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Ask for help
When my work directly affects others, I find it much harder to accept the consequences of procrastinating.
You could ask a friend or colleague to help you get started on something you’ve been putting off.
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Forgiving yourself for procrastinating can help you overcome negative feelings about the work you’ve put off in the past, so you can more easily approach future tasks.
Set a timer for 30 minutes. During that time stay focused on your work. When the timer goes off, set it again for 10 minutes, and rewards yourself with a fun activity like YouTube videos, chatting with friends, or reading a book. After 10 minutes, reset the 30-minute timer and get back to ...
- Reframe your task into a challenge. “What if you got this work done before lunchtime?
- Challenge yourself to stay focused on a single task for as long as possible: … try a count-up timer. See how long you can remain on task. See if you can beat your last reco...
Encouraging people to imagine the future can help them make better decisions now.
- Looking at a digitally aged photograph can help us more effectively imagine ourselves in the future, thus helping us make better decisions.
- Realistically imagine how you’ll feel tomor...
“Structured procrastination” is a clever way to stay productive even while you procrastinate. Procrastinating doesn't mean you are doing absolutely nothing.
Next time you feel the urge to procrastinate, go for it. Avoid that Big Scary Task that makes you fee...
We have two ways of dealing with our procrastination:
- Make whatever we’re procrastinating on feel less uncomfortable, and
- Convince our present selves into caring about our future selves.
Procrastination is more about our emotions than our tendencies for laziness or just being “bad at deadlines”. At its core, we procrastinate to keep ourselves happy in the moment.
We procrastinate because our brains are wired to care more about our present comfort than our fut...
Often starting a task is the biggest hurdle. Research shows that progress—no matter how small—can be a huge motivator to help us keep going.
Set the timer for just 5 or 10 minutes. While the timer’s running, you don’t have to work, but you can’t do anything els...
Since negative emotions are the cause of our procrastination, what if we could manage our negative emotions while working?
Behavioral economist Dan Ariely calls this method reward substitution. It is essentially getting yourself to do the right thing for the wrong reaso...
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Procrastination is fundamentally an emotional reaction to what you have to do. The more aversive a task is to you, the more you’ll resist it, and the more likely you are to procrastinate.
Aversive tasks tend to: be boring, frustrating, difficult, lack intrinsic rewards, be ambiguous ...
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Facing a task, experiencing the uncomfortable emotions associated with it and doing the task despite those emotions.
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People tend to procrastinate to avoid emotionally unpleasant tasks - so they choose to focus on something that provides a temporary mood boost.
This creates a vicious cycle: procrastination itself causes shame and guilt — which in turn leads people to procrastinate even f...
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