Jul 18 2023

How to stop procrastinating on projects outside your comfort zone

By Kate Hesse

As much as I wish it weren’t true, the reality is that it can be really easy to stay stagnant if we’re not sure how to step out of our comfort zone. I know I waited WAY too long to start my own business because it was so far out of my comfort zone, and I didn’t know how to get started.

I’m hoping this post will help you discover how to take action on something you’ve been wanting to do but didn’t feel prepared to start!

Why you’d want to get out of your comfort zone

Before we get started on how to handle working on projects outside your comfort zone, let’s start with why you’d even want to get out of your comfort zone. I mean it’s in the name – it’s comfortable. You know what to expect.

But, your comfort zone also means you’re stagnant. You aren’t growing or changing. Which is great if you can look at your life and say every single aspect is perfectly perfect. You wouldn’t change ONE little teeny tiny thing about it.

The reality is though, I don’t think I’ve ever met someone who could say that. We all have things we’d like to do at least a little differently. Sometimes these things are in just one or two areas of our lives, sometimes we want to make changes – big or small – across the board.

In order to make those changes, you need to step out of your comfort zone. I’ll quote Albert Einstein – “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.”

Getting outside your comfort zones is necessary to grow

If you want something in your life to be different, you have to do something different.

That could be as simple as learning to cook with new ingredients or techniques if you want to make changes to your diet. Or it could be major mindset changes and shifts if you want to show up in your life in an totally different way.

If you want something in your life to be different, you’ll need to step outside your comfort zone.

What it takes to successfully step out of your comfort zone

When faced with a task outside your comfort zone, it’s really easy to simply procrastinate. To put it off as long as possible hoping it will somehow magically fall off your task list or into your comfort zone.

But the reality is that rarely happens. So when you do finally get backed into tackling the project, you’ve not only built up fear and anxiety around it, but you’ve also usually created extra pressure by putting yourself in a deadline crunch.

Getting proactive about the way you approach projects outside your comfort zone is key to setting yourself up for success.

I’m offering five techniques and mindset shifts to help you not only prepare to tackle the project, but also to get through it with the greatest ease possible. This won’t necessarily make it easy, but it will help you to remove quite a bit of the fear which is often the biggest obstacle to taking on projects outside your comfort zone.

Don’t forget to download the Cheat Sheet below which contains all five techniques in a concise checklist ready for you to start taking action!

Learn as much as you can

Often projects outside our comfort zone come with a lot of unknowns. Sometimes we simply don’t have the experience to know what to expect. Sometimes these projects are so far outside our comfort zone we don’t even know what we don’t know.

I’ve talked about this before – but the unknown can be a great way to trigger your stress response. Your amygdala – the fear center in your brain – approaches something unknown and begins to flash danger signs in your brain. This triggers a cascade of physiological and psychological responses.

So to successfully tackle projects outside your comfort zone, you want to pay extra attention to staying calm, to keeping your logic and reasoning center in the brain online, and to prevent your fear response from stepping into the driver’s seat.

Remove the unknown

It might seem obvious, but the more you can prepare yourself for a project outside your comfort zone, the less overwhelming and scary it will be.

Consider reading books, watching YouTube videos, and asking others who have been there/done that before. You can also listen to podcasts, talks, seminars, and other presentations with applicable content.

Maybe you’re planning to retile your bathroom but you’ve never done anything like that before. Watch a dozen YouTube videos – not only will you get tips and techniques to help you tackle the project, but you’ll also see people with all levels of experience taking on the project. Consider watching at least one or two that say something like “my first time tiling a shower”.

Not only will the process stop being so nebulous and overwhelming, you’ll also see that people with the same level of experience you have can do, and have done, what you’re preparing to do. This helps our minds understand that what we’re tackling is totally doable and helps to take the scary out of stepping outside our comfort zone.

Use tools and techniques to calm your instinctive response

No matter how much you prepare, stepping out of your comfort zone can still feel overwhelming and trigger a stress response. That’s why it’s so important to have the tools and techniques you need to help you calm your instinctive stress response when facing something outside your comfort zone.

I’ve covered several of these tools before – think of things like the Audible Exhale, Mindful Moment, and Grounding.

You can use any other self-care tools and techniques which help you shift out of the sympathetic nervous system – your fight, flight, freeze, or fawn response, and into the parasympathetic nervous system – your rest and digest response.

I was running an in-person workshop last fall, and I planned to arrive 15 minutes early – not only so I had a buffer in case I ran into traffic, but also so I had time to sit in my car and tap for 5-10 minutes before walking in to give the presentation. Planning in that time to tap through my fear of standing in front of a group of strangers and presenting for 90 minutes helped me more confidently and comfortably step out of my comfort zone.

Break it down into manageable steps that don’t feel as outside your comfort zone

You might have heard me talk about small steps being the key to success before. That applies here as well.

When you’re looking at a task outside your comfort zone, break it down into small steps. Take the overall task, and figure out what each single action step is to get you from where you are to completion.

For example – if you want to grow your own vegetables, but you’ve never done any gardening before, what is each step you need to take to get from where you are to harvesting your first tomato?

You need decide what you want to grow. Figure out where you’re putting your vegetable garden. Decide if you’ll be planting directly in the ground or in containers. And if you’re using containers, what those are. You’ll need to source the materials – containers, dirt, shovels, plants or seeds. Then you’ll need to actually set everything up and plant your plants. Determine how often they need to be watered and water them accordingly. You’ll need to do any maintenance like pruning or picking off pests. And then you’ll need to know when to harvest and how to do it.

Taken as a whole that list feels incredibly overwhelming. But when you take just one action step at a time, it gets a lot less so.

Focus on just the current step

There’s no point in worrying about what the tomatoes will look like when they’re ready to harvest before you’ve even planted them. And you don’t need to think about how deep to plant them before you’ve decided what to grow.

When you focus on just the next action step you need to take, it becomes doable in a way that can feel impossible when you’re looking at the entire project as a whole.

For instance – with the vegetable garden, picking what you’ll grow is a great place to start. What do you like to eat? You know the answer to that. Then do a little searching for what grows well in your area. You’ll learn more about the specific vegetables as you do that and gather information that will be helpful as you move into the next step.

Each action step will provide you with more information – while the last step might feel totally out of your comfort zone at the start, it will likely feel like not much of a stretch when you finally get to it.

For more on this, check out Episode 2 of the podcast where I go into detail on the entire process of breaking your goal into small steps.

Ask for help and/or support

Remember how I mentioned at the start of the podcast I waited way too long to start my own business because of how far out of my comfort zone it was?

The reality is I had family and friends who were self-employed. Who ran similar businesses to what I was thinking about. And who were more than happy to offer information and advice once I started asking questions.

But they couldn’t help UNTIL I told them I actually needed help. They couldn’t read my mind and know I was thinking about starting a business but certain things were holding me back because I didn’t know how to handle them.

In just one conversation with one of those friends, I was able to get a better understanding of the things that just felt overwhelmingly scary. And I started my business a few days later.

Think about the project you’re approaching that’s outside of your comfort zone – who do you know who’s maybe been there and done that before? Can they offer insight, guidance, or perhaps even assist with part of the project?

Get an accountability buddy

Another great way to ask for help is to get an accountability buddy. Maybe the project outside your comfort zone is eating healthier. Do you have a friend who’s voiced a similar desire?

When we have someone to check in with on a regular basis, our chances of success increase dramatically. Research conduced by the American Society of Training and Development found that people who have ongoing meetings with an accountability partner increase their chances of success by 95%.

Not only will you get the benefit of working with an accountability partner in terms of peer support, but you’ll also be able to remove some of the unknown for each other. If you’re both working to eat healthier, you could each try a new recipe or technique each week and share it with the other with all the tips and suggestions you learned to make it easier for them the following week.

Recognize it won’t be perfect – and that’s ok

Finally, when you approach a project outside your comfort zone, it’s important to remember it’s outside your comfort zone because you’ve likely never done anything like this before.

And when you try something for the first time, chances are, you won’t do it perfectly. The first sweater I knit had arms that were about twice as long as the body – and it wasn’t supposed to be a cropped sweater! I’d gotten something very wrong with the gauge. But I learned a lot during the process, and I’m still knitting all sorts of things over two decades later.

When you prepare to tackle a project outside your comfort zone, recognize the results will likely not be perfect. The first time you try something, odds are you won’t achieve the same results as someone who’s done the same thing a few dozen times before. And that’s ok.

We all have to start out from a place of not knowing how to do something. And through the process we learn and we’re able to do better the next time.

Done is better than perfect

You might have heard the saying before that done is better than perfect. And you might have bristled a little at it – I know I have.

But here’s what people really mean when they say it. It’s not that you should accept sub-standard quality work from yourself or others. Rather, that if you wait until you’re able to make something perfect, it simply might never happen at all.

I’ve talked about the un-reality of perfection before. The truth is that what you perceive as perfect is a moving target. The more you learn and grow, the better you’re able to do something, and what seemed like perfect last year might be just so-so work this year.

When approaching a project outside your comfort zone, done really is better than perfect. Because simply getting out of your comfort zone and tackling the project is the very best you can do – until you’ve done the project, learned from it, gotten more experience, and can do better next time.

If you’re struggling to release the expectation of perfection, check out my 5 Ways Aiming for Less Than Perfect Makes Your Life Better ebook. And don’t forget to use coupon code to save 25%!

Tackling projects outside your comfort zone

So to wrap up, just a reminder that the only way something moves from outside your comfort zone to inside your comfort zone is to actually do it!

Based on the project you’re approaching you may find some of these techniques I’ve covered (and included on the Cheat Sheet you can get using the form below) resonate more strongly with you than others. Pick the ones that make sense to you, and use them to support you as you take each step in the project.

If you’d like additional support in creating a Personal Roadmap to tackle a project outside your comfort zone, I’d love to help – schedule a Personal Roadmap Discovery Call with me today and walk away with an action plan as well as tools and techniques tailored to you and the project at hand!

And remember – living your best life isn’t about changing your life – it’s about changing the way you show up for your life!