How procrastination affects your daily life
Ali Abdaal / January 21, 2025 / Share:
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Procrastination is a challenge as old as time itself.
The philosophers of Ancient Greece even had a term for it: ‘akrasia’. It describes the act of doing something despite it going against our better judgement.
These days, procrastination can feel more challenging than ever. We’re surrounded by countless digital distractions and we struggle to get things done.
When we procrastinate, we’re encountering a concept called the Present Bias.
The present bias is this idea that we can easily set whatever goal we want for our future selves. But it’s our present self sitting here who actually has to get up and do it.
Unfortunately, our present self tends to prioritise immediate short-term rewards, even if the alternative future rewards are more beneficial.
So, when it comes to either going to the gym or binge-watching our favourite tv series, we’ll almost always ****pick the latter, even though we know that the gym will benefit us more in the long run.
This present bias makes the idea of watching tv more appealing in the short term and our future self will never get around to making the gym a habit.
So, in this article, we’ll discuss what causes procrastination, and we’ll share some tips and tricks for overcoming it, so you can get the most out of your day.
What Causes Procrastination? 🔎
Dr Tim Pychyl, a procrastination expert, highlighted in a 2013 study that the cause of procrastination often stems from a desire to avoid the negative emotions associated with a task.
If a task feels daunting, challenging, complicated, we try and escape the negative feelings of stress and confusion by avoiding the task altogether.
Put simply, we procrastinate to manage our feelings in the short term, rather than focusing on completing tasks that we know will contribute to our long-term goals.
Rationally, we all know that procrastination is bad for us, yet we still do it.
Our drive to avoid the negative emotions outweighs our desire to get the task done.
These negative feelings can be really difficult for us to confront. So instead we’ll avoid the task entirely, and distract ourselves by watching TV, scrolling on our phones or finding any other short term escape.
When we procrastinate in this way, we create an internal conflict between the immediate rewards of idle activities and the challenges of difficult tasks**.**
We choose the short-term highs of the video game rather than the slow progress towards our longer goals.
This results in a frustrating grey area where we understand that our procrastination is harmful, but we constantly find ourselves doing it.
The good news is that we can do something about it. There’s a simple formula to overcome procrastination that I’ve discovered over the last couple of years.
The Procrastination Prescription 💊
This is The Procrastination Prescription. It’s 4-step formula I’ve found to help you remedy procrastination for good:
- Seek Clarity
- Treat Yourself Like a Robot
- Overcome the Emotional Hump
- Find a Community
Each step includes two practical tips to help you beat your procrastination.
1. Seek Clarity ☀️
The strange thing about procrastination is that sometimes we simply can’t afford ****to do it. So we don’t.
If we’re faced with something urgent or life-threatening, the idea of procrastinating won’t even cross our mind.
The importance of certain tasks seems to override any thoughts of delay.
Whereas, in less critical scenarios, we’re more likely to put tasks off until the next day. We’ll tell ourselves “I’ll just do that later.”
This is down to something called uncertainty paralysis.
If we’re certain that the task is absolutely vital, we won’t procrastinate.
But if we’re not really sure why we’re meant to be doing something, it’s much harder to motivate ourselves to get it done.
So to overcome our uncertainty, we need to seek clarity, to understand the purpose of the task at hand.
A second way that we might feel uncertain is surrounding the details of the task itself.
If we don’t fully understand what we need to do, or if the next steps we should take aren’t obvious, we’ll start to feel uncomfortable. We don’t always like heading into the unknown.
This discomfort can then cause us to procrastinate. We don’t want to start a task that we don’t know how to finish.
By seeking clarity over both the reason why we’re doing a task and the next steps needed to complete it, we can remove the negative feelings that were causing us to procrastinate.
Tip 1: The 5 Whys ❓
If we find ourselves struggling with uncertainty paralysis, one effective way to reduce our anxiety is to use something called the ‘5 Whys’.
It’s a problem-solving method where we ask ourselves “why” repeatedly – usually five times – to get to the root cause of what is really bothering you.
Let’s say you’re procrastinating on a project. Instead of blaming yourself for being ‘lazy’ or ‘unmotivated’, start by asking yourself why you’re avoiding the task. For example:
- Why am I avoiding writing this essay? Because I feel really anxious about getting started.
- Why do I feel anxious about starting it? I’m worried it won’t be perfect.
- Why am I worried about it not being perfect? Because people might laugh at me if it’s bad. I’m scared of what they might say..
- Why do I fear their criticism? Because I’ve received negative feedback multiple times in the past which has really knocked my confidence.
- Why did that negative feedback knock my confidence? Because I try really hard and I’d like to be recognised for it.
By asking these questions and peeling back these layers, we managed to get to the real issue.
Our fear isn’t around writing the essay itself. It’s around not receiving any recognition.
Once we understand this, we can address the core issue rather than just the symptoms.
Then we can develop a solution. In this case, you could celebrate your hard work yourself or close friends or family without relying on feedback from others.
Tip 2. Develop a Growth Mindset 📈
Sometimes in life, we won’t be able to avoid procrastination.
We might be given a task that we just don’t want to do, but we have no choice in the matter.
No matter which way we look at it, we can’t reduce our negative emotions. It feels like there’s a huge emotional hump that’s stopping us in our tracks.
Tip 5: A 5-Minute Sand Timer ⌛
Newton’s law of inertia states that objects at rest tend to stay at rest, and objects in motion tend to stay in motion.
The same goes for us when we’re procrastinating. If you’re sitting on the sofa endlessly scrolling, it’s way easier to stay in that rut than to get up and just do the thing.
This is where the magic of a 5-minute timer comes in.
The idea is simple. Flip the timer and commit to just 5 minutes of the task.
No strings attached and no commitment beyond those 5 minutes.
When you do this, more often than not, you’ll find that once you get started you’ll completely forget about the 5 minutes and you’ll find yourself focused on your work.
You realise it’s not as bad as you thought. You’ll be able to keep going. The object in motion stays in motion.
It’s all about tricking yourself into action without expecting that initial burst of motivation.
Use this to tip to build momentum, and before you know it, those 5 minutes have turned into an hour or two.
In this article:
- What Causes Procrastination? 🔎
- The Procrastination Prescription 💊
- 1. Seek Clarity ☀️
- 2. Treat Yourself Like A Robot 🤖
- 3. Overcome the Emotional Hump 🏔️
- 4. Find a Community 👋
Ali Abdaal
I’m an ex-doctor turned YouTuber, Podcaster, entrepreneur and author. I’ve been creating YouTube videos for over 7 years and have a following of over 6 million over on my main channel.
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