How To Overcome Procrastination

Procrastination is one of the things I struggle most with in my everyday life and it can take many forms: hours of Social Media doomscrolling, unscheduled Netflix or movie marathons even though I should be doing other things, just sitting around doing nothing or sticking to low-effort tasks that aren’t actually that important to avoid getting started on bigger stuff. I think it’s impossible to fight it entirely, but we can try our best to not let it rule our lives entirely.

What is procrastination

I believe we all know procrastination as the thing that will at some point ruin our life and bring shame to us and all of our ancestors, but the Cambridge dictionary definition is in fact far less dramatic: Apparently, procrastination is simply “the act of delaying something that must be done, often because it is unpleasant or boring”. I still think the ruined-life-shameful-legacy-definition is more accurate if we would base it solely on how procrastination feels. But for the sake of scientific accuracy, let’s stick with the Cambridge definition.

Procrastination vs. Laziness

Many seem to still confuse procrastination with laziness, but this is a very important distinction that I would like to make right at the beginning:

Laziness (according to the Cambridge dictionary, of course) is “the quality of not being willing to work or to use any effort”.

So, laziness is basically not doing things because you don’t want to put the effort in in general. But for procrastination, you have the intention to put the effort in at some point, just not right now.

The point is that procrastination has nothing to do with laziness, but more with poor self-regulation and the immediate reward system that our (sometimes unhelpful) brain operates on.

Causes of Procrastination

People do not delay tasks simply because they are difficult. They delay them because those tasks produce uncomfortable emotions.

— Science News Today https://www.sciencenewstoday.org/why-we-procrastinate-a-neuroscientific-view

our brain’s survival mechanism

Keeping in mind that our brain evolved for an environment where the future was way too uncertain to care about in the face of immediate threat to survival, it makes sense that we value immediate rewards so much more than future ones.

One of the parts of our brain that are involved in procrastination is the amygdala, which is basically the centre of emotion. When a task triggers a negative feeling, the amygdala senses danger and wants to avoid the task. The prefrontal cortex (the more logical part of the brain) tries to fight that, but for understandable evolutionary reasons, the amygdala (which wants to keep us alive) is much stronger.

fear of failure

We may be afraid of a task because it is very difficult or because we are perfectionists or because we are facing external pressure (or because of other things). So it often feels safer to just not do the task at all, rather than trying and failing. That doesn’t really make sense logically (chances of success are higher if you at least try), but since fear is a negative emotion, it sparks the amygdala’s survival mode and reason is out of the picture.

poor self-regulation

This is where the actual problem lies. Not in the emotions we are feeling, but in our struggle to regulate them properly. I wrote a post on emotional regulation a while ago if you’d like to look into that. I think emotional regulation is the key to quite literally everything, but as it usually is with such nice things: It’s so hard to do. You are fighting millions of years of brain-programming, so the odds aren’t great. On the other hand, the same millions of years of brain-programming gave you the ability to reflect on those things in the first place and to actually overrule the amygdala, so I should probably be a bit more optimistic.

poor organisation

Overwhelm is probably one of the most common causes of procrastination as well and a lot of that can be avoided by just having good systems. If I had 70 tasks on a list without any visible difference in importance or urgency, I’d be overwhelmed too. So when I have got a lot on my plate, writing a to-do-list and then prioritising is the first thing I do. Costs 5 extra minutes and brings some clarity, because you might realise that some of the things on your list can actually wait a little longer.

It’s a vicious cycle

If we’d only procrastinate once, it wouldn’t be much of a problem, but unfortunately, it becomes a habit very quickly. And once it is a habit, it’s even harder to break it (not impossible, though!). So when we procrastinate over and over again, procrastination becomes the default-mode.

mental health disorders

Mental health conditions like ADHD, OCD, anxiety, or depression can also contribute to procrastination, in which case the strategies here can help, but there are likely underlying issues that should be addressed as well (e.g., through therapy or medical support).

Consequences of Procrastination for Mental Health

I think we can all agree that procrastination is bad for mental health. You already feel negative emotions connected to the task and after having procrastinated on it, you still feel those plus the guilt of having wasted time.

Procrastination lowers self-confidence and self-esteem, which again leads to more procrastination.

That’s why it won’t surprise you that studies have shown that procrastination can be linked to higher levels of stress and depression.

write a to-do list and prioritise

As I mentioned earlier, this is probably the easiest first step to take in order to reduce overwhelm and actually being clear on what you need to be doing. For this, you can try out the Eisenhower Matrix, in which you sort the tasks according to urgency and importance. You can also just prioritise according to your gut feeling if you’ve got less time.

break the task down into simple steps

Even the simplest tasks can feel hard sometimes, but what helps for me is just breaking it down into the simplest steps. If you are sitting on the couch and you need to start cleaning, the first step is just getting up. If you are scrolling Social Media, the easiest thing you can do is just close your eyes. Once the first step is done, it’s easier to move on to the actual task.

labelling emotions

Very often just labelling an emotion takes its power away. So when you feel negatively about a task, ask yourself what emotion it is that you are feeling and why. It stops you from spiralling into the emotion and helps keeping a clear mind.

start talking about random stuff to distract yourself

When in between tasks or sitting on the couch or lying in bed, it’s super easy to get stuck. So I just start saying out loud whatever is on my mind and that distracts me from the fact that I don’t feel like getting up. That way, I usually manage to get up and get onto the next task without even noticing.

Specifically for Social Media: screen time limits

I’ve been using the app “Screen Zen” in the past few weeks. It’s free and what’s great about it is that it doesn’t only let you set screen time limits, but you can also write a message to yourself and put a countdown for when you click on Social Media. Then you have to wait another few seconds until the app opens, which gives you time to rethink what you are doing.

All of these things seem very simple, but it can still be difficult to actually implement them. Nevertheless, they do help me personally and I think I just need to get more used to actually doing them.

The key is to not be discouraged from the phases where you can’t seem to get anything done and just try different techniques to see what works best for you.

See you next week! 💕