PDF Summary:The Procrastination Equation, by Piers Steel

Do you frequently delay important work until right before the deadline? Do you find yourself distracted and overwhelmed by your daily tasks, unsure of how to begin them? If this sounds familiar, you’re not alone—according to Piers Steel, nearly 95% of people say they procrastinate. To address this common problem, Steel wrote The Procrastination Equation, exploring strategies to help procrastinators increase their motivation and reclaim control over their time. By reducing distractions, building confidence in your abilities, and making unpleasant tasks feel more valuable for yourself, you can begin to overcome procrastination.

In this guide, we’ll discuss the reasons behind procrastination and its consequences, along with Steel’s strategies for combating the most common procrastination triggers. In our commentary, we’ll identify alternative strategies for managing procrastination from authors such as Brian Tracy and Matthew Dicks. We’ll also explore additional resources for combating procrastination.

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Likewise, the traits that typically accompany the tendency to procrastinate—such as impulsivity and lack of self-control—make procrastinators more susceptible to unhealthy habits, including excessive alcohol consumption and smoking. These habits represent short-term pleasure, which procrastinators favor over long-term health outcomes.

Using If-Then Plans to Curb Bad Habits

If, like many chronic procrastinators, you’re susceptible to unhealthy impulses and vices, consider using “if-then” plans to break bad habits. These plans connect a triggering situation to a concrete action that’s an alternative to the bad habit. Repeatedly using your if-then plans strengthens your association between temptation cues and your more positive, constructive response.

For example, maybe you frequently drink alcohol on weekday evenings, and you want to stop because it decreases the quality of your sleep. You might create an if-then plan that says, “If it’s a weekday evening, then I’ll drink water instead of alcohol.” Or, perhaps you smoke most often during work breaks; your if-then plan could be, “If I’m at work, then I’ll chew nicotine gum instead of smoking.”

Realm #2: Financial Success

Steel argues that procrastinators are typically less financially successful than their peers. Procrastinators often delay paying off debt, meaning they end up paying more in fees and interest. Additionally, they typically wait much longer to start saving for retirement, so they end up without enough money in old age.

Tips for Starting to Work on Your Finances

Financial experts offer many tips for working through common forms of financial procrastination:

Tip #1: Start getting your finances in order before you feel ready. Many people procrastinate on saving with the excuse that they’ll start when they have more money. However, waiting until you can save more often means that you never save (since, in theory, you could always earn more than you currently do). So, it’s better to start with what you have, even if it isn’t a lot.

Tip #2: Focus on one area of your finances at a time. If you’re just starting to work on your finances, you might feel overwhelmed when confronted with all the tasks ahead. Then, you might feel the urge to procrastinate. To avoid this, choose one aspect of your finances to focus on at a time. Start by tracking your income and spending, so you know what you have and what you’re spending your money on. You can identify areas of overspending and then make cuts. Then, begin working on saving for retirement and paying off debt.

Tip #3: Schedule time every week to look over your finances. So you don’t back out of it, treat this time as if it’s time scheduled with a friend. Reviewing your finances regularly makes it a habit, and you also ensure you’re on track with your savings goals and payments. That way, you avoid fees and interest from making late payments.

How Can We Avoid Procrastinating?

We’ve defined procrastination, explored the main reasons we do it, and considered some of its most common negative consequences. Now, we’ll discuss how to avoid procrastination by exploring three of Steel’s strategies:

1. Managing distractions and impulses
2. Making your tasks more interesting
3. Building your confidence

Within each strategy, we’ll touch on specific anti-procrastination techniques you can apply in your everyday life.

Strategy #1: Manage Distractions and Impulses

Steel notes that since impulsivity causes procrastination, managing distractions and impulses can prevent procrastination. If you avoid things that offer tempting immediate rewards, you reduce the amount of time you spend delaying important tasks.

(Shortform note: You may find that if you wait a few minutes, the procrastination-inducing allure of distractions fades. In Ultralearning, Scott Young suggests setting a five-minute timer whenever you feel the impulse to procrastinate. Commit to working for at least those five minutes. When the timer goes off, you may want to continue working because the urge to distract yourself has passed. If you find yourself frequently choosing to stop working after five minutes, increase the time to 25 minutes followed by a five-minute break. As each period of productivity feels more natural, upgrade to longer periods of time.)

Here, we’ll explore two techniques for managing distractions and impulses.

Technique #1: Remove Distractions From Your Workspace

Thanks to the internet, television, eye-catching advertisements, and a host of other potential distractions, our world is full of triggers that may tempt us to forgo important tasks for immediate satisfaction. According to Steel, one way we can prevent procrastination is by removing these distraction triggers from our work environment.

(Shortform note: Distractions are powerful because of the ingrained reward system in our brains. In Hyperfocus, Chris Bailey notes that every time we do something new, our brains release a hit of dopamine, the “feel-good” neurochemical. This happens every time we switch tasks or stop work to follow a distraction. Because this makes us feel good, it’s hard for us to avoid, making this kind of procrastination highly tempting. That’s one reason why Steel’s strategy of removing access to distractions may be an effective measure to prevent procrastination.)

Steel suggests doing the following to avoid common triggers:

1) Silence email notifications on your computer. Every time an email pops up, we tend to click on it, breaking our focus and preventing us from deeply engaging in more pressing work.

(Shortform note: In Eat That Frog!, Brian Tracy expands on this advice, arguing that you shouldn’t check your email first thing in the morning. Checking first thing prompts a dopamine hit that your brain seeks to repeat the rest of the day. Additionally, to avoid distraction, limit your email checking to twice a day, and close out of your inbox after each time.)

2) Remove computer shortcuts to games and websites you commonly visit. The more readily available something is, the more likely it’ll become a distraction. Therefore, by making it more difficult to access common distractions like games and websites, you’re reducing the chance that you’ll use them.

(Shortform note: In today’s world, most internet-based distractions likely come from smartphone apps and social media websites like Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter. If you have trouble stopping yourself from using a particular app, consider installing apps that block social media, such as AppBlock or Flipd. Many of them let you schedule time blocks during which you’re unable to access the distracting apps, giving you pre-planned, uninterrupted work time.)

3) Clean up your workspace. A cluttered workspace means a workspace full of distractions—every time you have to look for something or move things around, you’re increasing the probability that something will sidetrack you.

(Shortform note: In Getting Things Done, David Allen offers suggestions for creating an organized, consistent workspace that minimizes distractions. At its most basic, your workspace should have a writing surface, an in-tray for papers, and a space for a computer or other digital devices. You may also want a printer, file drawers, stacking trays, reference shelves, and a whiteboard. If you work both in an office and at home, create an identical setup in both locations so you can use the same organization system no matter where you are.)

Technique #2: Create Negative Consequences for Procrastination

Steel states that you can also discourage procrastination by setting up an accountability measure that includes negative consequences if you give into the impulse to procrastinate. If you know that something unpleasant will happen as a result of your procrastination, you’ll have far less incentive to heed your impulses.

(Shortform note: Self-imposed consequences will likely motivate you more than the inherent long-term consequences of procrastination we discussed earlier (such as poor health outcomes and financial hardship). First, the accountability measures are more immediate—it’s much harder to ignore something that’ll affect you tomorrow than it is to ignore consequences that might occur in a few years. Second, your accountability measures are more concrete—you know exactly what will happen, so it feels more real. Long-term consequences are often too abstract to be immediately motivating—which is the same reason long-term goals are difficult to follow.)

Whatever accountability measure you choose, make sure it’s reasonable—it shouldn’t be so rigid that you can’t get out of it under special circumstances. However, it shouldn’t be so easy to break that it’s not really an incentive at all.

For example, you might promise to do all the chores in the house for a month if you don’t pay your bills by a certain date. To ensure that you stick to this arrangement, maybe you create a written agreement with the other members of your household. To ensure that you aren’t held responsible for delays that arise from events outside of your control, you might include stipulations in your agreement that allow for special circumstances, such as delaying bill payments because you had to use the money for an emergency.

Choose Rehabilitative Consequences Over Self-Punishment

Some experts recommend that when you're designing accountability measures, the consequences you create should be rehabilitative ones, specifically. Rehabilitative consequences prepare you to get back on track with your goals. Though they can feel unpleasant, they often push you toward more positive actions. You can design rehabilitative consequences that fit Steel’s definition of a reasonable accountability measure. For example, a rehabilitative consequence for failing to pay the rent on time would be altering your budget so you have enough funds to pay the next month’s rent in four weekly installments—unless you face a special circumstance, such as losing your job.

In contrast, self-punishment is deliberately harming yourself for perceived wrongdoings. It uses fear to make you avoid certain actions, but it doesn’t show you how to change and grow. This is only a behavior change on the surface level. Additionally, self-punishment puts you in a negative headspace, making you less resilient to stress and less motivated. For example, if your accountability measure involved berating yourself or depriving yourself of a meal, that would be harmful self-punishing behavior and not helpful to your goals.

Strategy #2: Make The Task More Valuable to You

Steel’s second strategy addresses the second reason for procrastination—disliking what we’re doing—by making tasks more interesting (and thus more valuable) to us. In today’s world, most work is broken into routine, repetitive tasks that contribute to monotony and boredom, such as doing inventories, entering data into spreadsheets, and writing reports. We struggle to feel motivated to complete these dull tasks because our brains deem them unimportant. Thus, we procrastinate, and the unpleasant work adds up.

(Shortform note: Repetitive tasks may pose workplace problems beyond just encouraging procrastination. Some research shows that the extreme boredom of repetitive tasks can have serious effects on employees’ mental health, making them dissatisfied, dispirited, and desperate to leave the job. When turnover increases, companies incur costs for recruiting and lose time training new employees. Additionally, tasks that involve repeated movements often lead to health problems like tendonitis and carpal tunnel syndrome.)

The following techniques will help you make tasks more interesting and valuable:

Technique #1: Make the Task (Somewhat) More Challenging

Steel states that you can make a task more enjoyable and avoid procrastination by making it a little more challenging. Tasks that are too easy become boring because there’s no novelty left in them—they’re inherently repetitive since you know exactly what to do and how to do it. Adding some difficulty reintroduces novelty, making the work more valuable and interesting.

Steel argues that this works as long as you don’t make a task too challenging—if you do, you might become overwhelmed and procrastinate anyway. You experience maximum engagement when you’re able to strike an appropriate balance of difficulty. This allows you to access flow states where you’re completely engrossed in a task—still learning new things and improving, but undeterred by what you’re not yet able to do.

One way to make a task more challenging is to turn it into a game or competition. For example, you could treat your tasks like quests in a video game, where you must complete each one within a certain amount of time. Each time you succeed, you get points to trade in for real-life rewards, such as a meal at your favorite restaurant. The limited time adds a challenge, and the reward system makes the work more fun.

(Shortform note: If you want a little creative guidance to help you gamify everyday tasks, some companies have products designed for this purpose. For example, The Hero’s Journal is a daily journal you complete over 90 days that transforms your goals into quests. You write in it every day to track your progress, and you experience a story along the way.)

How to Make Tasks More Challenging and Access Flow States

If a work task feels too easy, you can also make it more challenging and engaging by exercising different skills. For instance, use problem-solving skills to make your workflow more efficient. Additionally, increase your expertise in the task, instead of sticking with a basic understanding of it. Learn the ins and outs of the processes, software, and systems involved in the task.

In Flow, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi describes how you can use this iterative learning process to access flow states even as you acquire skills that make previously challenging tasks feel easy (and therefore unengaging). He argues that flow states balance ease with challenge to create an enjoyable experience.

According to Csikszentmihalyi, you enter and exit flow states at different stages of pursuing a goal. When you first start an activity, you enter the first flow state, where you’re accumulating the collection of skills needed to do the activity. Once you achieve your first goal, previous challenges are now easy, and you exit the flow state, instead entering a state of boredom and anxiety. To leave this anxious, bored state and enter a new flow state, you must create new goals and practice new skills.

Technique #2: Attach Boring Tasks to Important Goals

Steel’s second technique for adding value to tasks involves attaching the tasks to goals that are important to you. When we associate responsibilities with goals we already care about, they become inherently motivating instead of things that we’re obligated to do. Even the most mundane tasks become relevant to bringing your vision of the future to life. Therefore, you’re less likely to procrastinate them.

For example, maybe you hate exercising. However, one of your long-term goals is to travel to places that require a lot of physical activity to get around. Therefore, you need to get in shape and get stronger. Every time you have the urge to procrastinate on going to the gym, remind yourself that each exercise session brings you closer to your goal of being able to walk and hike wherever you want. Think of all the beautiful sights you’ll get to see and the experiences you’ll get to have, and let that be your motivation.

(Shortform note: To reflect on the relationship between tasks you dislike and your broader goals, The Bullet Journal Method author Ryder Carroll suggests journaling. First, identify the tasks you find difficult and unpleasant. Then, on the left side of the page, write how each task makes you feel. For example, “I hate meal planning for the week because it’s so frustrating to have to decide what I want to eat in advance.” On the right side of the page, write how the tasks ultimately benefit you. (This benefit could include whatever goal you connect it to.) For example, “Planning ahead makes it easier to choose healthy options and prevents me from exceeding my grocery budget.”)

Strategy #3: Build Your Confidence

Steel’s third strategy is building your confidence to avoid procrastination that’s based on the fear of failure. As we touched on earlier, the less confidence you have in your ability to succeed, the less motivated you’ll be, and the more likely you are to procrastinate.

(Shortform note: Some experts state that procrastination based on fear and lack of confidence also provides an excuse for failure: If our work isn’t very good, we can blame it on not having enough time. It wasn’t a personal failure, but a failure of circumstance. This cushions our self-esteem and allows us to avoid facing the fear that we wouldn’t be good enough even if we did have enough time.)

On the other hand, Steel says that being too confident about your ability to succeed can also result in procrastination. If you believe that everything will work out no matter what, you might wait for success and good fortune to come to you instead of working to make it happen. Additionally, overconfident people often underestimate the amount of time needed to complete tasks, so they wait until the last minute to begin. This can undermine their results.

(Shortform note: The tendency to overestimate our abilities is so common that psychologists have a name for it—overconfidence bias. This bias affects more than just our perception of the time and effort it takes to complete a task: It can also affect our ability to make ethical decisions. Research suggests that we tend to believe we’re more ethical than our colleagues, peers, and competitors. One study found that 50% of the business people surveyed believed they were more ethical than 90% of people. Because of this bias, we often take ethical issues lightly. We assume we’ll do the right thing instead of reflecting properly on what that might be, making it more likely that we’ll make unethical decisions.)

To successfully avoid procrastination, you must strike a balance between acknowledging the work it’ll realistically take to complete a task and believing that you’re capable of succeeding. (Shortform note: Keeping a work journal can help you strike this balance in the workplace. Documenting your experiences with work tasks—including the time it takes to complete them, issues and insights you have along the way, and so on—creates a clear and realistic picture of what you need to do when you’re faced with the task again. Additionally, reflecting on your achievements and having a record of your progress can build your confidence.)

Technique #1 helps you strike this balance, and Technique #2 helps you increase your confidence when it’s running low:

Technique #1: Break Up Your Tasks Into Smaller Steps

First, Steel advises breaking large tasks into small, manageable steps instead of trying to tackle everything all at once. Each step should be something you know you can achieve. This builds your confidence through small wins—every time you successfully complete one of the steps, your confidence and motivation increase, propelling you toward the next step.

For example, say you’re writing a novel. This is a large, intimidating task—you could easily decide it’s not worth it because it’s too hard and you’ll never finish. Imagine that instead of thinking of it as one big task, you start by committing to writing 300 words every day. After you successfully do this every day for a week, you decide you want to start writing 500 words every day. Over time, your confidence in your ability to finish the novel grows as each small step of reaching your daily word count adds up to a whole book.

(Shortform note: Setting and accomplishing small goals makes us feel good at the molecular level—it’s another way we get a rush of dopamine. As Steel suggests when discussing growing confidence, these positive feelings are addictive. The more goals we complete, the more dopamine our brains get, and the more we want to repeat the behavior that made us feel good. This gives us forward momentum toward our end goal.)

Technique #2: Surround Yourself With Positive Influences

Steel’s second technique for building confidence is surrounding yourself with the right people. We’re strongly influenced by those around us, so it’s important to spend time with people who represent the attitude and beliefs we want to embody. When it comes to confidence, this means choosing friends who offer positivity and encouragement—having others believe in us can help us believe in ourselves. With a strong foundation of self-belief, we have less reason to procrastinate.

(Shortform note: If you’re unsure where to find encouraging, like-minded people, there are a few methods you can try: First, get involved with clubs, organizations, and hobbies that interest you. You’ll have common ground with the other members, making it easier to make friends. Second, build friendships online. There are many websites and forums where you can connect with people all over the world. You don’t have to be in the same physical place to receive meaningful encouragement from friends.)