How to stop procrastinating

How to Stop Procrastinating: 14 Practical Ways for Procrastinators

Celestine is the Founder of Personal Excellence where she shares her best advice on how to boost productivity and achieve excellence in life. Read full profile

You have a deadline looming. However, instead of doing your work, you are fiddling with miscellaneous things like checking email, social media, watching videos, surfing blogs and forums. You know you should be working, but you just don’t feel like doing anything.

We are all familiar with the procrastination phenomenon. When we procrastinate, we squander away our free time and put off important tasks we should be doing them till it’s too late. And when it is indeed too late, we panic and wish we got started earlier.

The chronic procrastinators I know have spent years of their life looped in this cycle. Delaying, putting off things, slacking, hiding from work, facing work only when it’s unavoidable, then repeating this loop all over again. It’s a bad habit that eats us away and prevents us from achieving greater results in life.

Don’t let procrastination take over your life. Here, I will share my personal steps on how to stop procrastinating. These 14 ways will definitely apply to you too:

1. Break Your Work into Little Steps

Part of the reason why we procrastinate is because subconsciously, we find the work too overwhelming for us. Break it down into little parts, then focus on one part at the time. If you still procrastinate on the task after breaking it down, then break it down even further. Soon, your task will be so simple that you will be thinking “gee, this is so simple that I might as well just do it now!”.

For example, I’m currently writing a new book (on How to achieve anything in life). Book writing at its full scale is an enormous project and can be overwhelming. However, when I break it down into phases such as –

Suddenly it seems very manageable. What I do then is to focus on the immediate phase and get it done to my best ability, without thinking about the other phases. When it’s done, I move on to the next.

Make Lists

You knew I was going to say that, didn’t you? Lists are good—they’re fun to make, and even more fun to throw out when you’re done.

Lists are very useful if you can’t stop procrastinating because they help us deal with at least two of the three factors that cause procrastination risk-aversion and rewards.

You can’t make just any list, though. As I never tire of saying, lists should be concrete, granular, doable—the first item on your list should be something you can glance at and immediately do.

Don’t know how? Then it shouldn’t be the first thing on your list; figuring out how to do it should be the first thing on your list. Or, rather, “Use Google to find out how to do x”, or “Go to the library to get books on x”, or “Take a class on x” should be first on your list.

Then, the next thing on your list should be something you can glance at and immediately do; and the third thing, and the fourth.

If you can’t start doing something within two minutes of reading it on your list, it’s not concrete enough. Call it “The Other Two Minutes Rule”.

2. Change Your Environment

Different environments have different impact on our productivity. Look at your work desk and your room. Do they make you want to work or do they make you want to snuggle and sleep? If it’s the latter, you should look into changing your workspace.

One thing to note is that an environment that makes us feel inspired before may lose its effect after a period of time. If that’s the case, then it’s time to change things around.

For instance, if you can’t work in public places because of the constant movement and noise, then find a quiet place to sit down and focus.

To avoid procrastinating and focus on what you’ve decided to focus on, try to remove every possible distraction from my work environment—both physical and digital. For example, you can take your iPhone, put it on ‘Do Not Disturb’, and then put it in a drawer that requires you to physically get up in order to check it. Disable the notifications and alerts on all your devices, too. Basically, un-plug before you plug-in and focus.

Create a Playlist

Jam out to some music to beat procrastination. Create a “beating down procrastination to a pulp” play list that puts you in a state of flow with your work.

If you want to avoid procrastination, pick what works best for you and make that your next action!

3. Create a Detailed Timeline with Specific Deadlines

Having just 1 deadline for your work is like an invitation to procrastinate. That’s because we get the impression that we have time and keep pushing everything back, until it’s too late.

Break down your project (see tip #1), then create an overall timeline with specific deadlines for each small task. This way, you know you have to finish each task by a certain date. Your timelines must be robust, too – i.e. if you don’t finish this by today, it’s going to jeopardize everything else you have planned after that. This way it creates the urgency to act.

My goals are broken down into monthly, weekly, right down to the daily task lists, and the list is a call to action that I must accomplish this by the specified date, else my goals will be put off.

Here’re more tips on setting deadlines: 22 Tips for Effective Deadlines

Schedule Time Blocks

If you know that some tasks are coming up as due and you have a lot of work to do on them, take out your calendar and schedule some time blocks. This will give you a set time to work and help you beat procrastination.

Have a System

We recommend GTD (Getting Things Done), because, you know, it’s the best: Why Getting Things Done is the Best Productivity System For You. You can also try out goal setting which will help you focus on your task.

4. Eliminate Your Procrastination Pit-Stops

If you are procrastinating a little too much, maybe that’s because you make it easy to procrastinate.

Identify your browser bookmarks that take up a lot of your time and shift them into a separate folder that is less accessible. Disable the automatic notification option in your email client. Get rid of the distractions around you.

I know some people will out of the way and delete or deactivate their facebook accounts. I think it’s a little drastic and extreme as addressing procrastination is more about being conscious of our actions than counteracting via self-binding methods, but if you feel that’s what’s needed, go for it.

Don’t Check Emails

One of the worst things that you can do when starting to “work” is checking emails. Checking emails first in the morning isn’t good for you. It will put you in an “non-action” mood.

Instead, pull out your task list and work on a big task first. Check email later.

Get Rid of Social Networks

Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, everything — Turn them off completely to beat procrastination. Focus on the task at hand.

Time Yourself

One good way to get to work is to set a specific time for yourself to work. Say, 25 minutes (ie. Pomodoro Technique).

After the set amount of time, rest and do whatever you want for a little bit. Then, work for a set of time again.

Track Yourself

One of the best ways to know where you are spending your time and find free time to beat procrastination is by tracking yourself. There are a host of apps for doing this: 18 Best Time Management Apps and Tools

Find your weaknesses and change them.

5. Reduce the Number of Decisions You Need to Make Throughout the Day

Every decision we make has an energy consequence. If you wake up in the morning, and you need to ask yourself, “What do I need to do today?” — well, you’re about to procrastinate today.

If you approach each new day without having given thought to what you want it to look like ahead of time, then you’ll waste a large portion of your energy thinking about what to do and what not to do.

Should I hit the gym today, or go tomorrow?

Should I say Yes to lunch with Barry Boombatz from Accounting, or should I do a quick lunch solo so I can get back to the office and finish up this presentation?

Should I wear this or wear that?

Eat this or eat that?

Reply now or later?

We’re asking ourselves questions like this all day long.

Problem is, questions compel us to respond with answers, which compel us to make decisions… This drains you of your self-control and makes you tired—which leads to you procrastinating on whatever matters most in your life.

Reduce the number of decisions you need to make during a given day by making those decisions ahead of time and/or creating habits around certain areas of your life to boost your effectiveness and prevent you from draining your energy by thinking about whether to do them or not.

These are just a few simple examples, but it’s usually the simple things that matter most.

What are some examples you can think of to reduce the number of decisions you make in your own life? Doing this will free up the energy you’ll need in order to stay focused on doing the big and meaningful stuff, rather than procrastinating on it by doing the little and meaningless stuff.

6. Finish Your Day Before It Starts

This tip picks up where tip #1 leaves off. The best decision you can make towards avoiding procrastination is to plan your days in advance.

Rather than frantically figuring out what you’ll do on any given day, a better way to approach your day would be to take a few minutes at the end of each day to quickly map out the following day.

For example, every night, before bed, I write-down/review my plans for the next day, which includes:

Whatever else needs to be done the following day. This way, my most important goals and projects are given ample time to be crushed—and to not be procrastinated on.

7. Re-Clarify Your Goals

If you have been procrastinating for an extended period of time, it might reflect a misalignment between what you want and what you are currently doing. Often times, we outgrow our goals as we discover more about ourselves, but we don’t change our goals to reflect that.

Get away from your work (a short vacation will be good, else just a weekend break or staycation will do too) and take some time to regroup yourself. What exactly do you want to achieve? What should you do to get there? What are the steps to take? Does your current work align with that? If not, what can you do about it?

8. Stop Over-Complicating Things

Are you waiting for a perfect time to do this? That maybe now is not the best time because of X, Y, Z reasons? Ditch that thought because there’s never a perfect time. If you keep waiting for one, you are never going to accomplish anything.

Perfectionism is one of the biggest reasons for procrastination. Read more about why perfectionist tendencies can be a bane than a boon: Why Being A Perfectionist May Not Be So Perfect.

Just Do It, but Don’t Over Do It

We often put pressure on ourselves to do certain tasks more often than we really need to, such as cleaning, tidying and laundry etc. So give yourself a break and set a schedule for these things that is not overwhelming.

Do thing on a “need to do” basis and let go of the notion that you need to keep up with some perfect schedule. Ever heard of the business concept “just in time” inventory, well this is “just in time” task management.

Realize It Will Never Be Perfect

If you can’t work on something unless it is perfect, then you should find a way to leave earth.

Make something real and awesome. That will be great enough.

Think Like a Rhino

9. Reward Yourself

Some people say that rewards aren’t good motivation. Don’t believe them. Those people are probably criminals.

OK, maybe not—but they’re only right about external rewards, a.k.a. “bribes”. As it happens, offering rewards to employees often doesn’t increase motivation.

But offering rewards to yourself—well, that’s just good common sense. You need that Bing! moment—you are, after all, simply a giant hairless ape with a yen for gourmet coffee and a laptop. This is a good hack if you just can’t stop procrastinating.

Researchers placed monkeys in a cage, with a button that, when pressed, dispensed a piece of food. “Yum!” said the monkey when he pushed the button. So he pushed it again. And again. Monkeys are, of course, just small hairy people without coffee or laptops, so they learn pretty fast.

Then the researchers added a twist: every third time the monkey pushed the button, he’d get an electric shock! “Ouch!” said the monkey—then he ate his treat. “Ouch ouch!” he said, the next time—then he ate his treat.

The moral of this story is that we’ll put up with quite a bit of crap, as long as we get our treat. Your challenge, then, is to find a treat good enough to hit the button for, even though you know it’s going to hurt like heck.

10. Give Yourself a Break

Don’t be too hard on yourself if you are having a tough time beating procrastination. Remember, you are human and we love to sit and stew in our own uncompleted mess of work sometimes. Just work hard to get out of it.

In fact, taking a break helps with your productivity, here’s why: The Importance of Scheduling Downtime

When you’re tired or have low motivation, take a break. Don’t be so hard on yourself about the timing of a task and then you won’t try to escape through procrastination so hard in the future. Just reschedule and get back on track later or tomorrow.

And since we are plugged in to the digital world. We constantly have music or sound on. It can be overwhelming and stressful, causing us to tune out of work and life.

A break as short as 5 minutes is enough to keep your mind sharp and wards off fatigue. I recommend you to use the Pomodoro Time Tracker. It is a great tool to help you take breaks at set intervals. Simply start the 25-minute timer, and follow the prompts.

11. Hang out with People Who Inspire You to Take Action

I’m pretty sure if you spend just 10 minutes talking to Steve Jobs or Bill Gates, you’ll be more inspired to act than if you spent the 10 minutes doing nothing. The people we are with influence our behaviors. Of course spending time with Steve Jobs or Bill Gates every day is probably not a feasible method, but the principle applies — The Hidden Power of Every Single Person Around You

Identify the people, friends or colleagues who trigger you – most likely the go-getters and hard workers – and hang out with them more often. Soon you will inculcate their drive and spirit too.

As a personal development blogger, I “hang out” with inspiring personal development experts by reading their blogs and corresponding with them regularly via email and social media. It’s communication via new media and it works all the same.

12. Get a Motivation Buddy

Having a companion makes the whole process much more fun. Ideally, your buddy should be someone who has his/her own set of goals. Both of you will hold each other accountable to your goals and plans. While it’s not necessary for both of you to have the same goals, it’ll be even better if that’s the case, so you can learn from each other.

I have a good friend whom I talk to regularly, and we always ask each other about our goals and progress in achieving those goals. Needless to say, it spurs us to keep taking action.

13. Tell Others About Your Goals

This serves the same function as #6, on a larger scale. Tell all your friends, colleagues, acquaintances and family about your projects. Now whenever you see them, they are bound to ask you about your status on those projects.

For example, sometimes I announce my projects on The Personal Excellence Blog, Twitter and Facebook, and my readers will ask me about them on an ongoing basis. It’s a great way to keep myself accountable to my plans.

14. Seek out Someone Who Has Already Achieved the Outcome

What is it you want to accomplish here, and who are the people who have accomplished this already? Go seek them out and connect with them. Seeing living proof that your goals are very well achievable if you take action is one of the best triggers for action.

Get a Grip and Just Do It!

At the end, it boils down to taking action. You can do all the strategizing, planning and hypothesizing, but if you don’t take action, nothing’s going to happen. Occasionally, I get readers and clients who keep complaining about their situations but they still refuse to take action at the end of the day.

I have never heard anyone procrastinate their way to success before and I doubt it’s going to change in the near future. Whatever it is you are procrastinating on, if you want to get it done, you need to get a grip on yourself and do it.

How to Stop Procrastinating

Nancy Schimelpfening, MS is the administrator for the non-profit depression support group Depression Sanctuary. Nancy has a lifetime of experience with depression, experiencing firsthand how devastating this illness can be.

Procrastination is an easy habit to fall into, particularly if you have symptoms of depression. The symptoms that people with depression face such as fatigue and hopelessness make it so easy to say, «I’ll just put this off until tomorrow when I feel better.»

Then deadlines begin to creep up and panic sets in. As the panic mounts, so does the depression. And as depression increases, so does the need to avoid reality.

Depression and Procrastination

Procrastination can bring temporary relief. It is a way—no matter how maladaptive—of coping with the emotions and physical symptoms that accompany depression. People with depression may experience procrastination in different ways.

Types of Procrastinators

Procrastination styles can overlap and collect around one of four themes. Once you recognize your style of procrastination, you can take steps to stop it.

Self-Doubt

These people feel there are rigid standards about how thing ought to be done and they fear they will fail. They second-guess themselves and delay taking action.

Discomfort

This person avoids activities or tasks that will cause distress, discomfort, or anxiety. Of course, the act of dodging an activity doesn’t make it go away, so tensions mount because of this avoidance.

Guilt

The person feels guilt over undone tasks. Rather than correct the lack of action, they procrastinate so that they do not have to face the guilty feelings.

Habit

This person has procrastinated so many times, it becomes an ingrained response. They no longer think about why they do it; they feel it’s just a part of themselves. It becomes an automatic response to say, «This is too hard or «I’m too tired,» or to laugh it off as a character flaw.

Strategies for Beating Procrastination

Fighting the habits and mindsets that lead to procrastination is challenging. One or a combination of these motivation methods may help.

Create a To-Do List

One of the most important things you can do for yourself is to get organized. Make lists, take a class in organization, or purchase an organizer. Do whatever works for you. One word of advice: keep it simple. If your organization system is too complicated, it will become just another task to avoid.

This system allows you to feel confident that you can accomplish all you need to in the time you have. Now you can relax and work on one item at a time without feeling you have to do it all at once.

Just Do It

Next time you catch yourself saying, «I can do this later,» get into a Nike mindset. Just do it! Push on through the feelings and do it now. The feeling you get when you finish will be so much better than any relief you get from putting it off.

Schedule Reward Time

As you go work through your tasks, you may find your mind drifting off to all the activities you’d rather be doing. You will find it much easier to concentrate on your work if you know that you have scheduled time for reward activities.

Tell yourself: «I will work hard today accomplishing my goals because tomorrow is Saturday and I have scheduled a time to go fishing.» Knowing that you have finished your tasks will also make it easier to relax and enjoy your leisure time.

Delaying your reward until a certain amount of time has elapsed, during which you will have crossed things off your to-do list, can be very effective.

Cope With Anxiety

Does the thought of performing a certain task fill you with anxiety? First, try this:

You should notice after each breath that your heart rate is actually slowing and you are feeling less tense. Now, do something, no matter how small. Just make a start. The very act of accomplishing something will ease your anxiety.

Change Your Expectations

Perfectionism and feeling that things should be a certain way can be stumbling blocks to beating procrastination. Next time you catch yourself using language like «should» or «must,» evaluate whether these are restrictions you are imposing on yourself, or reflections of the reality of the situation.

Build Momentum

If you have several small items to do which are directly related to the project at hand, do these first. Even though you have large tasks left, it feels as if you have less to do. It gives you a feeling that you have accomplished something. Just remember, they must be tasks that are relevant to accomplishing a bigger goal.

When you have accomplished a task, mark it out on your list with a pen. It gives you visual confirmation that you are getting somewhere. Again, this gives you a psychological boost.

Allow Extra Time

Remember, if something can go wrong, it will. Allow yourself more than adequate time to finish each task.

If you do not need all the time you’ve allowed, you will be able to progress ahead of schedule. This will be a psychological boost. At the very least, you won’t be left rushing to finish.

Don’t panic if you get behind schedule. If you’ve allowed yourself extra time each day, you will simply shift everything forward until you catch up. The key is to leave yourself room to be flexible.

Ask for Help

What if you really don’t have time to finish everything? Get creative. Request extensions on deadlines, get help from friends and relatives, delegate tasks to others, drop non-essential items from your schedule, or hire outside help. You won’t find many situations that can’t be solved somehow once you let your expectations change about how things should be.

11 proven tips to stop procrastinating once and for all

We all have to deal with procrastination at some point in life.

You are probably familiar with the feeling of knowing you should get some work done but somehow not being able to, and so you fool around all the way up to the last minute, when stress and pressure force you to finish the job done; or, in an even worse case scenario, the job never gets done at all.

If we aren’t «smarter» than procrastination, it’s a complete lose-lose situation. The job doesn’t get finished or is performed poorly.

While you procrastinate, you always have a reminder that you should be working somewhere in the back of your mind, and so you can’t be fully relaxed.

Not to mention that procrastination can make you feel like a loser and slowly turns your self-image into that of someone who just can’t get work done. Consequently, your productivity suffers a lot, and with it your earning and creative potential.

There are many tricks and tactics to help you stop procrastinating, and in this article, we will cover some proven suggestions on how to stop procrastinating once and for all.

Two different types of procrastination

There are two types of procrastination, chronic and acute. Chronic procrastination has a deep, strong, and permanent psychological cause that may not be so easily eliminated. It can be done, but it takes patience and hard work.

On the other hand, acute procrastination can be caused even by small mood or energy swings throughout the day, or other small psychological triggers which aren’t a steady natural part of your psyche (like having a bad day, for example).

Thus, chronic and acute procrastination have to be dealt with in different ways. Let’s start with acute procrastination, since it’s the easier one to sort out.

Acute procrastination – you procrastinate from time to time, which is normal

Acute procrastination happens as an out-of-the-ordinary behavioral pattern.

It’s actually quite easy to recognize acute procrastination and distinguish it from the chronic version. When acute procrastination attacks you, you behave differently.

You may even ask yourself something like “Why am I acting so stupid?”. In a normal state, you’d just get the job done, but this time something is holding you back.

Even if you’re a super productive person, acute procrastination will strike you from time to time. There can be many reasons for this:

The first thing you have to do is to identify why you’re procrastinating. Just ask yourself the question and observe your inner dialogue.

This is an important step, because you can’t tackle all the reasons for acute procrastination in the same way. First you need to make the right diagnosis.

If you want to stop procrastinating when acute procrastination hits you, there are several things you can do:

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Proven tips to overcome acute procrastination

1. Just start working

One thing you may do is to just force yourself to start and to make the first step.

The first step is always the hardest. If you ever had to push your broken-down car, you know how it is. Once you get the car moving, it gets much easier.

So, what you can try is to mobilize every single unit of discipline you possess and push yourself hard into making the first step. Sometimes it works surprisingly well.

After the first step, you just forget about the procrastination and get the job done. The timeboxing technique can definitely help you with that.

2. Manage your energy, not your time

An important concept in time management is that you don’t manage only your time, but also consider your energy levels.

No matter how disciplined you are, you’ll have super productive days and not so productive ones. In the same way, you have your peak productive hours and less productive hours in the day.

Here are a few things you should consider in this context:

Accept that sometimes you’re simply not in the state to be productive and that’s okay. We are all only human.

Resolve your energy issues first, and then when things calm down go after the task you procrastinated on.

You also need to be smart about hard work. You can’t just work hard constantly. Sooner or later, burnout happens.

Life is a marathon, not a sprint. So, take regular breaks throughout the day (walk, stretch, hug people etc.) and a long break at the end of the week. You will be much more productive on other days.

3. Do other, easier tasks until your energy levels recover

What usually happens when you procrastinate with a task? Remember back in school when you had to study for example, how did you procrastinate?

You probably went from your room to the kitchen to check if all the food was still in the fridge and took a bite or two. You all of a sudden needed to go to the toilet. You browsed a website or two to relax, counted the number of windows in the building next to yours, and so on.

But there is another thing that you probably did: you tidied up your room and your desk, arranged all the notes, stretched a little bit, talked with your classmates about what could be in the test, and other semi-productive tasks. You see where this is going?

If nothing else works, you can use procrastination as a source of motivation to do other important tasks.

The only key is that you don’t waste time on stupid things, but instead tick off other work that is currently marked as important on your to-do list.

When the deadline for the procrastinated task approaches and puts more pressure on you, you’ll just get it done. Don’t fight procrastination, do other important things instead.

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Chronic procrastination – a tougher nut to crack (but it can be done)

Acute procrastination is very different from the chronic version as there is often a deep and a complex psychological issue behind it.

You’re in a state of chronic procrastination when you constantly procrastinate with certain types of tasks or, even worse, with all of them.

Here are the most frequent reasons for chronic procrastination:

Proven tips to overcome chronic procrastination

1. Engage in assertiveness training

A lack of assertiveness is the number one reason people usually procrastinate. The source of a lack of assertiveness usually lies in upbringing.

To simplify, instead of trust, autonomy, initiative and competence, unassertive people develop mistrust, shame, guilt, doubt or inferiority.

Luckily, a lack of assertiveness usually happens only in a specific context. For example, someone who is very assertive and competent on a soccer field may not be in intellectual matters. A successful professor may not be as skillful when it comes to money management.

Similarly, there are usually areas of life where you know how to assert yourself and others where you don’t. When it comes to the former, you procrastinate.

The only way to fix this is to learn how to assert yourself in a healthy way in that area of life.

There are several things you can do:

2. Overcome the fear of failure or fear of success

Procrastination can also happen because of fear. The two most common fears connected with procrastination that are potentially holding you back are the fear of failure and the fear of success.

There is a big difference between being hurt by failure, going through a recovery period, reflecting on what you learned and then trying again, and being paralysed by the fear.

Nevertheless, failure is an integral part of success. Success is nothing but going from one failure to the next without giving up, until you succeed.

So, if you want to succeed faster, you have to fail more. You have to learn to love failing and constantly learn from it.

It may be hard to believe, but there is another fear that may be holding you back and causing you to procrastinate – the fear of success.

Success brings things like fame, financial abundance, being the center of attention, good feelings about yourself, and so on. If you don’t feel like you deserve success and everything that comes with it, you will always self-sabotage.

The techniques to overcome fears are similar to those used in assertiveness training. Expose yourself to smaller challenges, join group or individual therapy to explore the underlying reasons, and try techniques like visualization, affirmations, etc.

Easy to clock-in and out. Timesheets always up-to-date. Manage and approve absences.

3. Make sure you don’t have unreasonably big goals and expectations in life

Yes, we all have to dream big. But life has its limitations, and we must make sure we don’t get caught in narcissistic grandiosity, driven by completely unrealistic expectations as to how fast we can achieve something.

Unrealistic expectations lead to disappointments, and big life disappointments usually lead to procrastination or giving up.

Here’s how it happens. When you have unrealistic goals and realize after your first try that it will be much harder to achieve them than you thought, you may start to procrastinate.

It’s called the Valley of Despair and is part of the Dunning-Kruger effect. You may start doubting yourself and asking if you even have what it takes to achieve your goals. For a while, you struggle with procrastination, and soon you give up.

There are at least two things you can do about it:

4. If you believe you are a lazy person, make an identity shift

If you see yourself as a lazy person, the best solution is to change that perception within yourself.

If you want to deal with procrastination due to laziness once and for all, you’ll first have to see yourself as an ultra-productive person. But before that, you must explore your underlying beliefs.

Ask yourself: “what beliefs are supporting my laziness?” Imagine yourself as an ultra-productive person, never suffering from procrastination. How does your life look? Do you see any benefits?

Here are a few additional ideas that may help you:

If you don’t see yourself as a lazy person and you actually are (we all have blind spots), well, first you have to become aware of it.

Maybe you can ask 10 people in your professional and personal life if they see you as a lazy person. Or benchmark your working outputs with 5 other people that have the same position as you do. That may be a good start.

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5. Improve your lifestyle to have more energy

If you don’t have high levels of energy, it’s very normal to procrastinate.

A lack of energy may be caused by overworking, burnout, and temporary exhaustion, but it can be also caused by an unhealthy lifestyle. If you have a really poor diet with no exercise, small changes can have a big benefit on your productivity.

Here are a few recommendations for improving your lifestyle:

There’s no big philosophy here, just do it. Go sleep early, add veggies to every meal, always have healthy snacks within reach, go for a walk or exercise every day, drink water and so on.

Introduce one of those things into your life every month, and in half a year you’ll enjoy a completely new you.

When we talk about a healthy lifestyle, you should pay special attention to addictions. There are many addictions that could be destroying your life and your productivity and causing you to procrastinate.

These addictions are for example:

6. Develop a new set of skills that will help you deal with more demanding tasks

If your skill level for a certain task is high and this task is not even a little challenging to you, you get bored and you may procrastinate.

In the same way, if a task is way too demanding and you lack skills, your actions will be hindered by worry, anxiety, and procrastination.

If a task is way too challenging for your current skillset, you push yourself directly into the panic zone. In the panic zone, you may face such severe negative emotions that it becomes much harder to go out of your comfort zone for the next attempt, which results in chronic procrastination.

Never overestimate what you can accomplish in a month but, on the other hand, also don’t underestimate what you can accomplish in a few years’ time.

There are two things you can do. The first one is to bite off only as much as you can chew at a particular moment.

The other thing you can do is to develop new competences. You can join an online course, get a mentor, engage in formal education etc.

We all usually want to show the world the new competences we have acquired, and that can be a great motivator to overcome procrastination.

Track work hours, manage absences and generate payroll reports

7. Find a new passion that is the result of being good at something

To be highly motivated and not to deal with chronic procrastination at all, you want to make sure that your goals are totally aligned with your own life vision, your talents, and your competences and values.

It’s where intrinsic motivation comes from. If your goals aren’t true to your real self, you will never be motivated enough to achieve them, since they won’t be your real passion.

But make sure you don’t have unrealistic expectations regarding work that awakens passion in you. There’s rarely a scenario where you have a passion for something (like a hobby) and then that thing also becomes a job with which you can pay your bills.

It can happen, but usually it’s the exception rather than the rule.

A much better strategy is to follow your effort (advice by Mark Cuban). Find something you’re good at and the market needs. Develop mastery at that thing and passion will come.

The bottom line is that you have to provide value to the market, and value is what other people are willing to pay for; unfortunately, those are usually not your hobbies.

Don’t follow your passion, follow your effort. Become a master at something the market needs and passion will follow.

8. Make sure perfectionism is not holding you back

Perfectionism might be the reason you’re constantly procrastinating.

Perfectionism is a result of cognitive distortions and below are just a few examples of how cognitive distortions may contribute to procrastination and how negative thinking and toxic beliefs are preventing you from acting:

In particular, all-or-nothing thinking leads to perfectionism, and perfectionism leads to procrastination. Since I can’t do it perfectly, I don’t want to do it at all.

You’re never satisfied with your results, so why add another thing that you just won’t be proud of? But in reality, this is the sort of toxic thinking that may prevent you from achieving anything in life.

The best solution for any cognitive distortion is emotional accounting. A technique to talk back to your inner critic. Try it, it may change your life forever.

The summary – How to stop procrastinating once and for all

Now you should have a really good understanding of procrastination and what you can do about it. The next time you procrastinate, first determine what kind of procrastination you’re dealing with and find the real source.

After you have identified the type and source of procrastination, you now have many tools available that can help you deal with it once and for all. Below is the summary of all the techniques we have mentioned.

Temporary low levels of energy

Overworked or burnt-out

Being in an irritated emotional state

You think the task is not your work

People you don’t like are involved

It’s the type of a task you just don’t like

Lack of assertiveness

Big goals and high expectations

A lack of skills or fake passion

Perfectionism and other cognitive distortions

How to Stop Procrastinating: 14 Simple Tips to Stop Being Lazy – Overcome Your Procrastination

Home » Success Habits » How to Stop Procrastinating: 14 Simple Tips to Stop Being Lazy – Overcome Your Procrastination

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​​​We’ve all been there:

You have an important project for work or school. The clock is ticking and you’re afraid that you won’t ​complete it in time. You’ve procrastinated on this project for weeks (or even months) and now your anxiety levels are through the roof because it needs to get done — right now!

Sadly, this (and other examples of procrastination) is a common experience for many of us. You want to know how to stop procrastinating, but sometimes you​’re unable to motivate yourself to get started with certain tasks.

​And you know what’s even more frustrating?​

​How we procrastinate and what we procrastinate on differs from person to person:

We all have personal reasons for procrastinating. And it’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking it’s not a big deal.

​So, in this blog post, I’ll cover 14 tips to ​stop procrastinating—even when you don’t feel lazy or experiencing a complete lack of motivation.

You’ll find that this article has a “choose your own adventure” list of ideas. This means you don’t need to do all of them to overcome procrastination. Instead, I encourage you to pick and choose the ones that work well for your personal situation and try to build it as a habit.

What You Will Learn

How to Stop Procrastinating Tip #1: Resolve Any Potential Emergency

​Fact: Procrastination is not just an inconvenient habit that can negatively impact your success at work or school. Instead, it can have a disastrous impact on the health of you or a family member.

​We all have those moments that require us to immediately drop what we’re doing and take care of an unexpected priority. This can include a death in the family, a sick child, or your furnace breaking in the middle of winter.

These scenarios can’t wait until your next open block of time. Instead, you often need to cancel everything on your calendar and take care of these issues immediately.

On the other hand, there are scenarios that start out as small things, but could transform into catastrophic events for you or your family.

These can be issues like experiencing chest pain, receiving a letter from the government, getting a phone call from your child’s teacher, or hearing from a depressed friend in the middle of the night.

At first, none of these scenarios might seem like an emergency. So, it’s easy to let them slip through cracks—especially if you’re a busy person. They don’t come with a warning sign like the other emergencies in life.

But if you’re someone who already procrastinates, then you run the risk of allowing these issues to snowball into a catastrophic event.

​Ignoring potential emergencies can lead to death, divorce, suicide, financial ruin, and other horrible situations. No matter how busy you might be, it’s always important to immediately address any situation that could be an emergency.

This can be done by asking yourself a few questions:

In the book The Top Five Regrets of the Dying, Bronnie Ware shared her experiences as a palliative care nurse who worked with people in the last few weeks of their lives. Her patients frequently spoke of the things they wished they had done differently. The one regret that sticks out to me is the wish that they hadn’t worked so hard during their life.

I feel this is an important lesson, because it’s easy to get wrapped up in the daily grind and ignore the issues that don’t seem important but can turn into true emergencies if left ignored. Sure, you might not “have time” to take care of the unexpected. But it’s also a matter of priorities.

No job, task, meeting, or appointment is worth putting something off that could derail your life or the lives of your loved ones.

My suggestion is whenever something comes up, stop what you’re doing and take care of it right away.

Sure, none of these scenarios might be convenient, but I guarantee that taking care of them immediately will prevent scarier issues down the road.

Want to learn how to stop procrastination in the long run? Watch this video and you will learn about 5 simple habits you can build that will help you stop procrastinating:

How to Stop Procrastinating Tip #2: Do a 5- to 10-Minute Daily Review

A simple way to deal with your procrastination is to schedule a 5- to 10-minute daily review session.

The idea here is to spend a few minutes going over the day’s priorities and identifying the tasks that will have the strongest influence on your immediate goals. You should ask yourself these key questions during the review session:

This quick review session is critical because it provides structure for each day. When you constantly remind yourself which tasks are important, it’ll be hard to put them off because you will recognize that your inaction will negatively affect your immediate goals.

Now before we go any further…

One of the best ways to procrastinate on purpose is to identify the tasks that will have the biggest positive impact on your life and schedule time to work on these before anything else.

This is using what’s called the 80/20 rule​ (or the Pareto Principle).

If you’d like to learn more about this rule, then I encourage you to watch this video and apply this strategy whenever you’re feeling lazy or a lack of motivation.

How to Stop Procrastinating Tip #3: Focus On Your MITs

It’s ​hard to overcome procrastination if you start each day with a to-do list full of tasks, appointments, and projects.

You can simplify your list by identifying the tasks that have the biggest impact on your career or life and do them first thing in the morning. This is a strategy that many productivity experts call completing your “most important tasks” (or MITs).

Pick from one to three MITs that absolutely must be completed by the end of the day. Two should relate to an urgent project with an immediate deadline and one should be part of a long-term goal.

For instance, many years ago, I determined that one of my core 80/20 activities is writing. So, even if I have a bunch of urgent tasks that are due at the end of the day, I always set aside at least 30 minutes for this task—usually right after my morning routine.

From there, I spend the rest of my morning on the other two MITs. By focusing on important activities right away, I create an energized state that allows me to work on any project in the afternoon.

See how this works in the real world?

If you want take massive action in your life, then the simplest thing you can do is identify the tasks that will have the biggest positive impact on your life.

How to Stop Procrastinating Tip #4: Eat the Frog

In his classic book on how to overcome procrastination, Eat That Frog!, Brian Tracy suggests that the best way to begin your day is to, well, “eat that frog.” The idea stems from a Mark Twain quote:

If the first thing you do each morning is to eat a live frog, you can go through the day with the satisfaction of knowing that that is probably the worst thing that is going to happen to you all day long.​​​​

If you can complete the hardest task first, then you’ll begin with a major win that will make all the successive tasks or chores seem less daunting. It also will be motivating knowing that you’ve already tackled the one thing that you are most likely to procrastinate on.

This advice is perfect for anyone who frequently puts off tasks that require focus and hard work. If you can commit yourself to just getting started and working on your hardest task right away, then you’ll discover that’s it probably not as bad as you thought.

Once again, let’s go back to my writing example….

This is a task that I’ll frequently dread or not want to do. But I also know that if I put it off for later in the day, then I’ll increase the likelihood that I’ll skip it or get distracted by another activity.

By committing myself to eat the frog first thing in the morning, I know that after 30–60 minutes of effort, I’ve already completed the most challenging task for the day.

One of the most motivating experiences is knowing you’ve already completed the hardest task before 9:00 a.m.

For more on how to put the “eat that frog” strategy into practice, I encourage you to check out this video.

How to Stop Procrastinating Tip #5: Use the Eisenhower Matrix to Make Quick Decisions

While it’s great to imagine a perfect workday where you’re able to work on just your MITs in isolation, this rarely happens in the real world.

If you’re like most people, your day is filled with a steady stream of small emergencies, random disruptions, and unexpected changes. These can feel overwhelming if you don’t have a framework that allows you to separate the important from the not-so-important.

That’s why I recommend using a simple decision-making strategy called the Eisenhower Matrix, so named because Dwight Eisenhower, prior to becoming the 34th president of the United States, served as a general in the army and as the Allied forces’ supreme commander during World War II.

During his time in the army, Eisenhower was faced with many tough decisions concerning the tasks he had to focus on every day. This led him to invent a principle that helps us today by prioritizing our tasks by urgency and importance.

If this strategy was good enough to help Eisenhower lead hundreds of thousands of people, then it’s probably good enough to help with your procrastination issue.

Side note: Stephen Covey, author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, further popularized Eisenhower’s concept by supporting Eisenhower’s use of four quadrants to determine the urgency of one’s tasks.

The Eisenhower Matrix prioritizes your tasks by urgency and importance, which results in four quadrants that each require a separate approach and strategy.

In addition to sorting tasks by urgency and importance, the matrix also identifies tasks that you should either delegate or completely remove from your life.

Here is a quick graphic that provides an overview of this system.​

​And here is a brief explanation of how you can structure your tasks in order to stop your procrastination:

Quadrant 1 (Q1): Urgent and Important

​Q1 tasks are the “do first” tasks, because they are critical for your life or career in some way and need to be finished right away. They are the tasks that need to be done in order to avoid negative consequences. It’s important to be able to manage the tasks that are in Q1 before anything else, so you want to get these tasks done as soon as possible.

An example of a Q1 task in your career may be answering a time-sensitive email from a client or finishing a report that’s due by the end of the day.

This matrix can also be used in your personal life. Examples of Q1 tasks in your personal life may be a crying baby, a medical emergency, or something burning in the oven.

Quadrant 2 (Q2): Important but not Urgent

​Q2 are the “decide when” tasks, because while they can have an amazing impact on your life, they don’t seem immediately critical like the Q1 tasks that need to be done right away.

Simply put, Q2 tasks usually relate to your long-term goals. In an ideal world, this is where you want to invest most of your time. But unfortunately, this is the area that’s the easiest to ignore because you’re too focused on the priorities from the other quadrants.

What are some examples of these tasks? Well, exercising is important to your health. So is spending time with your family or working on a certificate that will improve your career path. Usually, nobody is pushing you to complete Q2 activities, so it’s easy to let these tasks fall by the wayside.

Quadrant 3 (Q3): Urgent but not Important

​Q3 tasks are the “delegate it” tasks, because while they seem urgent, they can often be automated or passed off to someone who is better qualified to handle them.

This is the quadrant for those tasks that, in hindsight, turned out to be not very important. Taking on Q3 tasks often occurs when someone asks you to do something that does not directly benefit you or get you closer to achieving your goals. For Q3 tasks, it’s important to learn and remember how to delegate certain things.

When you think something is urgent when it isn’t, it’s usually caused by an outside source of distraction—like checking your email or phone or responding to people as soon as they try to contact you. You may think it is urgent at the moment, so you stop what you’re doing to tend to the matter, but in retrospect, the task wasn’t that crucial.

If you’re in the middle of working on a project and the phone rings, it’s not important for you to answer it. So, you can delegate this task to someone else. It may seem urgent while it is ringing, but a task like this can usually be handled by other people. (Don’t worry, we’ll talk about how later in the book.)

Quadrant 4 (Q4): Not Important and not Urgent

​Q4 tasks are the “delete it” tasks because they are the activities you should avoid at all costs. In fact, I encourage you to purposefully procrastinate on these items.

They are simply a complete waste of your time. If you are able to identify and eliminate all of your Q4 tasks, then you can free up much-needed time that can be reinvested in Q2 tasks.

Some examples of Q4 tasks are playing video games, watching television shows, mindlessly browsing the web, or fulfilling obligations that are other people’s priorities.

Does that mean nothing in Q4 should be a part of your life?

The short answer is no.

Having a balance between your professional and personal life is important, and downtime helps you regain your energy. The challenge here is to spend most of your time in Q2 and just enough time in Q4 to relax.

How to Use the Eisenhower Matrix on How to Overcome Procrastination

To get started with the Eisenhower Matrix, I recommend a simple exercise:

Don’t worry if at first you find that most of your time is spent in “reaction mode,” with you mostly focusing on urgent activities in Q1 and Q3.

It’s normal to get fixated on the stuff that has a definitive deadline. But if you keep tracking your tasks using this matrix, asking yourself why you do each activity, and then redesigning your schedule, you’ll discover it’s not that hard to structure each day on the tasks that have the biggest impact on your long-term success.

How to Stop Procrastinating Tip #6: Complete Quick Tasks Immediately

Have you ever procrastinated on a task that doesn’t require much effort, like cleaning the dishes after a meal, making a phone call, looking up a phone number, or sending an email? You know it doesn’t take much effort to complete. Yet you keep putting it off because you’re too busy or you think you don’t have time to do it.

This often happens because we fail to complete those small, seemingly unimportant tasks. By ignoring the activities that can be easily resolved, we build them up in our mind as being tougher than they actually are. On the other hand, if you learn to take immediate actions on small tasks, then you’ll prevent them from piling up. There are two strategies that can help you do this.

First, there is the Two-Minute Rule that David Allen recommends in Getting Things Done. If you know a task takes only a few minutes, then do it right away instead of writing it down on your to-do list or swearing that you’ll do it later.

Whenever you think of something that needs done, ask yourself: “How long will this take?”

If it’s only a minute or two, then do it right away instead of putting it off. You’ll find that doing this consistently will remove much of the negativity that happens when you have a lengthy list of tasks to complete.

On the other hand, if a task requires more than a few minutes of effort, then put it on your calendar and schedule time when you can take care of it.

For more on the two-minute rule, check out this video, which of course, is will take you less than two minutes to watch.​ 🙂

​The second strategy, closely related to the Two-Minute Rule, is to “single-handle” every task. Think of all the times you’ve opened an email, realized it required an action that you don’t have time to complete, so you put it off until later. Then when “later” comes, you open the same message, read it again, and then remember that the email requires a follow-up action.

Single-handling can remove the stress created by the small tasks you procrastinate on because it forces you to complete any task that you start. The idea here is whenever you begin something, you need to see it to its conclusion.

Here are a few examples:

It’s easy to overcome procrastination when you ​take an extra minute or two to complete a simple action and get it off your plate. You’ll find that it’s easy to eliminate some of the stress that comes from having a huge list of small tasks.

How to Stop Procrastinating Tip #7: Create a Mini Habit for Challenging Tasks

As we’ve discussed, one reason people procrastinate is they know a task will require hard work.

You’ll need to mentally (or physically) push yourself, so you keep putting it off and doing something else that results in a dopamine rush of instant gratification. It’s perfectly normal to avoid doing something you know might be unpleasant. But if you’re often struggling to get started on a challenging task, then a quick fix for that is to use the mini-habits strategy.

“Mini habits” is a term coined by my friend Stephen Guise, which appears in the book of the same name. The purpose of mini habits is to remove the resistance that you feel when it comes to starting a difficult (or time-consuming) task. It’s easy to schedule an activity into your day (like running for an hour), but it’s hard to complete when you feel a lack of interest.

Mini habits work because they eliminate motivation from the equation. Instead of setting an extremely challenging goal, you set a “lowball” goal that makes it super simple to get started. Let’s go over a scenario in the following paragraphs that illustrate this point.

Picture the following scenario:

​You set a goal to exercise for 30 minutes. Everything goes perfectly in the first week. You join a gym, attend a few classes, and enjoy the endorphin rush of frequent exercise.

One day, your boss asks you to work late, so you’re forced to skip your scheduled class.

You tell yourself, “That’s okay, I’ll do it tomorrow.” But in the back of your mind, you start to doubt your commitment to this new exercise habit.

This pattern repeats itself over the next few weeks.

You miss classes for a variety of reasons: Your kid has the flu. You didn’t pack your gym clothes. The roads are covered in snow. You have to wash your cat. Suddenly, this “30 minutes of exercise time” has turned into a task that feels impossible to do consistently.

Stinks, doesn’t it?

The mini-habit concept prevents this scenario because it eliminates that overwhelmed feeling you get when you think a task is too difficult to complete.

To quote Stephen:

When people try to change, they usually try to get amped up for the change, but no matter how badly you want the change, you haven’t changed yet! As motivation wanes, so does progress. You don’t need more motivation, you need a strategy that can leverage the abilities of the current you into a better you.

In other words, the simplest, most effective way to create a lasting change is to create a goal that might seem too easy to complete but is also so easy that you can do it on a consistent basis.

So, if you’re finding yourself frequently procrastinating on a specific activity, then create the simplest possible habit you can think of to force yourself to get started.

Here are a few examples:

I’ll admit these goals seem ridiculously simple. But that’s the point— each activity is completely doable, no matter what your schedule is like. If you can push yourself to just get started, then often you’ll find yourself doing more of an activity than you initially anticipated.

How to Stop Procrastinating Tip #8: Build Elephant Habits for Ongoing Projects

We’ve all heard this ​before:

​Question: How do you eat an elephant?

Answer: One bite at a time.

The idea is that whenever you’re faced with a large, complex goal, all you need to do is chip away at it in small chunks.

Unfortunately, many people don’t apply this mindset to their lives. When they’re forced to tackle large projects, they procrastinate or even avoid them completely because the tasks seem insurmountable.

You, on the other hand, can take any large project and chip away at it using what I call elephant habits, which I discussed at length in my book Habit Stacking: 127 Small Changes to Improve Your Health, Wealth, and Happiness.

Elephant habits are designed to overcome the natural resistance we all feel whenever we’re forced to do a potentially unpleasant, massive project. We know it must be done, but we avoid starting because dedicating a few days to it sounds as fun as getting a root canal. Thankfully, an elephant habit will help you complete a project one bite at a time.

The goal here is to chip away at a simple but time-consuming project in 5- to 15-minute daily increments. You can do this with many of the larger tasks on your to-do list, such as:

I use elephant habits whenever I’m faced with something unpleasant. Rather than building it up in my mind as a horrific ordeal, I overcome inertia by scheduling a 15-minute daily block where I can chip away at the project. (Usually, it’s tacked on to my morning routine or part of an existing habit stack, which we’ll cover in the next step.)

Elephant habits have a similar framework to the mini-habits concept that we’ve just discussed. When you tell yourself that a task takes “only” five minutes of your time, it’s easier to convince yourself to get started. And usually, once you get started, you’ll find yourself doing more of that activity than you originally planned.

How to Stop Procrastinating Tip #9: Use Sprints to Work On Challenging Projects

Smart workers know how to overcome procrastination by condensing their efforts into short “sprints” and tracking them with a timer.

The idea here is to work for a short period of time and then give yourself frequent breaks. The benefit of these sprints is that it’s easy to push yourself to get started when you know there is a clear stopping and starting point. Once you complete a sprint, you can take a quick break and then start a second sprint.

The strategy that I recommend for completing these sprints is a system called the Pomodoro Technique. The Pomodoro Technique is a popular time-blocking system, created in the 1980s by Francesco Cirillo, that has been embraced by entrepreneurs and work-efficiency experts.

Cirillo recognized that humans can focus on only a limited amount of time before becoming distracted. He found that it’s better to create a system where people focus for a condensed period and then proactively take a break before beginning the next sprint.

He named his technique after a popular kitchen timer that looks like a tomato (hence the name Pomodoro, which is Italian for tomato). The timer was used like any old kitchen timer, but Cirillo experimented with time blocking until he discovered the most effective usage of time blocks (for efficiency in work production).

When using the Pomodoro Technique, you:

You might assume that this technique is not as effective as working without breaks. But think back to those times when you tried to do a task for an extended period of time. In all likelihood, you were energized at first, then you reached a point when your concentration dropped off. Finally, you probably felt the urge to do anything besides your current task.

The Pomodoro Technique prevents these distractions because it keeps your mind fresh and focused. With the scheduled breaks, you have an opportunity to take a few minutes off to relax. Even though you’re working for less time, the quality of the content will be better than what’s normally created at the tail end of a marathon session.

If you’re interested in the Pomodoro Technique, you might want to download one of the following programs:

When it comes to time blocking, the amount of time you choose really depends on your personal preference. I like the Pomodoro Technique because it has a nice symmetry. The 25 minutes on and 5 minutes off adds up to 30 minutes. You can schedule these 30-minute blocks throughout the day and use these sprints to complete those challenging tasks that you would normally procrastinate on.

Finally, if you’d like to learn more about the Pomodoro Technique, I encourage you to watch this video by Thomas Frank.

How to Stop Procrastinating Tip #10: Build the Discomfort Habit

One of the best strategies you can use to permanently and on how to overcome procrastination is to become comfortable being uncomfortable. Mastering this skill can allow you to do pretty much anything. You can stop procrastinating, begin that exercise regimen, eat healthier, get that degree, speak in public, and overcome specific challenges in your life.

Truthfully, most people choose to avoid being uncomfortable. Just the thought of working hard or experiencing some level of pain is the main reason they fail to change their habits.

For example, many people choose to live a sedentary life because exercising takes too much effort. It is easier to simply sit at a desk or lie on the couch all day. Now, exercise isn’t torture; it’s just something that takes some effort and a willingness to experience discomfort.

Similarly, when people try to push aside their junk food and start eating a healthy diet, they often discover that the new food on their plate is bland, unexciting, and not filling. Changing what your taste buds are used to is a bit uncomfortable, but to be honest, you can retrain your taste buds if you are willing to push through a little discomfort.

Discomfort is not a bad thing—it’s just doing something that’s not part of your normal routine. As people avoid discomfort, they pay the price of not being able to change things in their lives, not living a healthy life, and not being open to new adventures.

The important thing to remember here is that a little discomfort is healthy. It can actually turn something you perceive as dreadful into an enjoyable habit—if you’re willing to push yourself at first. So, let’s talk about how to do that.

How to Master Discomfort

If you choose to master discomfort, you can do it comfortably. While this may sound counter-intuitive, it means that you do things at your own pace and a little bit at a time.

If you’re nervous about being uncomfortable and try to beat your nerves with an overly grueling activity, there is a good chance that you will give up and return to what you are familiar with.

Here are five steps to success (as outlined by Leo Babauta in an article titled “Discomfort Zone: How to Master the Universe”):

1. Choose an easy task.

​Start with something small. If your goal is to increase your activity level, start with walking outside for 30 minutes a day. You already know how to walk, so this won’t add any complications to something that you already do every day. Do not worry about your pace or how far you are able to go—just walk.

2. Just do a little.

​If you don’t want to start with 30 minutes of something that you are not used to doing, start with 5 minutes. It doesn’t matter where you choose to start, just make sure that you do.

3. Gradually push yourself out of your comfort zone.

When you want to stop, push yourself just a bit further. Begin to sit through the moments of discomfort so you can get used to the feeling and see how it comes and goes.

Each time you go back and try to do something, push through one more phase of discomfort to help you gradually learn how to comfortably leave your comfort zone.

4. Pay attention to your discomfort.

​Pay attention to your thoughts as you become uncomfortable. Do you start to have negative thoughts or complain silently in your head? Do you start looking for a way out? How do your thoughts change if you stick with the discomfort and push your way through?

5. Smile.

Learning how to smile while being uncomfortable can help you be happy with discomfort. Smiling sends a message to your brain that you are happy and everything is fine. It also sends the message to other people that you are confident in what you are doing, which will likely make you feel more comfortable as well.

Once you become comfortable with being uncomfortable, you’ll build the mental willpower to get started on a task—even when you initially feel like procrastinating.

Practicing discomfort is one of the best ways on how to overcome procrastination. It’s like building a muscle. If you work at accepting discomfort regularly, you’ll realize that getting started with any task isn’t as bad as you think.

Even if you’re dreading beginning a task, challenge yourself to do it for just five minutes. You’ll probably discover that it’s not as bad as you anticipated it would be.

How to Stop Procrastinating Tip #11: Remove Hidden Blocks with the Awareness Habit

A golden nugget that I learned from Leo Babauta’s article “Building Awareness of the Procrastination Urge” is that one of the simplest ways to beat procrastination is to build what he calls the awareness habit.

The major challenge that folks have with procrastination is they’re often unaware that they’re even doing it. That’s why a simple way to prevent it is to create a habit where you track your impulses to procrastinate.

Here are a few techniques that Babauta recommends:

Create reminders. Write notes to yourself on pieces of paper, and put them around the areas you usually procrastinate. You could even create a wallpaper message on your computer or phone, using a phrase like “Be aware!” to act as a reminder to not procrastinate on what’s important.

Use tally marks. Carry around a small notepad and a pen. Throughout the day, when you notice yourself getting the urge to procrastinate, simply put a little tally mark on the paper. These tally marks are not necessarily a good or bad thing. Instead, they act as a way for you to build awareness of your desire to procrastinate.

Log it daily. Finally, at the end of the day, you should track the awareness habit as something that you successfully completed. Like any other habit, you should track the fact that you did it throughout the day. You can even sign up on Coach.me to track the awareness habit.

Once you’ve developed the habit of asking questions about your procrastination, you can use this information to immediately address any limiting belief that you might have.

To get started, ask yourself questions like:

Recognizing that you​ often feel lazy on specific tasks is ​one of the​ key steps to stop being a procrastinator.

When you develop the awareness habit, you’ll start to recognize the specific patterns and triggers that cause you to skip an activity. Then all you need to do is to create a plan for how you’ll respond whenever you feel the temptation to procrastinate.

How to Stop Procrastinating Tip #12: Bundle Rewards with Actions

In a blog article titled “How to Stop Procrastinating and Boost Your Willpower by Using ‘Temptation Bundling,’” James Clear talks about a concept called temptation bundling, which comes from the work of Katy Milkman.

The idea here is simple:

You create a rule where you’re allowed to engage in a specific enjoyable experience only while you’re engaging in an activity that has a positive long-term impact on your life.

Sidebar: If you’d like to learn more about the science behind temptation bundling, check out this presentation recorded by Professor Milkman on this subject.

Now, some of the examples that Clear gives about temptation bundling is that you:

It’s simple to implement the temptation bundling strategy. Just create a list with two columns:

You’ll find the temptation bundling is perfect for those important but not urgent Q2 tasks. These are the activities that you know you’re supposed to do but that you keep putting off because they don’t seem as urgent your day-to-day activities.

By attaching small rewards to the habits related to your long-term goals, you’ll be adding a little bit of enjoyment to the activities that often feel grueling.

How to Stop Procrastinating Tip #13: Attach All Tasks to a Goal

It’s amazing how a shift in perspective can be enough to motivate you. Whenever you have a task that you’ve been dreading, ask yourself: “How does this relate to one of my important goals?”

Odds are you’ll realize that even the most mundane activity is related to a value you hold dear.

While I’m responsible for doing the dishes in my house, it’s not an activity that I find pleasurable.

At no point in the day do I say to myself: “Ooohhh, I can’t wait to get to those dishes.”

That said, I do them happily because this task is part of the large, really important value of building a great relationship with my wife. She likes to live in a clean, organized household. And I like to make her happy. This means that doing the dishes has become one part of the important goal of maintaining a quality marriage.

You can apply this mindset to any task that you’ve been avoiding. Simply make a list of your personal and professional responsibilities. Then connect each one to an important value or goal. And whenever you’re not in the mood to get started, remind yourself of how it relates to one of your long-term goals.

How to Stop Procrastinating Tip #14: Create Accountability for Your Tasks

You’ve probably heard about the law of inertia (also known as Newton’s first law of motion). If you haven’t, the law states that “an object at rest stays at rest and an object in motion stays in motion with the same speed and in the same direction unless acted upon by an unbalanced force.”

In other words, if your natural tendency is to lounge around before starting the day, then you’ll need an extra “push” to force you into action. People often procrastinate because it’s easier to do nothing than it is to push themselves to do a potentially unpleasant task.

That’s why one of the biggest lessons I’ve learned about habit development is to add accountability for every major goal.

It’s not enough to make a personal commitment. The big things in life require a solid action plan and a support network to tap into whenever you encounter an obstacle. This is true for your career trajectory and your personal development. When you have someone to cheer on your successes (or kick you in the butt when you’re slacking), you’re less likely to give up.

There are a variety of ways to be accountable, like posting your progress on social media accounts or telling the people in your life about your new routine, but I have found that there are three strategies that get the best results.

The first is to use Beeminder, which is a habit-building app on steroids. Instead of relying on self-reporting to track your habits, Beeminder syncs with a variety of apps (like Gmail, Fitbit, and RescueTime) to make sure you follow through with your commit- ments. If you fail to achieve a target goal, then Beeminder will charge you money. Sounds hard-core, right?

In my opinion, the best use of Beeminder is to use the location app on your cell phone when you’re at the gym and then create a “commitment contract” with Beeminder where you promise to go to this location for a specific amount of time each week. If you don’t follow through, you’ll have to pay money to Beeminder.

The second option is to use Coach.me, which is another great app for maintaining and sticking to new habits. It’s like having a coach in your pocket, for better and for worse. You’ll be held accountable for your task by adding it as a habit and checking in every single day when it’s been completed. Trust me—the simple act of knowing that you have to update people on your progress is motivation enough to stick to a habit-stacking routine.

Finally, you can work with an accountability partner with whom you share your breakthroughs, challenges, and future plans. This is a great way to get a kick in the butt whenever you feel a wane in motivation. It’s also valuable to have someone you can confide in whenever you have a challenge that requires a second opinion.

If you’re interested in finding prospective accountability partners, be sure to check out my Facebook group, HabitsGroup.com, which has almost 4,000 members. Every month, we create a thread where members can connect with one another and become accountability partners.

​Final Thoughts on Overcoming Procrastination

You don’t need to be crippled by that feeling of overwhelm. ​In fact, you can learn how to stop procrastinating by implementing one (or a few) of the 14 strategies that I’ve covered in this post.

​Just review the list again and pick the one strategy that you can take action on today.

Now it’s your turn…

​Is there an anti-procrastination habit that I missed?

If so, feel free to comment below and share your thoughts!

How to Stop Procrastinating: A Guide for People Who Want to Overcome Procrastination and Start Getting Things Done

If you’re reading this, you’re probably struggling with procrastination in some form.

Whether your procrastination is a minor issue that’s simply hurting your productivity, or a major issue that’s preventing you from achieving your goals, you’ve probably tried to overcome your procrastination on your own before, and saw that this can be difficult to do.

Furthermore, you may have looked for advice on the topic, and saw that there is a lot of information out there about how to stop procrastinating, but that most of it is either partial or ineffective.

This guide is meant to be a definitive source, that will help you solve your procrastination problem once and for all. It is based on decades of scientific research on the topic, and contains a systematic approach that you can implement in order to beat your procrastination, together with a comprehensive list of anti-procrastination techniques that you can use.

The guide is quite extensive, since procrastination is a complex problem, that requires a thorough solution. However, don’t let that discourage you; feel free to skim through everything here, especially when it comes to the list of anti-procrastination techniques, and focus on the things that you feel will help in your particular situation. Furthermore, if you just want a summarized version of this guide, you can simply scroll right on to the next section.

This guide opens with an introduction to procrastination, together with an explanation of why we procrastinate, as well as scientific evidence which shows that you can learn how to stop procrastinating. Then, we will see an outline of the approach that will allow you to beat your procrastination, followed by a list of the anti-procrastination techniques that you can use, together with tips on how to make this process as effective as possible.

While reading, keep this in mind: procrastination is a tough issue to handle, but if you take the necessary time to read this guide and formulate a valid plan of action, and if you then follow through on this plan, you will have an excellent chance at overcoming or reducing your procrastination.

Table of contents

How to stop procrastinating: the short version

This section contains a summarized version of the full guide.

First, here is what you need to know about procrastination:

If you need basic advice on how to stop procrastinating right now, here are some things you can do:

In addition, you can also ask yourself “what’s causing me to procrastinate?”, and then think through the cause of your procrastination and try to resolve it. For example, if your issue is that you’re afraid that you won’t be able to handle the task well enough, you can tell yourself that even if you make a mistake, that’s not the end of the world, and you can correct it later on.

If you want to understand how to stop procrastinating in the long term, here is the systematic approach that you should use:

Finally, here are some of the top anti-procrastination techniques you can use:

The main goal of these techniques is to help you deal with the reasons why you procrastinate in the first place. For example, while ‘break large tasks into small, actionable pieces’ is generally seen as a time-management technique, its main goal here is to help you transform overwhelming projects into something that feels manageable, which will prompt you to stop procrastinating on them and start taking action.

Overall, this approach for dealing with procrastination is fairly intuitive, and you can implement it based only on what you’ve read in this summary.

However, you will significantly benefit from looking through the full guide, which explains all the small details that will help you implement this approach as effectively as possible. This includes, for example, how to set good goals for yourself, how to identify the nature of your procrastination problem, and how to pick the best techniques for dealing with procrastination in your specific situation.

If you don’t feel like implementing the full system right now, you can still benefit from just picking a few relevant anti-procrastination techniques listed here, and implementing them whenever you can.

Nevertheless, if you want to have the best chance that you can have at beating your procrastination, you will benefit more from using the full system and reading this entire article, even if it takes you some time to do so.

Note: if you don’t feel like dealing with all this right now, but you do want to improve your ability to stop procrastinating in the future, you can sign up here to receive occasional tips on how to stop procrastinating.

A brief introduction to procrastination

Procrastination is the act of unnecessarily postponing decisions or actions.

If you struggle with procrastination, know that you’re not alone; procrastination is a widespread phenomenon, and around 20% of the adult population and 50% of the student population say that they procrastinate in a serious and chronic manner. Furthermore, even people who aren’t chronic procrastinators still struggle with procrastination from time to time, and suffer from it to various degrees in their everyday life.

In addition, as you’ve likely noticed, procrastination is a serious problem, which can lead to a wide range of issues. Accordingly, it’s not surprising that procrastination is associated with worse grades in school, lower salaries in the workplace, a higher likelihood of being unemployed, increased stress, higher rates of mental health issues, and higher rates of physical health problems.

Why we procrastinate

If you’re a procrastinator, you’ve probably asked yourself some variation of the following question in the past:

“Why do I keep procrastinating even though I know that it’s bad for me and even though I want to stop?”

People often assume that they procrastinate simply a result of laziness or a lack of willpower, but the real answer is much more complex than that, and has to do with the cognitive mechanisms that we use in order to self-regulate our behavior, in our attempts to bring ourselves to take action that is in our best interest.

In short, when we need to perform a certain task, we usually rely on our self-control in order to get ourselves to do so. Furthermore, our motivation, which is based on the desire for some reward which we will receive as a result of completing that task, can provide a helpful boost to our self-control, which helps us act in a timely manner.

However, there are various demotivating factors, such as anxiety or fear of failure, that have an opposite effect than our motivation, meaning that they can make us more likely to postpone our tasks unnecessarily, instead of getting them done in a timely manner.

In addition, there are also various hindering factors, such as mental exhaustion or distracting environments, that interfere with our self-control and motivation directly, in a way that also makes us more likely to procrastinate.

Whenever these demotivating and hindering factors outweigh our self-control and motivation, we end up procrastinating. We then have to wait until the balance between them shifts back in our favor before we can get started on our work, which can sometimes take a very long time.

However, as you will see in this guide, by using the right techniques, it’s possible to actively shift this balance in your favor, sooner rather than later. This will allow you to take control of your life, and enable you to get your work done when you want to, rather than when your procrastination says you can.

Note: if you want to learn more about why people procrastinate, take a look at the dedicated guide on the topic.

You can learn to stop procrastinating

Research shows that you can successfully reduce or overcome your procrastination, by using the right techniques.

For example, studies show that learning how to manage time effectively or learning how to regulate emotions better, reduces people’s tendency to procrastinate.

Furthermore, research shows that self-guided, internet-based training can be effective when it comes to overcoming your procrastination. This type of training, which is used in the present guide, involves learning to understand your procrastination problem better, and then learning how to solve it by applying techniques that allow you to deal with the detrimental patterns of thoughts or behaviors that cause you to procrastinate in the first place.

Moreover, research on the topic also shows that these improvements can be maintained in the long-term, both when it comes to reducing your tendency to procrastinate, as well as when it comes to reducing the severity of secondary issues that you experience as a result of your procrastination, such as anxiety and stress.

Of course, this doesn’t mean that online self-treatment is always guaranteed to work. Furthermore, in many cases, you could benefit more from pursuing other types of procrastination treatments, such as in-person cognitive behavioral therapy or group therapy sessions conducted by a professional therapist, either in addition to this approach or instead of it.

However, the existing research on the topic does indicate that for many people, an online, self-guided plan can be effective when it comes to reducing their procrastination problem. Since this approach is the most accessible one, and since it’s not mutually exclusive with pursuing other treatment plans in the future, it’s worth giving it a try, especially if the alternative is doing nothing at all.

How to stop procrastinating

In order to stop procrastinating, you first need to set your goals, and then identify how procrastination will prevent you from achieving them. Next, you need to create a plan of action based on this information, and then implement this plan, while making sure to refine it as you go along.

In the following sections, you will learn more about each of these steps, so that you will be able to use this approach as effectively as possible.

Set your goals

The first step to overcoming your procrastination is to set your goals.

When you do this, it’s crucial to make sure that your goals are as clear as possible, since you are more likely to procrastinate when it comes to goals that are vague, compared to goals that are clearly defined.

For example “be more healthy” is a relatively vague goal, and you are therefore more likely to procrastinate when it comes to pursuing it than you are when it comes to pursuing a more concrete goal such, as “drink only water and avoid eating fast food for the next month”.

Similarly, a goal such as “start exercising” is relatively vague, and is therefore more likely to lead to procrastination than a goal that is more concrete, such as “go to the gym 3 times a week, and work out for at least 30 minutes each time”.

In addition, when setting your goals, you also want to make sure that those goals are achievable and meaningful:

For example, the goal of writing 5,000 words for your thesis each day is meaningful but is generally not achievable, since most people can’t write at that rate, which is why such a goal should be avoided. Conversely, the goal of writing 5 words each day is certainly achievable but isn’t meaningful, since it will take you too long to finish your thesis at that rate, which is why this type of goal should also be avoided.

In comparison, the goal of writing 500 words per day is both achievable as well as meaningful, which is why it represents a good goal to set for yourself.

Of course, different people might choose different rates of progress, and there isn’t a single rate of progress that works for everyone. As such, the most important thing is to find the rate of progress that works for you, in your particular situation.

Overall, the first step to overcoming your procrastination is to set your goals. These goals should be clear, achievable, and meaningful, which means that they should be well-defined, possible to accomplish, and significant enough to help you make notable progress.

Once you set your goals, you can move on to the next step of this process, which is to identify the exact nature of your procrastination problem.

Identify the problem

If you want to successfully solve your procrastination problem, it’s important to first understand the exact nature of the problem that you’re dealing with.

Specifically, there are three main factors that you should consider when assessing the nature of your procrastination:

For an example of how to consider these factors, imagine a scenario in which you’re taking a class where you need to hand in a series of assignments throughout the semester.

Each time you get a new assignment you sit in front of the computer in your room (the ‘when’), but instead of working on the assignment you find yourself wasting time on the internet (the ‘how’), because the assignment is so boring that you can’t find the motivation to start until shortly before it’s due (the ‘why’).

It’s important to note that, in this situation and in similar ones, you might often end up promising yourself that you’ll get started soon, or that next time will be different, despite the fact that the same thing happened in the past, and that you never really did anything significant to change your behavior. The main reason why this happens is that people wrongly assume that procrastination is just about willpower, while also wrongly believing that next time they’ll be able to exert more willpower and change their behavior, despite the evidence to the contrary.

However, by taking the time to clearly identify the nature of your procrastination problem, you can then figure out a valid way to deal with it, instead of just hoping that things will be different in the future.

Note that a tool that could help you figure out why you procrastinate is the guide on the psychology of procrastination, which contains a comprehensive list of the reasons why people procrastinate, with the most notable of these being the following:

If you’re not sure why you procrastinate, then you should read the guide on the topic and identify the reasons for procrastination that describe you the best, and then return here and figure out how to build a plan of action that takes these reasons into account.

Create a plan of action

Once you’ve set your goals and identified the nature of your procrastination problem, you can create a plan of action that will allow you to stop procrastinating and start getting things done.

To create a plan of action, you need to figure out which anti-procrastination techniques you should use, and how to use them. These techniques, which are listed in the next section, fall into two main categories:

Some techniques can involve a blend of behavioral and cognitive aspects, and it’s not crucial to understand the distinction between these two types of techniques. Rather, the important thing is to understand the general idea behind anti-procrastination techniques, and specifically that you can overcome your procrastination by instilling positive behaviors and thought patterns while eliminating negative ones.

In general, each technique is likely to help you accomplish at least one of the following things:

You can use any combination of techniques that you want, and you should pick the ones that fit you best given your particular situation, since different techniques will work differently for different people, and will even work differently for the same person in different situations.

As such, make sure to identify the nature of your procrastination problem before figuring out which techniques you should use in order to solve it. As you go along, try to see which techniques are working for you, and then eliminate those that don’t, while experimenting with other techniques that you haven’t tried, in order to find new beneficial approaches.

Finally, keep in mind that if this all feels like too much at first, remember that imperfect action is infinitely better than no action at all.

As such, if you feel overwhelmed and don’t know where to start, just pick a single technique that you want to work on for now (if you’re not sure which one, go with the first one on the list: ‘break large tasks into smaller ones’).

Later on, once you feel more comfortable with the situation, you can choose to implement additional techniques if you’d like.

List of anti-procrastination techniques

Break large tasks into smaller ones

Breaking large tasks into smaller sub-tasks can prompt you to take action, by making large tasks feel less overwhelming, and by allowing you to experience a continuous stream of rewarding progress. Furthermore, doing this also benefits you from an organizational perspective, by helping you identify what exactly you need to do in order to achieve your goals, and by enabling you to make plans that include a high level of detail.

For example, if your goal is to write a paper for a class, you can break down the large task of writing the paper into an ordered list of subtasks that you need to perform. This list can include subtasks such as “decide on a topic”, followed by “collect a list of relevant sources”, “write the introduction”, and so on.

When using this technique, there are a few things you should keep in mind:

Prioritize tasks

Prioritizing your tasks can help you figure out which tasks you need to work on and when you need to work on them. This will ensure that you don’t end up procrastinating by wasting time on trivial tasks while neglecting important ones, and will also help you avoid situations where you feel overwhelmed because you’re not sure where to start or which tasks you should be working on.

Two common methods for prioritizing your tasks are the following:

Overall, there are many methods you can use in order to prioritize your tasks. Don’t waste time over-optimizing your prioritization method or getting stuck figuring out which one to use; just pick one to start with and then try different methods until you figure out which one works best for you. If you’re unsure about this, simply go with the Ivy Lee method, which is explained above.

Identify your productivity cycles

Different people have different cycles of productivity, which means that different people are productive during different times of the day. For example, some people might work better in the morning, while others might be more productive at night. Similarly, some people might be the most productive after they eat, while others might be more productive when they’re hungry.

A good way to reduce your tendency to procrastinate is to identify your peak times, which are the times of the day when you’re most productive, and then plan your schedule so that most of your work is scheduled for those time periods.

In addition, you should also identify your slump times, which are the times of the day when you’re least productive, and then plan your schedule so that only your breaks or most simple tasks are scheduled for those time periods.

Finally, when accounting for your productivity cycles, keep in mind that you might be able to handle different types of tasks better during different times of the day. For example, you might be able to handle creative tasks better when it’s still early in the day, and menial tasks better when it’s relatively late.

Establish a routine

Establishing a consistent daily/weekly/monthly routine can be helpful in getting you to avoid procrastinating.

For example, you can set up a routine of doing creative work early in the morning before checking emails or social media, which is a good way to ensure that you start your day being productive, and by completing your most important tasks while you still have a clear head.

The routine that you establish should take your daily productivity cycles into account, which means that different routines will work for different people. Setting a routine is especially important in some cases, such as if you tend to have an erratic sleep schedule, which could make you sleep-deprived and therefore more prone to procrastination.

Try to reach a state of flow

A flow state is a mental state where you become completely immersed in the activity that you’re engaged in. This state, which is colloquially referred to as “being in the zone”, is an optimal state of mind in terms of productivity, since it allows you to focus on your work and enjoy it, which significantly reduces the likelihood that you will procrastinate.

To help yourself get to this state, try to create the right conditions, by working during times when you’re naturally productive, and by removing external distractions from your environment, in order to help yourself focus on the task at hand.

Since being in this state is highly beneficial, and since it can be hard to get there, if you do find yourself in a flow state don’t stop working unless you absolutely have to. You can often accomplish more in a few hours of flow than in weeks of procrastination, which is why this mental state should be appreciated as much as possible.

Set deadlines for yourself

Setting deadlines for yourself can reduce the likelihood that you will procrastinate, since deadlines serve as a commitment device, which helps you plan ahead and motivate yourself.

When setting deadlines for yourself, there are several things you should keep in mind:

It’s also important to remember that deadlines should encourage you to start working early. As such, you should avoid using deadlines that encourage you to wait until the last possible minute to get started on your work.

A good way to achieve this is to create a series of minor deadlines which correspond to each of the steps that you need to complete along the path to your end goal, instead of having just a single deadline at the end. This means that you should set proximal goals for yourself, which are small goals that you strive to achieve while working toward your final distal goal.

Furthermore, an added benefit of using these intermediate deadlines is that we tend to care more about deadlines that are close to us in time, so constantly having a nearby deadline makes us less likely to procrastinate.

Finally, creating self-imposed deadlines can be especially beneficial in situations where you would otherwise have no clearly defined target date and no external deadline. This might happen, for example, if your goals are related to personal development, as in the case of wanting to start a business or wanting to lose some weight, in which case the lack of a deadline can cause you to procrastinate for an endless amount of time.

However, keep in mind that the effectiveness of deadlines varies in different scenarios, and there are situations where increased flexibility can be preferable to the use of deadlines. This means that if you personally feel that deadlines are hindering your progress in some area, for example because you feel that they stress you out unnecessarily, then it can be reasonable to avoid using them. Just make sure that avoiding deadlines in that situation is truly the best option for you, and isn’t just an excuse for you to procrastinate.

Use time-management techniques

You can use various time-management techniques in order to make it easier for yourself to get started on your work and to remain focused once you’ve started.

For example, you can use the Pomodoro Technique, which is a time-management technique where you use a timer in order to organize your workflow. The Pomodoro Technique entails working on your tasks for a set amount of time (e.g. 25 minutes), and then taking a short break (e.g. 5 minutes), before starting to work again. In addition, as part of the Pomodoro, once you complete a certain number of work cycles (e.g. 4 cycles), you can take a longer break (e.g. 30 minutes), before getting back to work.

You can modify this technique and similar ones to fit your personal preferences. For example, instead of using a set amount of time to limit each work cycle when using the Pomodoro Technique, you could choose to use a different measure, such as the number of words that you’ve written or the number of pages that you’ve read.

There is no single method that works perfectly for everyone, so you should try out different techniques until you find the one that works for you. If you’re not sure which one to start with, simply go with the Pomodoro Technique, and modify it to suit your needs as you go along.

Use timeboxing

Timeboxing is a technique where you allocate specific blocks of time, called “timeboxes”, to activities that you want to do or tasks that you need to work on. For example, if you keep procrastinating on an annoying assignment that won’t take long to handle, you can schedule a 30-minute timebox for it in the evening, and finish it then.

Using timeboxing can be beneficial for a number of reasons:

In addition, allotting a specific timebox for a task makes it more concrete, compared to if you just intend to do it at some point later, which increases the likelihood that you’ll complete it in a timely manner.

Use a to-do list

Using a to-do list is highly beneficial when it comes to helping you avoid procrastinating, for several reasons:

In addition, using a to-do list can also give you extra motivation to work on your tasks, because it makes you want to be able to cross those tasks off your list, and because you get added satisfaction from being able to do so.

When it comes to creating your to-do list, you can either use the pen-and-paper method or one of the many apps on the market. Try out different solutions until you find the one that works best for you, but as always, make sure to not get stuck over-optimizing things, and simply pick one option to start with. If necessary, you can always reassess the situation and modify your solution as you go along.

Gamify your behavior

Gamification involves incorporating elements from games, such as competition with others and the accumulation of points, into other types of activities, in order to increase your motivation to work toward your goals. Gamification, when implemented correctly, can be a powerful tool when it comes to getting yourself to stop procrastinating.

For example, to increase your motivation to complete tasks, you could reward yourself a number of points for each task that you complete, and deduct a number of points for each task you procrastinate on. Furthermore, you can decide that, once you get a certain number of points, you’ll reward yourself in some way which provides you with increased motivation.

As with other types of anti-procrastination strategies, there is no single method of gamification that works perfectly for everyone. As such, if you decide to use gamification, you should try out different ways of implementing it, until you find the one that helps you deal with your type of procrastination as effectively as possible.

Reward yourself for your accomplishments

People often procrastinate because important tasks that are rewarding for them in the long-term are less appealing than less beneficial behaviors that feel more rewarding in the short-term. As such, you can reduce the likelihood that you will procrastinate by associating rewards that are pleasant in the short-term with actions that are good for you in the long-term.

For example, you can decide to take a short break and watch some TV for every chapter that you read in preparation for a test, or you could eat a small piece of chocolate as a reward for every task that you complete while working on a project.

Similarly, you can also make your accomplishments more rewarding by doing simple things such as writing down every task that you complete throughout the day, and then going over them at night to see how much you managed to get done.

Note that you can reward yourself either for getting started on a task, for completing it, or for working on it in general. Rewards should be given for behaviors that are meaningful enough that they allow you to make progress, but that are also accessible enough that they motivate you in the short-term.

Create streaks

One way to motivate yourself to get things done is to create streaks (or chains) of completed tasks, that you don’t want to break.

For example, you might decide that each day that you go without wasting time on social media or each day that you successfully write another page in your thesis counts as another day you get to add to your streak.

How you keep track of your streaks is up to you, but the more meaningful you make the streak, the more you will want to maintain it, and the more you will be motivated to avoid procrastinating.

One example of a method for keeping track of your streaks is the Seinfeld strategy, which involves marking a big red X in your calendar on each day where you complete your daily goal. Alternatively, if you’re using a time-management app, it’s likely that it will have a setting that will allow you to keep track of your streaks in the app.

Commit to having no zero days

A zero day is a day on which you make absolutely no progress toward any of your goals.

You can commit to having no more zero days, by deciding that you will not end your day until you manage to take at least a single step toward reaching one of your goals, even if it’s just a minor one, such as writing a single paragraph or going outside for a five-minute walk. If you have several goals in mind, you can even take this approach further, and commit to making a single step on each of your goals every single day.

This approach can provide you with a strong motivational boost, and encourage you to make continuous progress toward your goals.

Plan ahead for future contingencies

One of the main reasons why people fail to break the procrastination cycle is that despite having a strong goal intention, which means that they truly want to stop procrastinating, they fail to plan ahead for circumstances that could cause them to procrastinate.

This issue can be significantly mitigated by creating a strong implementation intention, which you can do by identifying future situations where you might struggle to self-regulate your behavior successfully, and then coming up with the appropriate goal-directed behaviors that you should engage in if you ever find yourself in those situations.

For example, if you notice that you frequently procrastinate because people invite you to hang out and you find it difficult to say “no” even though you know you should be working, you can come up with a pre-planned response that will make it easier for you to politely refuse people’s offers, which will make it easier for you to stick to your goals when you’re faced with the temptation to do otherwise.

Increase your energy levels

Increasing your energy levels is one of the best ways to get out of slumps and get yourself to stop procrastinating, since being tired can make you more likely to procrastinate.

Specifically, the following are some of the main things that you can do in order to increase your energy levels:

Improve your work environment

A bad work environment can cause you to procrastinate more, while a good work environment can help you be more productive. As such, you should try to improve your work environment as much as possible, by making it a place where you find it easy to focus on your work.

For example, if your desk is so cluttered that it’s hard for you to focus on reading your textbook, this could make you more susceptible to distractions and therefore also to procrastination.

This is especially important for chronic procrastinators, since they frequently tend to collect an excessive amount of clutter which they struggle to remove, despite feeling that it lowers their quality of life. If this is an issue for you, cleaning up your working environment will likely help you feel better, which will help you concentrate on your work.

Change your work location

If you find that you’re more likely to procrastinate on your work when you try to get it done in a certain location, then go somewhere else when you want to work.

For example, if you can’t bring yourself to stop procrastinating when you’re trying to work on the computer in your room, then go to the library or to a coffee shop and work there instead.

This is especially important when it comes to separating the areas where you work from the areas where you conduct other functions of your life, such as playing, resting, or eating, since having a location which is dedicated exclusively to work can help make it is easier for you to switch into “work mode” when you need to get things done.

Eliminate distractions

Removing distractions from your environment makes it more likely that you will focus on your work and avoid procrastinating.

For example, if your phone emits a loud sound each time you get a notification, you’re going to constantly be distracted while you work, which will make it hard for you to focus. As such, in such situations, you will want to put your phone on silent mode while you work or use a dedicated app to block notifications, which will help you concentrate on your work.

When doing this, you should keep in mind the harmful influence that even seemingly minor distractions can have on you.

For example, research shows that even if you’re not actively using your phone, simply having it out on your desk serves as a significant distraction. Moreover, though putting your phone inside your bag can reduce the degree to which it serves as a distraction, having the phone there still occupies more of your mental resources than having it in a different room, where it’s entirely out of reach.

Another example of this issue is the fact that multitasking by doing things such as watching TV or browsing social media while engaging in cognitive activities such as studying, is associated with reduced levels of self-control, which in turn can make you more likely to procrastinate.

Research suggests that the relationship between this type of multitasking and low levels of self-control likely involves reciprocal causality. This means that people with lower levels of self-control are more likely to multitask in this way while they’re working, but that multitasking in this way is also likely to decrease people’s ability to control themselves while they work.

Add a delay before indulging your impulses

One way to help yourself resist the desire to engage in impulsive behaviors such as procrastination is to add a brief delay before you indulge yourself.

For example, if you want to check your phone for notifications or check a website for new posts, you should make yourself count to 10 first. Then, if the urge to engage in that procrastinatory behavior is still there, you can follow through on it. However, if the urge to do it disappears, which it often will while you count, you can choose to get back to work instead.

If necessary, you can decide to count a bit higher (e.g. up to 20 or 30), as long as you make sure to actually count, in a reasonable pace, each time you do this. More importantly, remember that you’re not allowed to do anything else while you count, unless it’s related directly to your work.

If you use this count every time you’re about to procrastinate you will find that the urge to do so is often temporary, and passes once you wait a short while.

Make it harder for yourself to procrastinate

The more difficult you make it for yourself to engage in procrastinatory behaviors, the better you will be able to prevent yourself from procrastinating.

For example, if you need to write a paper on your laptop and you tend to procrastinate by browsing social media, blocking the sites that you usually look at while procrastinating will make it more difficult for you to procrastinate. This will significantly increase the likelihood that you will get to work, simply because there’s nothing else for you to do.

Make it easier to get started on tasks

The easier you make it for yourself to get started on tasks that you need to complete, the more likely you are to get finish them in a timely manner.

For example, if you need to work on a certain document, then before you go to sleep, you can leave it open on your computer, so that it will be the first thing you will see when you turn on your computer in the morning, which will increase the likelihood that you will work on it.

Make unpleasant tasks more enjoyable

In general, the more unpleasant a certain task is, the more likely you are to procrastinate on it. As such, by making unpleasant tasks more appealing, you reduce the likelihood that you will procrastinate on them.

There are many ways you can make tasks more appealing. For example, if you need to clean the house, you can put on music that you like, and try to time yourself to see how much you can get done in a 10-minute sprint of work, in order to make this otherwise boring task more enjoyable.

Use nudges

Nudges are small modifications that you can make to your environment in order to get yourself to get your work done in a timely manner.

For example, if your goal is to get good grades because you want to get into a good graduate program, consider putting a small sticker with the logo of your dream program on your laptop, which will give you a small motivational boost when you need to start working.

Similarly, if your issue is that you often end up gaming for longer than intended, you could set up an alarm on your phone that goes off after a certain amount of time, and then put the phone close enough that you can hear it but far enough that you have to get up and leave your gaming platform in order to stop the alarm.

Minimize the number of decisions you have to make

The more decisions you have to make during a certain time period, the more fatigued you become from a mental perspective, and the more likely you are to procrastinate when it comes to making new decisions. As such, by minimizing the number of decisions you have to make within a certain timeframe, you can improve your ability to make decisions in a timely manner.

For example, if you need to write a paper, you can create a timeline of which parts of the paper you need to work on in advance, so that you don’t have to make the decision of what to work on each day. Similarly, you can pick the clothes that you will wear the next day right before you go to sleep, which will save you from having to make that decision right as you’re starting your day.

In addition, note that the more options you have to choose from when deciding what to do, the more difficult it will be for you to make a decision, and the more likely you will be to procrastinate. As such, by minimizing the number of options that you can choose from, you can reduce the likelihood that you will procrastinate.

For example, if you use highlighters while writing notes, you can decide to limit yourself to a small selection of colors, which will make it easier for you to choose from them each time you need to use one.

Set time constraints for decision-making

If you tend to procrastinate because you struggle to make decisions in a timely manner, you can limit the time that you have available to make decisions, by setting artificial time constraints for yourself.

For example, if you need to decide which design scheme to use in a presentation, you can set a timer with 1 minute on it, and decide that once the timer runs out, you have to go with one of the available options, even if you’re not perfectly sure that it’s the right one.

This technique is especially useful in situations where there is no new information for you to take into consideration, or in situations where the decision that you need to make isn’t too important in the first place, such as when none of the available options is significantly better than the others, meaning that it doesn’t really matter which one you choose.

Use countdowns

The countdown is a technique that involves choosing a number (e.g., 5), counting down from that number while telling yourself that once you reach zero you’ll get started on your work, and then prompting yourself to get started once you actually reach zero.

To make countdowns more effective, you can condition yourself to abide by them, by using them before doing things that you have no problem with (e.g., easy everyday tasks), which can help you get used to following through on countdowns when dealing with more difficult tasks.

In addition, a useful version of this technique is to set a countdown timer on your computer or phone, instead of counting in your head. In this case, if you fail to start working once the timer runs out, then you can keep the timer’s alarm on until you manage to get started, which will increase your motivation to take action.

Start with your best or worst tasks

Some people find it beneficial to start their day by dealing with the task that they dread the most, so they can immediately get it out of the way, and go through the rest of the day knowing that they already took care of it. This approach is referred to as eating the frog (or eating the elephant beetle), where the ‘frog’ signifies the unpleasant task that you have to take care of.

Alternatively, some people find it more beneficial to start with their easiest tasks first, in order to help themselves get started and enter the right mindset that they need for work.

Either option may prove more effective for different people and in different situations, so you should try them both in order to figure out which one works for you. When doing this, keep in mind that the easiest/hardest task can apply to various things, such as the easiest task out of a specific project, or the easiest task that you have to deal with on a certain day.

Start with a tiny step

Deciding to commit to only a tiny step can sometimes help you get started on tasks that you’re procrastinating on, especially when you’re procrastinating because the task feels overwhelming or scary in some way.

For example, you can sit down intending to only write a single sentence on your thesis, or you can go to the gym intending to work out for just a few minutes.

Often, you’ll find that getting started was the hardest part, and that once you start engaging with the task it becomes fairly easy to keep going. In addition, even if you decide to stop after taking that tiny step, which is perfectly acceptable to do, you’ll still have made more progress than you would have otherwise, especially when it comes to dealing with the mental blocks that cause you to procrastinate in the first place.

This concept is sometimes referred to as the 2-minute rule or the 5-minute rule, to signify that you should set out with the intention of working on your task for just a few minutes. However, you can commit to other blocks of time too (e.g. 10 minutes), and, as noted above, you can choose to commit to other units of work (e.g. writing a sentence on your paper). If you do decide to implement this concept using a time limit, consider setting up a timer, which could help you convince yourself that you’re only committing to a small amount of time.

Immediately complete small tasks

One way to avoid procrastinating on small tasks is to simply get them done as soon as you find out that you need to do them, whenever it’s possible for you to do so. This has the added benefit of preventing these small tasks from piling up until they become overwhelming, and is often much more efficient than wasting time scheduling these tasks for later.

This concept is sometimes referred to as the 2-minute rule, to signify how short a task should be for you to choose to take care of it immediately. However, it’s up to you to decide how small a task needs to be for you to implement this rule, and the important thing isn’t necessarily how long it takes, but rather whether you will benefit from taking care of it as soon as you figure out that you need to do it.

Note that this concept represents one of two possible versions of the 2-minute rule; the other one, which is covered in the previous entry (‘start with a tiny step’), suggests that you should bring yourself to get started on tasks by committing to only spending a small amount of time on them.

Eliminate bottlenecks

A bottleneck is a task that’s causing you to delay when it comes to a number of other tasks, because you can’t move forward with them until you deal with the bottleneck first.

A bottleneck can be a bottleneck for a variety of reasons. For example, there are practical reasons, such as that you simply can’t analyze data until you’ve collected it, as well as mental reasons, such as that you want to finish dealing with a project that you’re working on before you move on to the next one.

If you notice that one of your tasks is a bottleneck and that you’re procrastinating on it, it can be highly beneficial to find a way to deal with it somehow. There are several ways you can go about doing this:

Different methods for dealing with bottlenecks will work better in different scenarios, based on factors such as your personal abilities and the nature of the task at hand. The most important thing is to realize that the task that you’re dealing with is a bottleneck, and to then find the approach for dealing with it that will work best for you.

Switch between tasks

If you find yourself procrastinating on something because you feel stuck, consider switching to a different task for a while before returning to the original tasks that you were procrastinating on.

Doing this is beneficial even if it would ideally be preferable for you to work on the original task, since it’s better to get something less important done than to do nothing at all, and since shifting between tasks at your discretion could help you become “unstuck” when it’s time to return to the original task.

Procrastinate in a productive way

You can sometimes get work done while you’re procrastinating on something important, by accepting the urge to procrastinate, and diverting your efforts toward other tasks, that you find less aversive.

For example, if you find yourself procrastinating on writing an essay, then instead of wasting time passively watching TV, you can work on some other task that you don’t want to complete, such as washing the dishes.

This technique, which is called productive procrastination (or structured procrastination), can be useful to implement, because even though it means that you’re not getting your highest-priority task done, doing something that isn’t at the top of your to-do list is still better than doing nothing at all.

However, when implementing this technique, it’s important to make sure that it doesn’t become a way to enable long-term procrastination in a way that significantly hinders your progress. In addition, you should also make sure that the tasks you’re working on while procrastinating do have some value, and aren’t just a meaningless way to waste time and achieve a false sense of progress.

Finally, you should also try to identify situations where it would be more beneficial to simply take a break instead of trying to implement this technique, which could help you avoid wasting time and energy by trying to be productive during times where the circumstances are against you.

Take a break

Sometimes, taking a short break can help you clear your head, recharge mentally, and find the motivation that you need in order to get started on your work.

For example, if you’ve just finished writing a paper, and are now procrastinating on your computer instead of getting started on your next assignment, getting up from the computer and taking a short break could help you “reboot” your mind and switch it back to work mode.

To make the most of your breaks, try to actively use them with the goal of helping yourself recharge, and treat them as you would any other task. For example, instead of taking a break which consists of browsing social media until you feel ready to work again, it would be preferable to take five minutes to get up from the computer and stretch your legs before coming back to work.

This approach can often work better if you leave the environment that you were working in, and take a break somewhere else instead. This helps your brain to shift from ‘work mode’ to ‘break mode’, which could make the break feel more refreshing, and which could help you get right back to work once you’re done.

Improve your emotion-regulation skills

Because we often procrastinate as a result of improper emotion-regulation, improving your ability to control your emotions can help you reduce your tendency to procrastinate in various situations. There are two main ways you can improve your emotion-regulation skills:

Your goal in using adaptive strategies and avoiding maladaptive ones is to improve your ability to deal with the presence of negative emotions, such as anger or frustration, and to also deal with the absence of positive emotions, which you might experience, for example, if the task that you need to complete is unrewarding in the short-term.

One basic emotion-regulation strategy that you can use is to actively acknowledge the presence of negative emotions or the lack of positive ones, and to then remind yourself of your mental toughness, and of your commitment to finishing the task at hand.

Figure out what you’re afraid of

People often procrastinate because they’re afraid of something, whether that thing is doing badly on a task or getting negative feedback from others. Identifying the reason why you’re worried about a task can help you cope with your fear, which in turn can help you get started on your work.

For example, if you realize that you’re procrastinating on starting a new hobby because you’re worried that you’ll embarrass yourself, you can talk to people in the community in order to address this fear, which will help you bring yourself to get started.

Give yourself permission to make mistakes

Perfectionism, which is the tendency to strive toward flawlessness in one’s work, can cause people to procrastinate in several ways:

Realizing that you’re procrastinating because of your perfectionism is the first step to dealing with this issue. Once you’re aware that this is a problem, you must internalize the fact that it’s okay for your work to not be absolutely flawless, and that you shouldn’t let your fear of making a mistake cause you to procrastinate.

For example, if your problem is that you can’t even get started, then you need to accept the fact that your work is always going to have some flaws at first. Try to get something done, even if it’s of low quality during this initial stage, and remember that you can always improve it later.

Similarly, if your problem is that you continue to revise your work endlessly or that you avoid releasing your work, you can ask for feedback from knowledgeable people that you trust, who can give you an honest assessment of the quality of your work, and tell you whether it’s ready to be released, and if not then what improvements you need to make.

Furthermore, you can also ask yourself what are the consequences of releasing work that isn’t absolutely perfect, and then follow this up by asking yourself how bad these consequences are, and how they weigh compared to the potential benefits of finally getting your work out there.

Forgive yourself for past procrastination

Forgiving yourself for past instances of procrastination can help you procrastinate less in the future, and reduce some of the negative emotions associated with procrastination. For example, research shows that students who forgave themselves for procrastinating on past exams procrastinated less when it came time to study for later exams.

However, note that this doesn’t mean that you should repeatedly forgive yourself for ongoing procrastination while you’re engaging in it, since this could cause you to lose the drive that you need in order to want to change. Rather, you should make sure to forgive yourself when it comes to old mistakes, in cases where being angry at yourself for those mistakes is holding you back.

Minimize the impact of relapses

While you’re dealing with your procrastination problem, there will likely be times when you end up slipping, meaning that you might end up procrastinating despite your attempts to avoid doing so.

These relapses can happen to anyone, as they are a natural part of the long-term process that you have to go through in order to overcome your procrastination, messing up on occasion won’t automatically ruin your attempts to change.

As such, while you should try to avoid relapsing as much as possible, which you can do by using the techniques which are outlined in this guide, it’s also important to minimize the impact of relapses when you do mess up. Specifically, your goal is to cope with your relapses in a positive way, which will allow you to move past them with as little issues as possible.

For example, a positive way to deal with a procrastination relapse is to tell yourself that you made a mistake, and to then figure out how you can avoid making the same mistake in the future, before returning to your work. Conversely, a negative way to deal with a procrastination relapse is to say to yourself that you’ve already procrastinated for an hour, so you might as well waste the rest of the night procrastinating.

Accordingly, if you end up relapsing while you’re trying to stop being a procrastinator, there are several things that you should do:

Develop self-compassion

Self-compassion involves extending sympathy to yourself, particularly when you struggle or suffer. It is comprised of three key components:

There are various techniques that you can use in order to increase your self-compassion.

One such technique is to remind yourself that everyone makes mistakes sometimes, which can help you accept the fact that you did so yourself. To help yourself internalize this concept, you can, for example, think about situations in which other people that you think highly of have made similar mistakes in the past, or about how you would react if a friend of yours made the same mistake.

However, it’s also important to make sure that your self-compassion doesn’t turn into a way to enable yourself to continue procrastinating. As such, when practicing self-compassion, you should always ask yourself whether doing so is helping you cope with your procrastination, or whether it’s encouraging you to procrastinate more in the long run.

Increase your self-efficacy

Self-efficacy is your belief in your ability to perform the actions needed to achieve your goals. This belief is crucial to your ability to self-regulate your behavior, which is what allows you to successfully avoid procrastinating.

You can increase your self-efficacy using various techniques, such as reflecting on your successes, identifying strategies you can use, and addressing your fears.

However, it’s also important to remain realistic when it comes to your self-efficacy and your optimism, and to avoid allowing them to cause you to procrastinate. This might be an issue, for example, in situations where you postpone important tasks unnecessarily because you believe that you will have enough time to finish them right before the deadline, or because you overestimate your ability to avoid procrastinating again when it’s time to return to these tasks in the future.

Focus on the goal instead of on the task

One way to increase your motivation to work on tasks that you view as boring or unpleasant is to focus on your end goals instead of on the tasks themselves.

For example, if you’re procrastinating on an assignment because it’s boring, try to not think about the task itself when you’re trying to get yourself to do the work, but rather think about your underlying reason for wanting to complete it, whether it’s to get a good grade, to get a promotion, or even just to be able to relax without feeling guilty.

Note that this approach, which involves adopting an outcome focus, is generally most effective when you are averse to the task at hand. However, there are situations where it can be more beneficial to adopt a process focus, which entails focusing on the task at hand instead of on the goal, such as in cases where you have a high fear of failure, meaning that focusing on the task itself could potentially distract you from that issue.

Visualize your future self

Visualizing your future self can help you motivate yourself into overcoming your procrastination.

This technique, which is called episodic future thinking (or mental time travel), works by increasing your temporal self-continuity, which is the connection between your present and future selves. This, in turn, makes you care more about your future self, about the future consequences of your actions, and about the perceived value of the future outcomes of your work, thus reducing issues such as temporal discounting and temporal disjunction.

For example, if you’re procrastinating on an assignment now because you will only receive a grade on it in a few weeks, you can implement this technique by imagining your future self getting the graded assignment back.

Note that, when visualizing your future self, you can either focus on the positive outcomes that you will experience if you follow through on your commitments, or on the negative outcomes that you will experience if you continue to procrastinate.

Furthermore, you can choose whether you want to visualize your future self from a first-person or a third-person perspective, meaning that you can either try to see future events as taking place directly through your own eyes, or you can try to see them through the eyes of an external observer.

Regardless of which option you choose when it comes to visualizing your future, make sure to commit to this visualization, by making it as detailed and as vivid as possible. The more you feel connected to your future self, and the more you care about them, the better you will be able to motivate yourself in the present, and the more likely you will be to successfully overcome your procrastination.

Adopt an external perspective

If you’re struggling with a procrastination problem and you’re not sure how to deal with it, it can sometimes be beneficial to try to view your situation from an external perspective, since this can help you analyze the situation better.

For example, if you keep procrastinating because you’re not sure how to get yourself to start working on an idea that you have, you could use self-distancing language when thinking about the situation, by asking yourself “what should you do” instead of “what should I do”. Alternatively, another thing that you could do is imagine what you would say to a friend if they came to you asking for advice on a similar situation.

Find someone who can hold you accountable

Having a person who will hold you accountable for your actions can help you stop procrastinating in some situations.

The person who holds you accountable can be anyone that you trust, whether it’s a teacher, a colleague, a parent, or a friend. The better they can hold you accountable, the more their assistance will motivate you to do your work in a timely manner.

Note that there doesn’t necessarily have to be any tangible reward or penalty involved in the way that the other person holds you accountable; if you care enough about their opinion of you, sometimes even wanting them to be proud of your actions or wanting to avoid disappointing them can be all the motivation you need.

Find a role model

A role model is someone who you admire, based on factors such as their values, actions, or accomplishments, and who you aspire to be like. Finding a role model for yourself and then trying to emulate them can potentially help you regulate your behavior better in a number of ways, such as by increasing your internal drive to persevere in the face of obstacles.

For example, if you have a specific role model in mind, and you find yourself in a situation where you know that you should work but you feel a desire to procrastinate, ask yourself what your role model would do if they were in the same situation, or how you would feel if they could see you now.

Seek favorable peer influence

The people you spend time with can have a significant impact on your ability to avoid procrastinating. To account for this, there are two main things you should do:

Build a social support network

A social support network is a group of people that you can rely on to give you emotional, informational, and practical help. For example, a close friend or a study partner are two types of people that you might include in your social support network.

Social support can be beneficial when it comes to reducing procrastination in some cases. For example, if you’re procrastinating because you’re afraid of failing at something, talking to someone in your social support network could help you overcome your fear.

Note that the nature or size of your support network isn’t crucial, as long as you have the support that you need.

Furthermore, note that in some cases, you can also benefit from having a significant personal network, which includes people who share your situation in some way, but who you don’t necessarily expect to support you. For example, your peers in the classroom or your colleagues at work could both be considered part of your personal network.

This type of network can be beneficial even if the people in it don’t help you directly, because simply being knowing that they’re there and that they share your situation can help you feel motivated, and can help you set realistic expectations for yourself.

The stages of breaking the procrastination habit

The Stages of Change Model is a behavioral model that outlines the stages that you go through as you learn to overcome self-destructive behaviors, such as procrastination.

There are five main stages in this model:

If you’ve decided to read this guide, then you were probably aware that you have a procrastination problem, but you were unsure what you can do in order to cope with it, meaning that you were stuck in the contemplation stage. However, this guide should have given you the tools that you need to move on to the preparation stage, and from there to the action and maintenance stages, respectively.

Note that, in some cases, long-term maintenance of positive habits can bring you to the termination stage, which occurs when the negative behavior that you were trying to deal with has been completely eliminated, meaning that you’re no longer prone to engaging in it.

However, for some people, it’s not possible to reach the termination stage, since the temptation to relapse into their old behavioral patterns remains there forever, which means that they will have to remain in the maintenance stage indefinitely.

Furthermore, different people under different conditions will need different amounts of time for short-term anti-procrastination behaviors to turn into long-term habits, so while some people might be able to overcome their procrastination relatively quickly, others might take significantly longer to achieve the same.

Nevertheless, the longer you manage to stick to your plan of action by instilling positive behaviors and avoiding negative ones, the easier it will generally get for you to keep going, and the better you will be at preventing yourself from procrastinating.

Experiment and reevaluate

It’s important to keep in mind that there is no ultimate cure for procrastination: procrastination is a complex problem, and different people will benefit more from different solutions to it.

This means that there isn’t a single right way to get yourself to stop procrastinating. Rather, the best approach to dealing with this issue is to try and understand your procrastination as best as you can, and to then try out different solutions, until you find the ones that work best for you.

As such, you should think about the techniques in this article as the various tools and weapons that you can use in your personal fight against procrastination, and then figure out which ones you want to keep in your arsenal and which ones you prefer to discard.

Start today

This guide gave you all the tools that you will need in order to combat your procrastination. Now, the responsibility lies with you to implement what you’ve learned.

Overall, the most important thing to internalize is the fact that you cannot be passive when it comes to dealing with your procrastination. You have to actively try to improve yourself, and you can’t keep repeating the same mistakes and promising yourself that things will be different, without making any changes.

Unless you’re willing to put in the necessary effort, things will always stay the same. However, if you put in the effort, and if you work in a smart way by analyzing your problem and finding effective solutions, you’ll be able to stop procrastinating and start getting things done.

If you’re not sure where to start, do the following:

Later on, you can add more goals that you want to pursue and more anti-procrastination techniques that you want to implement. Right now, however, the most important thing is to make sure that you just get started.

The longer you wait, the less likely you will be to act on what you’ve learned, so start now, instead of telling yourself you’ll get started later.

Summary and main takeaways

In conclusion

Procrastination is a tough problem to solve, but if you’re willing to follow the necessary steps in order to create a good plan of action, and if you’re willing to then put in the effort in order to follow through on your plan of action, you have a great chance at being able to overcome your procrastination.

Overall, this guide has all the tools that you need in order to stop procrastinating; it’s now up to you to use them.