putting off because you’re actually scared of achieving, not failing? Think about it. I want you to do a few things. Number one, I want you to identify the real fear behind it today.
(00:26) Whatever that decision you’re looking to make, whatever scares you about it, I need you to give it a name. Give it a label. Be clear about it. Again, most people think, “Well, no, I’ll get to it. I’m just, you know, I’m trying to get it better.” No, no, there’s something about it that scares you.
(00:44) Use this thing called the two-minute rule. My philosophy is that if I get an email, a text message, something that gives me anxiety around like should I say yes, I just want to use the two-minute rule to move it forward. What’s the smallest possible action I could do to move it forward? Okay, sometimes I call it the min most important next step.
(01:05) That twominut rule gets me to default to action, not slow down, not overthink it, move it forward. And then for me, it’s the whole reframe that action is less painful than anticipation. This one’s crazy. Have you ever seen people, maybe you’ve done it, I know I have, where the anticipation of failure is the pain and is bigger than actually what happens from deciding to do.
(01:38) Wild, but true. The second big idea when it comes to procrastination is that motivation isn’t required. Motivation follows action, not the other way around. Hear me say this again. Motivation follows action, not the other way around. When I was a teenager, I found myself in a sticky situation.
(02:05) I ended up in prison and adult prison due to the severity of the crimes I had committed. I grew up in addiction. I grew up in a really t troubled. To say that it was uh colorful would be an understatement. But here’s the gift that that gave me is that I realized anytime I had negativity in my mind, I could drop down and do push-ups.
(02:29) I could do tricep extensions off my bed. I could do air squats. Essentially, the fastest way for me to change my mental state was to move my body. What a crazy concept. Or even just like sit down and write a letter. Like get out of my head, not sit there and think about it and think about it and think about it. See, the action created the momentum.
(02:55) Momentum created motivation. Most people get it wrong. They’re like, “I don’t feel motivated.” Don’t do that to yourself. If you got to be motivated to take action, you’re in trouble. Default. Go move. Action. That’s my question to you is what’s the simplest, smallest action you could take in the next five minutes to push that thing forward? You know that thing you’ve been putting off? That one.
(03:26) What is the action that you could take right now in the next five minutes that would do anything at all to move it forward? It could be buy a domain. It could be create that Instagram account. It could be publish video, you know, do that. Here’s a few things that help you really crystallize this concept. First off is don’t wait for the perfect headsp space. Create it.
(03:54) Don’t wait for it. Don’t wait for your I gotta be inspired. Don’t do that. Create it. How? Take action. That leads to motivation. The other thing is to think about it like stacking micro wins, right? Like stacking them early in the day. Like when I wake up, I want to use my morning when I am most in tuned to what I want to create.
(04:23) most in tune to the motivation, the inspiration and use that to take action to win. There’s this guy Charlie. He has this idea called winning streaks. He celebrates the micro wins. Because he celebrates the micro wins, he creates the momentum. every time, no matter how small of a win he has, he goes, “Winning streak, winning streak.
(04:52) ” I’m I love that concept. Winning streak to move it forward. And then here is the big one, and this is what I do every day, is always set a deadline 20% shorter, 30% shorter than what you think it needs to be to create a forcing function for you to focus. often times it’s just because we give ourselves too much time to get something done that we could get done sooner and then we delay and procrastinate and it almost like creates a snowball on itself.
(05:20) So the big the second big principle is motivation follows action not the other way around. The third that is the most important is procrastination compounds regret. Procrastination is like a you know negative spiral. I either think we’re spiraling up or we’re spiraling down. And every time you delay, you procrastinate, you just make it worse.
(05:45) You get inside your head. See, I remember one time I had this idea for a software company and I was super passionate about it. I even drew it in my notebook and how it could work. And I probably spent like six months thinking about it, designing it. It could do this, it could do that. And then one day I see online that a company had launched and raised millions of dollars on the exact same idea.
(06:12) Waiting did not make that idea better. It procrastinated the regret. It delayed the outcome and it was harmful and very expensive. It costs a lot of money. Like think about it. At any point I could have launched this. I know you think, “Oh, but Dan, maybe they’ve been working on it for a while and and you’re not them and all these and and I get it because by saying that you make it okay for you, but I’m telling you, procrastination compounds regret.
(06:45) ” Here’s the lesson I want you to take around that philosophy. First off is that you have to treat inaction as a massive cost. See, most of us, myself included, will do more to avoid pain than we will to get a gain. So it’s not a neutral choice. If you want to force yourself to take action, then you have to consider it a massive cost.
(07:11) See, when you start treating your hour, as an example, like it’s worth $500, maybe you got to go to $1,000, but like make it really substantial because then you would go, “Oh, that inaction, that delaying it, that waste of that time costs me.” And that is what you want to internalize to push you forward to stop procrastinating.
(07:36) The other one is that big projects need to be broken down into like 48 hour sprints. Like I just break them down and just go, “Okay, I got two days to get this part done, two days to get this part done, two days to get this part done.” Even within those bigger projects, I like to use Pomodoro, which is 25 minutes of work, 5 minutes of reset, 25 minutes of work, five minutes of reset.
(07:59) I put my AirPods on, listen to some EDM music, some beats. I don’t even like words. And I have my my timer on my laptop and it’s just going off every 25 minutes counting down. And I have a focused outcome for that period of work and it keeps me locked in. You just got to figure out what is it that gets you focused to take action.
(08:23) And then for me, it’s finishing up my day when I’m done. Okay, I have a note file I open up and I I put in everything that I didn’t finish that day that I’m committing to starting my next day with. That’s how I’m able to like disconnect, go home, and be with my kids because I don’t have open loops because the open loops are written down and that’s what I’m deciding at the end of my day to start with the following day to make sure that when I wake up, boom, we attack it. We hit it again.
(08:53) We’re creating momentum. That is the process. So, think about it. Procrastination is a is a protection mechanism. It’s there to keep you from pain. That’s the fear. The other one is that the motivation follows action, not the other way around. And then what I just shared, which is that procrastination compounds regret.
(09:19) If we don’t get ahead of it, it will just make you feel worse. So, my question below in the comments, I want to hear from you. What’s the one thing you’ve been putting off? What is the one thing that you know on your heart you want to do and because you’re listening to this, you take action