Nathan Honess has just brought up my new book, and I've got a copy in my hand. It's Done Beats Perfect, The Secrets to Overcoming Procrastination and Getting Things Done, and it's out in paperback the day we record.
I flick through to a chapter called A Confession and start reading it out.
"I got stuck, and I procrastinated whilst writing a book about overcoming procrastination and getting things done."
That's me, on the page, in print. I'd even put posts on social media saying I wasn't sure the book would ever get finished. "People thought I was joking. I wasn't."
This was the second half of my chat with Nathan on Power of Progress, back in April 2021. He used to come on training I ran, so he'd heard me go on about this stuff more than once.
Stuck on my own book
I told Nathan it felt wrong not to put that in. Almost all of us hit a wall at some point in anything we're trying to achieve. If I was writing about how to get past those walls and hit one myself, the honest thing was to say so. "If you're experiencing some difficulty, well, so did I."
In that chapter I wrote that we all have times when old habits come back to the surface, and that I wish more people were open and honest about it.
The pause gave me something as well. The section that came after it couldn't have been written without it. "Because I wasn't the person I needed to be in order to write it."
Shift your standards
Near the end I threw something out there. In the personal development and business coaching world I was heavily involved with at the time, people love telling you to raise your standards. "I actually think you need to shift your standards."
"Because sometimes your standards are so damn high, that's your problem."
Hold yourself to something you can't reach and you never get any momentum. You just end up beating yourself up about what you're not doing. I wasn't saying lower the bar until everything's easy. Sometimes you just shift it down a bit and ask, "Hang on. What can I actually do today?"
"And once I get proficient at that, then I can put the standard back up." Maybe even higher than it was before.
The example I gave Nathan was movement. Say you decide you're going to do two hours every single day for the next six months, and today you didn't even do five minutes. You'd be better off starting with one 20-minute walk. Or a mile out and a mile back, and when that feels easy, two miles.
Same goes for a target time. "The medal says finisher, it doesn't say what the time is. Does it matter? You still did it."
An honest benchmark
It all comes back to honesty. "What's my benchmark?" Where am I really starting from? Then how do I improve on that, and keep improving on that?
The awkward part is we're not always honest with ourselves. There's a chapter in the book called Untruths. "There's a big difference between an untruth and a lie, because a lie is deliberately not telling the truth." An untruth is a belief you hold that isn't true, without knowing it isn't.
I told Nathan about putting weight on without noticing. I went from a 32 or 34 inch waist to a 42, and only saw it when I looked in the mirror one day and thought, "Who is that guy staring back at me?"
Nothing stays still. "And if you believe that you're doing something and it's just in a status quo, I guarantee you it's actually getting worse." It's just happening slowly enough that you miss it.
And if the beating yourself up part sounds familiar, Would you talk to a friend like that? picks up where this leaves off.
Listen to the full episode
The full episode is on Apple Podcasts and the other podcast apps.
Pick a bar you can clear
Think of one thing you've been putting off because the standard you've set feels miles away. Write down, honestly, what you actually did on it this week, even if the answer is nothing. Set tomorrow's bar just above that, low enough that you'll clear it, and leave it there until it feels easy.
First published April 2021 on Nathan Honess's Power of Progress podcast. Written up here in October 2026.
