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Recently, my family and I were feeling the blues from the COVID-19 shutdown. We were just sitting around, watching Netflix and eating Cheetos and just chilling out. And it’s OK to have those times. It’s OK okay to feel sorry for yourself sometimes. But I also remind myself of the much-repeated Biblical phrase: idle hands are the devil’s workshop. My Christianity is part of my personal brand, as I’ve disclosed before, but you can be of any faith, or none at all, to benefit from the philosophy behind the phrase: when you’re not doing anything, you don’t have any structure—which is one of the worst things you can do to your industry influence.

Why Purpose is Part of Your Triangle of Genius

Without purpose—your “why”—you end up doing the exact opposite of what you could be doing. If you’re sitting in front of your computer without a plan, you start surfing sites and wasting time. You click on your Netflix app to relax. But you have nothing to do, so you end up watching hours upon hours of Netflix. If you’re bored, you end up opening the fridge, eating whatever’s in there: the kids’ hot dogs, slices of processed cheese, questionable pickles from 2013. So you always want to have structure. A plan pays off in so many ways: productivity, possible profits from future industry influence, and, ultimately, a sense of pride that you spent the day wisely instead of lying on the couch scrolling through Instagram.

Do It Scared

My friend Nick has a favorite expression that has helped him become a great success: Do It Scared. Because that’s exactly what he did when he shifted careers. Nick was scared. But he had to start somewhere.

This can happen anytime. For example, today I sat down to write my blog and found I had a little case of writer’s block. Sometimes, when we have writer’s block, we just sit there and we try to power through it. We think, “Oh, let me start chatting with some friends, and maybe I’ll get that inspiration and get back to it.”

What did we just do? We had idle hands and we started wasting your time. But when we are determined to just start scared, something different happens. With my writer’s block, I turned to a list of busy work I had to complete. I had to return a lot of emails. My wife wanted me to mail out all these thank-you letters. Things I’d been putting off. But with my idle hands, I ended up doing something I was scared of: mundane items I had thought were beneath me. I wrote those thank-you letters, I returned those emails. And when I was done, I was actually had the inspiration to write again.

Are you turning your idle hands into idol hands?

That’s how your Triangle of Genius works—giving you the power to overcome procrastination (and stop eating all that processed cheese). You can find even more helpful tips on getting through tough times by joining me at my Industry Influencer Masterclass.