We all know that sinking feeling—the deadline approaching but not a single box on your to-do list has been checked off. Still, for some reason, your mind is everywhere except where you need it to be. Procrastination is something we have all dealt with at some point in our lives, but it takes true expertise to master it. As someone who has years of experience in the matter, here is my foolproof guide to the phases of procrastination and how to do it right.
Step 0: Why?
Before diving into the steps, it’s important to understand why we procrastinate in the first place. For many, procrastination is a response to stress, anxiety, and even feeling overwhelmed; it’s the brain’s avoidance of doing something perceived to be difficult. While this task almost never ends up being as strenuous as your brain convinces you it will be, it’s easy to fall into the trap of “I work best under pressure” and “I’ll do it later.” Procrastination is less about laziness and more about avoidance. And that avoidance? It ultimately manifests itself into a very slippery slope of total chaos and stress.
Step 1: Start off productively.
Any decent attempt at procrastination begins with utmost concentration. It starts with self-deception, telling yourself that you’re already busy with a hundred tiny, attainable (yet ultimately irrelevant) tasks that you convince yourself are necessary to complete before tackling the real work. In this way, you can tell yourself you aren’t avoiding your work since reorganizing your desk will make you more efficient, planning tomorrow’s outfit is a smart decision made to save time tomorrow, and making the checklist will help you start on the one task you actually need to do. Decide you absolutely must do these insignificant tasks that you have been putting off for the past month at this very moment. Small, nonessential items will trick your brain into feeling productive, as these little jobs suddenly feel a lot more manageable in the face of the big, overwhelming task ahead of you. To protect yourself from the strain of intimidating work, your brain prioritizes the little things instead.
Step 2: Lie to yourself.
How many times have you heard someone— or even yourself— say, “I work best under pressure?” This is by far the most common belief of any master procrastinator because it gives you a logical reason to delay your task yet again until the very last minute. Here’s how it goes: you wait and wait until the 11th hour to begin a task, and filled with adrenaline— and probably copious amounts of caffeine— you somehow manage to complete it. Then, a rush of relief and pride washes over you when you finally finish. But does this cycle really generate your best work? Most likely not. Waiting until the last minute might force you into action, but the rushed final product will contain a hundred tiny errors that stress will cause you to miss.
Step 3: Distract yourself.
Another common step on the path of procrastination is distraction. Let’s say you do finally drag yourself to your desk and open that project on your computer. It is so simple to “just” check the notifications on your phone or “just” watch one more episode of that show. These interferences are silent killers, made particularly dangerous by how harmless they seem, because in the grand scheme of things, what difference does one more 15-second video or five minutes of scrolling make? A big difference. Five minutes can turn into 30 minutes all too quickly. Maybe it feels like you “earned” the break with your 20 minutes of actual work, but it will snowball into an unproductive binge of procrastination.
Step 4: You actually do it.
After hours, or even days, spent stuck on steps 1 through 3, you finally make it to step 4: actually doing the task. This is the final stage of procrastination where you stay up all night trying to cram hours of work into as short a span as humanly possible. It’s 10:30 pm and the paper is due at 8 am tomorrow, but now you finally have to face it, and the words start to flow onto the page. Maybe you finish it— and maybe you don’t— but either way, you are left with a rushed essay filled with a mountain of typos the next day. But at least you turned it in, right?
Step 5: The cycle continues.
After every adrenaline-filled work session, you will probably never want to do it again. But somehow, the cycle will repeat itself. Why? Because the guilt that comes with procrastinating is forgotten as soon as you finish the work. You can take a deep breath once it’s turned in. Your brain moves on, and the cycle repeats because it has become a pattern. Every time that you manage to get away with it, you relax, but over time, you begin to associate work with stress and failure, leading to worse procrastination habits and even more avoidance. For the sake of your own sanity, be kind to yourself and try to break the cycle. Sometimes you can’t help it, but small changes will go a long way.
Trust me, I understand. Procrastination is inevitable. And the fear of failure will always kick your brain into high gear, especially at those key moments when you have to turn in at least something. Hopefully, this guide resonates with anyone who has fallen into the trap of procrastination before. Rather than beat yourself up for it, recognize that other people are dealing with the same struggles and be aware of the signs when you begin to experience each step. With practice, you can become a more mindful procrastinator, embracing the occasional delay without letting it derail your progress and self-confidence entirely. If you have to procrastinate, then at least do it the right way.
Edited by Bethany Chern
