If you struggle with procrastination, you likely also endure relentless and tremendous frustration, confusion, irritation, guilt, and shame.
You can’t seem to figure out why you can’t just start getting stuff done. You feel it should be easy. Perhaps you believe, like many, if not most, others, that if you were just more organized and had better time management skills, then you’d be able to start and finish things much more often.
The Actual Main Reason We Procrastinate
“While time management enables you to use your time more efficiently, it ignores the primary reason you miss deadlines: You don’t start. Lacking the motivation to begin a task is the hallmark of procrastination” (Hall, 2022, p. 12).
In Dr. Nick Hall’s book, I Know What to do, so Why Don’t I do it?, he clarifies much of procrastination comes down to identifying what motivates us to begin working on tasks and then using that motivational spark to get started.
For instance, in his book, he describes that, as a child, he was highly skilled and motivated when it came to his music performance. He first attended a junior high school that was one of the best for music in his state, and so there was a continual pressure and competition, all of which
motivated him. Then, he found that when his parents decided to move he and his family across the country, and to a much less prominent musical program, he lost that motivation. Years later, he recognized that the reason he lost his motivation to play was because he wasn’t
surrounded by that competitive and pressure-filled atmosphere. He relied so heavily on the daily adrenaline rush he received in that first school.
The First Key Step to Overcoming Procrastination
Therefore, the first crucial tip to overcoming procrastination is as follows: “Reflect on what it was you found sufficiently rewarding so that you worked night and day to achieve a long ago objective…That’s the component you need to weave into your endeavors. Use what you find rewarding to maintain your motivation even when faced with challenges” (Hall, 2022, p. 4).
The Second Main Reason We Procrastinate
We do certain things, and don’t do other things, for 2 simple reasons: to experience pleasure or to avoid pain.
If you struggle with motivation to start a task, what you are essentially saying is this: I expect to experience some form(s) of unpleasant emotions/pain if I start this task, so I’ll just postpone starting it.
Another way of thinking about this difficulty with procrastination is you struggle with poor emotion management. For example, you might have a lot of difficulty calming and working through feelings of dread and fear of failure, all of which stops you from starting an activity.
Can I Just Will Myself to Start Tasks
The answer is no. The reason may be hard to embrace because it goes against a lot of what the American culture pumps into our minds and souls from an early age.
We are relentlessly tricked into believing that we just need to work hard all the time and we will then make enough money to be happy. There’s a lot of problems with this message, most of which this blog won’t cover, but for the purposes of this blog, let’s take a look at one core problem with this message.
This message implies that motivation, willpower, and our brains are limitless, whereas they are all actually finite. All three are like muscles and, as such, all prone to fatigue when stretched. Just like our muscles, when we stretch motivation, willpower, and our brains after finishing long and challenging activities, we must take steps to replenish and heal them. “Research has shown that the more motivation required to achieve a goal, the less willpower you’ll have available in the immediate aftermath” (Hall, 2022, p. 19).
I’m sure you’ve had moments where, after a massive exam, you felt completely drained. Then, the following day, you felt like you had to force yourself to restart your schoolwork.
Ideally, you should give yourself that day after the exam to completely respect that you expended your motivational, willpower, and brain muscles by giving yourself permission to have a completely relaxing day.
Dr. Hall (2022) encourages us to consider Sir Isaac Newton’s quote that, for every action, there will be an equal and opposite reaction.
Knowing and living in alignment with these principles is also critical to protecting oneself from procrastination. If we only begin tasks when we our brains, motivation, and willpower haven’t been used to the point of exhaustion, then we set ourselves up for a much greater likelihood of having that initial motivational spark.
Critical Concepts about Emotions
In this country in particular, another message that often bombards us all from birth is the idea that our negative emotions are bad. Not only is this incredibly untrue, but when we believe this, it directly contributes to procrastination. If we aren’t supposed to feel distressed, worried, fearful, overwhelmed, guilty, shameful, irritated, and dread, just to name a few common ones related to procrastination, then it will be quite the challenge to begin working on a task where some or all these emotions burst up to the surface.
“The belief that emotions are inherently bad was driven home during the Middle Ages. What today we would call emotion was, during that church-dominated period of history, closely intertwined with sin. Words such as greedy, lust, and envy were in the spotlight. To this day, this historical perspective influences our cultural beliefs. Despite evidence to the contrary, emotions often are believed to be inherently bad, which may be why many people deny or repress them” (Hall, 2022, p. 26).
“First and foremost, you should recognize that emotions are really nothing more than a sensory system. They are the eyes and ears of your body – gauges of your biology. More often than not, negative emotions reflect the perception of unmet needs” (Hall, 2022, p. 24).
Every emotion serves an important purpose. For example, anger can clue us in to some perceived injustice and can give us the energy needed to act and address it to try to improve things. Let’s look at another example. You come home every day from work feeling sad about your job. Well, without that feeling of sadness, you wouldn’t know that you’re so unhappy that you either need to then change how you look at your job or get a different job altogether. Without our emotions, we’d be walking around with a broken compass, lost and directionless. Additionally, life would be boring and meaningless.
Emotions, therefore, are not the problem. The way we express them can be problematic.
If you get nervous before a presentation and you take a few deep breaths, remind yourself past presentations have largely gone well, and then you go up and perform well, that’s terrific. If you get nervous before a presentation, run home, and get fired, well that’s bad.
Additionally, “recognize that if all you do is place a pharmacologic or behavioral Band-Aid on the emotion, the problem that led to that emotion will resurface at some point. It might be in the form of a derailed immune system, intestinal upset, skin disease, memory loss, or heart problems” (Hall, 2022, p. 24). Procrastination is another example of a “behavioral Band-Aid” on the emotion(s).
What you want to practice doing instead is work to identify the negative emotion(s) that come up when you consider beginning a task. Then, practice the following approach:
AWARE
- A – Acknowledge what you’re feeling and give yourself compassion and grace for feeling it/them.
- W – Wait and Observe – Rather than try to judge and fervently try to stop or change the emotion(s), wait and watch yourself as you experience it/them. Essentially, practice mindfulness where you just experience the emotion(s). Know that the more you allow yourself to feel things, the more you build tolerance for such feelings, which then helps communicate to your brain that feelings are okay and not something to be so afraid of and trying to avoid. This practice, over time, ultimately results in far less intense negative feelings and much more control over them.
- A – Act – You can take a handful of deep, belly breaths, as we don’t get enough oxygen in when we breathe in from our chest. You might practice a bit of grounding, where you remind yourself of the current moment you are in by using as many senses as you can to vividly bring to life the current moment, thereby helping you to not get so caught up in whatever is happening in your mind. The idea here is you are working to reduce the emotional intensity/temperature the best you can so the moment is potentially at least a bit more manageable.
- R – Repeat – You may have to practice these approaches a few times as our minds are inherently wanderers. It can also be very useful to try to embrace this reality, rather than to constantly set yourself up with the false expectation that you should always be able to stop your mind from wandering.
- E – End – Realize this all will end. The intensity of our emotions usually only lasts 15-20 minutes. With practice, this number often goes down.
Start Learning More about What Causes Your Procrastination Struggles and Work with a San Diego Therapist to Help
To understand more about your struggles with procrastination, and all the stress, anxiety, fear, overwhelm, and guilt you often endure alongside it, Stress Solutions is here to help. We can teach you all the ways in which procrastination starts and gets maintained and how to use a handful of easy-to-learn and implement concepts and skills to shake things up and end procrastination once and for all. Call or email now to schedule your free consultation with our therapist.
