How to stop procrastinating: deal with the feeling first

To stop procrastinating, deal with the feeling before you touch the schedule. You put things off because the task makes you feel bad (bored, anxious, unsure where to start) and avoiding it makes you feel better for a few minutes. What works either shrinks that bad feeling, with a five-minute start, a concrete first step and forgiveness for last time, or makes escaping harder, with friction for distractions and deadlines that bite.

If you're reading this to avoid something else: noted. Finish the article, then use it on that thing. Consider that your first order.

A mood problem in a time-management costume

Most advice treats procrastination as a scheduling failure. Get a better planner, color-code the calendar, wake up at 5 a.m. The research points somewhere else.

In a 2013 paper, psychologists Fuschia Sirois and Timothy Pychyl argued that procrastination "has a great deal to do with short-term mood repair and emotion regulation." The task stirs up something unpleasant, and avoiding it brings quick relief. They quote a phrase from fellow researchers Tice and Bratslavsky that sums it up: we "give in to feel good." The catch, Sirois and Pychyl point out, is that the bill goes to your future self.

A 2007 meta-analysis by Piers Steel, which pooled 691 correlations from procrastination research, points the same way. The strongest and most consistent predictors were how unpleasant the task is, how far away its payoff is, low confidence in your ability to do it, impulsiveness, and low conscientiousness, especially weak self-control, distractibility and disorganization. Not one of them is "didn't own a nice enough planner."

That's why a new app alone rarely fixes it. A tool helps only if it changes how the task feels, or how easy it is to run away from.

The relief is real, and so is the bill

Procrastinating does work, briefly. That's what makes it so sticky.

Psychologists Dianne Tice and Roy Baumeister followed college students through a semester in two longitudinal studies published in 1997. Early on, the procrastinators reported less stress and fewer symptoms of illness than everyone else. By the end of the semester the pattern had flipped: they reported more stress and more illness, and overall they were sicker and got lower grades. The authors' summary: procrastination is a self-defeating pattern with "short-term benefits and long-term costs."

So before you put something off, ask the honest question: who's paying for this, and when?

Which kind of procrastination is yours?

Before you pick a tactic, name the feeling. Each one has its own fix, and there's a guide for most of them:

• The task is boring, unpleasant or huge. Start smaller than feels reasonable. See how to start a task you keep avoiding.
• You're afraid it won't be good enough. That's perfectionism wearing a disguise, and it has specific fixes: perfectionism and procrastination.
• You don't know what the first step is. The task is too vague to start. Make it concrete (below).
• Your phone keeps winning. Build friction; how to stop scrolling has the setup.
• It's a personal project with no deadline. Those die quietly. Read how to finish side projects.
• You honestly don't know. Why do I procrastinate? walks through the causes with a quick self-diagnosis.

Six tactics that work on the feeling

Start for five minutes

Set a timer for five minutes and give yourself permission to stop when it rings. The dread usually peaks right before you start; once you're moving, the task tends to shrink back to its real size. If you keep going, great. If you stop, you still started, and starting again tomorrow is easier. The Pomodoro technique is the same idea scaled up, and Toxic Coach's focus timer runs 25-minute sessions that catch you if you sneak off to scroll.

Make the task physical and specific

"Work on the report" is a fog, and fog is unpleasant to walk into. "Open the document and write three bullet points for the introduction" is an action. Write your next step as a verb, an object and a place, small enough to finish in one sitting. If you can't picture your hands doing it, it's still too vague.

Put friction between you and the escape routes

You need less willpower when the temptation is harder to reach. Put your phone in another room, not face down on the desk. Log out of the sites you drift to. Close every tab that isn't the task. Each extra step between you and the distraction is a few seconds in which the better choice gets a chance.

Borrow deadlines from other people

A deadline you set for yourself is easy to renegotiate with yourself. One that involves another person is harder to wriggle out of. Tell a colleague you'll send a draft by Thursday at noon. Book the meeting where you have to show progress. Break a far-off deadline into dated pieces that someone will actually see. If you want reminders that never forget, a goal with a deadline in Toxic Coach escalates them as the date gets closer.

Decide when and where in advance

"I'll do it later" has no later in it. Replace it with a plan that names a time and a place: "At 9:00, at my desk, before I open my email, I open the spreadsheet." When 9:00 arrives there's no decision left to make, and decisions are where procrastination likes to hide.

Forgive yourself for last time

This one sounds soft. It's practical. In a 2010 study titled, fittingly, "I forgive myself, now I can study," Michael Wohl, Timothy Pychyl and Shannon Bennett found that students who forgave themselves for procrastinating went on to procrastinate less afterwards. As Sirois and Pychyl read it, easing the negative feelings tied to past procrastination makes the task easier to approach again. Beating yourself up does the opposite: it makes the task feel even worse, and feeling worse is exactly what you were trying to escape.

Excuses that sound like strategy

• "I work better under pressure." You work faster under pressure. In Tice and Baumeister's studies, the procrastinators got lower grades.
• "I'll wait until I'm in the mood." The mood is the thing you're avoiding. It doesn't arrive on its own schedule, and starting usually changes it faster than waiting does.
• "I need to do more research first." Research is the most respectable way to not start. Give it a limit, one hour, then produce something.
• "I'll do it tomorrow." Tomorrow's version of you has the same feelings and fewer hours.
• "It's not urgent yet." Which is exactly why you can do it calmly now.

When it's more than procrastination

Everyone procrastinates sometimes. But if you've put off nearly everything for as long as you can remember, or the avoidance comes with weeks of low mood, anxiety that doesn't let up or trouble focusing in every part of your life, that's not a discipline problem, and no article can fix it. A doctor or a mental health professional can help you figure out what's going on. If you're struggling right now, our support page lists helplines.

Do this in the next five minutes

1. Name the one thing you've been avoiding.
2. Write its first physical step, small enough to finish today.
3. Put your phone in another room.
4. Set a timer for five minutes and start.

You're allowed to stop when the timer rings. You might not want to.