How to Stop Procrastinating

by S J Scott

  After making that expensive mistake, I vowed to myself that I’d never let something stupid like that slip through the cracks. I swore that if something important popped up, I’d take care of it right way, without delay. And I promised myself that I would create a framework for my personal life where I would create that perfect balance between the important long-term goals with the urgent day-to-day stuff that we all deal with.

  That system I created is what you’re about to learn in How to Stop Procrastinating.

  Now, let’s get started by talking about why many people procrastinate.

  8 Reasons Why People Procrastinate

  One reason overcoming procrastination can be a challenge is everyone has a different reason for doing it. What’s more, the same person may have different reasons for putting off the various tasks in their life.

  For example, maybe you feel too tired to call back your mother, telling yourself, “I can call her later this week.” Or maybe you put off starting a new hobby because you’re afraid of making a bunch of mistakes. Or you might procrastinate on a major project because you’re secretly worried that it’ll be a complete failure.

  Simply put, beating procrastination is tough because we all have personal, but different, reasons for why we struggle with it. That said, if you want to break this bad habit, then you need to understand the common reasons why it happens and address this issue.

  In this section, I’ll review eight reasons why people procrastinate.

  My suggestion?

  Carefully read each one and ask yourself if it sounds like an excuse that you say to yourself whenever you want to put off a task.

  Reason #1: You Are a Perfectionist

  It’s easy to procrastinate when you’re worried about making a mistake that will expose a weakness. The fear of making mistakes is real, and it can cause people to put off some of their important obligations for another day.

  This type of mindset is addressed in Carol Dweck’s Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. In this book, Dweck relates successes in school, sports, work, the arts, and other areas of human endeavor to how one thinks about their talents and abilities.

  Dweck explains that people have either a fixed mindset or a growth mindset.

  Those with a fixed mindset believe that their abilities are set in stone, so they focus only on their current intelligence or talents, believing they can’t be developed. They believe that they were born with what they have and they can’t improve on their abilities. People with a fixed mindset also believe that effort is not needed if someone has talent. They believe talent just comes naturally.

  So, why can a fixed mindset be dangerous? Because it hinders your ability to grow, learn, and make positive changes.

  Alternatively, a growth mindset allows a person to believe their abilities can prosper and be developed through hard work. They believe that people’s brains and talents are a mere starting point. They are born with their individual strengths, but there is no limit as to what can be accomplished. The growth mindset creates a desire to learn and an ability to overcome problems in order to be successful.

  Dweck explains that mindset reveals how great teachers, parents, and managers can advance in their careers and achieve great accomplishments. With the correct mindset, people can motivate, lead, and teach in a way that can positively change their lives and the lives of others.

  According to Hillary Rettig, the author of The 7 Secrets of the Prolific: The Definitive Guide to Overcoming Procrastination, Perfectionism and Writer’s Block, people who procrastinate due to perfectionism tend to have a fixed mindset. This means that they avoid doing certain tasks because they fear the risk of making a mistake and looking anything less than perfect. They want their work to be perfect and cling to the idea that they will inevitably fail if the task is not in line with their given talents, so it’s best to set it aside for another time.

  While some may think that being a perfectionist is a positive trait, it’s a quality that can have a long-term, detrimental repercussion on your success. It’s a dangerous mix of antiproductive habits and attitudes that discourage progression. Although often misunderstood as having high standards, perfectionism limits the definition of success to an unrealistic standard.

  Often, perfectionists will procrastinate because they fear that they will never achieve the high standard they set for themselves. They think: “Why should I even make the effort?”

  Reason #2: You Fear the Unknown

  Picture this: You notice one day a new mole that has appeared on your skin. You start to get anxious that it may be cancerous, so you avoid getting it checked out and secretly hope it’ll go away on its own.

  Does this sound like something you’ve done in the past?

  Sometimes people are afraid of taking action because it may reveal a truth that they don’t want to hear.

  So, the old phrase “What you don’t know can’t hurt you” isn’t true. In almost every case, if you ignore something for a long period of time, hoping it will go away, it will only get worse.

  Researchers from the University of Michigan conducted a study on the effects of allowing misinformation to linger in someone’s mind. The study notes that misinformation remains in an individual’s memory and continues to influence their thinking, even if the person is aware that they are mistaken. The person is also likely to make use of the misinformation, especially if it fits with their existing beliefs and makes a logical story. This then leads to spreading the inaccurate information to other people.

  This study applies to detriments in the environment, in politics, and at an individual level. Having misinformation or preconceived notions about health issues (such as “Cancer does not run in my family, so I am probably fine” or “The mole will go away with time”) can end up doing significant damage.

  The researchers found that your beliefs and personal views can be significant obstacles for changing believed misinformation. Additionally, an attempt to present someone with an unwanted truth that is against what they previously believed can even backfire and amplify their incorrect ideas. When it comes to personal health issues, ignoring the problem instead of facing the truth can certainly lead to a more severe issue and even death.

  Think about it: What if the mole is a form of cancer that is completely treatable during the early stages but can grow malignant if it’s ignored?

  You could be proactive in getting the mole checked out and it would be an easy fix, or you could procrastinate because you want to assume everything is okay. In this case, what you don’t know certainly can hurt you, and your personal belief that it will go away on its own is detrimental.

  Some other examples of this phenomenon include avoiding going to the dentist and continuing to tell yourself that the cavity you suspect you have will be fine. Maybe you don’t want to do your taxes because you’re afraid to face the truth about how much money you owe the government. Perhaps you avoid a conversation with your spouse to delay the argument that it may cause.

  This all ties back to the findings of the researchers at the University of Michigan because in these cases, the person doesn’t want to know the truth. They are more comfortable with the possibility that everything is fine.

  Ignorance is bliss, right?

  The truth is that ignoring these situations can lead to grave circumstances.

  The big lesson here: knowledge is power. Even if you receive bad news, the earlier you hear it, the more opportunities you will have to overcome a potentially worse situation.

  As I learned from the cartoon G.I. Joe when I was a kid, “Knowing is half the battle!”

  The earlier you can learn a harsh truth, the more time and opportunities you’ll have to take corrective action if necessary.

  So, ask yourself these important questions:

  What am I afraid of?

  What is the worst possible consequence that could happen?


  What could happen if I ignore the situation?

  Why am I putting this off?

  Is there any benefit to putting this off?

  How often do people die from avoiding a situation like this?

  Am I trying to convince myself of something that’s not true?

  Am I scared of the process or the result?

  Can I handle the outcome?

  Am I trying to protect myself from a certain outcome?

  Am I actually scared or was I just told this was scary?

  I’ll admit that it’s downright frightening to address tough issues, but there is almost never a good reason for putting off anything that can have a disastrous, negative impact on your life.

  Reason #3: You Promise to Do It “Later”

  This common excuse is a reminder that you can work on the pending task at some point in the future. It could be a few hours from now, in a couple of days, or the “perfect” free day that you envision sometime in the future.

  Unfortunately, this line of thinking creates a strong disconnect between how you will ideally feel in the future and how you will actually feel in the future.

  In your imagined future, you will have boundless energy, eat a healthy diet, exercise on a regular basis, and work well into the evenings in order to get everything finished.

  However, the realistic “Future You” is tired, unmotivated, burned-out, handling unruly children, and craving chocolate cake.

  This phenomenon relates to two concepts: the hot-cold empathy gap and time inconsistency. Let’s start with the first concept and see how it relates to procrastination.

  The Hot-Cold Empathy Gap

  The hot-cold empathy gap is a concept that’s widely covered in Willpower by Roy F. Baumeister and John Tierney. It’s a state of mind that causes people to underestimate the influence of their instinctive drives on their attitudes, behaviors, and preferences.

  The most important aspect of the hot-cold empathy gap is that human understanding greatly depends on one’s state of mind. For example, if you’re feeling angry, it’s hard to picture yourself feeling calm. Or if you’re hungry, it’s hard to think of yourself as being full.

  The inability to minimize the empathy gap can cause negative outcomes in professional settings. For example, when a doctor is gauging the physical pain of their patient or an employer is assessing how much paid leave an employee should get for a death in the family, these subjective decisions can easily be influenced by the hot-cold empathy gap. Maybe the doctor had previously been in a similar accident as the patient and feels like they are overreacting to their pain, or maybe an employer also recently had a death in the family but was able to return to work relatively quickly. These past experiences and feelings can have an influence on people’s decisions.

  Time Inconsistency

  Time inconsistency is a situation where the decision-maker’s preferences vary over time and their preferences become inconsistent. This mirrors the idea that there are different versions of yourself when making a decision. Each “self” represents the decision-maker at a certain point in time and the inconsistency happens when their preferences are not aligned.

  For example, a study by Andersen et al. examined the decisions and actions of students. The night before an exam, many students wished they had one more day to study. If they were asked that night, some might agree to pay $10 for the exam to be postponed just one more day.

  Alternatively, if asked months before the exam date, the students generally didn’t feel the need to put the exam off. Consequently, most weren’t willing to pay $10 to change the date of the exam.

  While the choice is the same in both instances, it is made at different points in time. Because the decisions of the students change, they are exhibiting time inconsistency.

  Another example of a time inconsistency was shown in a 1999 experiment published in the Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. In this study, subjects were offered a free movie rental. The movies fell into two categories: lowbrow entertainment (such as Austin Powers) and highbrow entertainment (such as Hamlet).

  Researchers analyzed the patterns of the choices that the subjects made. Without time inconsistency, you would expect that a subject would make the same choice regardless of when they made the decision versus when they were going to watch the movie. However, the decisions were different.

  When subjects were asked to pick a movie to watch right away, most chose to watch a lowbrow movie. However, when they were faced with the decision of which movie to watch in four or more days, 70% of the subjects chose a highbrow movie.

  What does this mean?

  People’s minds change over time, and the outcome of their decision in relation to the point in time that the decision is being made can certainly have a strong effect on how people think. People make different decisions for what will affect them in the immediate future rather than what will affect them down the road.

  One interesting aspect of time inconsistency is the challenge of aligning the needs of Present You versus Future You.

  James Clear, in his article titled “Two Harvard Professors Reveal One Reason Our Brains Love to Procrastinate,” best describes this problem: “Future You knows you should do things that lead to the highest benefit in the long term, but Present You tends to overvalue things that lead to immediate benefit right now.”

  The average person spends too much time worrying about their Present Self, and not enough time thinking of how their actions can negatively influence their Future Self. It’s easy to fall into the trap of not caring about the long-term costs of an action because the reaction will often happen in an undetermined amount of time.

  Present You and Future You are constantly at odds. You might set a goal that you hope Future You will achieve, but it’s always Present You who does the heavy lifting of working at this daily goal. And the only thing that Present You wants is to watch Netflix and eat a bag of potato chips.

  To illustrate this point, think about an exercise goal you’ve made in the past. Odds are you imagined a Future You that exercises for an hour every day of the week and is full of energy. This version of you is fit and the envy of all your friends.

  Unfortunately, Present You is tired from work and hungry for a snack. All you want to do is unwind after a long day. So, you skip the workout because the negative impact of not exercising isn’t immediate. You then sit back and enjoy a relaxing evening because you simply don’t want to work out.

  This is a scenario that happens to people all the time. Future You has all sorts of dreams and plans, but Present You often succumbs to the instant gratification of an immediate reward.

  Reason #4: You Focus on Easy Tasks

  This probably sounds familiar: often you will choose to work on “filler” tasks because they are quick and easy to accomplish. This may include checking your email, talking to a coworker, or doing light paperwork.

  While these tasks might give the appearance of “busyness” and make you believe that you’re getting things done, they are a creative form of procrastination. Small tasks are easy to do and give you a quick sense of accomplishment, so by doing them first, you feel that rush of accomplishment and instant gratification.

  The more time and effort it takes to do a task, the harder it is to get started. Without the instant dopamine rush from successfully finishing an activity, it’s easy to push it off because the reward seems too far away. Many people want to feel successful and accomplished sooner rather than later.

  All this relates to a concept called present bias. This term refers to a person’s tendency to prioritize payoffs that are more immediate when considering the trade-offs between two future moments.

  One study done at Princeton University studied subjects’ brains while they made choices between immediate small rewards and larger rewards to be received at a later date.

  Researchers
found that there are two areas of the brain that compete for control over someone’s behavior when they try to decide between near-term rewards and long-term goals. The researchers turned to a popular economic dilemma where consumers act impatiently in the present moment but plan to be patient in the future.

  The study focused on 14 Princeton University students who were given a brain scan as they were asked to consider delayed-reward choices. One choice was a gift card to Amazon.com with values ranging from $5 to $40 at that moment or an unknown larger amount that the students could receive if they waited 2–6 weeks.

  The researchers found that when subjects were considering choices involving the possibility of an immediate reward, parts of their brains influenced by emotional neural systems were activated. Additionally, all the decisions that were made, both short- and long-term, activated the brain systems associated with abstract reasoning.

  Interestingly, when students had the option of getting a short-term reward but chose the more valuable delayed option, the calculating areas of their brains were more active than their emotional areas. When subjects chose the short-term reward, the activity of the two areas was similar, with a small swing toward more activity in the emotional area.

  The study concluded that the option of short-term rewards activates the emotion-related area of the brain and overcomes the abstract-reasoning areas.

  The researchers found that your emotional brain has a difficult time imagining the future, regardless of the fact that our logical brain can see the future consequences of current actions.

  While our emotional brain wants to receive immediate pleasure, no matter the future damage, our logical brain knows to think about long-term effects. More often than not, the immediate hassle of having to wait for a payoff doesn’t seem worth the unknown future benefits.