Let’s get straight to the point. Although there are many ways you can deal with procrastination, in my experience the best solution is just to do the thing you’ve been avoiding as soon as possible. You might say “That’s like pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps! You may as well tell a chronically depressed person to ‘cheer up’. If I could ‘just do the task’, I wouldn’t have a problem in the first place!” What I mean, though, is that you should use specific techniques to force yourself to undertake the key tasks you’ve been avoiding until now.
As you start to walk on the way, the way appears. — Rumi
This is what other people have done in the past to break the habit of procrastination. You can use these techniques temporarily to make yourself do the task you were avoiding and then gradually replace them with a healthier long-term motivation strategy. One of the main problems with procrastination is that people will read books about how to overcome the problem, journal and meditate about it, prepare to stop procrastinating, but still avoid doing the task — because they’ve turned all these self-help techniques into forms of procrastination.
Nothing is so fatiguing as the eternal hanging on of an uncompleted task. — William James
Talk is cheap; action generates momentum. I’ve seldom met anyone, in fact, who overcame a serious procrastination problem without actually changing their behaviour, and reversing their avoidance, right from the outset. Over-preparing yourself to stop procrastination is itself, more often than not, no cure but just another symptom of procrastination. As people who succeed in breaking the habit often say: “I realized I had no choice but to tell myself: just do it!”
How to Force Yourself to do Things
As you probably realize, it may be difficult (though not impossible) to break your habit using willpower alone. Most people change their environment, therefore, in ways that make it impossible for them to avoid doing the task. The most common solution is to commit to an appropriate “response cost” (penalty) for failing to get things done. For that to work, you need to ensure that you’re actually able to do the task you’ve been avoiding, and there are no practical obstacles in your way. I’ll use the example of writing an essay, although you can adapt this to other tasks you’ve been avoiding.
Schedule a specific time to work on the essay, if possible. Don’t just think about it, but actually put it in your diary. Be clear about exactly where and when, and set a minimum amount of time that you must complete. For the first week or so, it’s best to make this pretty easy, so you have no excuse for avoiding doing it, and people often set a ten minute minimum. (Alternatively, you might set a minimum amount of words to write.) Of course, that’s a minimum not a maximum, and once people begin work they often find they continue for longer, so give yourself the flexibility to keep working beyond the minimum time commitment. Avoidance is often caused by setting unrealistic goals and failing to meet them. Indeed, there’s a well-established correlation between perfectionism and procrastination. So set modest goals in order to break the habit.
Set a response cost for failing, even once, to complete the scheduled minimum work, and make a firm commitment to implementing it. If you do incur the cost, start again the next day, commit to your schedule, and recommit to paying future response costs. Ideally, the cost should be paid as soon as possible after you avoid the task but if that’s not possible, or you forget, you must administer it anyway, as soon as you remember, even if it ends up being at a later time.
The response cost can be anything that you would rather avoid more than the task. Often people have donated $500 or another sum of their choosing to a political party, candidate, or organization they strongly dislike — sometimes called an anti-charity penalty. In practice, if it’s a strong enough deterrent, you’ll never have to do it, or you’ll do it once and never again.
Some other examples of response costs people have used in the past include:
Nuisance chores such as cleaning the bathroom or the gutters
Burning a $100 bill or some other amount
Eating a food they find disgusting, such as liver or blood sausage
Running for half an hour on a treadmill, or doing some other form of additional exercise
Pouring a bucket of ice water over their head in the garden
Writing an accountability note, explaining the failure and the precise reasons for it, and sending it to your coach or therapist, or some other accountability partner
Sometimes it may make sense to pay a behavioural tax by committing to doing the avoided task belatedly but for four times as long, perhaps as an option to avoid a more severe cost
The task must be aversive, though — it can’t be something you find you enjoy or that turns into a means of further procrastination. That said, sometimes a ridiculous response cost, such as slapping yourself across the face with a cold haddock, can make you feel it would be absurd to prefer doing that to just completing ten minutes on your task.
My clients have also found it useful to employ a technique from behavioural psychology called Premack’s Principle, which people like to compare to a grandmother telling kids they won’t get any ice-cream until they’ve eaten their greens. In training animals, you would look for a behaviour they do frequently, such as a chimpanzee swinging on a tyre. This behaviour is now made contingent on completing the desired task, e.g., the chimp has to complete a simple puzzle before he’s allowed to swing on his tyre. If he doesn’t do the puzzle, he doesn’t get to do the thing he likes — if you don’t eat your greens you don’t get ice-cream. Today’s most common equivalent of swinging on a tyre is checking your social media accounts but you could pick any task you do each day, such as having a morning coffee. You could make a contract that says you’re not allowed to go on social media, or have a coffee, until you’ve completed at least ten minutes of writing. This can act both as a reward, for doing the work, and a cost, for failing to do the work.
Self-management can also be used by individuals who make contracts with themselves. Writers and artists have for many centuries helped themselves work at their crafts for a minimum period of time each day by allowing themselves to eat, read, or talk to their friends only after they have put in this allotted amount of time.— Albert Ellis
You will be more likely to remain committed to doing the work, and paying the cost of avoidance, if you make yourself accountable to someone. That could consist in writing an accountability statement, which you sign, and send to your therapist or coach. It could also be your spouse, your boss, your friends, or even your kids in some cases. Enlisting the support of a confederate tends to significantly increase the success rate.
For example, an accountability statement might read as follows:
I wholeheartedly promise to do at least ten minutes of serious writing on my essay, and ideally more, starting at 9am every morning, sitting at a desk in the library. I am 100% committed and won’t allow anything to stop me. I’m doing this because I want to be a more proactive person, and break the habit of procrastination in general. I also want to set a better example to my kids. I will not allow myself to have my morning coffee or check social media, at all, until after I have completed my task. If I miss even one day, I promise that I will pay the cost as agreed, by actually pouring a bucket of ice water over my own head in the garden. I will then get back to work again the next day, and reinstate the same schedule and response cost.
— Signed, Donald Robertson
27th Dec 2025.
The nuclear option. The strategy that I’ve found most effective, mainly with male clients, has been as follows. Immediately book a table at the weekend for yourself and your wife (or girlfriend) at her favourite restaurant. Enlist the support of your wife, and tell her that you’re 100% committed to breaking your habit of procrastination. If you succeed, you’re going to reward yourself by taking her to her favourite restaurant, but if you fail to get the minimum daily work accomplished, even once, you’re going to immediately call up and cancel the booking. That means telling your wife that you’re now cancelling her treat because you didn’t do ten minutes of writing. She can help by reminding you of this commitment as required. This tactic can be repeated on a weekly basis. Most of my clients would rather do even the most tedious work, for at least ten minutes, than have to explain to their wife why they failed.
Using response costs is a well-established technique in behaviour therapy. We do know it has limitations over the long-term but, nevertheless, it can be an effective way of breaking a habit, and getting the ball rolling. It takes a lot of fuel to get a steam train to start moving, but less fuel to keep it going, I’m told. It can require force to break the habit of procrastination, but over time you will probably be able to adopt a more natural, and less extreme, approach to motivation. And, as we shall see, there are reasons why it’s important to get straight to work, by whatever means necessary.
How to Overcome Obstacles
“But,” you say, “I don’t like doing the tasks! I’ve been avoiding them for a reason!” That’s probably true, but not always the case. Often avoidance is just a habit, and once you get started you may immediately find the problem is solved. You may discover that the task is, in reality, easier than you assumed or more enjoyable. That happens surprisingly often. Procrastination is usually not avoidance of the tasks themselves but rather an aversion to certain associated feelings — effort, boredom, uncertainty, inadequacy, frustration, or anticipated failure. Psychologists call this experiential avoidance. That’s how exposure works: the goal isn’t to complete the task perfectly, but to retrain your tolerance for those uncomfortable feelings.
The most robustly-established technique in the entire field of psychotherapy research is exposure therapy. We know that when people face their fears, repeatedly, and for a prolonged period, as long as there aren’t any other complicating factors, their anxiety tends to reduce naturally. It also leads to improvement in other areas, perhaps most importantly that you’ll learn from experience how you’re able to tolerate uncomfortable feelings and cope with the situation better than you may have otherwise assumed. You can think of forcing yourself to do the task you’ve been avoiding as a form of exposure therapy.
“I MUST believe that tasks are highly important and urgent otherwise I CANNOT stand making myself do them.”
“It’s too difficult!” Or perhaps, “It’s too boring!” or “I’m too tired!” or “I feel overwhelmed!” or “It’s too much effort!” or “I can’t handle doing this!” What you really mean is that you don’t like doing it, not that you’re incapable of doing it. Procrastination is typically maintained by what Albert Ellis called Low Frustration Tolerance (LFT) or I-can’t-stand-it-itis. In other words, there’s often an underlying attitude of intolerance toward some aspect of the task, such as the perceived effort, tedium, tiredness, discomfort, or risk. Try asking yourself: “What do I feel needs to be different, internally or externally, in order for me just to get the task done?” In many cases, for example, clients tell me that they need to believe the task is urgent, as if there’s a looming deadline to get it done. Otherwise, even though it may be important, more urgent tasks are given priority. You can treat this as the irrational belief: “I MUST believe that tasks are highly important and urgent otherwise I CANNOT stand making myself do them.” On reflection, though, is that really true or just an exaggeration?
The fundamental solution to this is simply to do the avoided task because the act of exposing yourself to the effort alone is essentially a behavioural experiment directly challenging, and refuting, the belief that you can’t endure it or need something to be different before you can start. Through persistence, you will prove to yourself that you can stand it, that it’s not unbearable, or too much for you to handle, and that you might find it easier to get started if you’re told it’s urgent but you don’t literally need that to be the case. You may discover that it’s easier than you assumed, that you get used to it, that it becomes easier with practice, and that you can motivate yourself without using the anxiety about a looming deadline. You may find a way of making it more tolerable, such as breaking it down into smaller steps or approaching it in a creative new way. You may learn to motivate yourself by focusing on the long-term benefits, or the skills you’re developing, etc.
In addition to behaviourally disproving your Low Frustration Tolerance, you can also verbally dispute that whole way of thinking. Where is the evidence that you literally can’t stand writing your essay for ten minutes? Does everyone else find this sort of task unbearable — no, so why should you? How does it follow logically that just because you don’t like the task, or find it difficult, that you cannot endure it? Where does it get you in the long run, if you keep telling yourself you can’t bear hard work or discomfort, even when you know it’s in your own best interests to get it done? Aren’t you achieving precisely the opposite of what you want if, by avoiding the task, you just end up creating more hassle for yourself in life? How much time are you going to waste procrastinating about this? Wouldn’t it be easier just to get it done promptly and move on?
As Epictetus said: everything has two handles — a good handle and a bad one. If you want to bear the burden of this task wisely, you’re going to need to pick it up by the good handle, not the broken one. So what’s the alternative way of looking at this? What’s a more rational and realistic philosophy? Tell yourself: “I may not like doing this, but I can stand it long enough to get it done — it’s unpleasant but it’s not unbearable.” By accepting the effort and discomfort while asserting your ability to cope, you build High Frustration Tolerance, which is very beneficial trait as it can often generalize across a wide variety of situations and lead to growing self-confidence and emotional resilience.
“I need to do something else!” Procrastination typically involves diverting yourself by doing other tasks, which may temporarily appear more urgent. You wash the dishes or answer some emails, for example, instead of working on your essay. This can go on indefinitely — there’s always something else to do. You stand the most chance of overcoming this if you do two things:
Set modest and consistent goals, such as working for a minimum of ten minutes per day, so that it is difficult for you to say you don’t have enough time — as you should always be able to find at least ten minutes.
Do the avoided task first, before anything else, which means that it’s usually going to be best, where possible, to plan doing it in the morning — that way, even if something gets in the way, you still have the rest of the day to make time to complete your task.
If you tell yourself the goal is merely to do the task, you’ll always be able to find excuses to do something else first, and keep saying mañana, I’ll deal with this later. Always treat your task, first and foremost, as a means of developing your character by becoming a more proactive and self-disciplined person. Approach it as an exercise in living in accord with your core values and setting a good example to other people, such as your own children. Bear in mind the wider implications of being proactive and self-disciplined, and how it will benefit you throughout life.
Fear of Failure
Anxiety and fear of failure are common factors in procrastination. In many cases, rigid perfectionistic standards cause the slightest setback or mistake to be perceived as a catastrophic failure, which leads to avoidance. Neurologically, we know that anxiety can potentially inhibit the regions of the brain associated with initiating and maintaining goal-directed activity. Reframe problems as a normal part of the process, and as an opportunity rather than a threat. Sometimes this may require additional work, using cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT) techniques such as decatastrophizing.
The Self-Flagellation Cycle
Ironically, criticizing yourself for procrastinating is a very common cause of procrastination. You make a mistake, perform poorly on a task, or procrastinate and avoid it — you regret that, feel ashamed of yourself, and may then spend more time beating yourself up than it would have taken just to try again and complete the task. There’s a reason why we don’t use severe criticism (“You’re such an idiot!”) in coaching or education — it doesn’t work. You may succeed in scaring or shaming yourself temporarily into getting tasks done but it’s probably going to impair your performance and, ultimately, it’s likely to backfire by severely undermining your future motivation. Self-castigation leads to what I call “boom and bust” cycles in motivation and, over time, it usually causes fatigue and eventual burnout.
Morbid self-flagellation tends to be vague and character-based (“You idiot!”); constructive criticism requires getting specific (“You would be better to focus on this specific part of the task instead next time and trying using this specific tactic…”). Forget about attacking your character as a “failure” or “incompetent” or “useless” and, employ constructive criticism instead, which focuses on encouraging your effort, reinforcing what you did well, and correcting specific mistakes. Adopt an experimental (“trial and error”) attitude toward your tasks. The paradox is that the more passionately you want to succeed, the more incentive you have to accept your own fallibility so that you are ready to learn from mistakes and recover from setbacks. “The perfect”, as Voltaire once said, “is the enemy of the good.” Perfectionists, in other words, invariably set themselves up for failure.
Coping Statements
We saw earlier how disputing Low Frustration Tolerance (“I can’t stand doing this!”) naturally leads to a philosophy of High Frustration Tolerance, and rational assertions such as “I don’t like this, but I can handle it”. By repeating similar coping statements to yourself before, during, or after, the task, you can coach yourself through the process, as if you had someone standing beside you, walking you through getting it done. Psychologists call this method Self-Instruction Training (SIT) and there are many research studies that provide clear evidence that it can improve task performance in a wide variety of situations.
Adopt the tone of an effective coach and adapt to your own needs. You may need to be firm and assertive with yourself, but not aggressive, to get things started. You may need to exercise patience and compassion, to reassure and encourage yourself, when recovering from setbacks. Nobody is going to come and do this for you. Promote yourself to your own manager, take charge of the situation, and put yourself to work on the tasks you’ve been avoiding.
Here are some examples of self-instructions that have helped other people to complete tasks. They’re divided into different stages of the process. You don’t need to learn all of these, just pick 2-3 that seem most relevant. After throwing yourself into doing the task, come back to this list and look again for ways in which you could improve your self-talk and coach yourself through the process.
1. Getting Started
“I don’t have to feel motivated — starting creates motivation.”
“I don’t like this feeling, but I can handle it; it will get easier with practice.”
“What’s the first tiny step I can do to get started?”
“Ten minutes is nothing — just do it!”
2. Staying Focused
“Keep going even if you feel anxious or bored; it will be worth it in the end.”
“Even if I feel the urge to do something else, I can ignore it and keep going.”
“One step at a time — stay with the process.”
“This is temporary; I can tolerate it for ten minutes.”
3. Recovering from Setbacks
“If you get stuck, slow down and simplify things.”
“Dealing with obstacles is just a normal part of the process.”
“I don’t need get things perfect; I can learn from my mistakes.”
“Pause, breathe, and choose the next step.”
These are just typical suggestions but hopefully they inspire your imagination. You can think of your own statements, tailored to the problems you encounter.
Self-Monitoring
It’s not essential to track your progress but it often helps. For sure, don’t turn it into another excuse for procrastination — you better keep it short and sweet. At a minimum you probably want to record prior to each task:
Date/time and a few words indicating the task,
e.g., “Sat 27 Dec, 2pm, work on accounts.”Unhelpful thoughts, which may be automatic,
e.g., “I can’t be bothered; I’ll do it tomorrow; I hate this.”Helpful thoughts, such as coping statements you told yourself in response to get the task done,
e.g., “I don’t like this; it’s boring, but I can do it; it’s better to do it now and get it out of the way.”Outcome, what you actually got done, and what you learned,
e.g., “Worked for ten minutes; realized it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be.”
Some people also record their anticipated rating of how difficult they think the task will be (0-10) and then afterwards how difficult it was in reality. Some record afterwards their level of “pleasure” (0-10) and “mastery” or sense of achievement (0-10) from doing the task. You may also want to include feelings such as boredom, anxiety, fatigue, etc, and perhaps rate their intensity (0-10).
However, I believe the most important thing is that you adapt the self-monitoring to suit your needs, and don’t turn it into more fuel for procrastination. Do what helps not what doesn’t help. There’s nothing wrong with just quickly jotting down a number to track your sense of mastery, for example.
In some cases, you may even want to use self-monitoring as a way of inhibiting procrastination. For example, by writing down exactly what you did instead of the task you wanted to accomplish, you may find that raises self-awareness and makes it seem tedious to engage in any diversions. For instance, if you go on social media for an hour instead of working on an essay, you may find that writing that down, noting how many minutes you spent doing it, and even rating your pleasure and mastery (often zero!) may act as a deterrent or a response cost. It can be revealing to observe that diversions sometimes turn out, on closer inspection, to be less pleasurable and rewarding than the task you’re avoiding.
Conclusion
Our focus in this article has been on breaking the habit of procrastination. That requires forcing yourself, first and foremost, to do the task you’ve been avoiding. These aren’t long-term strategies. I don’t want to overload you with information, though, so I’ll just summarize the changes you would make to maintain long-term improvement, without going into them in as much detail.
Most people will fade out the response costs when they’re confident they’re no longer necessary, but perhaps continue to give themselves occasional rewards. (After all, we’re normally rewarded for work by being paid wages.) Some people continue to use certain costs; it’s up to you.
Self-instructions or coping statements are usually faded out over time, so that you may be thinking them implicitly but you don’t need to keep explicitly repeating them to yourself in your head. Of course, when you encounter difficulty, you may sometimes revert back to using explicit self-instructions to guide your actions.
Perhaps most importantly, if you really want to maintain long-term commitment to a task, it’s a good idea to link it to your core values. These should ideally be character-based values. For instance, the Stoic virtues: wisdom, justice, kindness, courage (endurance), and temperance (self-discipline), and so on. Intrinsic values are known to provide a much more stable and enduring source of motivation than our feelings, or the desired outcome of actions.
I’ve given you a lot of advice here. All of it is based on strategies that other people have found helpful in overcoming procrastination. Without doubt, though, the most important thing is to go and do the task as soon as possible. You cannot reverse avoidance without reversing avoidance. That’s probably going to require pushing yourself at first, and engineering your situation in life so that avoidance is no longer an option, by setting up contracts, rewards, and response costs.
So, what are you waiting for? Get to it!
Great and practical read!
Timely advice. I realize I was making excuses for not taking the lead on a project that would benefit the university.
Oh the ways one can procrastinate! You didn't give us any place to hide. LET'S DO IT. 🙃