Stop Procrastinating

Procrastination rarely looks like doing nothing. More often, it looks like a mortgage broker “staying productive” all day while the real work keeps slipping to next week. When swap rates jump, lenders pull deals, and clients need calm guidance fast, it’s easy to tell ourselves we’ll get back to marketing, systems, and long-term planning once things settle. But if we’re not careful, firefighting turns into a pattern of avoidance that quietly stalls business growth.

We unpack what procrastination actually is: not laziness, but discomfort. We dig into the common drivers for self-employed people such as fear of failure, perfectionism, low motivation after a heavy client day, and anxiety about making the wrong decision. Then we shine a light on “productive avoidance,” where researching the perfect CRM, polishing website copy, or tweaking brand colours feels responsible while you dodge the outreach, content, and follow-ups that genuinely move the needle. A simple question helps you spot it fast: is this task directly tied to revenue, client service, or long-term growth?

From there, we get practical. You’ll hear how to shrink the first step, set deadlines that matter, add accountability, and design your environment for focus. We also cover making progress visible, protecting energy with single-tasking, using CRM automation and delegation to remove admin friction, and reinforcing momentum by celebrating small wins. The thread running through it all is progress over perfection, because “done” creates feedback and traction, while “perfect” often creates delay.

If it helps, subscribe, share the show with a broker mate, and leave a review so more self-employed business owners can find it.

I help employed mortgage brokers go self-employed with clarity, confidence and one-to-one mentoring. Find out how Pathways or Coaching works at craigskelton.co.uk

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Transcript

Welcome And Market Context

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Hi, and welcome to this week's The Mortgage Broker Broadcast. I'm your host, Craig Skelton, and this show is for mortgage brokers and business owners who want to build a sustainable business without losing sight of why they start the whole thing in the first place. We talk about mindset, habits, and the realities of being self-employed. A couple of weeks ago, we talked about firefighting in a chaotic market and how it's okay to focus on locking in rates and calming clients in an emergency. This week we're going to slow things down again and look at a quieter villain that can derail your progress long after the crisis passes. I'm talking about procrastination. So why talk about procrastination now? Well, with swap rates jumping around, lenders pulling deals, clients panicking, it's tempting to put long-term projects on a hold. Maybe you postponed planning your marketing because you were chasing rate switches or delayed reviewing your protection clients because the phone wouldn't stop ringing. In a crisis, reactive work is necessary, but if we're not careful, the habit of reacting can become a pattern of avoidance. Business owners and the self-employed often mistake motion for progress. Procrastination often disguises itself as productive avoidance, spending days researching the best software or tweaking our brand colours or rewriting your website copy instead of calling potential clients. When you're self-employed and answer to no one, it's alarmingly easy to stay busy without touching the tough, forward-moving work. But delaying these tasks has a cost. Procrastination stems from fear of failure, lack of motivation, perfectionism, and decision anxiety. And it can lead to missed deadlines and lower productivity. Awareness and recognizing these patterns is the first step to breaking them. So what is procrastination? Procrastination isn't laziness, it's a response to discomfort. It can be described as the voluntary delay of an intended task, even when you know it may lead to negative consequences. For business owners and the self-employed, procrastination often feels like constantly preparing and never executing. I would define procrastination as avoiding or delaying necessary tasks due to fear of failure, lack of motivation, perfectionism, or anxiety. These reasons resonate for most. Fear of failure shows up as a worry about how a new piece of content will be received. Lack of motivation creeps in when you're exhausted after back-to-back client calls. Perfectionism keeps you tweaking your social posts instead of hitting publish. Anxiety about making the wrong decision can keep you stuck in research mode. And adding to that, constant distractions, emails, other people's social media, urgent requests, and procrastination becomes default. So let's look at procrastination versus productive avoidance. One reason procrastination is hard to spot is it often feels like productive work. As I said, productive avoidance. You're doing something that feels helpful, like comparing CRM systems or reading another article about the housing or the mortgage market, but you're dodging the high impact tasks that actually moves your business forward. For brokers, productive avoidance might be researching for a new perfect CRM instead of reaching out to past clients. It might be agonizing over that brand colour instead of posting that video content. It might be reformatting your terms of business instead of recording a short social reel. A key test to this is to ask yourself: is this task directly linked to revenue, client service, or long-term growth? If not, you may be avoiding something deeper. Perfectionism is often the culprit. As I've said in an episode of the Morning Mindset podcast quite some time ago, chasing perfection can lead to disappointment, procrastination, and even burnout. When we hold ourselves to impossible standards, we risk getting trapped in self-criticism instead of taking imperfect action. So, how do you break the procrastination loop? Well, the good news is procrastination is a pattern that you can change. But how do you go about that? The first thing to do is shrink the first step. The hardest part of meaningful work is starting out to lower the mental barrier, shrink the first step until it feels almost too small to resist. Instead of saying, I need to record next month's social content, start with just one. Instead of sort of saying I need to review my business plan, start with something basic. Even just opening the document and having a look at it, you could also anchor tiny actions to existing routines. And that also works as well. The next thing to do is set clear deadlines and accountability. Without deadlines, tasks expand to fill the space that you have given them. If you've been meaning to update your website for months, set a deadline. I'll publish the new about page by Friday at three o'clock. Pair that deadline with accountability. Tell a colleague, mentor, even a partner or a spouse, and ask them to check in with you to see if you've done what you said you were going to do. When someone else is waiting for your work, it's harder to quietly extend the timeline. And then design your environment for focus. Your surroundings influence your behavior. People working at messy desks feel more mentally drained and take longer to complete tasks than those who work on an orderly desk. Clear your workspace, close unnecessary browser tabs, put your phone out of reach. Creating a consistent setup, specific lighting, background music, or playlist signals to your brain that it's time now to focus. And then make your progress visible. Progress is a real powerful motivator, but only if you can see it. Break projects into small steps you can complete within an hour or so or a day at a time and track them with a whiteboard or a simple checklist. Watching tasks move from to-do to done gives you momentum and shows you where you need to adjust. You then need to guard your energy and understand that multitasking is a myth. Switching between tasks comes with mental costs. It takes your time, takes time for your brain to re-immerse itself into the original task. Plan your most important work when you are naturally most alert, which is often the first part of the day. Protect those blocks by silencing notifications and checking email on a schedule. And when you're tired, take a break. Stepping away can give you that fresh idea and improve your focus. And you can also automate or delegate low-value tasks. Admin work can be like a procrastination magnet. You avoid high-value work because you feel obliged to clear your inbox first. Use tools like your CRM automation, scheduling apps or AI assistance to help handle repetitive tasks. Freeing yourself up from busy work makes it easy to start work that actually matters. Delegate to support staff or outsource help when you can. And the last thing is reward momentum and celebrate those small wins. Positive reinforcement strengthens habits. When you finish a difficult task, something you've been putting off for a long time, reward yourself. It doesn't matter what that reward looks like, but you reward yourself. It's just important to make sure you feel rewarded. Celebrating the small wins builds confidence and motivates you to keep going. And we need to be building habits that last. Our last few episodes have emphasized on discipline and routines. Habits are the antidote to prolonged firefighting. Regular morning routines sets the tone for your day. Time blocking your calendar creates a rhythm for strategy, client calls, marketing, and rest too. That's important. I recommend daily planning, time blocking, using a CRM for reminders and taking regular breaks. When you time block your day, your week, and commit to routines, there's less room for procrastination. Habits also help you stay visible when life gets hectic. If you can't create fresh content, repurpose a snippet from an old post or share a client story or share a client recent review. The key is consistency. Your audience doesn't need new ideas every single day. They just need regular reminders that you are there to help. So let's look at progress over perfection. At the heart of procrastination is often perfectionism. Striving for flawlessness leads to procrastination and burnout. The cure is to embrace progress over perfection. Instead of obsessing over the perfect video or blog post, focus on delivering value and improving with feedback. Your first attempt doesn't have to be perfect. It will never be your best. It just has to be published. Refuse to label yourself as a procrastinator. Shrink the tasks, lower the barriers, take the first step. If perfectionism creeps in, remind yourself that done is better than perfect. And if you fall back into old habits, practice self-compassion. Every day is a chance to begin again. So just to wrap up on the key takeaways from this week's podcast, procrastination often hides as productive avoidance, tweaking manner details instead of doing the work that counts. It's driven by fear of failure, lack of motivation, perfectionism, and anxiety. Break the cycle by shrinking the first step, setting deadlines with accountability, designing your environment for focus, making progress visible, single tasking, automating low-value tasks and rewarding momentum. Habits like time blocking, daily planning reduce decision fatigue and keeps you visible even when the market is chaotic. And let go of perfectionism. Progress is far more important than perfection. And as always, remember your why, the reason you became self-employed in the first place. You don't have to overhaul everything all at once. Choose one area where you've been procrastinating and commit to a tiny step today. So that's it. That's this week's podcast. Thanks for listening. If you found this episode helpful, please subscribe, please share it, please leave a review. We really appreciate it. And as always, please don't forget to run your own race.