You know that kind of day: you know perfectly well what you need to do. The file is open. So is the task list. You had even planned to start at 9 a.m. It is now 11:42 and you have learned an astonishing amount about the best way to clean bathroom grout…
Yes, yes, you are procrastinating.
Or, in its much more scientifically precise formulation:
you just can’t be arsed.
Well… maybe.
Because behind this apparent loss of motivation, very different mechanisms may be hiding.
And before trying to become more disciplined, it might be worth understanding why you can no longer get yourself moving.
The answer may be subtler than it looks.
Procrastination is not necessarily laziness
That is probably the first idea to get out of the way.
Procrastination means voluntarily delaying an action even though we know that postponing it may work against us.
Psychologist Fuschia Sirois’s work notably invites us to understand it as an issue of emotion regulation: we are not merely trying to avoid a task, but the unpleasant emotion associated with that task. APA
In other words:
maybe I am not putting off this report because I am lazy.
I am putting it off because it bores me.
Because it makes me anxious.
Because I do not know where to start.
Because I am afraid it will be bad.
Because I do not understand what is expected of me.
Because the task is so enormous that my brain would rather alphabetise my spice rack.
And in the short term, the mechanism works remarkably well.
I postpone the task. And voilà: Relief.
The problem?
The task still exists.
And now… it has invited stress over for dinner, the annoying bastard.
So no, procrastination is not necessarily self-sabotage
Immediately describing all procrastination as self-sabotage implies that we are consciously involved in some sort of conspiracy against ourselves.
It is rarely that simple.
Procrastination can temporarily help us avoid an uncomfortable emotion. The problem begins when this strategy becomes repetitive and ends up increasing the stress, guilt or difficulties it was supposed to help us avoid. APA
So the right question is not necessarily:
“How can I force myself to work?”
but:
“What am I avoiding when I avoid this task?”
And that is where the answers become much more interesting.
“I can’t be bothered”: yes, but which kind?
Because there are probably fifty different things hiding behind that sentence.
The tired kind: I am genuinely exhausted and need to recover.
The bored kind: this task stimulates absolutely nothing in me.
The scared kind: starting means risking failure.
The perfectionist kind: if I cannot do it perfectly, I would rather not start.
The confused kind: I do not even know what the first action is.
The rebellious kind: I could do it, but I hate being told how, when and why.
The absurdity kind: I can no longer see the point of what I am doing.
And finally, a particularly interesting category:
the demotivated kind.
I know how to do it. I could do it. But something in me replies:
“What’s the point?”
And now we are no longer talking only about procrastination.
We are talking about motivation.
How do you get your motivation back?
We often imagine motivation as some mysterious quantity in our body made from heaps of dopamine and pleasure.
Some people supposedly have lots of it. Others very little.
And some have probably lost it down the back of the sofa along with their car keys and the remote.
But motivation depends enormously on the context in which we act.
In Drive, Daniel Pink popularised research on intrinsic motivation around three major factors:
autonomy, mastery and purpose.
Autonomy: having some latitude over what we do and how we do it.
Mastery: feeling that we are progressing and developing our skills.
Purpose: understanding why what we do matters and what it contributes to. Daniel Pink
And suddenly the question:
“Why do I procrastinate so much at work?”
can become:
Do I still have room to make decisions?
Am I learning anything?
Do I feel that I am progressing?
Do I still understand why I am doing this job?
Because trying to solve structural demotivation with nothing but more discipline is a bit like pressing harder on the accelerator when the car has clearly run out of fuel.
Motivation and recognition: “What’s the point if nobody sees what I do?”
Recognition also matters.
Not necessarily in the form of applause, medals and a brass band every time we answer an email.
But human beings generally need to feel that their contribution exists, is useful or is at least noticed.
When effort seems invisible for a long time, motivation can erode.
And once again, the solution is not necessarily to become “more disciplined”.
Sometimes the real issue is the environment.
Being busy is not the same as moving forward
Procrastination has a particularly elegant disguise:
productive procrastination.
Answering emails.
Reorganising your folders.
Redoing your Notion setup. (No, no, I am absolutely not targeting anyone.)
Watching fifteen videos about productivity.
Choosing a new time-management app.
You are extraordinarily busy.
You still have not started the thing.
That is where it can help to ask:
“If I could accomplish only one thing today, which one would actually change something?”
Then start that one.
Even imperfectly.
What if procrastination were sometimes information?
Let us be reasonable: I do not think we should glorify it.
Regular procrastination can be costly in stress, guilt, opportunities and sometimes health. APA
But I do not think it is particularly intelligent to respond automatically to procrastination with:
“Get off your arse.”
Well… sometimes, yes.
But when the phenomenon keeps repeating, it may deserve something better than a moral judgement.
Because behind “I’m procrastinating”, there may be:
“I’m scared.”
“I’m exhausted.”
“I don’t know how to start.”
“I want to do it so well that I no longer dare to do it at all.”
“I have no autonomy.”
“I’m no longer progressing.”
“Nobody recognises what I contribute.”
“I no longer understand why I’m doing this.”
Or even:
“I don’t want this anymore.”
(A sentence we often hear from our Manifesting Generator friends in Human Design.)
No time-management app will properly answer that kind of sentence.
Coaching, motivation and procrastination: getting moving again
That is precisely where coaching can become useful.
Not to have someone standing behind you shouting:
“COME ON! MOTIVATION! DISCIPLINE! MOVE!”
But to understand what is actually happening.
Is the task unclear?
Is there fear?
Perfectionism?
Exhaustion?
A lack of meaning?
A lack of autonomy?
A problem with recognition?
Or is this goal simply no longer yours?
Motivation is not always something you need to recover. Sometimes its disappearance is information you need to listen to.
And once we know what the problem actually is, we can stop trying to repair everything with yet another productivity hack.