How to become unstuck

Everybody procrastinates at least sometimes, but over 20 per cent of adults and up to 50 per cent of college students procrastinate consistently and problematically, meaning it has a measurable impact on our jobs, education, relationships, or health.

Why is procrastination both so common and so hard to remedy? Aversive tasks require quite a bit of self-regulation; we have to focus, get organized, overcome inertia. And a pile of evidence shows that self-regulation deteriorates under emotional distress; heck, nobody blows up their diet, budget, sobriety, or wedding vows because they feel happy and regulated. Indeed, when our brains have to choose between a small but immediate reward and a larger but longer-term reward, feeling bad will push us toward the former.

When a task makes us feel lousy, procrastination steps in as a coping mechanism - and a highly reinforcing one at that. Procrastination is a one- two punch that allows us to both avoid the aversive task that's making us feel bad and immediately replace it with something that makes us feel better, whether that's watching baby whales breach on TikTok, baking banana bread, or tackling virtuous but non-urgent projects.

But then, two things happen. One, we outsource our mood management to an external source - TikTok, baking etc. Two, we feel worse - guilty, pressured due to time loss, plus, whatever initial emotions we were trying to avoid rebound like a beach ball pushed underwater.

What ends a bout of procrastination? Our negative emotion see-saw eventually tilts the other way. At some point, feeling bad about procrastinating outweighs feeling bad about the task. Our fear of failing the exam finally outweighs the drudgery of studying.

For those of us who are hard on ourselves, procrastination is stickiest around tasks that include some kind of judgment: we'll get graded, reviewed, reacted to, or open ourselves and our work to the opinions of others. This takes the task to a kryptonite level of aversion, even if we've done it a million times before. That's why we trade tasks laden with possible negative evaluation for tasks that are socially safer.

The many layers of a procrastination parfait

Procrastination isn't just about the task. We stack additional layers on top, each one adding its own dose of negative emotion that requires repair before we get started.

First is unrealistically high standards for completing a task - a blow-the-boss's-socks-off presentation, a multi-paragraph handwritten reflection in every birthday card, an annual review for a direct report that somehow lists their weaknesses while making them feel good. We can feel overwhelmed, anxious, unsure: all emotions procrastination works to avoid.

Next is good ol' fear of failure - those of us who are hard on ourselves selectively attend to failure. We focus on flaws, including possible future flaws, both in outcome and process. Next is procrastination-related self- criticism. Feeling bad about playing Minecraft for eight hours or avoiding writing a will for ten years slathers on more negative emotion - guilt, shame, self- loathing. The contempt we feel for ourselves carries over to the next task, and the cycle begins anew.

On the surface, the solution seems simple: just get started! But it's not that easy. Let's look at four ways we can keep procrastination from dragging on:

Get started and your mood will catch up

If procrastination is about avoiding negative emotion, do we have to finesse ourselves into a better mood? Are kindness and forgiveness the golden ticket to never procrastinating again? Honestly, no. We don't have to feel better before we start. We can feel crappy and still get started. This can feel like a hard sell. But hear me out. 

Start with acceptance. We procrastinators, research shows, don't come by mindfulness naturally. Indeed, a phenomenon called overidentification with affective states - if I feel it, it must be true - is pretty much the opposite of mindfulness. 

But instead of getting yanked around by how we feel, we can try watching our emotions like a movie playing out on the big screen of our minds. It's not even a long movie; the intensity of emotion drops in a matter of seconds to minutes. We can notice our anxiety, overwhelm, or however we feel without needing it to go far, far away. And then, we can open PowerPoint while we feel incompetent, figure out the next step while we feel incapable, or crack open the book and start studying while we feel stupid. That's acceptance. Now let's pull the lever of 'change'.

Peel a banana: Breaking tasks down into ridiculously small steps

It's way easier to mindfully tolerate feeling lousy while starting a teeny-tiny task than to mindfully tolerate feeling lousy while starting a ginormous task. Let's use the classic behaviour-change technique of breaking tasks down into small steps - but here's the key: we'll break it down into steps so small we feel no resistance.

Our internal cattle prod doesn't like breaking things down. It prefers all or nothing. It tells us we have to do the whole thing, start to finish, in one sitting, effortlessly. But breaking down tasks also breaks down our aversion. My final year of grad school, I worked on a study for individuals with depression and diabetes. One participant was trying to motivate himself to go to the gym. His first step, was literally 'Peel a banana.' This was the precursor to eating the banana that would fuel his workout. 'Find car keys' was one of the subsequent steps, which I found highly relatable.

Nobody has to know how small your steps are. Retroactively put smaller steps you've already done on your to-do list just for the satisfaction of crossing them off. If you feel any resistance at all, break it down further. When we break down our task into tiny steps and are willing to accept feeling temporarily lousy, it's easier to get started. Do this combo regularly, and we collect a tidy bundle of mastery experiences, which are essentially small successes, and we start to feel better, or at least less bad. So, we'll make room for our lousy feelings, do the first ridiculously small step - our own equivalent of peeling the banana - and let the momentum of small successes propel us forward.

Forgive yourself for procrastinating

If the goal of procrastination is on-demand mood repair, let's try out other ways to repair our mood. Procrastination researcher Dr. Timothy Pychyl and colleagues found that undergraduates who forgave themselves for procrastinating while studying for their first Psychology 101 midterms procrastinated less while studying for their second midterms. The reason: 'decreasing negative affect.'

In other words, rather than repairing their moods by procrastinating even more, self- forgiveness provided real mood repair and more motivation to study. We might say, 'Expecting myself to clean the whole house was really overwhelming; I see why I put that off. It's okay – these things happen.' Repeat it, be patient with contrary feelings like frustration or insistence, and let it slowly sink in.

Connect with your future self

When we're stressed or tired, we pin our hopes on the future version of ourselves. We reason that our future selves will somehow be less tired, more motivated, and able to jump in with gusto. It's the same reason the most common day of the week to start a diet is 'tomorrow'.

Since procrastination centres on mood repair, putting our faith in our imaginary future eager beaver selves make us feel better right now, not only because we don't have to feel bad by starting our task but also because we don't have to feel bad about procrastinating - our future selves will take care of it! However, because that future self is so different from how we feel right now (motivated! energetic! disciplined! confident!), we feel disconnected from it, like a stranger. 

Though we can't time travel, Dr Eve-Marie Blouin-Hudon came close. She created a 'mental imagery intervention to increase future self-continuity and reduce procrastination.' In her study, she walked college student participants through a guided imagery practice that asked them to "see" their end-of-semester self from an outside perspective. Some sample sentences: Pay attention to your future self's face and body.

What is your future self wearing? You notice that your future self is holding a textbook and is opening it to read. Pay close attention to the book. Does it look brand new or has it been used often? You look around and see more  notebooks from your other classes stacked around your future self. Are the articles highlighted or left blank? Have the notebooks been used often or do they look unused? 

Notice that the script doesn't mandate visualizing a well-thumbed textbook or imagining feeling prepared for finals. Instead, it's choose-your-own-adventure all the way. The point? Vividly imagining our future selves with lots of sensory detail, both inside and out, can make us feel more empathetic for and connected to our future selves and our goals.'

• How to be Enough is published by Bonnier Books.