Why do we procrastinate?

First, let’s define the beast we’re battling. 

Procrastination is the biggest creative block of all. The boss level. To defeat a boss, we need to practice, build up our skills. And it’s important to know your enemy. So here’s a definition. 

Procrastination is the habit of voluntarily and unnecessarily putting off important tasks you need to do, even when you have time to do them. You know that avoiding these tasks will cause you problems in the future. Yet you do it anyway, to avoid feeling bad in the present.

Procrastination is a form of self-harm. We all know this. But this awareness doesn’t stop us giving in to it. 

In his useful book Solving The Procrastination Puzzle, scientist and long-term procrastination researcher Professor Tim Pychyl identifies the song of the procrastinator. 

• I don’t want to
• I’m not in the mood
• I’ll feel better tomorrow.

Does any of that sound familiar?

Procrastination is a master of disguise. 

Its song has many different lyrics and hooks, endless variations on the themes above. 

You can be perfectly alert and awake until you turn to an aversive task. Then the fog descends, and you suddenly feel exhausted. Procrastination will tell you to rest now, convincing you that you’ll be be able to tackle it better later.

“Wait until tomorrow/next week/next month,” it urges, promising that then you’ll somehow have all the energy, knowledge, skill, confidence you need. 

It will convince you to delay a little longer while you just clear the decks, empty your in-box, research or prepare a bit more, tidy your office, declutter a cupboard, then watch Netflix (to recover).

It whispers cunningly: “Just this one more thing before you start…” Or, “Why don’t you have a quick look at Instagram?” 

Once it’s wasted your day, it repeats its tired old promise. You can start fresh in the morning. Tomorrow, you’ll be less anxious, more rested, in a better mood, more able to cope with the work.

Except tomorrow never comes. When you wake up, it’s just today again. And Future You? It’s turns out to be the same old you, only more stressed. Because you’re one day closer to your deadline. Or you’ve lost a precious day that you could have spent working on a project that was important to you.

All humans procrastinate.

As we will see, it’s in our nature. There are strong evolutionary reasons why all of us procrastinate occasionally. 

But some people procrastinate more than others. Research indicates that 15-25% of us are habitual, chronic procrastinators. And this is when it gets truly harmful. 

Chronic procrastination is bad for your health, your happiness, your career prospects, your bank balance, your friendships.

You put off exercise; you eat badly (you’ll start that diet tomorrow); you put off getting medical check-ups or support for your mental health.

You end up paying interest on bills and fines on your tax because you put off dealing with financial matters. As for that book, film, album? You’ve put off working on that for months on end.

You’re seen as unreliable at work, and by friends. People stop trusting you to do the things you say you’ll do. Even worse, you stop trusting yourself. 

The resulting guilt and shame simply creates more unpleasant feelings. Which makes us even more likely to procrastinate, escaping into numbing or distracting activities. 

Creatives are especially prone to this. 

I’ve found no scientific studies to back this up, but I’m willing to bet that a disproportionate number of chronic procrastinators are self-employed, work in a creative field, and have self-directed projects they’re struggling to start or finish. 

Why? Lots of reasons.

• Creative work can be hard. Especially starting it, before you get into flow.
• Marketing and selling our services or our work is challenging.
• Unpleasant feelings such as fear, overwhelm, rejection or not feeling good enough are constant companions on the creative journey.
• We have the freedom to structure our time. Often no one is watching. When you work in a team, or have a job with set hours, it’s not impossible to come in late, to miss deadlines or to goof off and play computer games . But it’s much easier to do those things when you work alone. And when you are the boss.
• If we’re working on speculative projects, with no certainty that what we’re doing will ever find an audience, it can be even harder to motivate ourselves. 

There are four stages in any creative project, and all have their own procrastination traps. You can read more about that here. It’s also true that a lot of creative work doesn’t look like work from the outside. Sometimes, you’re the only one who knows if you’re procrastinating, or doing essential dreaming, exploring and thinking.

Common triggers for procrastination

We don’t procrastinate on doing things we genuinely enjoy, or that we find easy. We only avoid tasks that are aversive to us in some way. The more of these triggers a task has, the more likely we are to procrastinate:

• Boring
• Frustrating
• Difficult
• Unstructured or ambiguous
• Lacking in personal meaning
• Lacking in intrinsic rewards (ie not fun or engaging)

Why we procrastinate: the science

Procrastination occurs when two different parts of your brain go to war with each other.

The limbic system is the emotional, instinctive part of your brain, including the pleasure centre. It’s your dinosaur brain, the most ancient part of our thinking process. In it is a small, walnut-sized area called the amygdala, which assesses danger and triggers our fight-flight-freeze response. If you spot a tiger, the amygdala instantly overrides everything else your brain is doing, so that you immediately run, use a weapon. Or do whatever else you need to do to stay alive.

The prefrontal vortex is the more recent and logical ‘executive’ section of the brain. In charge of planning, decision-making, control and social behaviour, it wants you to do unpleasant things to further long-term goals. If you live in a place where tigers might attack, this is the part of the brain that will urge you to design strong fences to keep you safe, and invent better weapons to defend yourself with. 

Dinosaurs don’t play well with technology.

Our brain evolved over hundreds of thousands of years. It hasn’t had time to adjust to the modern world, where life-threatening incidents are mercifully rare for the vast majority of us. 

When faced with the stress of a task that makes us feel anxious or insecure, the amygdala still perceives it as a existential threat, and swings into action. It can’t tell the difference between a tiger attack, and a work deadline; a threat to your life, and something that threatens your self-esteem. 

Your dinosaur brain is concerned only with the present, and getting you to back to comfort and safety now. It’s not bothered about your plans and goals, your deadlines, your Future Self. Its only job is making sure you have a future, by keeping you alive and out of danger. 

Scientists call this “amygdala hijack”, an instinctive response that overrides the more rational parts of our mind. The rest of us call it having a full day to work on an important project, yet somehow spending it watching cat videos, answering email, or making an especially complex dinner involving hours of shopping for esoteric ingredients, chopping and simmering. (Or is that just me?)

Procrastination is giving in to feel good. 

You avoid unpleasant, uncomfortable feelings by opting for adrenalin rush of ticking easy things off your to-do list. You get engrossed in busywork that feels productive, but actually moves nothing important forward. 

Or you escape into watching video clips, scrolling social media, playing computer games – all distracting activities that have been designed to be addictive, giving you regular, unpredictable little hits of pleasure-giving dopamine. 

We know this relief from discomfort is temporary. Later on, we’ll feel even worse. We understand that we’re creating problems for our Future Self. If we’re honest, and ask ourselves how we’re really feeling, procrastination rarely feels good, even in the moment. 

Yet we do it anyway, to avoid risk, discomfort, unpleasant emotions. 

It’s a short-term fix.

Procrastination is a strangely joyless drug with a hideous hangover. When we give in to this short-term mood repair, we also deny ourselves the slower, gentler, but more lasting pleasures that make a good life.

The satisfaction of solving a difficult problem. The sense of fulfilment you get from building up a substantial body of work. And the confidence that comes with knowing you can do hard things. 

So procrastination isn’t about being lazy, lacking discipline. It’s not about motivation, even. Beating yourself up only makes it worse, giving you more unpleasant feelings to run away from.

Procrastination is about learning to manage unpleasant emotions: fear and uncertainty, guilt and shame, feeling inadequate or worried that you won’t be able to save your idea well.

To overcome it, we have to get comfortable with feeling uncomfortable. Everything else you do to try and control it is dealing with the symptoms, not the cause. 

It’s all about emotion.

Emotion is rarely rational. But it’s powerful. Understand this, and procrastination becomes easier to deal with.

If you expect to encounter resistance every time you start creative work, you can prepare for it. And have more control over how you respond. You can decide in advance what to tell your panicked dinosaur brain, how to soothe your amygdala and put your pre-frontal cortex back in the driving seat.

You can look at all the factors that make a task aversive, and reverse some of the triggers.

Most of all, remember that the conditions don’t have to be perfect. Motivation follows action, not the other way round. It doesn’t matter if your muse doesn’t show up, so long as you do. You don’t have to be in the right mood or mindset.You just need to begin. 

The siren song of procrastination will always be there. It will keep changing its tune, coming back in new and clever disguises. But when you expect this, it’s easier to see it for what it is. And to finally beat it.