What is procrastination?
Procrastination is more common than you might think. Around 71% of us put off life admin tasks, while the average UK worker spends more than two hours each day procrastinating. If you find yourself delaying tasks or chores until the last minute (or frequently missing deadlines), it can be a sign of procrastination.
You can procrastinate at any age. From young school children to teens, young adults to those nearing retirement age, if you've ever found yourself putting something off (regardless of the potential consequences), you may have experienced procrastination.
Frequent procrastination can lead to increased feelings of stress and anxiety. A study into procrastination and mental health found that long-term procrastination can negatively impact your physical and mental health. Essentially, procrastination is an unhelpful, ineffective coping mechanism.
When we procrastinate too much, we feel like our stress levels are higher and, without more helpful coping mechanisms in place, can fall into a negative cycle of unhelpful behaviours. But what causes us to procrastinate? And what can we do to help overcome this negative habit?
What are the four types of procrastination?
Procrastination can be split into four different types. These include:
- The lucky optimist: You believe everything will work out in the end (and it often does).
- The overloaded: You have too much to do (and often end up failing your tasks).
- The pleasure-seeking avoided: You leave boring, hard, or otherwise painful tasks until the last minute to focus on the more fun present.
- The perfectionist: You avoid starting – and finishing – tasks (due to your own, often unrealistically high standards).
More than just poor task management, procrastination is often a form of emotional avoidance. We all have built-in mechanisms to dodge stress, fear of failure or overwhelm.
- Hypnotherapist Christopher Higgins BA (Hons), DipCBH, CNHC Reg. explains more in The hypnotic approach to procrastination.
Why do people procrastinate?
There are many different things that can lead to procrastination. Some of the most common causes can include fear of failure, distraction, and overwhelm. Other common reasons for procrastination can include:
- A lack of organisational skills or poor time management
- Low motivation
- Difficulty focusing or concentrating on the task at hand
- Feelings of anxiety or fear of failure
- Unrealistic expectations or goals (set by yourself or others)
- Negative self-beliefs (about your worth, ability, or capability)
- Perfectionism
- Past negative experiences (leading to avoidance or delay)
- Task aversion (finding tasks boring, frustrating, or unpleasant)
- Not knowing where to start or what steps to take next.
Other conditions may also make it harder for you to focus or lead to lower energy levels, for example, if you are experiencing fatigue, depression, or have ADHD.
How to stop procrastinating
If you are worried that procrastination may be having a negative impact on your work, life, or productivity, there are a number of things you can try. It’s important to note that unless you are ready to change, nothing will change. Without the desire to change and improve, old, bad habits that lead to procrastination will return. Try the following tips:
1. Start with a quick win
Pencilling in a smaller task or ‘quick win’ can be an easy way to start your day. This can help create an initial sense of success, helping push you in the right direction and setting the tone for the rest of the day.
2. Improve your time management and organisation skills
Learning time management and organisational skills can help you better prioritise your workload based on deadlines, how important tasks are, and how they may affect your (or others') overall workflow.
3. Balance your day
Not everything on your to-do list is going to be fun. Ensuring you space out the tasks you enjoy alongside those that you don’t can help you to avoid a backlog of last-minute tasks and hard-to-meet deadlines.
4. Try time-limiting techniques
There are a number of different methods that can help you get back on track. The 1-2-3 method (where you count to three, then start doing the task you should be focusing on) can help overcome that initial barrier to getting started.
Another method is the one-minute rule, where you commit to focusing on a task for just one minute. This can help overcome the initial barrier to getting started. A longer version of this is the Pomodoro technique, where you work on a task for 25 minutes before taking a five-minute break.
5. Avoid over-filling your schedule
When you have too much on your plate, getting started can feel overwhelming – let alone finishing. By ensuring your workload is manageable, you can increase your chances of success, as completing tasks can help boost your sense of accomplishment and further motivate you onwards.
6. Practice accountability
Set your own deadlines and stick to them. If that isn’t working? Try telling someone else about them. When others expect something from us, we can feel more motivated to get started, as we don’t want to let them down.
7. Be kind to yourself
Acknowledge that you struggle with procrastination and forgive yourself. This can help reduce associated negative feelings of guilt, which can trigger further procrastination. Just be careful not to give yourself permission to continue procrastinating.
8. Evaluate your excuses
Finding an excuse to procrastinate is easy. Maybe the office is too loud, your internet connection is slow, or your inbox is busier than expected. But are these good enough excuses to postpone the task you should be working on?
Ask yourself: if it’s too loud to focus on this task, what task can I do instead? If my inbox is busier than usual, can I prioritise what needs to be answered now, and what can be done after my other tasks? If you're having trouble with your connection or hardware, who can you talk to about these issues? And are there other tasks you can do while these issues are being fixed?
9. Build sustainable, healthy habits that work for you
Everyone works differently. Finding habits (and stacking them to create a sustainable routine) can help improve your performance, make better choices, and create healthier habits. Willpower alone is often not enough. Finding the routines, systems, and frameworks that work for you is key.
How can hypnotherapy help with procrastination?
Hypnotherapy encourages you to focus on your strengths and explore the thoughts and habits that may be contributing to procrastination. By helping you develop a more positive mindset and healthier patterns of thinking, it can become easier to replace self-doubt with greater confidence, build new routines and work towards your goals.
If you are ready and open to change, hypnotherapy can be a helpful tool in overcoming procrastination. Using hypnosis, a hypnotherapist can enable you to create new habits, change negative self-perceptions, and release feelings of guilt or self-doubt. It’s important to remember that in order for hypnotherapy to work, you have to want to change. With the support of a hypnotherapist, you can learn new habits, make positive changes, and reduce procrastination.
Types of hypnotherapy that may help with procrastination
- Rapid Transformational Therapy®: RTT works for procrastination by accessing the subconscious mind, where limiting beliefs and behaviours originate, and directly challenging these thoughts in order to reframe them. The idea is that this may disrupt these initial thoughts, removing the need for procrastination as a coping mechanism.
- Cognitive behavioural hypnotherapy: Aims to reframe both your emotional and behavioural responses to a given target situation and, over time, reinforce and support a natural transition where tasks do not trigger old maladaptive reactions through affirmation and positive suggestion.
- Solution-focused hypnotherapy: Combining psychotherapy with hypnosis may help the prefrontal cortex work more efficiently, reducing task-based overwhelm. The subconscious reprogramming aims to reduce fear and anxiety, putting a focus on motivation. The overall goal is to build on one’s belief that they can succeed, reinforcing task capability.
- Visualisation techniques: Through guided relaxation and visualisation techniques, hypnotherapy helps individuals identify and challenge limiting beliefs and self-sabotaging patterns of thinking.
Your hypnotherapist may use a range of techniques, depending on what may be contributing to your procrastination and how this relates to your subconscious.
Frequently asked questions
Is procrastination laziness?
Procrastination isn’t a sign of laziness. While lazy people may not start or finish a task and are fine leaving it undone, procrastinators are more likely to feel uncomfortable, upset, or guilty. Procrastination itself is an active process. By procrastinating, you are choosing to do something else instead of the task you should be doing. Laziness, on the other hand, often comes from apathy, inactivity, or an unwillingness to act.
Does procrastination mean you're intelligent?
There is a common belief that people who procrastinate are naturally more intelligent, but there isn't enough reliable evidence to support this. People procrastinate for many different reasons, including feeling overwhelmed, anxious, lacking motivation or striving for perfection. Intelligence alone doesn't determine whether someone procrastinates.
Whatever the reason, procrastination can make it harder to achieve your goals if it becomes a regular habit. Developing healthier routines, improving time management and addressing the thoughts behind procrastination can help you feel more confident and productive.
Ready to find a hypnotherapist for procrastination?
If procrastination is affecting your work, studies or wellbeing, speaking with a qualified hypnotherapist may help you understand what's driving the behaviour and develop healthier habits.
