Procrastination

Putting things off is mostly about avoiding a bad feeling, not about laziness. Shrink the first step, plan when you'll start, and go easy on yourself afterwards.

• Evidence: Some
• Takes: 10 minutes
• Everyday

Right now

1. Pick the one task you’re avoiding most. Just one. Write it down.
2. Shrink it to a first step you could do in 2 to 10 minutes. Not “write the report” but “open the document and write three bullet points”. Not “sort out my taxes” but “find last year’s form”.
3. Set a timer and do only that step. When the timer goes off, you’re allowed to stop. Often you won’t want to. Starting with a few minutes is a widely used method rather than something trials have tested on its own.

Before

• Notice what feeling you’re avoiding. Boredom, worry about doing it badly, not knowing where to start. Researchers describe procrastination as trading a better mood now for a worse one later: you feel relief when you put the task off, and your future self pays for it [2]. Naming the feeling makes it easier to start anyway.
• Make the task less unpleasant. In a large review of the research, how unpleasant a task feels was one of the strongest predictors of putting it off, along with how far away the deadline is, low confidence and being easily distracted [1]. So work on those directly: pair the task with something you like (music, a good coffee, a nice spot), break it into smaller pieces, and set yourself an earlier deadline.
• Write an if-then plan. “When I sit down after lunch on Tuesday, then I’ll open the spreadsheet first.” Across 94 tests, plans that spell out when, where and how had a medium-to-large effect on people reaching their goals [6]. In one study of 152 students, those who made a plan like this were much more likely to turn up for an appointment than those who didn’t [7].
• Remove the easiest distraction. Put your phone in another room or close the tabs before you start. Being easily distracted is a strong predictor of putting things off [1].

During

• Work in short blocks. 25 minutes on, 5 off is a common pattern. Stop at a point where you know the next step, so restarting is easy.
• Lower the bar for the first draft. A bad first version you can fix is better than a perfect one that doesn’t exist.
• When you feel the urge to switch, wait one minute. Note the urge, then finish the sentence or line you’re on.
• Talk to yourself like you’d talk to a friend who was stuck on the same thing.

After

• Forgive yourself for the delay. It sounds soft, but it’s practical. In a study of first-year university students, those who forgave themselves for putting off revising for their first exams procrastinated less before the next round of exams [3]. Guilt keeps the task linked to a bad feeling, which makes you want to avoid it again.
• Write down what worked. One line: what got you started? Use the same trick next time.
• Plan tomorrow’s first step tonight. Leaving a clear, small starting point removes the hardest decision.
• If it keeps happening with the same kind of task, that’s useful information. Maybe it needs breaking down further, maybe you need help with it, or maybe it doesn’t need doing at all.

Why this works

The idea that procrastination is about mood comes from a large body of research summarized by Sirois and Pychyl [2]. Steel’s meta-analysis of 691 correlations found that unpleasant tasks, distant deadlines, low confidence and impulsiveness were strong and consistent predictors [1]. That points to the steps on this page: make tasks smaller and less unpleasant, and bring the start closer.

Programs to reduce procrastination work on average. A meta-analysis of 24 studies with 1,173 people found a large reduction after interventions, which held at follow-up. Programs based on cognitive behavioral methods, first developed and tested in clinical trials, did best [4]. In a randomized trial with 150 adults, an internet self-help course using these methods reduced procrastination by a moderate amount compared with a waiting list, with or without guidance [5].

If-then plans have strong support in general [6], but only a little research on procrastination specifically [7].

Rated Some. The intervention research points in a consistent direction, but most studies are small, many used students, and the self-forgiveness finding comes from one observational study.

Topics: Everyday, Procrastination, Motivation, Planning, Self-Compassion

Sources checked 4 October 2026. Spot a mistake? Tell us.