Solved Highlight: The Real Reason You Procrastinate

You have goals to achieve and plans to make them happen—but you’re constantly sabotaging your progress toward getting them done. How? By procrastinating: leaving tasks for “later” or “tomorrow” when you could really be working on them today. In Solving the Procrastination Puzzle, psychologist Timothy A. Pychyl contends that you aren’t procrastinating because you’re bad at managing your time. Instead, you’re procrastinating because you haven’t learned how to handle your emotions—the negative emotions that pop up each time you consider working on a dreaded task.

In this guide, we’ll take you through Pychyl’s research-based insights into what procrastination is and how it’s undermining your ability to live a happy, healthy life. Then, we’ll dive into the reasons you’re procrastinating and explore Pychyl’s advice for changing your habits in the short and long term. We’ll also compare his ideas with those of other psychology and productivity experts who’ve studied procrastination, and we’ll look at additional strategies for changing your relationship with your most dreaded tasks.

Procrastination prevents us from living a fulfilling life, yet we still do it—why? In Procrastination, psychologists Lenora Yuen and Jane Burka argue that we procrastinate to experience short-term relief from our fear of working on certain tasks. Fortunately, they claim you can beat procrastination and learn to live a more fulfilling life if you accept reality’s constraints and learn healthier ways to manage your fears. In this guide, you’ll learn how to…

• Identify the fears that lead you to procrastinate
• Reflect on how your biology, circumstances, and self-esteem affect your procrastination
• Learn to set and achieve realistic goals
• Better control how you manage your emotions and time

Throughout this guide, we’ll contextualize the authors’ ideas among those of other experts, such as James Clear and Bhante Gunaratana. Furthermore, we’ll supplement the authors’ strategies with additional actionables, such as how to start practicing mindfulness and how to stop avoiding exercise.

To be honest, all of us are procrastinators: We put off the tasks we don’t enjoy until later, or tomorrow, or the last possible minute—even when we know there are likely to be negative consequences. Personal development writer Thibaut Meurisse argues in Immediate Action that procrastination served a function early in human evolution, but these days, it prevents us from reaching our goals. Meurisse contends that if you face your procrastination habit head-on and figure out why you’re putting off your most important projects, you’ll be able to build healthier habits—and reduce the impact procrastination has on your work, your education, or your life in general—in as little as a week.

In this guide, we’ll explore Meurisse’s approach to understanding procrastination and examine his methods for minimizing it. We’ll also compare his ideas with recommendations from scientists and experts on productivity and motivation for approaching your work so you aren’t derailed by procrastination.

Procrastination prevents us from living a fulfilling life, yet we still do it—why? In Procrastination, psychologists Lenora Yuen and Jane Burka argue that we procrastinate to experience short-term relief from our fear of working on certain tasks. Fortunately, they claim you can beat procrastination and learn to live a more fulfilling life if you accept reality’s constraints and learn healthier ways to manage your fears. In this guide, you’ll learn how to…

• Identify the fears that lead you to procrastinate
• Reflect on how your biology, circumstances, and self-esteem affect your procrastination
• Learn to set and achieve realistic goals
• Better control how you manage your emotions and time

Throughout this guide, we’ll contextualize the authors’ ideas among those of other experts, such as James Clear and Bhante Gunaratana. Furthermore, we’ll supplement the authors’ strategies with additional actionables, such as how to start practicing mindfulness and how to stop avoiding exercise.

Perfectionists strive for constant excellence—but, in order to reach that, they often do things that reduce their productivity and lead to burnout.

Why do we put off the things that matter most to us, even when we know that doing so makes us unhappy in the long run? According to psychologist and productivity coach Neil Fiore, the problem isn’t that we’re lazy—it’s that procrastination is a symptom of the fear and anxiety we sometimes feel about our work. In his 1988 book The Now Habit, Fiore explains what procrastination is, why we do it, and most importantly, how to avoid it.

The Now Habit combines psychological insights and time management tips designed to eliminate procrastination by lowering our resistance to work. Fiore promises that if you follow his system, you’ll get more done while enjoying a more relaxed and balanced life.

In this guide, we’ll examine Fiore’s theory of procrastination and share his ideas about how to fix it. Along the way, we’ll update Fiore’s advice by drawing on more recent work in the fields of psychology and productivity.

You may not realize it, but your brain has an extraordinary capacity for complex calculations. Simple tasks like stepping over a garden hose as you walk across your lawn require elaborate computations, and yet they seem easy because your brain does them intuitively.

Barbara Oakley wrote A Mind for Numbers to help you learn math and science well enough that they, too, become intuitive. In this guide, we will examine Oakley’s explanation of your brain’s natural capabilities, her strategies for remembering complex concepts more easily, her recommendations for building good study habits and avoiding procrastination, and a few other tips for succeeding in your studies. We’ll also examine the scientific basis of her recommendations and compare her strategies to those of other experts in learning and memory.

The Procrastination Cure by Damon Zahariades is a practical handbook for understanding why you procrastinate and how to break the habit. A self-professed chronic procrastinator, Zahariades shares the strategies that helped him change his behavior, with the promise that you can apply the same techniques to manage your procrastination and enjoy a less stressful, more productive life.

Zahariades left a corporate job to create his own business focused on helping people be more productive. His books and his website, Art of Productivity, explore a variety of topics related to productivity, including time management, habit formation, and goal setting.

In this guide, we’ll delve into each of the sources of chronic procrastination the author identifies, which we’ll group by root causes. We’ll go over the approach Zahariades recommends to address each cause, including practical tips on removing distractions, increasing motivation, and managing your time.

You have goals to achieve and plans to make them happen—but you’re constantly sabotaging your progress toward getting them done. How? By procrastinating: leaving tasks for “later” or “tomorrow” when you could really be working on them today. In Solving the Procrastination Puzzle, psychologist Timothy A. Pychyl contends that you aren’t procrastinating because you’re bad at managing your time. Instead, you’re procrastinating because you haven’t learned how to handle your emotions—the negative emotions that pop up each time you consider working on a dreaded task.

In this guide, we’ll take you through Pychyl’s research-based insights into what procrastination is and how it’s undermining your ability to live a happy, healthy life. Then, we’ll dive into the reasons you’re procrastinating and explore Pychyl’s advice for changing your habits in the short and long term. We’ll also compare his ideas with those of other psychology and productivity experts who’ve studied procrastination, and we’ll look at additional strategies for changing your relationship with your most dreaded tasks.

You have goals to achieve and plans to make them happen—but you’re constantly sabotaging your progress toward getting them done. How? By procrastinating: leaving tasks for “later” or “tomorrow” when you could really be working on them today. In Solving the Procrastination Puzzle, psychologist Timothy A. Pychyl contends that you aren’t procrastinating because you’re bad at managing your time. Instead, you’re procrastinating because you haven’t learned how to handle your emotions—the negative emotions that pop up each time you consider working on a dreaded task.

In this guide, we’ll take you through Pychyl’s research-based insights into what procrastination is and how it’s undermining your ability to live a happy, healthy life. Then, we’ll dive into the reasons you’re procrastinating and explore Pychyl’s advice for changing your habits in the short and long term. We’ll also compare his ideas with those of other psychology and productivity experts who’ve studied procrastination, and we’ll look at additional strategies for changing your relationship with your most dreaded tasks.

Procrastination prevents us from living a fulfilling life, yet we still do it—why? In Procrastination, psychologists Lenora Yuen and Jane Burka argue that we procrastinate to experience short-term relief from our fear of working on certain tasks. Fortunately, they claim you can beat procrastination and learn to live a more fulfilling life if you accept reality’s constraints and learn healthier ways to manage your fears. In this guide, you’ll learn how to…

• Identify the fears that lead you to procrastinate
• Reflect on how your biology, circumstances, and self-esteem affect your procrastination
• Learn to set and achieve realistic goals
• Better control how you manage your emotions and time

Throughout this guide, we’ll contextualize the authors’ ideas among those of other experts, such as James Clear and Bhante Gunaratana. Furthermore, we’ll supplement the authors’ strategies with additional actionables, such as how to start practicing mindfulness and how to stop avoiding exercise.

To be honest, all of us are procrastinators: We put off the tasks we don’t enjoy until later, or tomorrow, or the last possible minute—even when we know there are likely to be negative consequences. Personal development writer Thibaut Meurisse argues in Immediate Action that procrastination served a function early in human evolution, but these days, it prevents us from reaching our goals. Meurisse contends that if you face your procrastination habit head-on and figure out why you’re putting off your most important projects, you’ll be able to build healthier habits—and reduce the impact procrastination has on your work, your education, or your life in general—in as little as a week.

In this guide, we’ll explore Meurisse’s approach to understanding procrastination and examine his methods for minimizing it. We’ll also compare his ideas with recommendations from scientists and experts on productivity and motivation for approaching your work so you aren’t derailed by procrastination.