If you find yourself putting things off, the culprit may be a weak sense of identity rather than a weak will.

When you put off tasks that are important for the betterment of your business, do you beat yourself up for having a weak will?

It may feel like your inability to push yourself to do the unpleasant but unnecessary is to blame when you procrastinate, but psychology suggests there actually may be another culprit: your identity… or lack thereof.

Timothy A. Pychyl, a professor of psychology at Canada's Carleton University, has written on Psychology Today, that identity is "knowledge of who we are. Knowledge that is hard won through a real 'exploration' of possible selves (perhaps those crazy teen years or campus life in your 20's) and finally crystallized with a 'commitment.'"

What does identity have to do with procrastination? According to research done by one of Pychyl's grad students Matthew Shanahan having a less firm sense of the one leads to more of the other.

"Ego identity development was negatively correlated with procrastination. That means, the more achieved the identity, the more the participants knew who they were, the lower their scores on the measures of procrastination," Pychyl explains.

The moral of the story for Pychyl is that "we all have to 'grow up' a bit to decrease our procrastination." That's good news for frustrated parents of teens and deadline-challenged college students, but what does that have to do with business owners? You are, after all, not some teenager currently experimenting with a new goth look or vegan diet.

But while your fundamental identity as a person in general may long since have been sealed, if you're relatively new to entrepreneurship, your sense of yourself as a genuine business owner could still be tentative. When embarking on a new career path, it's common to feel like you're somehow faking it—that you don't really have the right to the identity you're claiming.

This discomfort with your new identity, at least in mild doses, isn't something to worry about, according to the New York Times, but it just might make you more prone to procrastination. The good news: as you get more comfortable with your identity and commit fully to seeing yourself as a business owner, your tendency to put things off should fade.

Conclusion: it's time to start believing in your identity as a business owner.

Does this connection between identity and procrastination make intuitive sense to you?

Yahoo's Marissa Mayer publicly said that she constantly thinks of who should replace her top execs. Cold blooded?

During the recent Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet Conference, Yahoo's CEO Marissa Mayer said something that raised my eyebrows.

According to Business Insider, Mayer said she "constantly thinks about who could do a better job" on her management team. "I think about who could be a better COO. I think about who could be a better CFO."

Since coming to Yahoo in July of last year, Mayer has replaced much of the company's senior management team with her own, having brought in Henrique De Castro as COO and Ken Goldman as CFO, among others.

Goldman was apparently in the audience when Mayer made her remarks, which she then followed up with, "Sorry Ken, it's just a thought experiment I do."

Now, I'm not going to say that kind of thing doesn't happen all the time in the boardrooms of corporate America. It does. I've had far worse things hurled at me by a CEO or two when I was a senior executive in the tech industry. But always in a private conference room; never in a public forum. Never like that.

A board director once told me a story about a well-known high-tech chief executive. He said the guy would sit in his executive staff meetings and imagine each of his top execs with their compensation emblazoned on their forehead and ask himself if they were worth it or not.

Sure, that's cold-blooded, but he kept it to himself, which is no big deal.

What is telling is that the kind of behavior Mayer exhibited at the Goldman conference reportedly was often on display when she worked for Google. I believe that.

In any case, Mayer's comments at the conference were probably humiliating for the executives in question. They don't reflect well on her or on her potential for retaining executive talent at Yahoo.

When I was discussing this with a colleague, she said, "I sure hope those guys are paid plenty to put up with that kind of crap." Indeed, they probably are.

Still, that's no way to treat employees. I don't care how much they make.

Elizabeth Grace Saunders is the founder and CEO of Real Life E Time Coaching & Training and the author of The 3 Secrets to Effective Time Investment. You can find Elizabeth on Twitter @RealLifeE and at ScheduleMakeover.com.

More than 40 studies affirm that this simple, practical technique doubles your chance of getting a yes, but surprisingly few people put it into use regularly.

If we're all in sales, as the old saying goes, then we're all in the persuasion business. And this is particularly true for entrepreneurs. Whether you're asking investors to hand over their money, potential customers to try your product, or employees to give their best, much of your day is probably spent persuading people. So how do you do it well?

There are a million hints and tricks out there--some more practical than others. A little swearing might help, suggest some studies, or if that's not appropriate for a given situation, how about simply adding a because statement to your request? Meanwhile, classic techniques like social proof, or convincing someone that everyone else is already doing whatever you're trying to get the person to do, or stressing scarcity are well known and frequently employed.

But for some reason, amid all this chatter about how to be more persuasive, one simple, practical, and well-tested technique had largely got lost in the shuffle. According to a recent post laying out the idea on PsyBlog, a whopping 42 studies with 22,000 participants have found the technique roughly doubles the chances of someone agreeing to a request.

What is it? Simply reminding people they're free. The blog calls it the But You Are Free technique, or BYAF for short:

This simple approach is all about reaffirming people's freedom to choose. When you ask someone to do something, you add on the sentiment that they are free to choose.

By reaffirming their freedom you are indirectly saying to them: I am not threatening your right to say no. You have a free choice…

People have been shown to donate more to good causes, agree more readily to a survey and give more to someone asking for a bus fare home.

The exact words used are not especially important. The studies have shown that using the phrase "But obviously do not feel obliged" worked just as well as "but you are free."

What is important is that the request is made face-to-face: the power of the technique drops off otherwise. Even over email, though, it does still have an effect, although it is somewhat reduced.

Are you using the BYAF and, if not, are you going to start?

Click link for full RFP.   

Purpose: This is the latest round of funding designed to provide faculty and departments with funds for curriculum development so that concepts associated with entrepreneurship and innovation can be integrated into the curriculum. Grants provide support for faculty interested in enhancing an academic environment where risk-taking, built on solid academic scholarship, is encouraged and supported. Entrepreneurial thinking involves the skills necessary for recognizing and analyzing a problem and then designing and implementing a potential solution. Course proposals that involve entrepreneurship, innovation, and entrepreneurial skills are particularly encouraged. Creation of partnerships across the campus or in the wider community are also desirable, but not required. Funding is for course creation, revision, and implementation.