The #1 Reason Why You Procrastinate

I’ll give it to you straight: the reason why you procrastinate is uncertainty.

You don’t know what exactly you need to do. You don’t know how much time and effort it requires. You are unsure whether it is really important or urgent.

You lack clarity in your goals, and that’s why you procrastinate.

Let’s take a student as an example. If his goal is to “study math”, then procrastinating will be very easy for him. It’s not just because studying sucks, but because “study math” leaves too much room for uncertainty.

The poor student looks at this task on the to do list, and he doesn’t know whether he should study the textbook, or go through past exam papers. Even worse, he doesn’t know when studying will end, or how much work he needs to do before he is done with math. To the student, studying math seems like an impossibly tortuous task, and he chooses to put it off for later.

If this student also wants to meditate, for example, he will be faced with the other face of uncertainty: He wants to meditate, but he isn’t sure whether it is really that important or urgent, and because of that, he can’t stay consistent. Something more important pops up, and he will choose to meditate tomorrow…

To wrap it all up:

If you are procrastinating, you are uncertain about:

• what you need to do

• how long it will take for you to do it

• whether or not the task is really important

• whether or not the task must be completed now

With that in mind, beating procrastination is straightforward:

• be clear about what exactly you want to achieve“I will go through 10 practice tests and then I am done”

• be clear about how long you will be working“I will study for 2 hours and then I am done”

• make it clear to yourself that the task is important, and that it must be done NOW“Meditating every day is crucial for my mental health, and I have to do it today, or I will never build a solid habit”

• Combine the above to stop procrastinating on even the most tortuous tasks: Right now, the task I am completing is to “Write” “Write one letter for my newsletter in 2 hours. Writing matters to me, and I know that I have to write right now, in the morning, because later on during the day, writing will be harder, and I will not be able to write as best as I can.”

That’s it for today, if you want to beat procrastination, become more disciplined, and get work done in today’s distracted world, don’t forget to subscribe to “Get Work Done”:

And if you have any questions, feel free to leave a comment — I reply to everyone!