Do The Damn Thing

We don't procrastinate because we're lazy. You're not avoiding the task, you're avoiding the story that you made up about the task. We don't procrastinate on the time it takes, we procrastinate on the time we imagine it'll take. Welcome to the Unblocked Woman podcast.

I'm Amy Sanders. For years, I believed the next level of my life, the business, would come from a better strategy, working harder, figuring out that perfect plan. But eventually, I saw the real truth. The biggest ceiling in our lives is not strategy, it's identity.

The patterns we don't see, the subtle ways we play small, the version of ourselves that we keep defaulting back to even when we know we're capable of more. This podcast is where we bring those patterns into the light. We talk about identity, leadership, growth, and what it actually takes to become the woman who can truly hold the life and business she wants. No fluff, no performance, just honest conversation about stepping fully into your power.

So go ahead and subscribe and follow the show. And remember, the moment you see the pattern, you can finally break it. We don't procrastinate because we're lazy. I want to say that up front because most women beat themselves up over this, like it's a character flaw, something's wrong with them.

It's not. We procrastinate because our brain has decided the task is bigger than it actually is. And once it decides that, it treats avoid as the smart move, the thing we should do. Avoid the task.

Here's the story that we tell ourselves. We tell ourselves, this is going to take forever. This is going to be so hard. I don't have the energy for this right now.

And that story, the story that you're telling yourself, not the task, but the story becomes the reason that we don't start. You're not avoiding the task. You're avoiding the story that you made up about the task. The brain's job isn't to be accurate.

It's to be efficient. So the brain's job is to be efficient. The first time a task feels unpleasant or heavy, your brain files the whole thing under. This is big.

This is hard. Let's avoid this. And your brain never bothers to update that file, even months of walking past it. It doesn't remeasure.

It just remembers the label that what it thinks it will happen if you do the task. That's why a task can sit on your list for a year and you never once stop to ask, wait, how long? How long would this actually take me? You've already decided.

Your brain's already decided. Your brain decided for you once in a half a second, and you have been living inside that verdict ever since. So before we talk about how to break this cycle, I want to name what's actually costing you to leave it undone because it's not nothing. It's actually a lot.

It's not neutral. It's a slow, quiet energy leak. An undone thing doesn't just sit there quietly. It hums in the background of your mind all day, every day.

There's a real psychological reason for this. Our brain hangs on to unfinished tasks way harder than finished ones. An open loop stays loud in your head precisely because it's open. The second that you close it, your brain lets it go.

But until then, it's sitting in the corner of your mind, taking a deep breath. It's not just sitting there. It's sitting there. It's sitting up a little bit of processing power every single time you brush past it.

And you do brush past it every single day. It's the pile of mail that's still not opened, the bills that aren't paid, the email you haven't answered, the closet that you've avoid opening. Maybe if you open it, things will crash down and fall all over the floor. It's the conversation that you keep meaning to have but still haven't.

It's that invoice that's sitting in your drafts folder. None of these little tasks are dramatic. That's the thing. They're little.

That's exactly why they're so sneaky. They are too small to be a problem. So you never sit down and deal with them like it's a problem. Instead, they just quietly tax you day after day, costing you energy.

And every time you walk past it, a tiny percentage of your attention leaks out of you and leaks towards it. Think of it like an app that's running in the background of your phone. You're not using your phone. You didn't even open it today.

Or you're not using the app on your phone. You haven't even opened it. But it's still draining the battery in the background the whole time. That's leaked energy.

You don't notice it as a single drain. You notice it as being a little more tired, a little more irritated, a little more off than the day should warrant. And you can't always trace it back to the thing because the thing is too small to blame. So how do you actually find what's leaking your energy right now?

We are going to get specific. All right. So I want you to make a list right now or even after this episode of the things that have been bugging you. I'm not talking about your big goals or your five-year plan.

I'm talking about the little, small, naggy things. I'm talking about the things that have been bugging you. The thing that you're like, I really should deal with that things. Next to each one, I want you to guess how long it would actually take to do it.

Just to guess. Just write it down. How long would it actually take? And then, this is the part that changes everything, go do one of them and do it for real.

We don't procrastinate on the time it takes. We procrastinate on the time we imagine it'll take. I bet real money that almost every item on your list, makes a fraction of the time your brain has assigned it. This isn't a coincidence.

It's the whole mechanism. The task was never actually big. Your brain just labeled it as big and you've been playing, you've been paying rent on that label ever since without ever going back to check if it's actually true. We all do this.

And this is where I want to give you what I call the 20 minute rule. If something has been bugging you and it would take less than 20 minutes to handle, go do it now. Don't analyze it. Don't say, I'm just going to get to it this weekend.

Just set your timer and go and do. Because the question underneath all of this is 20 minutes of mild, uncomfortable effort actually is worth more than the daily tax that you've been paying every single time you walk past it. For most, this math isn't even close. I want to make this real for you today.

I'm talking about this today on the podcast because I'm guilty of this and I did this exact thing to myself for an entire year. Let me just tell you about my fridge. So we have this fridge in my garage and it's where we keep the stuff that we don't want cluttering up the inside fridge. So it's the extra milk, it's the back stock, it's the stuff that doesn't fit.

And it's just a regular part of our daily life to have this fridge in our garage. We're in that fridge almost every day. In fact, I would argue that we're in that fridge every single day. So last summer, we are now talking about a year ago, my son spilled something sticky and purple in there.

I still don't even know what it was. I don't know if it was like a drink or like a popsicle that melted. I have no idea what it was. But around that same time, my daughter spilled some milk in there too.

And nobody cleaned it up. My son didn't clean it up. My daughter didn't clean it up. And I didn't even ask them to.

My husband didn't clean it up either. We just kept living. We kept opening up the fridge, kept getting what we needed, kept putting stuff in the fridge, kept closing it again. And here's something that's just so funny to me in hindsight.

Every single time I've opened that fridge, I would have this flash of like, ugh, this is so gross. I'd be grossed out. I'd be bugged. I'd be bugged with it like they haven't cleaned it.

By the way, I haven't even asked them to. I was just annoyed that this fridge was not clean. My husband would complain about it too out loud regularly. And we even thought about paying one of our other kids, one of the ones that did not make the mess, which is also weird to me that I'm even saying this out loud.

We almost talked about, or we did talk about paying one of the kids to clean it, but we didn't. Nobody did anything about it for a year. We just kept absorbing that little hint of irritation over and over every time we needed milk or leftovers or whatever was in there. Multiply that by basically every day for 12 months.

That's not a small cost. That's a lot of leaked energy over something that deep down I knew was completely in my control to fix. Today, I cleaned the damn fridge. I'm not going to pretend that it's a glamorous, but it's true.

I have been so bugged by this fridge. Me, my husband, I'm sure my kids have been too for an entire year, which I admit, yes, is gross. I'm not proud of the year part. When I started thinking about when this happened, I kind of died that it's been like basically a year.

But I am proud of what happens next. Guess how long it took me to clean the fridge? 20 minutes. 20 minutes to clean out a fridge.

That had been quietly costing us all these little pits of peace almost every day for a year. And it feels amazing. We also have more space in the fridge. Genuinely, I closed that door and felt lighter, like something had been resolved, but had nothing to do with a fridge.

And everything to do with finally closing a loop that had been open for way too long. It had been bugging us for a year. It took 20 minutes. That's the gap almost every year.

The avoided task is hiding. And that gap between what we imagine and what's actually true is where almost all of your leaked energy is hiding too. So here's the teaching underneath the fridge story. The task was never the problem.

It was the story about the task that was the problem. I thought that all that sticky stuff would take forever. And so we just couldn't do anything about it. Piling stuff over it.

We just kept putting more stuff in the fridge and we were just grossed out every time we opened up the fridge. As people, we are so quick to overestimate the effort of the avoided thing and so quick to underestimate the relief of finally doing it. Both of those miscalculations point the same direction towards staying stuck. And both of them are almost always wrong.

The second I got done cleaning the fridge, I texted my husband like, guess what I did? I said, I cleaned the fridge. His text back was like all caps. Amazing.

I'm so excited over a freaking fridge. So right now I want you to think about your own list. The email that's been sitting there. Maybe it's a doctor's appointment that you haven't booked that you know that you should.

The drawer that you've been avoiding. The text that you keep meaning to send. None of these things are five-hour projects. Almost all of them are 20-minute tasks or less.

And we think that they are a hundred-hour projects. They're not. And the second that you actually do them, you don't just get the task done. You get the daily tax back.

What it's costing you. The energy leaks. Every single day going forward, you get to open that fridge, answer that email, walk past that drawer, and feel nothing. That's not nothing.

That's your energy returned to you on repeat forever because you're not worrying about that thing anymore. It's done. This is the same principle we talk about with rooms and in the kitchen. It's done.

The thing that's quietly shaping you doesn't have to be a person or a relationship. Sometimes it's a fridge. Sometimes it's an inbox. Sometimes it's a conversation you've been avoiding.

Whatever it is, it's costing you more by staying undone than it would cost you to just go handle it. So here's what I want you to walk away with today. We don't procrastinate on the time something takes. We procrastinate on the time we imagine it will take.

And almost every time, the imagined version is a lie. So here's your homework. What are you putting off that's bugging you? Is it worth the energy it's costing you every day by not doing it?

You don't need a whole free weekend to get it done. You don't need a system, a planner, a fresh start on Monday. All you might need is 20 minutes and the willingness to stop paying rent, energy rent, on a story your brain made up a long time ago and never bothered to update. So go find your fridge, whatever it is, and go clean it.

If this one hit you somewhere, if this podcast landed, send it to a friend who's been meaning to do the thing for a long time. And save it for next time you catch yourself doing something small. Make sure you're subscribed. Go do the damn thing and feel amazing after.

I know that I do. And I will see you... Right back here next week. Hope you have a fabulous week.

Bye. Thanks for listening to The Unblocked Woman. Listen, you don't rise by waiting, you rise by leading. So if this episode sparked a shift, send it to a woman who needs to hear next.

And if you're ready to go deeper, join the Unblocked Woman Collective or begin the Unblocked Method at amysanders. co. And remember, see it, shift it, become magnetic. Your next level starts now.