We Spent Our Open House Listening. Here's What We Heard.

BD3 Solutions
Jun 29
3 min read

By Andrea Spyros & Nancy DeFina | BD3 Solutions

We went into our Open House with a plan not to talk.

That wasn't an accident. We told ourselves going in that the most useful thing we could do was stay quiet long enough to hear what was actually on people's minds. So we asked open-ended questions, and then we got out of the way.

What we heard was honest, vulnerable, and more consistent than we expected. Different people, different jobs, different stages of life, but similar stuck points. Underneath almost every story, the same two threads kept surfacing.

We want to name them here, because we think you'll recognize yourself in at least one of them. And over the coming weeks, we're going to dive deep into each.

Thread One: Maybe It Isn't Procrastination At All

The thread that surprised participants fascinated us in its pervasiveness.

Some of the things people were calling procrastination weren't procrastination at all. They were something else wearing its clothes. Thinking that hadn't finished yet. A decision that hadn't been made. A to-do list so overcrowded that nothing new could land on it.

Because they'd labeled it procrastination, they'd loaded it with everything that comes with that label. The guilt. The shame. The "what's wrong with me?" They were piling on emotions and judgments that were never warranted, for a delay that wasn't avoidance at all.

The guilt was real, but unfounded because the diagnosis was wrong.

When you misname a pause as avoidance, you reach for the wrong tool. You try to push through something that didn't need pushing, and you judge yourself for a delay that was actually doing its job. We're going to walk through the situations where the delay isn't laziness, it's intelligence, and how to tell the difference.

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Thread Two: The Way You Talk To Yourself About It

Over and over, people agreed the delay itself was a problem. But the real problem was the weight of the voice that came with it. The “I should have done this by now.” The unspoken “what is wrong with me?” The quiet certainty that everyone else has figured out the thing they can't seem to start.

Here's what the research is clear about, and what we kept wanting to say in the room (we resisted jumping in to fix): self-criticism doesn't release you from the Procrastination Cycle. It fuels it. The harsher you are with yourself, the more the avoidance, not less.

The way out is simple, but might not be easy for some (at least at the start). The first shift is the one that feels most backward; it asks you to do the one thing the inner critic never allows: treat yourself like someone worth helping. Self-compassion isn't a consolation prize for people who can't push through. It's one of the most well-researched performance tools we have. We're going to show you exactly what that looks like.

What Comes Next

These two threads should sound familiar. They're two of the Hidden Knots we’ve been discussing from the beginning.

One is about whether the delay is even what you think it is. The other is about how you treat yourself in the delay. Both ask you to look clearly first and set down the judgment second.

Once you give yourself permission to consider that some of your guilt was never warranted, it lifts the load. Not all delay is avoidance. The natural next question is "okay, but what about the delays that are avoidance, the ones I really do judge myself for?" That is precisely where self-compassion does its work. The reframe disarms the judgment, and self-compassion teaches what to do with what remains.

Over the next few weeks, we'll take each one in turn, with the science, the stories, and the tiny, doable shifts that make the difference.

If you came to our Open House, thank you for trusting us with the real version of yourselves. Whether you were in the room or not, if one of these threads sounds like you, keep reading over the coming weeks. This is where it gets even better.

Andrea Spyros and Nancy DeFina are the founders of BD3 Solutions and creators of Untangle Procrastination™, a science-based program built on methods from the Stanford Behavior Design Lab.

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Andrea Spyros and Nancy DeFina are the founders of BD3 Solutions and creators of Untangle Procrastination™, a science-based program built on models and methods from the Stanford Behavior Design Lab.