Why do I procrastinate even when I know a task is important?
Once people identify specific reasons for putting off tasks, they can choose appropriate strategies such as breaking the task into smaller pieces, asking for help, or setting a small goal to help them get started with a task. Common reasons for procrastinating include: anxiety about failure, perceiving the task to be boring, unclear, overwhelming, or simply unpleasant. The temporary relief felt from not engaging in a task reinforces the procrastinating behavior and ultimately leads to increased stress and negative feelings.
Why you procrastinate on important tasks
Often when a task is particularly important or meaningful to us, we can react with a sense of boredom, anxiety, resentment, self-doubt, or the fear of not doing the task adequately. Procrastination is usually not a symptom of laziness, instead its a way to avoid feeling uncomfortable.
Specify an immediate visible action. Vague tasks create friction to start. "Plan the project" does not tell you what to do first. Your mind has to figure out a lot of decisions before you even start working, so it may seem easier to avoid the task than deal with the mental effort required to start.
Some goals seem so big that they loom over everything else. Staring at a daunting finish line may lead us to pick the most rewarding, short-term tasks, which can give us quick gratification. This does not mean we don't care about other important tasks, it just means that avoidance, a prompt reward, competes with the eventual reward.
Learn to separate creation from editing. Perfectionism is a trap, an unreasonable demand for immediate excellence. If your first attempt has to be great, starting is terrifying, and so you procrastinate. Make modest goals for a first work session: produce an initial sketch, write a bad first draft.
You can change a pattern by asking yourself three questions
- What feeling am I trying to avoid?
- What is the smallest next step that would be useful?
- What could you do RIGHT NOW to make it easier to take that action?
If the task is unclear, figure out the next step. If it's overwhelming, divide it into short sessions. If you're afraid to make a mistake, figure out how to make a first draft. If there isn't enough information, figure out who or what you need.
Rather than respond to avoidance with self-criticism (more discomfort = more avoidance), neutrally acknowledge the pattern and identify what is challenging. That's your constructive starting point. Then make the task smaller, or approach with a time limit.