PP 292: Procrastination and You with Christine Li

Kim Sutton: Welcome back to another episode of Positive Productivity. This is your host, Kim Sutton. I want to thank you for joining us here for another episode. I am so thrilled to introduce you to today’s guest, Christine Li. Christine is the Procrastination Coach, and she helps her clients get from start to finish. Christine, I am so thrilled to have you here. Especially considering, wasn’t procrastination was tech issues, both you and me and child issues on my side, and it could be seen as procrastination by some. But finally, I’m so thrilled to have this conversation.

Christine Li: I am so glad to be here, Kim, finally too. I feel that the tech issues and kid issues that we had just gave us a chance to get to know each other better.

Kim Sutton: Oh, absolutely. Listeners, remember that Positive Productivity does not mean perfection. And even in procrastination, Christine, I would have to imagine that a lot of people get held up because they’re waiting to be perfect, instead of just moving forward. But hey, I’m sorry for jumping ahead a little bit, can you give us more of an introduction to how you got to where you are, and then we’ll circle back around to that.

Christine Li: Okay, great. And I would love to talk about the perfectionism issue at some point in this podcast because I think it’s such an important part of procrastination, but I would say my own story involves a whole lot of imperfection. I was just your regular student, do regular graduate students, but always constantly struggling with anxiety, work anxiety, difficulty getting any rest, difficulty meeting any deadlines and thinking that this was just how I came to the earth. This was not something that I had built up or intended, but that this was something that was part of my personality, part of my character. And fortunately, I think for me, I got some help and some insight to help us through psychotherapy being a patient myself, but also through just chance and circumstance, that I was able to volunteer to lead a procrastination workshop as part of one of my jobs as a psychologist in a college counseling center. And through that experience, I realized that I was pretty much the world’s worst procrastinator, and that I really needed to get my game on that. I needed to figure out how to avoid procrastination and how to decrease the stress in my life so that I could actually be productive. So that was the short of a longer story. But procrastination has really been part of my life for a very, very long time. And now, it’s the biggest part of my professional life.

Kim Sutton: I remember, probably 2008 or 2009, I was introduced to the book, Eat That Frog by Brian Tracy, and it absolutely changed my life.

Christine Li: Yes. What did you learn from it?

Kim Sutton: Well, the biggest thing that I learned was how tackling items on my list gives us, what is it? An adrenaline rush?

Christine Li: Uh huh.

Kim Sutton: And I became addicted to that, but I can’t say that entirely helped me. Because what I started doing was adding little insignificant things to my task list, instead of just the big things. And I think that so many entrepreneurs do that as well because they want to see accomplishment during the day. And when I finally backtracked on that, it was sometime in the last year, I got to be totally honest, I realized so much more was getting done because I wasn’t focusing on the little, oh, I just gotta say, BS tasks, but I was focusing on the big rocks instead.

Christine Li: Yes. The big rocks are so important, and the big rocks are the ones that make us really afraid. I feel that fear is just the fuel for procrastination. So whenever we have a private thought, oh, it’s not going to go well. oh, I’m not going to get accepted. oh, it’s not perfect. Then they lo and behold, procrastination starts knocking at the door. We really have to be careful for aiming for the big rocks, but also making sure that our fear level stays really low.

Kim Sutton: Oh, definitely. You and I were chatting a little bit before we started recording and I shared that I’m about to launch a five day free workshop. I have to share with you and listeners especially because I keep on repeating throughout every episode that Positive Productivity is not about perfection. I had recorded all of the segments for the workshop in audio only because I really didn’t want to be in front of the camera. I was so wrapped up about being perfect, and having slides, and then not having messy hair, and not having a professional video team here. But my husband’s home today and just had a fluke. I went in and I was talking to him. And all of a sudden, it struck me that that much part of the connection with the audience is actually being able to see me. I know that you listeners know me by my voice right now, but I feel it’s so important to connect visually as I’m going through this next stage.

Christine Li: Yes.

Kim Sutton: So I told my husband that while I’m going to record this tomorrow, I’m going to get myself set up. But I was sitting here, Christine, waiting to get on this call with you. And it was like, maybe 40 minutes before, and I didn’t really know what else I wanted to get into. And start, I said, what the heck. So it’s turned on Zoom, and I just let it out there, hey, this is me. You can see my hair sticking up. There will be bloopers., but it’s just so important to me to get my message out to you. So here I am, let’s get real, and it felt so good.

Christine Li: I really have to give you some feedback from someone who’s new to your work and new to getting to know you. I think your specific talent is your ability to be real like this. I know you’ve heard this from other people, but I just wanted to put my two cents in that, you are just great at connecting to people on an everyday level, on every issue kind of level. Nothing, no holds barred, nothing to be embarrassed about, and you make it fun. And I think adding the visual is just more fun, so I’m just going to encourage you to keep going.

Kim Sutton: Oh, thank you. Thank you so much. Listeners, I do have to let you know, Christine, when we talk for the first time? Was it a month, month and a half ago?

Christine Li: Yes, about then

Kim Sutton: I’m not going to point fingers at you because I don’t think it was just you. If it was even you, it might have been me. Who cares? But it was a tech issue, and we couldn’t record that day for some reason or another. And we ended up talking, for what? An hour? We ended up taking the whole hour just jabbing away our first conversation ever, and I liked that.

Christine Li: It was great. It was getting worked on too because we were getting to know each other and preparing for that podcast. I felt like we were using a not so great circumstance for good.

Kim Sutton: Oh, absolutely. Definitely. Christine, I have a question for you.

Christine Li: Sure.

Kim Sutton: What did you want to be, when you were a little girl, when you grew up?

Christine Li: I would say I don’t have a great answer for that, because I had no idea. I actually feel, because I was the child of an immigrant family, and because there wasn’t a whole lot of active communication going on in that family. It was a loving family, but there was not a lot of back and forth education, how you doing kind of thing. I felt that there was a lot of passive observation on my end instead of active engagement with the world. So I feel like I was learning about the world, but not really envisioning myself as an agent, or a powerful actor, or an astronaut, or something like that. I was just trying to figure out the world in many respects. So that’s my answer. I unfortunately don’t have a particular field of study or interest that I grew up having in my heart. I certainly did not know I wanted to be a psychologist.

Kim Sutton: Wow. I think you were the first person that I’ve ever chatted with who didn’t have an answer. So congratulations.

Christine Li: Thank you, I think.

Kim Sutton: Yeah. Oh, well, I wanted to be an architect in outer space. I didn’t like science.

Christine Li: Uh huh.

Kim Sutton: But I wanted to design the interiors of the Space Station. So more specifically, I wanted to be an interior designer.

Christine Li: That sounds cool. That sounds cool. You and I are, there’s another similarity. My first attempt at a major in college was architecture.

Kim Sutton: Oh, was it? Well, I think that it actually set us, set me up to go down part of the not so good entrepreneurial journey that I went down because there were so many sleepless nights because I was pushing, pushing, pushing. And I can’t say I was procrastinating because if I ever get any of my college friends on here, they’ll tell you that I wasn’t the party pooper because I just didn’t go to the parties.

Christine Li: Yes, yes. Architecture is quite a rigorous field, absolutely.

Kim Sutton: I mean, you go out to a party for one night, you risk that whole end of term project not getting done because you really needed that time.

Christine Li: Yes. I ended up dropping out because it’s the rigor. I just felt like I was behind all the time, and I didn’t like that feeling in particular in that field, because I felt that people had started ahead of it with a lot more experience, a lot more non native talent, and I just figured I better get the heck out of here before things feel a lot worse.

Kim Sutton: I can’t say I ever felt that way, but it was definitely jumping into a pool that I had never swim in. That’s the best way I can say that. However, on the side note about partying, I also went to the school, the Art Institute of Chicago, and our dorms were right there in downtown Chicago, and we got checked by security every time I came in. And if they sensed, if they smelled or saw any sign of drugs or alcohol, they actually wouldn’t let us back into our dorms for the evening.

Christine Li: And then what happened?

Kim Sutton: Oh, we had to go find somewhere else to sleep.

Christine Li: Oh, wow.

Kim Sutton: Yeah. So that was another reason. I couldn’t hide my drunkenness if I tried. So I figured, why bother? So tell us more about your journey and how you wound up here. I would love to hear more.

Christine Li: Okay, great. I mentioned that job at that college counseling service, and I would say, in working with many students, brand new students each and every day, kind of almost just one hour after another, you really, well, from my vantage point, I saw the difficulties that students were having with their work. But I felt that as part of a college counseling service, there wasn’t a lot of attention paid to work procrastination. I knew it was an issue for myself, and I decided to make it more of an issue in my career, that I would make it more of a focus and more of an area of expertise. So once you open your eyes to this area of productivity and procrastination, you realize that there’s so many tools now, and so much material, and so much support, and so much that we can do to improve our skills, the skills that we come to our job with, or we come to graduate school with, or we come to college with. And I feel like it became a mission for me to be one of those voices, one of those sources of support. Because over the years, lo and behold, I realized that I could transform my own life from being really a wreck and a mess, and being late all the time to being pretty calm and pretty connected to people, and much more creative, disciplined, and purposeful, and happy. So I felt like beating procrastination has kind of brought joy big time into my life. And I felt like it would not be great of me to keep this all to myself.

Kim Sutton: Can you come talk to my kids?

Christine Li: I’d love to.

Kim Sutton: Especially my 12 and 15 years old because they’re the ones that have chores and homework. And yes, especially the 15 year old. God knows I love them. But if it were not for the text messaging that thank goodness my parents did not have to tell the parents about the homework that’s coming up. Even when they’re in high school, I swear there’s homework, and he’s [inaudible] day, like an honor student in advanced classes, there’s no doubt that he would just put off until the morning is due even though it’s a paper like four pages with references. So what’s the hard part about? What makes it so difficult to understand that if you just do a little bit at a time and start early that your life will be so much more peaceful, even doing their chores when they get home from school, I understand that they’re exhausted and they might need a little break. But come on, there’s a difference between a little break and taking four hours before you actually start.

Christine Li: Yeah. You’re asking tough questions. And these are questions about everyday life too. And sometimes, everyday life can feel overwhelming, and that’s one way to look at it. Another way to look at it is that adolescents actually need that space and time. They need that time to not be doing anything, and that’s difficult for us as adults and parents to reconcile given that we’re getting text messages and we know that there’s a lot of homework to be done. So one of my recommendations would be to have someone else work with your kids, or just a little bit, poke their heads in with your kids rather than having it be you because there’s just that extra pressure, there’s that extra meaning because you’re a mom, and because you’re so busy and active also, and that they need to have the freedom to figure out their own system that works for them. Although you and I didn’t grow up maybe with a lot of texting, we did have the capacity to figure it out for ourselves. And I feel like we need to give everyone that opportunity to feel that they are in charge and they really own their own system, that we’re not beholden to anybody else, and we’re not doing it for other people. We’re doing it because we want to, because it’s going to benefit ourselves and because when we feel good, our work will be good.

Kim Sutton: I think I might have to send this episode to my was been and to my husband.

Christine Li: Okay. I’d love to share this message to the world, as I’ve said. Really, growing up is difficult, becoming an adult is difficult, being an adult is difficult. I mean, no matter how productive or how efficient you are, there are the mishaps, and the tech problems, and the low days, and the days where you forget to do something really important, or the day when you, this happened to me yesterday. I wrote down the time of a very important meeting. For me, it was important. I was off by 15 minutes for some reason, and that began a whole day of wondering what happened. And it was not because of intention, but it was something, perhaps out of my conscious control that happened, and we just have to go to sleep, wake up the next day and keep going. That sometimes can feel difficult when we want to have that ideal system in place. We want to be that perfect performer, but we also have to realize that life is imperfect, and that our future is going to be an up and down trajectory. One of my favorite episodes that I’ve listened to of yours is when you said: “Can anyone tell me that you’ve had a two week span of time where nothing went wrong?” And I just thought that that was a brilliant comment. It really made me think because, of course, I don’t think anybody has a two week period where nothing goes wrong, and I was just part of life.

Kim Sutton: I found it interesting that, lately, I’ve been hearing a lot of people say that they work better under pressure.

Christine Li: I hear that just about every day.

Kim Sutton: I feel more pressured under pressure, and I tend to work faster. And sometimes, I feel like I’m being more efficient because I compress it in a shorter amount of time, but that is not how I enjoy working. I’m not saying that I want to take four times longer doing my work for clients, but by no means do I want to do that. However, I want to work in a space. I mean, the three pillars of Positive Productivity are peace, passion and prosperity. Prosperity is not all about the money, people. But peace and passion, I want to have passion for my work, and I want to work in peace. And peace to me is not about rush, rush, rush, rush, rush, because I only gave myself two hours when I had like two weeks to work on it.

Christine Li: Yeah. I feel, in my experience, and I have heard that a lot about working best under pressure. I feel that everyone who says that has never worked any other way. So that there’s a little bit of the, I feel the situation that I know is the best situation rather than, I’ve tried out all the different scenarios, and I’ve picked that one. So I recommend for people to if they like to have that sense of pressure and the upcoming deadline to help them work to set up a false deadline that is earlier so that they get some practice with being a little bit more in control of the timeframe so that you could have a bunch done at that intermediary deadline, and then have some more time to edit, to flesh things out, to add to things, to reconsider things, and to extend that work period so that the work is have a little more higher quality.

Kim Sutton: I can definitely see that. Christine, do you see any direct connection between procrastination on tasks that we don’t want to be doing like really aren’t in alignment with our passion? Could you repeat that question?

Christine Li: I was just thinking and writing at the same time, I think I shouldn’t be writing.

Kim Sutton: Oh, that’s okay. Do you see any connection between procrastination and working on the projects that we really don’t have a passion for and those projects that we do have a passion for?

Christine Li: Sure. I feel that we could certainly procrastinate on either and on both. And one of the things that I try to teach my clients and I try to adhere to myself is that, if it’s a task that’s assigned to me and I really can’t get rid of it, but it’s not in alignment with what I really would rather be doing, I adopt really a radical gratitude for the fact that I’m able to participate, that I’m able to do this, that I’m able to work really quickly to get that unwanted task out of the way so that I can have time for the things that I really want to do. So it’s a little–

Kim Sutton: Eat That Frog.

Christine Li: Eat That Frog, be accepting. I don’t even like the idea of eating frogs. So just being accepting, grateful and having a really radically positive attitude. And that can be hard for people that sometimes is not second nature. And we have to be patient with ourselves when we’re learning that. When we’re learning that, if we keep moving forward,  those good feelings are gonna stay longer, they’re going to be more fulfilling, and they’re going to be more of an effect on us. But we have to stay in there long enough to get those good feelings. That’s sometimes where people fall down. They say, oh, I gave it a try, that technique didn’t work. And, really, that’s where the interpersonal live person support, I think where you need a coach, or you need a program, or a mastermind group, or an app that will help you out. So that it’s not just you, because sometimes we can get down.

Kim Sutton: Oh, I love the fact that you brought up apps. We were talking about apps right before we came on. Would you mind sharing the app that you’re using right now because I’ve already forgotten. No, I did not write it down.

Christine Li: Okay, sure. The app is fabulous, it is called CommitTo3, C-O-M-M-I-T to the number three. I heard about it myself on a podcast, and I went right away to go download it. It’s free if you use it for yourself. You could use it just to track three tasks that you would like to get done in a single day. And then over the week, you can see your progress in involvement in seeking to finish those tasks, and also your success rate at finishing those tasks. But where this app really shines is when you upgrade to the paid version, which is $2.99 for one year, non renewing. And with that upgrade, you get to invite a friend or two, I believe, I think maybe even more than two to be on your accountability team. So then you do the same thing. You track three tasks for a single day, but then you get to see how your friends or your colleagues are doing with their own progress. And it becomes kind of this group effort. It’s all of course, just virtual and just for fun. There’s no real added benefits, I’d say. No real world benefit except that you’re having fun, you’re staying in touch with people, and it somehow adds more juice to your own attempts to get things done. So I found that I’ve been skyrocketing my productivity in the past couple of weeks of using this app. And again, it’s CommitTo3.

Kim Sutton: Listeners, you may have heard me in an earlier episode mentioned, or even in any of the intro promotions, Christine, I even shared this with you before we jumped on. I have just recently started sharing a photo of my three big items that I want to complete each week. I put it into the Positive Productivity Facebook Group, and I’m holding myself accountable to get those three done by telling the group and by telling all you listeners too that for every one of those items that I don’t complete, I will donate $25 charity, the charity of your choice listeners if you share a screenshot of your review of the podcast in that thread below in the name of your charity. Let me tell you Christine, I’m in my second week right now. I have been blowing these tasks out of the water.

Christine Li: Yeah. I can’t imagine. Because with the financial–

Kim Sutton: And it’s not that I don’t want to donate to charity. Please listeners, don’t get me wrong there because I really do want to donate to charity. But if it’s between me getting my task done and donating to charity, hey, I’d rather get the task done seeing my projects launched successfully and then donate to charity off the revenue, then to use money that could go towards the projects and donate it to charity. I hope that makes sense. I feel like I just jumbled it all up.

Christine Li: Yeah. No, it really makes sense. I love how doing it that way so publicly and involving your audience is really just upping the game, but in a loving and expansive way you’re not trying to just doing this all for good reasons to help your audience model after you to keep yourself accountable and to grow your business so you can help more people, and potentially even help a charity. I think it’s three wins right off the bat.

Kim Sutton: Listeners, before I forget to mention, all the links, apps and everything that we talked about, including where you’ll be able to find Christine, you can find in the show notes at thekimsutton.com/pp292. But I want to share that, as I said, this is my second week doing this. I’ve been amazed that nobody has chimed in with a charity yet. So even though I finished all three tasks last week, there wasn’t even anybody who shared a charity that would be donated to. So listeners, this is your opportunity, go to thekimsutton.com/group to jump over to the group, leave a screenshot of your review of this podcast and the name of your charity. Your name will be permanently on the list as long as you’re a member of the group, that if I don’t stay accountable, and if I procrastinate, come on, we gotta turn it back to you, Christine, that I will donate to charity. So if you are the only person on the list every time I don’t get a task done, your charity benefits.

Christine Li: That’s a great system. Kim, I want to remind you that you had also talked to me about an app that you’ve been using, could you tell everyone about that and remind me of that app that you were talking about. 

Kim Sutton: Actually, while you were sharing CommitTo3. I did download it, so thank you. The app that I’ve been using lately, and I have to credit Cliff Ravenscraft, because I’m in his Next Level Mastermind, he recommended. It’s HabitShare. And what I found, or what it helps us do, and this is members of my mastermind group, is we have habits that we’re trying to establish and get done on a daily basis. So my daily habits right now, actually, I want to read before bed, I want to make sure that I use my planner and plan tomorrow, today, every night before I go to bed. I am doing my darndest to give up soda, and what else? And I want to make a real, oh, and taking my medicine. I know listeners that I have shared with you before that I have a thyroid issue, and not taking my medicine is a really bad thing. But with my five kids wandering around my house, not my two bigs, but my little ones, I have heard horror stories about kids chewing medicine. I know my kids get into all the things that they should not including green Sharpie markers so I just don’t leave it. I don’t have my medicine and a medicine box because I’m so afraid that they’re gonna break it. But this HabitShare has been amazing for keeping me on track with taking my medicine on a daily basis. And the great thing about this app, Christine, is that you can decide what habits are public that you do share with your friends who you connect with, it’s free by the way, and what habits that you want to keep private for you.

Christine Li: I love how there’s so many tools that are available to us for free, for very little money, and we can do this privately. And really these days, there’s so many opportunities for growth and for change. It only takes a minute to download something, and it only takes another couple minutes to make these changes. So use our techniques, use our apps, use our energy, use our examples. And I want to encourage everybody who’s listening to just make one change today just for yourself. You don’t have to show anybody, you don’t have to tell anybody just so that you feel better. I think it’s really just a wonderful way to be.

Kim Sutton: Yes, it is. I love how you said one change today. But as I shared with you before we push record, when I jumped into this app and I saw all the habits that my fellow mastermind members had, I was so inspired that I added a whole bunch more, including one of my, when my partner gets up, he wants to be up by 6:00 o’clock every morning. And that sounded like a great idea to me just because it would add me another two hours. But I am a night owl so I knew I did add it to my list. But for the first five days, it didn’t happen. And then I realize that it’s not going to happen if I stay true to the Positive Productivity brand. What I’m trying to share with all the listeners is that sleep is so important. Yes, if I get up at 6:00 o’clock or before 6:00 o’clock every morning, I’m not getting six to eight hours asleep.

Christine Li: Before we started recording, you used the word alignment. I think that’s such an important thing to always remember that no matter what your goals are, and no matter what time of life you are in your life, that whatever transpires needs to be in some sort of greater alignment with who you are and how you want your life to go. If it’s not in alignment, it’s not really going to work in the long term anyway. So 6:00 AM, wake up and go out the window for you. No worries.

Kim Sutton: Absolutely. And then I was even trying to keep myself accountable for posting three times a day on Facebook, and posting three times a day on Instagram. That’s going back to the small trivial stuff that we were talking about earlier where I was putting all this on my task list. I’m not gonna allow myself to feel bad if I don’t get that done. So at the end of the first week when I saw that I had maybe a 100% in only one of my goals, I realized that that was just doing way too much. I was holding myself accountable for way too much, and it didn’t feel good so I cut out all the extra.

Christine Li: Yeah, you brought up. You bring up a really important factor, which is that it’s easy to get overwhelmed. It’s easy to feel overwhelmed. And one really quick solution to that feeling, or that issue, or that circumstance is to simplify. Just take scissors, take a pen, cross things off, get rid of them, put them off for next week in a positive way. A positive procrastinating kind of way so that you can focus, so you can get your calm back and get that thing out the door so that you don’t have this rolling thing of feeling overwhelmed for weeks at a time. Overwhelm is just a temporary feeling that you can withstand, and that you can see your way through. Simplicity is really just, I think the kind of jack of all trades kind of tool that you could use. Is that the way to use that term? Jack of all trades? That’s wrong. It’s the tool of all, I don’t know what the idiom is, but you know what I mean.

Kim Sutton: I get you.

Christine Li: I speak a messed up idiom. It really is the tool that you can use for any situation that is difficult. Just simplify, see what is essential and then proceed. So thanks for bearing with me there.

Kim Sutton: Positive Productivity where we are full of bloopers. Have a blooper reel and speak, what did you say?

Christine Li: Messed up idioms?

Kim Sutton: Yeah, we messed up idioms and typos.

Christine Li: Welcome.

Kim Sutton: Did you say, I just want to make sure I got this right because here’s my messed up idioms. I don’t even think I’m using that expression right now. psychiatry or psychology?

Christine Li: I’m a psychologist.

Kim Sutton: Do you see any direct correlation between mental mindset and procrastination? Like maybe good enough. I think you already touched on this earlier. But actually, I’m gonna interrupt you before I’ve even allowed you to answer. I’m reading right now Worthy by Nancy Levin, have you read that?

Christine Li: I have not.

Kim Sutton: It’s amazing. She talks about increasing your net worth by increasing your self worth. It’s just huge.

Christine Li: Yes. I feel that after I had said earlier at the beginning of the podcast, that fear is really the fuel for procrastination. I think not feeling worthy enough is what’s behind all the fears. So yes, I absolutely feel that mindset is a part of procrastination. And it is what keeps us back from being our full selves, from really becoming actualized, from pursuing our potential, from trying to do the things that nobody has done before, or trying to do the things that we haven’t done before. It doesn’t have to be creative even if it just needs to be the things that we want to do for ourselves. So oftentimes, there are fears of, Am I lovable? Will somebody abandon me? Am I smart enough? Am I pretty enough? Is my hair in order? Like you said about your filming the videos. That it can be things that we makeup on the fly, but just even those momentary fleeting thoughts can really make a project fail and can make us feel like failures. And for me, that’s such a tragedy because these thoughts are fleeting. They’re transient, just like everything else. And really, we should give a lot more weight to the importance of getting something done, of creating something new, of sharing our work in our heart with people and having fun. That’s what’s forgotten when we get all caught up in, Am I worthy, is that we forget that there’s fun to be had everywhere, every single day no matter what.

Kim Sutton: I have to share, there’s a surefire sign that I am procrastinating if my desk is organized. Even work, and loving what I do, like eyebrow high in client work or in my own work. No, my desk, I thought a disaster, people, is really not, and everything is organized. I know where to find that, my husband would look at it and be like a side note. In my wedding vows, I told my husband that I would stop making piles of stuff. Well, I’ve gotten a lot better. I have gotten so much better, but I don’t know. I mean, my office will be speaking span. My whole house will be speaking span. And this is even scarier, I will be cooking if I’m procrastinating. Sure like a 100,000% indicator that I am procrastinating from doing something that I really don’t want to do if I’m cooking.

Christine Li: You bring up a wonderful point, which I will take as a teaching moment, which is that we really know when we’re procrastinating. In our heart of hearts, we know the difference between when we’re trying to work and being really purposeful, and really intend to get something done even if it’s not working out, and then when we’re procrastinating. So it really is within our power to correct that pattern. If we really don’t have the time to procrastinate, to just recognize, oh, I’m cooking again, or I’m starting to clean my desk again. This isn’t really rocket science to recognize procrastination and to get a handle on it. That’s my whole message, is really available to anyone who’s listening to your podcast, and anyone who certainly has an internet connection these days, and anyone who just has hope for the future that you can turn things around, that you can make a difference in your own life, and that you can make a change. It’s really that simple. It may not feel simple, but we, you need support to get through that. Maybe a more emotionally difficult part of procrastination. But the other stuff, that’s just stuff that you can change in a day.

Kim Sutton: Absolutely love that. And that’s just one of your messages. I know you have a gift to offer to listeners, I’m going to take this as a segue. I think I just made my own segue.

Christine Li: Okay, I love it.

Kim Sutton: Yeah. Would you mind sharing?

Christine Li: Yes, thank you so much. It is a free library of resources that I’ve put together. Some of them are things that you’ve seen before, like schedulers and planners. But there are other items in there like a mantra maker. If you are saddled with negative thinking, you can make your own positive mantra so that you have something in hand that next time you’re in a tough situation, and you can remind yourself of what to say to yourself to keep you going through, to keep you motivated and moving forward. So to access this free library, I’d have your listeners go to procrastinationcoach.com/freelibrary. Free library is one one word, no space.

Kim Sutton: Oh, fabulous. Thank you so much.

Christine Li: No problem. Thank you.

Kim Sutton: I love the mantra maker, what is your mantra?

Christine Li: I actually feel that one thing I always come to is that there are no limits. And that if I’m thinking that I’m limited, it’s really just a false thought that it’s not even the sky’s the limit. Because look, you were wanting to design the interior of spaceships before, and I think that we can do anything, we can envision anything, and we can make so much happen. I one day I had the thought that no matter how long I am blessed to be able to live on this planet and be alive, I will still not have enough time to completely fulfill my potential. And that thought led to the feeling of, let’s go for it. Let’s just go for this.

Kim Sutton: So let’s go for it. Is that what you tell yourself?

Christine Li: Let’s go for it. Yeah. And to not be afraid. What is your mantra? Do you have one?

Kim Sutton: Yeah, actually, it’s a little bit longer, but taped to my monitor, and this comes from my faith. I have Galatians 6:9, let’s not get tired of doing good. Because in time, we’ll have a harvest if we don’t give up.

Christine Li: That’s beautiful.

Kim Sutton: I have it on my Facebook wall, like in my introduction. I haven’t read there on my monitor, and it’s really what I go by

Christine Li: It’s beautiful. And it’s true. It’s true.

Kim Sutton: Christine, thank you so much for coming back. This has been an amazing part two, and I can’t wait to have part three.

Christine Li: I love it. Kim, thank you. You are a pleasure to work with and so much fun. I really want to just thank you for all the good work that you’ve been doing, spreading the good work, and the good messages, and your kind heart, and smart brain. It’s just doing wonders for people. I’m so positive about that.

Kim Sutton: Oh, thank you, and you’re welcome. I’m sending you big virtual hugs right now.

Christine Li: Thanks. Hugs back.

Kim Sutton: Where can listeners find you online and connect with you?

Christine Li: I am all over social media having fun as a Procrastination Coach. So I’m on Instagram quite a bit doing Instagram stories during the weekdays and trying to do a little coaching there, and a little bit on Facebook and Twitter. But my blog and website is my home base, and that’s procrastinationcoach.com.

Kim Sutton: Awesome. Christine, do you have a last piece of parting advice or a golden nugget that you can offer to listeners?

Christine Li: I was thinking about what I would say if you ask a question like that. And in my heart, the answer that came was to always stay connected to people and always to remember that you are connected to other people, because I feel like that is a wonderful, life affirming tool to guard against procrastination. When we think that we’re responsible for everything and we have to suffer to get things done, then we just get ourselves in trouble. And when we remember that everybody’s in the same boat, and everybody has ups and downs, and everybody has outsize potential, it can be a lot more fun. So just like our call today was a lot more fun. If I had these thoughts by myself, what fun would that be? But sharing them with you today was lots of fun.