How to Stop Procrastinating (When You Know Exactly What to Do)

Did you ever stand at the top of the high dive looking down and freeze?

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How about debating internally about asking that really cute person to dance?

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Or talking to your boss or client about raising your rates or needing a raise?

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And how long did you have that very loud conversation inside your head, either worrying about it or catastrophizing about it or trying to psych yourself up before you finally took action?

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If you DID take action.

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And for every time you took action, how many other times did you walk away?

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Both consoling and tormenting yourself about why now was not the right time or why “later” or “someday” would be better?

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Here’s the thing.

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We can pace back and forth on the diving board for as long as we want … until somebody starts coming up the ladder.

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At that point, you either have to slide past them and climb back down, humiliated, or walk to the edge of the board, close your eyes, and throw yourself into the pool.

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You might not have channeled your inner Greg Louganis but at least you didn’t have to climb down, trying to not cry or make eye contact with anyone.

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And even if you did, when you got back down to the pool deck, as much as you might have wished for it, the ground did not open up and swallow you alive.

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You lived to see another day.

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All that anxiety and longing and fear and exhilaration was self-manufactured.

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You put yourself through so much stress and for what?

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You did the thing or you didn’t.

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And if you didn’t, what do you have to show for the delay?

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Not much.

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Not even a guaranteed recipe for not delaying in the future.

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That's the toll that procrastination exacts on each of us every time we fail to act.

WHY DO I PROCRASTINATE WHEN I KNOW WHAT TO DO?

Procrastination is one of the 8 Deadly Time Thieves I write about in Calling BS on Busy, and when you already know what to do, it's clearly not a knowledge problem.

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And when it’s not about information or knowledge, it's the negotiating and debating with yourself that steals the time.

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Think about something you've been putting off right now.

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The call to reschedule a doctor's appointment—that got cancelled by a text message and automated robo voicemail.

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The package by the front door that's been packed up and just needs to be dropped off, but at an inconvenient location.

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The email from someone difficult you've been meaning to answer since last Tuesday.

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Each one would take less than 30 minutes from start to finish.

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But you've already spent hours avoiding them.

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Angry or hurt or frustrated by the steps required to complete them.

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And bogged down and depleted just thinking about doing them and trying to get motivated.

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And here's the infuriating irony about these kinds of tasks.

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The things you want to spend the least amount of time with are the things you end up spending the most time with.

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Because the delays keep them close.

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You're carrying all of them around with you every day.

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Not every moment of every day, but a little part of each of them every day.

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Especially when you think about any of them in the shower, or in the car, or at 3:00 in the morning when that cortisol spike wakes you up.

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So why do we delay taking action when it’s not an information gap that’s slowing us down but our feelings?

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Here are a few reasons that may sound familiar:

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"I'm waiting for the perfect time to get this done."

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"I'm just not in the right mood to take this on right now."

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"I still think it’s unfair I even have to do this."

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"I work better on a deadline so delaying this is actually a good time management strategy."

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"Maybe if I wait long enough this will get resolved on its own."

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"I’ll get up extra early tomorrow and take care of all this then."

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Each of these may sound reasonable when we say them.

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And provide just enough leverage to prevent us from taking action.

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Again.

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And it’s not like there isn’t a kernel of truth in many of them.

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But fundamentally, they’re still mostly a lie wrapped around a feeling.

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And by the time you finally get around to tackling any of them, the delays have cost you so much more than the action by itself ever would have.

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All that frustration and agitation, the stress and overwhelm you drag around as the real but seldom calculated costs of all of those looming ‘still to do’s’—that’s never factored into the delays.

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But your body is paying that price every single day.

SERIOUSLY? THERE ARE TWO KINDS OF PROCRASTINATION?

Yes, there are two kinds of procrastination: the avoiding kind and the indulging kind.

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The avoiding kind is the one we all know.

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It’s what I just described before.

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The errand you can’t seem to complete.

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The call you don't want to make.

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The pile you keep walking past.

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The indulging kind is sneakier, because we sell it to ourselves as self-care.

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And it sounds something like this:

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"I work so hard and I never get any time for myself.

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I'm just going to take 5 minutes for me—and then I promise I'll get right to it."

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And then you may even tell yourself you'll make up those 5 minutes later.

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But in that moment when you’re so desperate for a little relief and a little kindness, you're not actually giving yourself something nice.

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Even if it’s five minutes, closing your eyes or lying on a massage pillow.

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Because underneath all of it is starting the next thing late—which wipes out whatever yumminess you just enjoyed.

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Look, there's absolutely nothing wrong with deciding ahead of time to give yourself an extra 5 or even 20 minutes and pushing back your start time.

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That's planning.

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But that's not what you are doing when you’re delaying starting.

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That’s just theft.

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You're stealing time from one thing to spend it on another.

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And when it's time to pay it back, you pay for it three times.

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Because you’re seldom able to enjoy the self-care moment, cleanly.

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Chances are somewhere inside of you, there’s a little scorekeeper who’s noting that you stole those five minutes.

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And you’re now five minutes late to start the next thing so you’re starting off-balance and behind.

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And the third cost is to your self-esteem and your wellness because you’re likely to tell yourself one of your 200 lies that “every” time you try to take care of yourself, you just fall further behind.

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Clearly, there’s never a good time to care for yourself and you just have to grind yourself into a pulp and exhaust yourself because that’s your lot in life.

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Everyone else seems to have time for the things that matter and the things that have to get done, but you always end up with the short end of the stick.

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So, neither kind of procrastination is better than the other.

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They just each have their own costs and impact.

HOW DO I STOP PROCRASTINATING?

Start by deciding whether this thing actually needs to be done and done by you.

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We call this the 3-D’s.

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Because you've got three choices:

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Do it,

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Delegate it,

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or

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Delete it.

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And remember, no is a complete sentence.

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Even if it sometimes makes your skin crawl to not throw a “but” or “because” right after the no.

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So let’s start with the last one first.

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If you can live with the consequences of saying no, or in this case of the thing not being done, cross it off your list and stop dragging it around behind you.

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If it needs to be done, but it doesn’t need to be done by you, who can it be given to to complete it?

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And that ranges from AI or freelance labor to a friend, family member or colleague.

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If it can’t be delegated or deleted, then it's all yours.

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And for everything that is yours, the simplest and fastest way to dispatch it was first suggested by the 18th-century French writer Nicolas Chamfort: swallow a toad every morning, and nothing else that day will seem quite so disgusting.

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Most of us know it today simply as “eat the frog.”

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Do the thing you least want to do first, before your brain has a chance to start negotiating.

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And don't waste time batter-frying the frog or trying out a new recipe—those are just more delay tactics.

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No amount of garnish or garlic will change what it is into something it’s not.

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Then set a timer and start.

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And if you want to take the accountability up a notch, get someone expecting you.

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An accountability buddy is one of the fastest ways to move through something you don't want to do.

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Tell someone what you're doing and when you'll report back.

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Or work alongside other people doing the same thing at the same time.

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That's how my VIP Get-It-Done Sessions work.

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We start with live Q&A and coaching, everyone goes off and works on their own task for about 45–50 minutes, and then we come back together to report in.

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Nobody's watching you work.

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But everybody knows you're coming back.

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If your to-do list is where all of this piles up, I wrote about why you never get through your to-do list here.

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How much time do you want to spend talking yourself into something you're ultimately going to do anyway?

READY TO STOP PUTTING IT OFF?

What would you finally finish if you knew someone was expecting you?

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That's exactly why I built my new Unstuff Your Life! community.

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Daily coaching.

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Live group sessions twice a month.

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Workshops on paper clutter, digital clutter, photos, calendars, and to-do lists.

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And a group of people who'll notice when you show up—and celebrate what you finish.

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No prep.

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Bring what's stuck.

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Founding members get in at $67 a month while spots last—locked in for as long as you stay.

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Get 4 hours of your life back in 30 days—or your first month back.

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Join the community here → https://www.skool.com/unstuff-your-life/about

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Set a timer.

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Pick your frog.

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Start there.