To stop procrastinating, find out what the task makes you feel and deal with that first. Research treats procrastination mainly as a problem of managing mood and not time: we put off work because it feels boring, vague, or risky, and avoiding it brings quick relief. That is why another to do list rarely helps. How to stop procrastinating depends on the task in front of you.
Below is a 10 minute routine you can use right now. After that come the causes of procrastination, eight fixes matched to the kind of task you are avoiding, and the patterns specific to office work. The last part covers when a habit may be something a professional should look at.
What to do in the next 10 minutes
If you are avoiding something right now, read this list, do it, and come back for the rest later.
- Write down the one task you are avoiding.
- Finish this sentence: “I do not want to do this because it feels…” Boring, vague, too big, risky, and pointless are the usual answers.
- Let go of the delay so far. You cannot change it, and guilt tends to make the task feel worse.
- Write the smallest physical action that counts as starting, such as opening the file and typing a heading.
- Set a timer for 10 minutes and give yourself permission to stop when it rings.
You only have to begin. Once you have started, the next step is usually clearer.
Why you procrastinate
Procrastination is more than delay. Psychologists Fuschia Sirois and Timothy Pychyl describe it as choosing to put off something you intended to do while knowing you will probably be worse off. It often begins with a task seen as boring, frustrating, or lacking meaning or structure. That task creates a bad mood, and avoiding it repairs the mood for now. Your future self pays the bill.
Piers Steel’s meta-analysis of 691 correlations supports this picture. The strongest predictors of procrastination were how unpleasant the task is, how far away the reward is, how much you doubt you can do it, and how impulsive you are, along with low conscientiousness. Rebelliousness and neuroticism showed only a weak connection.
It may cost you at work too. In an internet sample of 22,053 people, high procrastination was associated with lower salaries, shorter periods of employment, and a higher chance of being unemployed or underemployed. These are associations, so they do not prove that procrastination caused those outcomes.
Match the fix to the task
People search for types of procrastination and find labels for the person, such as the perfectionist or the dreamer. We find it more useful to label the task, because you can change a task today. The grouping below is our own, built from the task qualities and predictors in the research above.
| The task feels | What is going on | Try first |
|---|---|---|
| Boring | Nothing pleasant happens while you do it | Fix 2 |
| Vague | You do not know the first step or what done looks like | Fix 3 |
| Too big | You doubt you can pull it off | Fix 4 |
| Risky | Someone will judge the result | Fix 5 |
| Pointless | You cannot see why it matters | Fix 6 |
| Far away | The deadline is distant or does not exist | Fix 7 |
Fixes 1 and 8 apply to any task.
8 ways to overcome procrastination
There is no single answer to how to overcome procrastination, so each fix below says how strong its evidence is. Several were tested on students or on goals outside work. Treat them as starting points and keep whatever works for you.
1. Decide exactly when and where you will start
“I will do the forecast tomorrow” leaves the hard decision for later. Replace it with an if then plan: “When I get back from the 10:00 meeting, I will open the forecast and fill in the first column.” These plans have some of the best evidence on this list. A review of 94 independent tests found a medium to large effect on reaching goals, including on getting started.
2. Pair boring work with something you like
Save a treat for the dull task, such as a favorite playlist you only play while doing expense reports. Researchers call this temptation bundling. In a field experiment, people who could hear gripping audiobooks only at the gym went 51% more often at first, though the effect faded over time. It was tested on exercise and not on office work, so think of it as a small nudge for routine jobs and swap the treat when it wears off.
3. Turn a vague task into a first physical step
“Sort out the onboarding docs” has no starting point, so your brain has nothing to grab. Ask what done looks like, then write the first action you could do with your hands, such as “list the five documents a new hire reads”. If you cannot define done, ask whoever gave you the task. James Clear’s two minute rule is a good test: a new habit should take less than two minutes to begin, and David Allen’s original version says to do anything that short right away. These are practical rules and have not been tested the way the if then plans have. If you have too many tasks to choose from, our guide on how to prioritize tasks can help.
4. Shrink the task until you trust yourself to do it
Doubt about your ability was among the strongest predictors in Steel’s review. So instead of facing the whole project, pick a piece you are sure you can finish today, then another one tomorrow. Each finished piece gives you evidence that you can do the next. We found no direct test of this tactic, so take it as advice drawn from that link and not as a proven method. Pick pieces that end in something visible, such as one completed section, and avoid vague slots like “work on the project for two hours”.
5. Separate the draft from the final version
When someone will judge the result, starting can feel dangerous. High standards are probably not what holds you back, though. A meta-analysis of about 10,000 people found that worrying about mistakes and other people’s judgment went with more procrastination, while striving for high standards went with less. So lower the stakes of the first attempt. Call it a rough draft, show it to one friendly colleague early, or start with the part nobody will see. If the fear is about being found out, read our article on impostor syndrome.
6. Find the reason, or question the task
If a task seems pointless, ask who uses the result and what they do with it. A real answer often makes the work easier to begin. If there is none, ask whether it can be dropped, simplified, or done less often. The job itself can be part of the problem. In a study of 443 employees in the Netherlands and Turkey, low job demands and resources went with boredom, and boredom went with procrastination at work.
7. Borrow a deadline from someone else
A deadline you set for yourself helps, but one set by another person helps more. In experiments by Ariely and Wertenbroch, self imposed deadlines improved performance, though less than external deadlines spaced evenly across the work. So tell a colleague they will have an outline on Tuesday and a draft on Friday. Two or three small promises to a real person are likely to work better than one big private intention.
8. Forgive yourself for the last delay
This one sounds soft, but it has data behind it. In a study of 119 first year students, those who forgave themselves for procrastinating before one exam procrastinated less before the next, and lower negative feelings explained the link. Self blame adds to the bad mood you were trying to escape in the first place, so it can feed the cycle. Note what went wrong, let it go, and pick a new start time.
Procrastination at work
Office life makes delay easy to hide, and learning how to stop procrastinating at work starts with spotting these three patterns.
- Busy avoidance. You clear email instead of writing the report. Sirois and Pychyl open their paper with exactly this scene. Small wins feel like progress and protect your image, while the task that matters stays put.
- Slacking in plain sight. Researchers measure procrastination at work under two headings, soldiering and cyberslacking, which roughly mean idling offline and drifting online. If yours happens on a screen, our guide on how to stay focused at work will help.
- Waiting for permission. “I can’t start until they reply” is sometimes true and sometimes a shelter. Send the question today with a date attached, and begin whatever part does not depend on the answer.
Not all delay is a problem. If you are waiting for better information, or another task matters more, you are prioritizing. To tell the difference, go back to the definition above: do you expect to be worse off for waiting? Watch for the opposite trap too. A generous deadline lets the task grow to fill it, which is known as Parkinson’s Law.
When it is more than a habit
If you have tried several of these fixes and delay still affects your job, money, or health, think about professional help. A meta-analysis of 24 intervention studies found large reductions in procrastination that held at follow up, and cognitive behavioral therapy reduced it more strongly than the other approaches. In other words, people do improve on this with support.
Long term difficulty finishing tasks can also overlap with other conditions, which we cover in the FAQ below. Only a clinician can assess that.
How actiTIME shows what is being delayed
You can’t fix a pattern you can’t see, and a time log makes avoidance visible. When you record hours against tasks in actiTIME, you can compare where your time went with what you meant to do. If a task due next week has no hours logged, you find out while there is still time to act.
Tasks carry estimates, deadlines, priorities, and workflow statuses, and you can view them as a list or a Kanban board, so a card that has not moved is easy to spot. The Estimated vs. Actual Time Report shows which work keeps taking longer than expected. For a personal view, the Time Management Assistant Chrome extension records your activity automatically and gives you productivity reports, either as a free standalone tool or synced to your actiTIME account.
actiTIME helps you focus on the business
actiTIME is very robust, integrated well into your business process, and most important, helps you focus on your business instead of monkeying around with technology.
FAQ
Why do I procrastinate?
Usually because the task causes an unpleasant feeling and avoiding it brings relief. Common causes of procrastination include tasks that seem boring or unclear, doubt about your ability, distant rewards, and impulsiveness.
How do I train myself to stop procrastinating?
Practice one routine until it becomes automatic: name the feeling, write the smallest first step, and set a specific time to begin. If then plans have good support, and repeating them for your most avoided task is a good place to start.
How do you beat procrastination when you have no motivation?
Start before you feel ready. Commit to 10 minutes on the smallest possible step and allow yourself to stop afterward. Our training lesson on how to beat procrastination goes through more exercises.
Is procrastination ADHD or anxiety?
Procrastination on its own is neither, but it can overlap with both. The National Institute of Mental Health lists frequent difficulty completing tasks that require sustained attention among the signs of ADHD, and it lists a hard time concentrating among the symptoms of generalized anxiety disorder. If these patterns have followed you for years, speak to a doctor.
What is the 5 4 3 2 1 rule for procrastination?
It comes from author Mel Robbins. You count backward from five and move as soon as you reach one, before hesitation takes over. It is a popular self help method, and we did not find a controlled study that tests it.
Name it, shrink it, start it
Learning how to stop procrastinating has more to do with how the next ten minutes feel than with discipline. Name what the task makes you feel, choose the fix that fits, and decide exactly when you will begin. You will slip again, so forgive it and set the next start time.
To see which work keeps slipping, start a free trial of actiTIME. It runs for 30 days with every feature included, and afterward you can keep the permanent free version for teams of up to 3 users.
