Why Do You Keep Procrastinating, and How Can You Stop?

By Mary Claire Schibelka, LPC

What do updating your resume, folding laundry, and paying bills all have in common?

The answer:  All are tasks that many of us procrastinate.

Procrastination is often attributed to laziness or poor self-control.  However, there are several other reasons why you may find yourself procrastinating that have nothing to do with willpower.  Understanding the reasons you procrastinate helps you create strategies for getting things done in a reasonable amount of time.

Read on to learn more about why you procrastinate and how you can stop.

Reason 1:  You Fear Failure

One of the most common reasons people procrastinate is the fear of failure.  Maybe you’ve been wanting to learn Spanish for the past 3 years, but because you know it won’t be easy, you still haven’t signed up for a class.

Tips:

• If the idea of failure feels scary to you, ask yourself why.  What experiences have you had with failure in the past?  

• Look up inspirational quotes on failure to remind yourself that it’s a normal experience and often an important part of learning.  

• Put your past failures in perspective by identifying at least one new thing you learned from each experience.

Reason 2:  You Fear Success

Believe it or not, many people fear success.  When you succeed at something, you set a new bar for yourself.  Expectations of you become greater.  For example, if you apply for a new job and get it, you’re then expected to perform well at that job.  This can feel like a great deal of pressure and lead to procrastination of tasks you’ll likely succeed at.

Tips:

• Maintain a “cheering squad” of the people closest to you who can help you feel supported and capable of taking on new challenges.  

• Recall past successes and times you exceeded your own expectations.

Reason 3:  Perfectionism

Perfectionism often accompanies the fear of failure.  If you struggle with perfectionism, you may believe that being any less than perfect at something reduces your personal value.  Expecting yourself to be perfect can lead to anxiety, a common culprit behind perfectionism.

Tips:

• Remember the principle of diminishing returns.  The longer you obsess over something that’s already good enough, the less effective the time you spend on it becomes.  For example, studying for a test for 5 hours can help you get an A instead of a D.  However, spending an extra 5 hours studying will impact your grade less.  The difference between a D and an A is far more significant than the difference between an A and an A+.

• Practice self-compassion by reminding yourself of your worth, even if you aren’t perfect.

• Hold yourself to the same standards you hold your friends to.  Chances are you’re way less hard on them than you are yourself.

Reason 4:  You’re Overwhelmed

If you have a ton of tasks on your to-do list, getting started on just one of them can feel like a challenge.  The same is true for getting started on a project that you know will take you a lengthy amount of time.

Tips:

• Build in rewards.  Do something enjoyable after completing each item on your list, or chunk your project/assignment into smaller pieces and reward yourself after completing each one.

• Eliminate any unnecessary tasks.

• Prioritize what’s most important and tackle that first.

• Delegate responsibilities to others when you can.

• Combine tasks.  For example, if you have to do laundry and run errands, throw your clothes in the washing machine and run errands while they’re washing.

• Plan ahead for when you’re going to work by putting necessary tasks in your calendar.

Reason 5:  You Don’t Know What To Do

The final reason why you may be procrastinating is because you simply don’t know what to do!  For example, if your car needs an oil change, and you have no idea how to do it, you’re probably going to put it off.

Tips:

• Ask yourself if the goal is too big.  In this case, maybe it would be easier to take the car to a mechanic than to learn how to change the oil yourself.

• Seek guidance from others who have done the task before in order to learn how to do it.

• Think of similar situations you’ve encountered.  Remember how you handled them, and see if you can apply those skills to this situation, too.

Beating yourself up and calling yourself lazy because you’re procrastinating is rarely helpful.  Instead, seek to understand why you’re struggling with procrastination.  Knowing your reason will help you figure out what to do next in order to feel accomplished, productive, and more in control of the things you have to do.

Find your work flow

By Mary Claire Schibelka, LPC

Love what you’ll do, and you’ll never work a day in your life.  That’s the common phrase.  Love when you do it, and you might never have to work another night in your life either.  Somewhere along the line, humans decided that the most efficient workday exists between 9 AM and 5 PM.  Oh, the good ole’ 9 to 5.  Covet or hate it, this routine style of working has truly made a name for itself.

It makes sense.  With the sun and fire as their only light sources, workers throughout history earned by day and played by night.  Evening was a time for recreation, restoration, and connection.

But in today’s modern world, technology allows work to creep into all hours of the day and night, easily distracting from personal activities.  Especially in the midst of COVID-19 and the resulting boom in working from home, the lines between the workday and the weekend can easily grow blurry.  While the hustle may feel exhilarating and even enjoyable for some, others find themselves exhausted by the end of the week.

Tom Hodgkinson is the author of bestselling books How to Be Idle and The Freedom Manifesto.  His remedy for burnout is quite the opposite of what you might think.  Founder of the magazine and curriculum, The Idler, Hodgkinson believes that regularly stepping away from work, or idling, is the key to not only happiness but also professional achievement.

In a May 2020 episode of The Happiness Lab, a podcast hosted by Yale professor and happiness researcher Dr. Laurie Santos, Hodgkins lists several examples of idle activities including taking walks with friends, napping, hour-long lunch breaks, and traveling- all with no work allowed.

Hodgkins explains that when we allow ourselves uninterrupted down time, our work performance and personal satisfaction bloom.  We create room for creativity, rest, and enjoyment.  At the same time, we replenish our energy and return to work with more drive.

Idling can be done at any time.  Nine to five workers might idle mostly at night, while remote workers can idle with more flexibility.  The goal is to relish the idle moments.  Regardless of when you work, your level of fulfillment impacts the way you show up, and this makes a difference.

In her Boston Globe Article, “Millennials aren’t lazy, they’re workaholics,” writer Katie Johnston points out anxiety’s correlation with lower career satisfaction, lower productivity, and fewer monetary bonuses.  Anxiety often interferes with motivation and the ability to focus, thus drastically reducing work performance.  It can also impede social behaviors necessary for good workplace relationship.

Unlike Hodgkins, you might not see napping from 2 to 4 PM as feasible or even ideal.  The 9 to 5 is just as enjoyable to some as its more unstructured alternatives are to others.  If you find yourself, though, stuck in the grind, fear not.

Constantly, new remote and time-flexible job positions are created.  Because of modern technology, teachers can virtually instruct classes in different timezones.  Business owners can work behind the scenes at all hours.  First responders and service industry professionals who prefer working at night can clock in after resting during the earlier hours of the day.

What is your ideal work style?  This is a question infrequently asked at high schools and universities.  We are so often expected to talk about what we like to do, but not how we like to do it.  Without this knowledge, we can accidentally wind up in careers that suffocate our passion instead of fanning it.  Once you notice the natural ebbs and flows of your energy throughout the day, you can begin to develop a career consistent with your preferred work schedule.  

Hodgkinson’s journey is a reminder that gaining the flexibility you desire in your career might take time.  He admits to having worked several jobs before finding his balance of work and idleness.  If you’re working in what I call a “stepping stone job”- one that feels particularly unstimulating and unsustainable- ask yourself these three questions:  What skills do I want to continue developing in the next phase of my career?  How do I want my next work environment to differ from this one?  How can I use my strengths in new ways?

Finding your work flow can feel challenging.  Start small by rethinking how you spend your little sprinkles of time throughout the day.  Consider stretching, walking, cooking, or calling a friend whenever possible.  Replace mindless activities with more pleasurable ones when necessary.  And if it works for you, embrace the two-hour nap.

THIS is the key to change

I’m sitting in the chair with my mouth wide open.  I’m staring at the ceiling as the drill starts up. I smell the horrible smell of bone being shaved off my tooth.  I taste the bitterness of the adhesive sliding on to my tongue. The dentist stands over me. Just behind him is the computer screen where I can see my “treatment plan,” aka all of the work that’s ahead of me in the months to come.  I breathe and think to myself “I can do this. I can do this.”

There’s a break in the procedure where I have time to sit with the unpleasantness I'm experiencing and also the sheer dread of the rest of the work I will have to get done.  My treatment plan sits there mocking me. As the technician comes back she say, “Are you okay, you look like you’re about to cry!” I mumble back, “No I’m fine” as I think to myself, I’m not in physical pain...no, this is the face of regret.  I’m regretting my sheer avoidance of the dentist for longer than I care to admit.  Regretting only doing the minimum twice-a-day brushing on top of a steady intake of sugar for the last decade.  Regretting all the money I’ll be forking over to fix all of this.  

And in that moment I mentally commit to never being in this position again.  I vow to brush, floss, mouthwash, and repeat so that I never have to feel this again. "Enough is enough," I say to myself.

Some might call this my rock bottom of oral care.  A wake-up call. Come to Jesus moment. Whatever you call it, it was the moment where the pain of staying the same outweighed the pain of changing.  I had suffered enough to decide that I needed to change. This, my friends, is the key to change: using the principles of pain (and pleasure).

The forces that motivate humans the most are pain and pleasure.  If enough of either are applied we typically respond. If a few years ago someone had offered me great sums of money to stay on top of flossing my teeth, chances are I would have done it.  In the same way, experiencing the complete unpleasantness that is dental work has now helped me comply to a thorough regimen.

The problem with using pain and pleasure to enact change is this that there is a delay.

In real life pleasure is normally something that comes much later, making it difficult for us to stay on top of the change we want to make.  If you are unsatisfied with your job and struggle to get yourself to update your resume and cover letter, network, and start applying for new jobs, you likely won’t see the fruits of your labor until you’re actually settled in to a new job.  Waiting for the pleasure makes it hard to motivate yourself to start the process, which is why people usually wait for the pain to set in before getting started. Many people wait until they are so miserable in their current job that they have that “enough is enough” moment which gets them to act.

Pain usually is more motivating for humans than pleasure, however, I think most of us would agree that it is not ideal to wait until we hit rock bottom before we act.  So how can we use the pain and pleasure principle to help motivate us to change? Our imagination.

Right now, call to mind something that you would like to see changed in your life.  Take a few moments to journal and fully imagine what life would look like as you consider the following (note: this is much more effective if you allow yourself to fully feel your feelings as you move through this): 

What would life look like if you haven’t made this change in the next 6 months?  What about in the next year? What about the next 5 years? 10? 20? Allow yourself to really imagine what might happen in the future.  How would you feel? What would it cost you emotionally? What would it cost you financially? What would your relationships be like? What would be the impact on your health?  

Really vividly bring these images up and feel what it’s like.

The idea here is to make it so unbearable that you have to change today.  Enough is enough!

Now, take a few moments to journal and fully imagine life if you did make a change, again fully feeling everything that comes up:

If this change were to happen today, what would life look like in the next 6 months?  What about in the next year? What about the next 5 years? 10? 20? Allow yourself to really imagine what might happen in future.  How would you feel? What would it be like financially? What would your relationships be like? What would be the impact on your health?

Hopefully you enjoyed the latter exercise more.  Because using our imagination is not quite as impactful as literal pain and pleasure, I recommend that you come back to the exercise consistently.  It’s helpful to drive these feelings it into your nervous system, which can only happen if you fully allow yourself to feel the feelings.