Procrastination is a challenge we have all faced at one point or another.

For as long as
humans have been around, we have been struggling with delaying, avoiding, and
procrastinating on issues that matter to us.

 to tell the chronic procrastinator to just do it would be like saying to a clinically
depressed person, cheer up.
Today, we're going to talk about how to make those rare moments of
productivity more routine. The purpose of this guide is to break down
the science behind why we procrastinate, share proven frameworks
you can use to beat procrastination, and cover useful strategies that
will make it easier to take action.
Procrastination is the state of acting against your better judgment. It
is when you do one thing even though you know you should do
something else. Procrastination is the avoidance of doing a task that needs to be
accomplished by a certain deadline.[1] It could be further stated as a habitual or
intentional delay of starting or finishing a task despite knowing it might have negative
consequences.

Procrastination is one of the main barriers blocking you from getting up, making the
right decisions and living the dream life you've thought of.

Recent studies have shown that people regret more the things they haven't done
than the things they have done. In addition, feelings of regret and guilt resulting from
missed opportunities tend to stay with people much longer.

Sometimes all our opportunities seem to be on our fingertips, but we can't seem to
reach them. When you procrastinate, you waste time that you could be
investing in something meaningful. If you can overcome this fierce enemy, you
will be able to accomplish more and in doing so better utilize the potential that life
has to offer.

We now know that the world today is conducive to procrastinating and

learning how to overcome it is, therefore, one of the most important skills you
can learn.

That self-awareness is a key part of why procrastinating makes us

feel so rotten. When we procrastinate, we’re not only aware that
we’re avoiding the task in question, but also that doing so is
probably a bad idea. And yet, we do it anyway.
What is going on in the brain that causes us to avoid the things we know we should
be doing? Behavioural psychology research has revealed a phenomenon called “time
inconsistency,” which helps explain why procrastination seems to pull us in despite
our good intentions. Time inconsistency refers to the tendency of the human brain to
value immediate rewards more highly than future rewards.

The best way to understand this is by imagining that you have two selves: your
Present Self and your Future Self. When you set goals for yourself — like losing
weight or writing a book or learning a language — you are actually making plans for
your Future Self. You are envisioning what you want your life to be like in the future.
Researchers have found that when you think about your Future Self, it is quite easy
for your brain to see the value in taking actions with long-term benefits. The Future
Self values long-term rewards.

One of the first studies to document the pernicious nature of procrastination

was published in Psychological Science back in 1997. APS Fellow Dianne
Tice and APS William James Fellow Roy Baumeister, then at Case Western
Reserve University, rated college students on an established scale of
procrastination, then tracked their academic performance, stress, and general
health throughout the semester. Initially there seemed to be a benefit to
procrastination, as these students had lower levels of stress compared to
others, presumably as a result of putting off their work to pursue more
pleasurable activities. In the end, however, the costs of procrastination far
outweighed the temporary benefits. Procrastinators earned lower grades than
other students and reported higher cumulative amounts of stress and illness.
True procrastinators didn’t just finish their work later — the quality of it
suffered, as did their own well-being.

However, while the Future Self can set goals, only the Present Self can take action.
When the time comes to make a decision, you are no longer making a choice for your
Future Self. Now you are in the present moment, and your brain is thinking about
the Present Self. Researchers have discovered that the Present Self really likes instant
gratification, not long-term payoff.

This is one reason why you might go to bed feeling motivated to make
a change in your life, but when you wake up you find yourself falling
back into old patterns. Your brain values long-term benefits when they
are in the future (tomorrow), but it values immediate gratification
when it comes to the present moment (today).

You cannot rely on long-term consequences and rewards to motivate the Present
Self. Instead, you have to find a way to move future rewards and punishments into
the present moment. You have to make the future consequences become present
consequences.

This is exactly what happens during the moment when we finally move beyond
procrastination and take action.

 The guilt, shame, and anxiety that you feel while procrastinating is usually worse
than the effort and energy you have to put in while you're working. The problem is
not doing the work, it's starting the work. If we want to stop procrastinating, then we
need to make it as easy as possible for the Present Self to get started and trust that
motivation and momentum will come after we begin. Motivation often comes after
starting, not before.
To a certain degree it is normal to procrastinate and it can be regarded as a useful way to
prioritize between tasks, due to a lower tendency of procrastination on truly valued tasks (for
most people).[24] On the other hand, excessive procrastination can become a problem and impede
normal functioning. When this happens, procrastination has been found to result in health
problems, stress,[25] anxiety, sense of guilt and crisis as well as loss of personal productivity and
social disapproval for not meeting responsibilities or commitments. Together these feelings may
promote further procrastination and for some individuals procrastination becomes almost chronic.
Such procrastinators may have difficulties seeking support due to procrastination itself, but
also social stigma and the belief that task-aversion is caused by laziness, lack of willpower or low
ambition. In some cases problematic procrastination might be a sign of some
underlying psychological disorder, but not necessarily.

In fact, several studies show that self-compassion supports motivation and personal
growth. Not only does it decrease psychological distress, which we now know is a
primary culprit for procrastination, it also actively boosts motivation, enhances
feelings of self-worth and fosters positive emotions like optimism, wisdom, curiosity
and personal initiative. Best of all, self-compassion doesn’t require anything external
— just a commitment to meeting your challenges with greater acceptance and
kindness rather than rumination and regret.
That may be easier said than done, but try to reframe the task by considering a
positive aspect of it. Perhaps you remind yourself of a time you did something similar
and it turned out O.K. Or maybe you think about the beneficial outcome of
completing the task. What might your boss or partner say when you show them your
finished work? How will you feel about yourself?

research suggests that one of the most effective things that

procrastinators can do is to forgive themselves for procrastinating.
In a study by Pychyl and others, students who reported forgiving
themselves for procrastinating on studying for a first exam ended
up procrastinating less for a second exam.

This works because procrastination is linked to negative feelings, the researchers say.
Forgiving yourself can reduce the guilt you feel about procrastinating, which is one of
the main triggers for procrastinating in the first place.
But the best thing that Pychyl recommends is to recognize that you don’t have to be
in the mood to do a certain task — just ignore how you feel and get started.
“Most of us seem to tacitly believe that our emotional state has to match the task at
hand,” says Pychyl. But that’s just not true. “I have to recognize that I’m rarely going
to feel like it, and it doesn’t matter if I don’t feel like it.” Instead of focusing on
feelings, we have to think about what the next action is, Pychyl says. He counsels
people to break down their tasks into very small steps that can actually be
accomplished. So if it’s something like writing a letter of reference, the first step is
just opening the letterhead and writing the date.
Even if it’s an extremely small action, a little progress will typically make you feel
better about the task and increase your self-esteem, which in turn reduces the desire
to procrastinate to make yourself feel better, he says.

“Mark Twain is quoted as saying, 'If your job is to eat a frog, eat it first thing in the
morning, and if your job is to eat two frogs, eat the big one first,'” Pychyl says.