§ 01 · The Hook
The bait, then the rug-pull.
The question lands before the intro music fades: have you ever planned something big and done nothing about it? The answer for most people watching is yes, and the follow-up reframe is the entire premise. You are not lazy. You are running a neurological loop, and this episode is designed to break it.
Where the time goes.
00:00 – 01:05
01 · Hook and three-point promise
Pattern interrupt then three deliverables: the equation, the four traps, the three-move protocol.
01:05 – 02:48
02 · The Procrastination Equation
Piers Steel's formula: expectancy times value divided by impulsiveness times delay. Coaching-business example maps to all four failure modes simultaneously.
02:48 – 04:19
03 · Your brain is wired to avoid
2019 fMRI study showing reduced anterior cingulate cortex and DLPFC activity in high procrastinators. Every avoided task deepens the default avoidance pattern.
04:19 – 06:08
04 · Trap 1: Planning theater
Artifacts are not customers. Phil Knight sold shoes out of a station wagon before Nike had a name. Test: have you made an uncomfortable ask of a real human?
06:08 – 08:04
05 · Trap 2: Research mode
Information consumption burns execution dopamine. Six months of PDFs equals zero businesses bought. Naval Ravikant prefers 100 great books over 1,000 new ones.
08:04 – 10:10
06 · Trap 3: Waiting to feel ready
Motivation is biologically impossible before action. Border journalism story: crossing into Mexico without a fixer, without readiness, without waiting.
10:10 – 11:51
07 · Trap 4: The future self illusion
Hal Hirschfield's UCLA study on future self emotional connection. Saying 'I'll start Monday' passes the work to a stranger who does not want to do it either.
11:51 – 13:26
08 · Move 1: Shrink
BJ Fogg behavior design: behavior equals motivation times ability times prompt. Under two minutes produces much higher continuation rates than full-scope framing.
13:26 – 14:44
09 · Move 2: Specify
Peter Gollwitzer implementation intentions: 94 studies, 8,000 people, two to three times higher completion. Pre-decide when/where/how. Use if-then format.
14:44 – 15:29
10 · Move 3: Stack
Anchor new behavior onto an existing habit. The existing habit is the trigger, the new behavior rides along with no remembering tax.
15:29 – 17:13
11 · Real example: one sentence to NYT bestseller
Main Street Millionaire started with a five-minute timer, one sentence, at 5AM in the kitchen. Coffee was the anchor. Forty minutes and a couple of pages followed uninvited.
17:13 – 18:59
12 · The missed-day rule and refusal to stay stopped
Never compensate with a bigger action. James Dyson: 5,127 prototypes over 15 years. 51 cold calls to buy the first business. The only skill: do not stay stopped.
18:59 – 20:36
13 · Close and CTA
Every action is a vote for who you become. CTA for Main Street Millionaire Live at msm.live, framed using the episode's Shrink vocabulary.
Visual structure at a glance.
Named ideas worth stealing.
01:05
model
The Procrastination Equation
- Expectancy: belief you will succeed
- Value: task feels meaningful
- Impulsiveness: resistance to cheap dopamine alternatives
- Delay: proximity of payoff
Piers Steel's formula compressing two decades of procrastination research. All four variables can be changed; willpower cannot reliably be scaled.
Steal for Diagnosing why a specific project is stalling: map each variable and fix the worst one first
11:51
list
Shrink, Specify, Stack
- Shrink: make the task so small the avoidance reflex does not fire
- Specify: pre-decide exact when/where/how using if-then implementation intentions
- Stack: anchor to an existing daily habit so no remembering tax applies
Three-move daily protocol combining BJ Fogg behavior design with Gollwitzer implementation intentions and habit stacking. Designed to bypass the avoidance response rather than overpower it.
Steal for Any morning routine, content cadence, or business-development habit that keeps dying in week two
04:19
list
Four Traps of Procrastination
- Planning Theater
- Research Mode
- Waiting to Feel Ready
- Future Self Illusion
Four disguises procrastination wears to look like legitimate activity. Each produces real-seeming outputs while producing zero traction.
Steal for Self-audit before committing to any major project phase: identify which trap is active
Lines you could clip.
02:32
"You don't have a willpower problem. You have an equation problem. Willpower is really hard to scale. Equations, though, they can be solved."
08:28
"Motivation is not a prerequisite for action. Motivation is a byproduct of action."
11:07
"When you start to say I'll start Monday, you're actually passing the responsibility to a stranger who doesn't want to do it any more today than you do."
18:59
"You don't need a perfect streak. You need a refusal to stay stopped."
Things they pointed at.
01:05bookPiers Steel: The Procrastination Equation
02:57link2019 fMRI procrastination study (anterior cingulate cortex / DLPFC)
06:56linkHal Hirschfield: future self research at UCLA
12:15bookBJ Fogg: Behavior Design Lab, Stanford / Tiny Habits
13:26linkPeter Gollwitzer: implementation intentions (94-study meta-analysis)
17:55bookMain Street Millionaire by Codie Sanchez (NYT bestseller)
How they asked for the click.
19:16
product
"Get your ticket to Main Street Millionaire Live at msm.live."
Well-executed: framed using the episode's Shrink vocabulary ('let's shrink the action -- grab the ticket'). On-screen logo, lower-third URL, and QR code appear simultaneously. CTA is positioned as the logical next step for someone who resonated with the business-buying examples throughout.
Word for word.
HOOK opening / re-engagementCTA the pitch metaphor
00:00HOOKHave you ever planned something big and then done nothing about it? It actually turns out you're not lazy. You're stuck in a neurological loop that this episode is going to break for you and me.
00:09HOOKToday, the idea is we're diving into the simplest way to kill your procrastination and reprogram your brain to achieve things. So you're gonna walk away with three extremely valuable things, all backed by neuroscience and behavioral science that led me to make my millions and build the life I want, and I want you to do the same thing.
00:26HOOKThree things today. One, the equation that explains why you don't start. Two, the four traps that hide the equation from you in real time.
00:33HOOKAnd finally, the three move protocol, you can run today to break out of it. I'm Cody Sanchez. This is the big deal pod, and today, we're killing procrastination
00:45HOOKCTAOkay. So before we jump in, if this channel is useful to you, do me a favor. Hit the subscribe button.
00:51HOOKCTAI make this show for ambitious people who are tired of business and life advice that doesn't actually change anything. So every subscriber we get, you, gets episodes like this in front of more people who need them.
01:06So there's this psychologist named Pierce Steele. He spent two decades reviewing every major piece of research on procrastination, that he compressed it all into a formula.
01:16He calls it the procrastination equation. That's a mouthful, but it's actually fascinating.
01:20That's the closest thing the field has to a unified theory, and almost nobody outside of academic psychology has heard of it. So here it is.
01:27Your motivation to do a task equals the expectancy times value divided by impulsiveness
01:35times delay. I know this is a lot, but, like, take a second to look at this and take it in. So
01:41the translation to this is basically, if you're like me and not a psychologist, you don't start when you don't believe you'll succeed.
01:50That's expectancy is low. The task doesn't feel meaningful. That means the value is low.
01:56Your environment is full of dopamine cheaper alternatives. Impulsiveness is high, or the payoff is months or years away.
02:03The delay is too high. So most ambitious people have all four problems running at once, and they don't realize it.
02:10So what does this actually look like? You wanna build a coaching business, but you don't really believe you'll get clients. Low expectation.
02:17Asking for money still feels weird. Low value. Your phone is six inches away from your hand and face at all times, so the risk of impulsiveness is high.
02:26And your first paying client is at least six months away. Delay is huge. Just like that, the .
02:33So, again, you don't have a willpower problem. You're not lazy. You have an equation problem.
02:39Willpower is really hard to scale. Equations, though, they can be solved. But the only way that you do that, which we're gonna talk about now, is, like, how do you change your inputs?
02:46That's what the rest of this episode is gonna break down. I wanna take a step back and look at the hardware you and I are running in our brains. So in 2019,
02:55researchers ran an fMRI study that scans the brains of high procrastinators while they worked through really high pressure tasks,
03:04and they found measurably reduced activity in two regions, the anterior
03:10cingulate cortex, which handles error monitoring and correction,
03:15and the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. I mean, very big mouthful, but that basically means your executive control.
03:21So if we talk in plain English, not like a crazy scientist, the parts of your brain that say, wait. This matters. Keep going.
03:29They're firing way less. The hardware is actually biased for you to avoid things. Like, say it with me.
03:35Do you feel that? Because I certainly did when I read this. So every time you say,
03:40I'll start tomorrow, you're not just losing a day. You're actually training that neurological pattern deeper.
03:46So the reduced activity becomes your default, and the avoidance actually becomes the automatic. So you wake up one morning, and the business you were going to start ten years ago, it still doesn't exist. The book is still three paragraphs in a Google Doc.
03:59I I do not think this is because you were lazy. It's because you spent a decade running the wrong program, and now the . So the good news here is that the same brain is actually plastic.
04:12So we can rewire the inputs, and your activity can change. But before we get to how to do that, you need to know what you're actually fighting. Trap one, planning theater.
04:21Like, you're not avoiding the launch. You're building the plan.
04:24If you're like me, a content calendar, maybe you've got a brand bible, totally worthless, those things, I think, and some tagline. But you haven't made a single dollar because you're confusing planning that feels like progress because it just produces these artifacts, these things, but the artifacts are not customers.
04:41The test is actually stupid simple. If you spent more than two weeks planning without doing one thing that touches a real human with a real ask that is uncomfortable, you're building an idea instead of a business.
04:52And, like, this isn't just me saying this. Uh, let's go to, like, Phil Knight, one of my favorite, huge inspirations.
04:58He started Nike. Right? He didn't have a 40 page plan for Nike.
05:02He had a day job as a CPA at Pricewaterhouse and a station wagon full of these crazy Japanese running shoes that he flew all the way to Japan on, got credit to import them. He sold those shoes out of his trunk at a high school track meet in Oregon again and again and again.
05:21And the first year, he sold 8 k worth of shoes. He he you know, that that, like, beautiful Nike swoosh, the company name, all of that, that came after. He got the sales, and the company followed.
05:32So get the fucking sales. Get the first dollar. You know, similarly, I didn't have a plan for contrarian thinking, our company.
05:39I opened a Substack account for a newsletter, and I had a chip on my shoulder. I wrote the first post on a laptop on my couch without any plan, and I hit publish before I think the show ended.
05:50One day later, the first subscriber came through. I remember screenshotting it and showing Chris. He was like, uh, cool.
05:56That was the launch. So the newsletter, the podcast, the book, the brand, the team, all of that came after. I got the subscriber, then I got the first dollars, then the company followed.
06:05So you don't need a plan. You need the dollar. Trap two, research mode.
06:10You're going to start right after you finish the course. You promise.
06:15Right after you read one more book, I swear, right after you watch the podcast. Right? This, like, information consumption,
06:22it feels like you're progressing because it has the same texture as work. You know? You're you're learning.
06:29You're taking notes. But sadly, and this is crazy, but neuroscience shows you're burning the exact dopamine your brain needs for execution. It can't tell the difference.
06:39So by the time you finish the mental masturbation is what I call it, you're not ready to do the real thing. Never gonna make a baby by yourself. Right?
06:47And so you feed the want and actually starve to the dew. And then Vaal Ravikant we have incredible episode on that. Actually, you should go back and listen to it with Eric Jorgensen.
06:56And Vaal Ravikant said he'd rather read the same 100 great books over and over than chase a thousand new ones. And that, like, bottleneck on building anything worth having is not input. It's rep.
07:07So if you've been researching the same topic, then you're actually hiding. So I want you to stop.
07:14I mean, I spent six months researching before I bought my first laundromat.
07:19Six months of, like, reading a bunch of stuff. I had been in finance already for a better part of a decade. And, you know, I would be on YouTube feeding me
07:28case studies at 2AM. You know what I had at the end of six months? A folder full of PDFs and zero businesses bought.
07:36The day I actually bought one, I did less research than I'd done on a normal Tuesday. I just, like I literally drove to a laundromat that I thought looked interesting. I sat in the parking lot.
07:45I watched you walked in for an hour. Then I walked inside and asked the owner one question, which is, hey.
07:50Do you own the place? And if so, would you ever think about selling it? Like, that's the research.
07:56The best research is when you collide with humanity. And so everything else was kind of this costume I was wearing so I didn't have to do the scary thing. You know what I'm talking about?
08:04Trap three, waiting to feel ready. So this is maybe the most, uh, spiritual sounding of the four, which is exactly why it works so well. It's like you're not avoiding.
08:12You're not you're not researching. You're just waiting for the right moment. Oh my gosh.
08:15I hear this so often. It makes me wanna die on the inside. Like, when the kids are older, when you have more energy, when this isn't done, when you feel better.
08:23Like, motivation is not a prerequisite for action. Motivation is a byproduct of
08:30action. You don't ever feel like going to the gym. You just go to the gym because you gotta go to the fucking gym if you don't wanna be fat.
08:38So the brain only releases the dopamine of momentum once you move. The brain's like, you don't get this before you do the thing.
08:45So if you're waiting for the feeling to show up before you begin, that's biologically impossible. It's like, hey. I'm sitting in a car.
08:51Why isn't this thing driving? I don't know if you know this, if I've told you this before, but, uh, I went down to the border to report for the Associated Press a million years ago. And I know you're like me.
09:01You're like a hard charger, so I was a hard charging college student. Um, but I had never been a real journalist. Like, my Spanish wasn't that great.
09:09I didn't have a fixer to write these intense stories. I had, like, a notebook. I might have had a recorder because I don't even know if there were iPhones back then.
09:17And I had a tip on a story everyone around me said was a terrible idea to do. And, uh, I went anyway. I served the border, I remember, to cross over the Rio Grande where there was barbed wire everywhere, barking dogs,
09:29a bunch of border patrol agents. And I remember thinking, if I turn around right now, no one will ever know I almost did this.
09:37And then I walked across. And, actually, kinda wild story. The first thing I saw was a man getting stabbed right next to me.
09:42So that was actually incredibly traumatizing, but I kept going. And that day, I found one of the most incredible stories ever in my career about how the number of bodies getting counted in the desert wasn't right. And that story ran to really big headlines,
09:56and it led to the next one and the next one and the next one. And all of those eventual pivots led to contrarian thinking, and none of that happens if I sit waiting to feel ready. So you don't wait for the feeling.
10:07You walk across the bridge. Trap four, the future self illusion. So this is probably the deepest one.
10:14You believe that Monday you, January you, or after this quarter you will be different. Right? Like, you'll be more disciplined.
10:22You'll be more focused. You'll be less tired. I hate to tell you that person does not exist.
10:28Like, there's a behavioral economist at the UCLA. Um, name is Hal Hirschfield. He ran a study where he showed participants
10:34age progressed renderings of their own future selves. The participants who emotionally connected with the older version made dramatically better long term decisions. They saved more for retirement.
10:45They exercised more. They were less impulsive. The ones who couldn't connect treated their future self like a stranger.
10:52They didn't know anything to that person. So when you start to say, you know, I'll start Monday, you're actually .
11:00And that stranger doesn't wanna do it any more today than you do, so this pattern just repeats. The version of you who builds the business is not future you. It's today you doing one small thing for five minutes.
11:11Future you only exists if you make them, and I lived this one. I had the idea that became contrarian thinking for years before I did anything. And, you know, every day, every month, whatever, it would be, well, I'll start it then.
11:24And I remember having four notebooks full of ideas. Like, have you ever had that? Like, you know, your ideas list.
11:29I used to call it my someday maybe list. And I hadn't actually done anything because future Cody was gonna do the work. Present Cody,
11:37well, she wasn't ready to become her. And so the only way that that happened was opening that laptop on a random Tuesday and writing the worst version of a newsletter anyone had ever read. And that bad newsletter is the only reason any of this exists.
11:51So here's the fix or what we call the protocol. Shrink specify
11:57stack. You shrink the action until your brain stops fighting it.
12:02The avoidance reflex fires when the task looks too big. It kinda threatens your identity, so you shrink it until your brain doesn't really feel like it needs to defend against anything. You don't say I'm gonna write a book.
12:15You're like, just gonna write a sentence. You don't launch the business. You buy the domain.
12:19You know? You don't make 22 cold calls. You write one cold email.
12:22So this actually comes from that famous BJ Fogg study at the Stanford Behavior Design Lab. His model is simple, but, like, whoo, so brilliant. He said behavior equals motivation times ability times prompt.
12:35So, like, you can't reliably crank motivation. Right? You can crank ability, though, by making the task smaller and smaller.
12:43So if you do it in under two minutes, it turns out you have continuation rates many times higher than tasks framed at their full scope. And I know you know this too because you're like me, but how many times have you had a
12:56six hour problem that you need to solve? And when you go to do it, you're like, oh, that took about twenty minutes.
13:02So here's the trick. Most days, once you do the five minute version, you keep going. Like, you can go the twenty minutes or six hours.
13:11The avoidance only really happens because you haven't started. So if you get past that threshold, it kinda disappears. But even if you do only the five minutes, you win.
13:19Like, okay. That's a receipt. That's a new rewiring of your brain.
13:23Move two. Specify the move with surgical precision. I think a lot of people fail here because they say,
13:30okay. I'll work on the business this week. That's not a plan.
13:35So what does neuroscience tell us? Behavioral psychologist Peter Golwitzer, he spent thirty years studying something he calls implementation
13:43intentions. Also, I don't know why all of these are such mouthfuls, but must be a psychology thing. He basically did this meta analysis combining
13:5094 independent studies across 8,000 people, People who predecide
13:57exactly when, where, and how they'll decide to do something, well, then they complete tasks at roughly two to three times the rate of people who are like, I'm going to, at some point, do something. And this is across, like, nearly everybody measured.
14:11So if you say, I'll work on the business this week. No. Instead, you're gonna say, I will spend twenty five minutes on the customer out outreach list at 7AM tomorrow on the kitchen table with my phone in the other room.
14:23That specificness is the entire mechanism. So kinda hands future you a finished decision so you don't have to argue about it in the morning.
14:32And there's, like, something called the if then format that works even better. So if it's 7AM and I'm at the kitchen table, then I open the laptop and start the outreach list.
14:41So not asking yourself to feel motivated. Right? The next move, move three, stack it onto something you already do.
14:48I think the reason most new habits die is they have no anchor. Right? Like, you have to remember to do them, and that remembering is the tax, and that actually breaks your habit eventually.
14:58So if you anchor the new behavior to an existing one, like after I pour my cup of coffee, I open the laptop. After I drop the kids off, I open the dock.
15:09After my morning run, I write one sentence. The trigger is the old habit, and the new habit gets to ride along as passenger. I like to think about, can my habits ride along with me?
15:18And this is probably one of the most underrated levers in behavioral science. Like, you're not even adding a habit. You're just extending one that you already got.
15:26So three moves. Shrink, specify, stack.
15:30Here's what that looks like in practice. So, you know, I had been saying for three years that I was gonna write a book about buying businesses. I had a Google Doc.
15:37I had, like, three, I think, chapter outlines, a folder of research, but I'd written nothing. I remember one morning, I was pouring coffee in the kitchen. Sun's not really up.
15:46I can't sleep. My little dog goes out my feet, and the thought arrives. I should work on the book today.
15:52I've chest kinda tightened at it. Like, my hand was like, ah, there's probably other things. And so move one, shrink.
15:58I was like, well, I'm not gonna write the book today. I am writing one sentence. And
16:05that one sentence, I wrote. Move two, specify.
16:09I sat at the kitchen table at, like, I don't know, 05:15, 06:15AM, and I set a five minute timer to write one sentence. It's crazy as forty minutes later, I had, you know, a couple pages.
16:19I didn't plan on that, but the rest of the work comes because . Move three, stack. So before I closed the laptop that day, I wrote the next move on a Post it, and I stuck it on the expression machine.
16:33After tomorrow's coffee, at this table, I will write one sentence. The coffee, I already want that every morning like an addiction, So the writing just rides along.
16:43And you know what? That book became Main Street Millionaire. It didn't start as a book.
16:48It but it became a New York Times bestseller. It started with a cup of coffee. And so I guess my question for you is, like, what's your move one through three?
16:56Tell me in the comments wherever you're listening to the podcast. Like, you did not launch a business.
17:02Right? You moved one inch. You collected one receipt.
17:06But six months of inch moving or receipt collecting, that's how a business gets built. And and one thing that's, like, actually really important to say is
17:16you're gonna miss days. Everybody does, including me. Here's the rule to put into practice.
17:22Don't try to make up the mess day with a bigger action. Have you ever done that? You're like, I missed my walk today, so I won't do 10,000 step.
17:28I'll do 20,000 steps. And you're like, well, that's ludicrous. I don't have time.
17:32We don't wanna do that because it actually triggers the avoidance reflex harder because now the task is, whoo. It's bigger.
17:38It's grown. And so when you don't, you know, succeed at that and you fail the next time, it it feels worse.
17:46So I just want you to run the protocol again the next day at the smallest possible scale. Five minutes, one sentence. That's it.
17:52In fact, like, James Dyson, who's, like, such an underrated entrepreneur to study, he built 5,127 prototypes of his vacuum cleaner before he had one that works.
18:04He literally failed, I think, for fifteen years. And, you know, he built prototype, you know, whatever
18:11one morning, then the next one the next morning. And he finally sold the company that made him a billionaire and one of the richest men in the world.
18:21And, you know, I remember, like, when I was trying to buy a business, I cold called business owners before I bought my first one. I think I cold called fifty. And I got so used to no's.
18:30Some people hung up. You know? A few told me I was too young.
18:33One said his wife would kill him if he sold. You know? And one of them asked me out.
18:38Well but, you know, I ended up buying number 50 one. And it wasn't that I just stacked more and more calls. I just made the next call every morning.
18:47The business I ended up buying wasn't the smartest deal I'd ever seen. It was just the one I got because I didn't stay stopped.
18:54CTASo you don't need a perfect streak. You need a refusal to say stopped. And that's the secret.
19:00CTAThe version of you who finishes things is just you. The only difference is you learned the equation.
19:06CTANow you can recognize the traps, and you built a protocol that runs even when you're not motivated. And so every time you let that avoidance win, you cast a vote for who you're going to become, and you're not gonna like that person. So let's break the habit together.
19:20CTASo if you're like me and you've been waiting years to do the thing, to buy the business in particular, well, then your next move, I got you. I know how to skip to the front of the line and avoid all the procrastination.
19:31CTAI want you to get your ticket here for Main Street Millionaire Live. It's a virtual event where my entire team and I walk you through the business buying game from the inside. You learn how to find real deals,
19:41CTAhow to evaluate them, how to get money for them, and how to own their upside. So we're gonna cover deal sourcing, creative financing, how to read a deal like an investor,
19:51CTAhow to figure out how to negotiate just to own part of a business, maybe with your sweat equity. We're gonna break down real deals live with actual numbers. So if you have been saying,
20:00CTAI know that I want to own part of a business. I know I want a laundromat. I know I wanna do this long term.
20:10CTAGrab the ticket. In three days, I'll help you do more than most people do in three years. Go to msm.live.
20:16CTAYou can get your ticket there. Tell me if this episode was helpful for you. Then if you know somebody that's struggling right now, do them the biggest solid you can of all time.
— full transcript
§ 05 · For Joe
Four names for the same avoidance loop.
WHAT TO LEARN
The brain does not distinguish between productive-feeling delay and actual work, which is why planning, researching, waiting, and deferring all feel like progress while preventing any.
- The procrastination equation shows that motivation collapses predictably when any one of four variables tips the wrong way, and most stuck people have all four working against them simultaneously.
- Planning theater is not a discipline failure. It is a substitute behavior the brain accepts because it produces real artifacts that feel indistinguishable from progress until you check for customers.
- Information consumption burns the same dopamine reserve that execution requires. Reading one more book before you start does not fill the tank, it empties it.
- Motivation arriving before action is biologically impossible. The neurochemical reward for starting fires only after movement begins, which means waiting to feel ready is waiting for a signal that will never come first.
- The future self illusion works because the brain treats a distant version of you like a stranger, and you feel no more obligation to hand that stranger a finished project than you would to someone you have never met.
- Shrinking an action below the avoidance threshold produces continuation rates many times higher than framing the full task, because the reflex that causes avoidance does not fire when the ask is small enough.
- Pre-specifying when, where, and how you will do something in if-then format removes the decision from the moment it is hardest to make. The 94-study meta-analysis showing two to three times higher completion is one of the most replicated findings in behavioral psychology.
- Stacking a new behavior onto an existing habit removes the remembering tax entirely. The existing habit is the trigger and the new one rides along without requiring additional activation energy.
- Missing a day does not reset a streak, but making up for it with a larger action does, because the enlarged task triggers the same avoidance reflex that caused the miss. The protocol is to run the smallest possible version again the next day.
- Every avoided task trains the avoidance pattern deeper into the brain's default wiring. Every completed micro-action trains the opposite. The vote is cast either way.
