The Real Reason You Procrastinate, Even When You Hate It

We all do it… But why do we procrastinate and how can we help motivate ourselves to do the task now rather than later.

Often when people think of procrastination they think of laziness, incompetence or a lack of discipline. But in reality procrastination is caused by emotional factors such as stress or fear of the task.

Procrastination isn’t a sign of weakness or a flaw in ones self, but instead is often a manifestation of deeper challenges, such as a fear of failure or perfectionism, not all procrastination is caused by time management issues.

The dynamic of procrastination is actually quite ironic, its the conflict between the desire to succeed and the fear of failure that causes procrastination. This results in feeling stuck and leads to procrastination being a form of protection by your brain rather than some sort of self sabotage.

Procrastination is a Biological Response

Procrastination is a biological response by the brain in which it treats the task as a threat, this then activates the amygdala, which releases stress hormones and triggers a fear response, which then causes you to want to do something less stressful, thus procrastinating. The longer you procrastinate the more stressful the tasks seems, when in reality it might be really simple when it is broken down into steps.

However; its important to understand that while this may be a biological process, it doesn’t mean that we aren’t able to work through it or overcome it. But before we discuss strategies on overcoming procrastination, lets identify who it affects the most.

Who Does Procrastination Affect The Most?

1. Surprisingly, Procrastination hits the overachievers the hardest. The pressure to maintain their high standards often leads them to the opposite of a growth mindset and causes them to be perfectionists. This can be really harmful and limit the true capabilities of these people due to the fear of failing or disappointing.
2. Procrastination also affects those with low self-esteem as people with low self-esteem often doubt their abilities to do certain tasks, and often these fears are unwarranted, but breaking past these mental boundaries can be very difficult.
3. Procrastination affects everyone; it doesn’t matter who you are, we have all experienced procrastination and we all know the effect that it can have on us. So if you struggle with procrastination, don’t be so hard on yourself because it is a universal struggle and instead use this as a moment for growth.

Overcoming Procrastination

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

Overcoming procrastination can be difficult, but the more you put yourself out there and break the cycle, the easier it becomes. Here are a few of the most helpful strategies for breaking the dreaded procrastination cycle.

1. Break Tasks Into Smaller Parts, this one is pretty simple, instead of putting on your checklist something like “Finish big project”, instead break it down into smaller and more specific parts like “Research for project”, “Outline project structure”, “Project introduction”
2. Journaling and Self-Reflection, We talked earlier about how procrastination is often rooted in subconscious fears, take a minute to ask yourself why you are putting this task off, or even better journal about what makes you not want to do that task, then read what you just wrote and ask yourself if your fears are valid
3. Practice Self Compassion, never be hard on yourself for procrastinating because that won’t help long term. Instead practice self compassion, this doesn’t mean you need to practice it by fueling your procrastination, but instead realize that everyone procrastinates and overcome it by telling yourself that you can indeed do this task
4. Remove Distractions, a LOT of time is wasted on things such as social media, and it also breaks the flow that we get while we are doing a task, whenever you get a notification and pick up that phone, its like reading a book and then someone interrupting you. It takes a minute to get back into the task and sometimes we forget what we were doing. Put your phone in a separate room or turn on do not disturb and you will notice a huge productivity boost
5. Set Realistic Goals, Setting realistic goals is like breaking a task into smaller parts, if you want to start learning to program, don’t start with 3 hours a day, start with 15 minutes and then work your way up as you become more consistent with the 15 minutes.
6. Accountability Buddy, Accountability buddies have helped me SO much in not procrastinating. Checking in with each other or calling and staying focused is a great way to get stuff done. This one does require more self control though because it is easy to get sidetracked with your accountability buddy and start doing/talking about something completely irrelevant

Closing Thoughts

No matter who you are, procrastination affects us all, but we don’t have to let it become this scary thing, instead use it to find more about yourself and what you really dread or fear. Then take these fears and face them head on, its better to get the task done than sit there for hours figuring out how to make it perfect because we all know that perfect is unachievable.