In today’s episode, Nicole meets with Dr. Christine Li, the Procrastination Coach, to dig deep into an energy-depleting issue that may be holding a lot of high-performing women back: procrastination. They discuss their own personal journeys with procrastination, the way that self-worth ties into procrastination, and the pivotal moments in each of their lives that got them to start changing their habits. Join Nicole and Christine as they get to the secret that is the heart of procrastination, and discover paths of choice that could be open to you.
Dr. Christine Li has been a clinical psychologist for the past 20 years and she has been working online as “Procrastination Coach” for the past 10 years. She helps people who are struggling with underperforming at work and at home to work smoothly and with high levels of productivity. Her coaching process is a blend of mindset strategy, time and emotion management work, and guidance for higher levels of self-love and self-care.
“If you are taught that rougher feelings like anger or jealousy or whatever you’re feeling are ones not to be looked at or certainly not to be shared, then you’ll be closed off to a whole part of your experience that is actually very alive, and very meaningful, and there to inform you what options to take, what options to close down.”
“No matter what your age is, I don’t want you to waste your time attacking yourself. Really, this is the gift that we can give ourselves. This is a gift that everybody can feel. You can feel so alive, so safe, so powerful, all at the same time. It does require release of your old habits.”
“I’ve become pretty obsessed with the term [habits] and with teaching people how to do habits well, so that you’re not draining yourself of your energy anymore, but actually, you’re finding your energy again once you correct your habits.”
“Those extreme thoughts really keep us in an underperforming space, so they are a waste of time because we have to recover from those thoughts and feelings before we can even start our work. We have this whole train of thinking and we then have to recover from that before we can get our active mind, our problem-solving mind, in action.”
“Hating yourself is such an energy drain.”
“Procrastination is one of the most unfun things you can do for yourself so you know it’s not the path of choice. You know there are other paths out there. There’s so much excitement and easier ways through than tearing yourself apart and worrying and not facing the thing that you really want to face.”
Nicole Tsong
Procrastination is one of those thorny challenges facing any high-achieving professional woman. No matter how efficient or effective you might be. In this podcast episode, I welcome a very special guest, on a mission to support women to overcome one of the greatest challenges known to anyone attempting to be productive: Procrastination. Today we are welcoming an amazing guest – Dr. Christine Li – who is a procrastination coach, clinical psychologist, and host of the “Make Time For Success” podcast. She helps people who are struggling with underperforming at work and at home, to work smoothly and with high levels of productivity. In our conversation, we dive into her own journey to overcome procrastination, and she shares the secret that is at the heart of procrastination. Are you a high-achieving woman who loves to procrastinate? This episode is for you! I’m so excited to welcome Dr. Christine Li to the show. Thank you so much for making time to be here. I’m so honored to have you as a guest on School of Self-Worth. Thank you for being here.
Christine Li
Thank you, Nicole, for having me. I’m really excited for this conversation and congratulations on your new podcast.
Nicole Tsong
Thank you so much. Well let me tell you all just a little bit about Dr. Christine Li, and then we’ll have her speak for herself. She’s a clinical psychologist, a procrastination coach and she’s the host of the “Make Time for Success” podcast, and just to get us sort of into the conversation here Christine, is I would love to know, in the theme of self-worth – just to start playing around – because I know that procrastination and self-worth feels to me like it has a pretty close tie and I’d love to start by hearing your thoughts about your own journey – wherever you would like to start really, from self-worth to procrastination, which is a big range actually.
Christine Li
Well, thanks for that. It’s a very interesting question and I’m going to have to think about this one. I can more easily start with the procrastination part of that question, because I’ve been talking about procrastination for a good 20 years now, in one way or another. I feel like I’m a natural-born procrastinator because I have these natural tendencies to want to avoid things, want to overcomplicate things and I think I’m also pretty good at denying that things actually exist. So it’s a pretty rough mixture of tendencies when I am sometimes faced with challenging or new things that I have to complete. That made my formal schooling years pretty complicated because I was constantly missing sleep, I was constantly missing deadlines, I was constantly missing out on more fun things because I never felt like I could actually attend fun things because I was always trying to catch up on something. So a very, very long history of regular procrastination, but also quite severe procrastination, but I will leave it at that. Then, through good fortune and maybe some fun circumstances, I found my way into the career of psychology. But becoming a psychologist had its own complications because I needed to speak about things like self-worth and feelings and vulnerability – and those were all things that I was not very prepared for, from my upbringing, for lots of different reasons. Including the fact that I am the child of immigrants and I am Chinese-American. So there are cultural factors, family factors, and all sorts of factors; but let’s just say that I didn’t really have any in-depth training in how to know myself, how to know my feelings, or how to communicate truthfully, openly, clearly, and directly. So I found myself in doctoral training for clinical psychology, being thrown into lots of different scenarios, including writing assignments and having to write and complete very complicated psychological testing reports. So there were more than enough assignments and I just really had to grow up as a human being, but I also had to find my way through this pattern of delay, distress, and avoidance, because I wasn’t doing myself or anyone else any favors by sticking to this pattern, and I will say that the lucky strike I had was when I volunteered to put on a procrastination workshop at a major University. I really had no business volunteering for this, but it ended up showing me that procrastination was not something that was inherent to me. Really, it was not something that was permanent or part of my character. It was just a bunch of traits that I could actually recover from and alter, and so I think that was really a turning point for me in terms of both self-worth and procrastination. And I’ve made a career and an expertise out of helping people to do the same for themselves, to really realize that procrastination is not a dead-end street. It’s not the end of the story, and it’s certainly not your best coping mechanism.
Nicole Tsong
Well, Christine, thank you for sharing all of that. I was interested in so many pieces of it. When we were talking beforehand, (Christine and I know each other through a connected group of colleagues), you were speaking about this experience of learning to connect to feelings and then procrastination and throwing that workshop. If you could actually tie together, for everyone, the connection between your feelings and procrastination, or it might even be not feeling your feelings and procrastination.
Christine Li
What great questions. Let’s just say that feelings are complicated. Let’s start there. If you are taught that rougher feelings like anger or jealousy or whatever you’re feeling, are one’s not to be looked at, or certainly not to be shared, then you’re going to be closed off to a whole part of your experience that is actually very alive and very meaningful. They are there to inform you about what to do, what options to take, what options to close down, and I was also very lucky to find my way into the field of psychology because that is the field where we get to play with different identities. Different ways of speaking, identifying different parts of ourselves without feeling like we’re in danger. So when one decides that, “Oh, I’m going to take on this procrastination habit of mine”, what you end up facing is not really the work, although that will come. It’s more your feelings about yourself, your identity, how you talk to yourself, how you see yourself, how you represent yourself, or how you fail to do that with other people, and it’s a lot. It really is a lot. It took me many years of experimentation and messing up. Having to tell people the truth and having to be in therapy, and benefiting from therapy of course. Doing a lot of training, doing a lot of Webinars, doing whatever I could to just learn a little bit more about myself each time, and, of course, working with patients. It’s such a blessing in that way because you get to see into the human brain and into the human heart. What makes people tick, what makes people freak out. They tend to be very similar things that we’re all so alike, in such important ways. And then of course we’re incredibly different – I don’t want to ignore that! But I do think we are all incredibly alike. We’re all inclined to be safe. There are people who are risk takers, but I think those people feel safe inside and they’re chasing whatever they’re chasing, and being very high risk. I happen to not be very high risk. But I think there are just emotional parts of ourselves that are yearning to be known, and we see these parts, when we develop symptoms, when we have preferences, when our intuition is telling us to pay attention – all sorts of things. When we fall in love – these are all emotional communications that we’re having with ourselves, and if we’re procrastinating, it’s likely we’re tired. We’re ignoring parts of ourselves that are really important and personal, because we’re thinking, “The world outside me is burning. I’m about to walk into a catastrophe. Who has time to pay attention to me?” And that may actually be the beginning of all the trouble. That there was maybe a little bit less attention now than maybe could have been paid to the developing self, to the feelings of the inner child, the inner self, the personal self, the private self. Then we all get to the school years, and we feel everything is about external performance. Nicole was kind enough to come onto my podcast and we talked a lot about how we have to teach ourselves away from that early training… that everything needs to be known from the exterior, from the outside of ourselves… when actually, so much is shown to us from the inside.
Nicole Tsong
Beautiful. Thank you so much for articulating that complex topic. It’s like our identities are what are affecting our procrastination habits, and I am a recovering procrastinator myself. Journalism really trained me out of it, like deadlines got me into action and I started to identify as somebody who could be really effective on deadlines, and then I was, and all of a sudden I could get a lot done. So as you’re speaking about that identity, I was curious then, as a child and especially being Chinese-American like you were, were you taught about what kind of identity was hampering you, that was keeping you in that procrastination mode?
Christine Li
I think a lot of things, a lot of parts and pieces of my identity. I think I had a tendency towards just general “lateness”. So when you act like that as a child, you’re going to be seen in a certain way by people, and it’s the same as when we’re late as adults. So there are tags like these irresponsible things and stuff I think we start to carry with us, and then we start with this new situation. “Well if I’m starting as an irresponsible person, that’s the baseline, that’s what we have to work with”, and I think when you recover from having identity or self-thoughts that are along those lines, then you get to start with “I’m fine, I’m safe, I’m completely competent enough to handle this, or at least I trust that I will be, and it’s a whole new beginning”. It’s a whole new person showing up for the challenge. Even though we’re in the same body. It’s the same person. I’m the same person who used to be late all the time. I’m now only occasionally late, but really transformed, because I don’t have to see myself as someone who’s always late anymore like I used to.
Nicole Tsong
I love what you’re sharing about how it’s really a shift in identity, which has to come from habits and ways you search to see each of them. You could probably do an entire podcast just on that topic alone, it’s so interesting. You kind of touched on what I actually loved to hear from you. A little bit is your journey around self-worth, and I’m curious, as you may not have tied it in together this way, but that tie between really being comfortable enough within yourself to start to change your identity of yourself, it’s like what you were referring to as safe, and what I think of as self-worth. Could you share a little bit more about that journey, of yourself?
Christine Li
I will share that. It was after the birth of my second child that I think it no longer was about self-worth. It was almost like a survival situation where I had done a good bit of personal work through therapy and my professional training. But then there was this whole world of motherhood that opened up, and I felt like I had to take care of everyone, not just myself. It was more like I had to merge. I had to straighten up all the errant parts that I really wasn’t paying attention to because I hadn’t had to, as I hadn’t been a mother for that long. But I knew that with the addition of another child, I needed to really hone in and develop things like authority – that is part of parenting by the way. So it’s not just recovering from procrastination. We need these skills to actually be competent adults, I think. We need time management. We need priority management. We need to be able to say no when we really need to say no. We need to have appropriate boundaries with people. When we feel like those years, when you have little kids hanging around, that time is in short supply.
I think because I’m past those baby years now, I feel with each passing year I value time even more. I think because I’m getting older really quickly. But also because I’ve been through what I’ve been through. Training and procrastination, childbirth and parenting, that you start to really see that every second is a gift, every second is so valuable. I wouldn’t at this point in my life want to be throwing away these seconds and minutes and days, thinking that I’m terrible, thinking that I’m irresponsible, thinking that I’m late, thinking that this is so critical, thinking that I’m such a big mess and there’s no recovery from that – because that would be a really big waste. My time and I want to say to our listeners listening today, that no matter what your age is, I don’t want you to waste your time attacking yourself, and I know Nicole feels the same because she’s been on her own journey of healing and transformation really. This is the gift that we can give ourselves, and it’s a gift where everybody can feel so alive, so safe, so powerful, all at the same time, but it does require release of your old habits. Nicole mentioned the word “habits” and I’ve become pretty obsessed with the term and with teaching people how to do habits well, so that you’re not draining yourself of your energy anymore. You actually find your energy again, once you correct your habits.
Nicole Tsong
That’s so powerful. What you were saying about how you could feel alive, powerful, and safe, and also about being in connection with yourself, and I also loved what you were sharing about how it’s a waste of time really, to be hard on yourself. I have never heard it framed up that way and it really is so true. It’s such a waste of energy because it doesn’t take you anywhere except down, and then it doesn’t really bring you anywhere positive or supportive. When we are hard on ourselves, do you have a habit that you like to teach or work with people around managing that?
Christine Li
Yes I do, and it was one of the best things I was taught while on the internship. (I was trying to think whether it was Externship or Internship). So Internship is what you do after your proper schooling for doctoral training. And I was in an inpatient eating disorders unit where the young women there were so frail and so medically compromised, that the belief was traditional psychotherapy practices would not be optimal, because their bodies were focused on recovery and getting food from the starvation standpoint, rather than doing deeper level exploration of feelings, so I was taught cognitive Behavioral therapy, and one of the basic exercises of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is to argue for the other side – be the lawyer for the other side. So if you’re thinking, “Oh I’m always late, I’m so irresponsible, how can anyone ever trust me”, you then, in the same brain in the same body, have to argue for the other side and you have to argue just as emphatically. So I would argue that there are times when I am on time and I’m really working on this behavior, and I know that in my heart of hearts, I care about my responsibilities. I’m actually not an irresponsible person. The real truth for me too, is that there is an option when we are so extreme with our negative views on ourselves. It’s a way of protecting ourselves from harm. From doing something wrong. But it really is too extreme and there’s so many thoughts that we can have that are more flexible, that are more forgiving, that are more reasonable, and that are more aligned with the true reality of who we are, and what we’re capable of.
Those extreme thoughts really keep us in an underperforming space. So They are a waste of time because we have to recover from those thoughts and feelings before we can even start our work. We have this whole train of thinking and then we have to recover from that before we can get our active mind, our problem-solving mind, into action. I just say to everyone now to just cut that entire experience out. Let’s take the cleaver to that experience. Some people can do that and some people just don’t believe it’s possible. But that’s the work of coaching, that we will do this patiently. We will do this with techniques that help you individually. You as a person, you are the unique person that has the unique coping mechanisms and defenses. It’s okay, we have time, but we just don’t want to use it procrastinating.
Nicole Tsong
I Love it. Be the lawyer for the other side. It was just like give the evidence and going full-on, is what I was hearing when you said that, and it’s like yes, argue for the other side because there’s proof both ways. There’s always proof both ways, and it’s which proof you are choosing to focus on?
Christine Li
I want to share something I saw just before we were recording. I was on TikTok I think, and I saw someone say in her car that she was reading a book which was teaching her that it takes just as much energy to love yourself, as it does to hate yourself, and I immediately thought to myself, based on what I know, that it takes much more energy to hate yourself. Because I think when you treat yourself with love, as this woman on screen was trying to encourage people to do, you bring back your energy – you start to restore your energy and peace inside, and so you have that much more energy left over. And like I said just a couple of minutes ago, hating yourself is such an energy drain. It wastes your time. And then you have to recover from it like you would recover from an illness that came over you, and you know how that is if you’re recovering from jet lag or illness. It’s a bummer because you’re not fully yourself and you’re not able to do what you know you’re capable of doing.
Nicole Tsong
Well, your body has to put so much energy into healing you before you can. Whereas loving yourself is easy like, “oh I can just be in it and I will say that because I know I said loving yourself is so easy”. But it can also be from actions of love versus just being, “I love myself”. I Always think that’s kind of hard for some people, just doing actions to show yourself love.
Christine Li
Yes, I will share that when people first come to see me oftentimes. They’re so exhausted and so depleted from trying, or from worrying about not trying, that I tell them the first thing to do is actually not to do their work – which they’re not expecting me to say. But I tell them to do something that’s really very unrelated to the work. Do something fun, something in conjunction with somebody else, that’s social. Because oftentimes people who are procrastinating are also denying themselves the fun of socializing. And it’s just a little bit of a restoration project of saying you know what? you’re allowed to have your life back. You’re allowed to have all the different elements: your health, your social life, your financial life, your productivity. All of it is allowed and you can handle it. You can actually be the captain of that ship.
Nicole Tsong
I love that. I am also always coaching my folks into having fun because it is something that we sometimes really forget. The whole point of this life is ultimately to enjoy it.. It’s not to be terrible and hard and miserable. No, actually enjoy it. So I love what you’re sharing about that. And that procrastination really is again a surface thing, that’s showing us something much deeper.
Christine Li
Yes, and I will add that procrastination is one of the most unfun things you can do for yourself. So you know it is not the path of choice. You know there are other paths out there, where there’s so much excitement, and easier ways through than tearing yourself apart and worrying, and not facing the thing you really want to face.
Nicole Tsong
Such a profound statement in the theme of self-worth, Christine. I’m curious, what is your favorite thing about yourself?
Christine Li
My favorite thing about myself might be that I really like to try things. So I love learning. I think people say that a lot. I like experiencing new perspectives, new opportunities, new chances, and coincidences. I just like exploring. I will say that I like exploring the psyche, but I also like exploring how people do things, and I like exploring things like hobbies. Things that are new, I think really light me up because it makes me think, “Ah, how does that fit into the whole grand scheme of things? How can I make this fit into my own life, or does it fit in because nowadays I don’t want to fit everything into my life anymore”, and I think that has helped. Another thing that I like about myself lately is that I enjoy calm in my heart because that really wasn’t an experience that I had growing up and into my thirties I would say, and now I really have that most days – this kind of lingering and constant sense that everything is actually okay and that I don’t have to freak out. It’s a really lovely thing.
Nicole Tsong
That sounds like the dream of many of our listeners – to have that peace in your heart and not be freaking out over every little thing. I’m curious, could you share a little bit about the last time you felt challenged in your self-worth, and how you move through it, because what I find for most women is that it is a perpetual journey. Like as soon as we move through one, we’re often confronted with another. So if there’s a recent example, you might be able to share.
Christine Li
Well, Nicole, you and I are both entrepreneurs as well as coaches, and I think the entrepreneur life is just one test after another of how we can withstand fragilities. In our sense of being worthy, I think because each product launch, or each offer, or each podcast episode even, can be a gauge of how we’re feeling about ourselves if we let it represent that, and I think in part it always does because we are doing these events and these offers and these launches – as ourselves. So I don’t think we can really fully avoid that, but the effort of saying, “I’m not going to let it bring me down, I’m not going to bring myself down”, is a real win and I think no matter what the numbers are at the end of every launch or at the end of any project, if we’re feeling like we’ve taken care of ourselves in the middle, that’s a real win. So I’ve had to learn that the hard way because I like to launch a lot. I like to experiment with things and I’ve seen my emotions go up and down. But I also have seen myself, over time, get really stronger about who I am, what I represent, what I’m here to do in life and in my career, and I think that’s just been again, a really valuable thing to do. So I don’t regret a minute of it. Has it been easy? No, it has not been easy. But I’m glad and feel very grateful that I’m able to enjoy entrepreneurship and do the work that I feel I was meant to do.
Nicole Tsong
Well, you shared that very eloquently. I feel like entrepreneurship is one long personal development journey every single day. Christine, are you ready for a little lightning round of fun questions, in the spirit of fun which we’ve been speaking about?
Christine Li
Yes, sure.
Nicole Tsong
So here’s the first one. What was the last thing you watched on TV?
Christine Li
Oh wow, I don’t watch much TV, and I will say that is a great procrastination tip. I think that really helped me to get chunks of time back because I would mindlessly watch, and I would mindlessly do a lot of other things like roam the malls, or do errands I find I no longer needed to do. It’s funny how I thought they were critical before, but really I think we can cut a lot of things out. So the last thing I watched was the Grammy’s last night, and I really had a great time because they did a really wonderful job of it this time. I saw a lot of my favorite performers each win a single statuette, which I thought was really lovely (I guess the Grammys isn’t a statuette?). But it was nice to see people supporting each other. It made me think about music and incorporating music into my business more because music really is a healing and enlivening avenue that we have, which I don’t really use as much as I should in my business. So that’s what I last watched.
Nicole Tsong
We got her show and a tip, so good! Okay so Christine, what’s on your nightstand?
Christine Li
My nightstand has a pile of books that are only partially read, including the book, The Power of Now, which I think has been interesting so far. It’s a book that I’ve started and stopped a couple of times. I have an Alexa and I listen to music. I do listen to music every morning or a part of every day. And I have some crystals. 2 crystals. One is an amethyst and the other one is blue, a light blue. It’s selenite. I think that’s how you pronounce it. They’re not there for any particular reason, I just like them, so I enjoy having things that I like around me. There’s a chachka from my wedding. A heart-shaped box which is really kind of funky. So it’s a little bit of a cluttered space – but it is me.
Nicole Tsong
Beautiful. Thank you. Okay, and you said you like new things – so this question is perfect for you. When was the last time you tried something new and what was it?
Christine Li
I will have to think about this. I think it might have been a while since I’ve tried something new. I will have to think. Oh, all I had to do was look to my left to have something I can share with you on video, for those of you who are watching the video. A 5-year journal. It happened to be New Year’s this year that I was in this cute drugstore in a neighboring town, and I saw this book and thought I could give it to someone. But then I thought maybe that person wouldn’t like this gift, so I decided to try this idea for myself. The book has 5 years of calendar dates and you can see with each year what you wrote the year before, and I think it’s really sweet, especially that I’ve been hearing a lot about the power of journaling, but never thought of myself as a journaler. So I thought I could do 2 sentences a day and try to keep up with this, and miraculously I have been keeping up with it so far. So that is my new, recent experiment, and it’s the first thing that comes to mind.
Nicole Tsong
Well, that’s a very impressive commitment! A 5-year journal. Because mine are like three months at a time. Perfect. Okay, last question, what are your top 3 most used emojis?
Christine Li
Oh, I definitely use the big, fat, red heart emoji pretty much every day – the one with the teeth, looking really stressed. That’s definitely my favorite one.
Nicole Tsong
Darwin.
Christine Li
And then I tend to use the fire one, because if I’m writing emails to my list, I talk about a lot of hot things. So I like to use the hot fire one too. I’m curious, what are yours?
Nicole Tsong
Love it. I use so many I feel like they’re constantly rotating, but the purple heart – because I’m a BTS fan. So k-pop. The purple heart is for sure on the top, and I use the laughing emoji a lot. I try to use the sideways one, to not age myself, with Gen Z, because I know they don’t really use the laughing emoji that much, but I like to use the laughing emoji. I also use the fire or the boom one, with the spark, because I feel the same way. I’m like there’s just lots of exciting fun things that can happen and I always want to bring the sense of play and fun for people, so I’m with you – like either the fire or the spark is happening a lot in my messages and texts and stuff. Well Christine, where can people reach you if they want to find out more, or want to work with you or hear more from you?
Christine Li
Yes, thank you, I love my podcast so please visit me over there and grab a listen or two. It’s the “Make Time for Success” podcast Nicole, which will be on in May, and I have a bunch of wonderful guests on the show. It’s the start of the third year of the podcasts, so there are more than enough episodes to do your decluttering with, or to do your daily commute with. I invite you to listen and would appreciate you giving me a Follow there. I’m also on social media quite a bit as a procrastination coach, and my website is procrastination coaching as well. I have a list of free resources for people that I can share with you and your audience Nicole. All you would need to do is go to procrastinationcoach.com/start. The reason I said “start” is because these are resources that will just help you get started if you’ve been procrastinating, to help you get a little bit more organized, and to get your plans a little more in order. It’s those kinds of resources, and they’re all free. So again, it’s procrastinationcoach.com/start
Nicole Tsong
Well, you do not want to miss out on the opportunity to hang out more with Dr Christine Li, because she is so fun and such a beautiful host. I had such a great time on her podcast as well. Make sure you check out all of those things – we’re listing them in the show notes as well, to make it easy for you to access. And I want to say thank you so much to you Christine, for being here. It’s been such an honor and I love the kismet of our connection, and being able to be on each other’s podcast is just really a gift. So thank you so much for being here.
Christine Li
Thank you Nicole, you’re amazing. Hugs to you, good luck to you going forward. You’re going to rock this podcast.
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