Procrastination Is Suffering Twice

Procrastinating is delaying a task that feels uncomfortable. Because we don’t want to do them, we avoid them for as long as humanly possible, often until the very last moment.

Therefore, it might be easy to see procrastination as a time problem. If only we were more organised, then maybe we’d have a better time getting things done. And the aftermath of procrastination also looks like a time problem, as we leave ourselves scrambling to finish things on time.

But procrastination isn’t a time problem, it’s an emotional one. Instead of looking at what procrastination does, we need to look at why we do it.

As mentioned, we procrastinate on tasks that we don’t want to do, but more specifically, tasks that make us experience emotions and feelings that we’d prefer to avoid.

It’s not the feelings themselves that are the problem, either. Instead, it’s how we react to the emotions that are the root cause of your procrastination.

We’re bound to feel discomfort when faced with exercise, cleaning our homes or studying for a test, and the truth is you’re mostly always going to feel this way, thus rendering any attempt to avoid these feelings a waste of time.

The truth is, as much as we could make ourselves stronger or more resilient to these emotions, when it comes to removing procrastination, there’s actually a much more efficient route. 

Imagine starting today that you had to eat a frog every single day of your life, if you don’t eat the frog, you die.

You might start out delaying it as much as possible, eating the frog later in the day, but eventually, you’ll eat it first thing every day without fail.

Not through strategy, but from a natural consequence of pain avoidance. When you wait to eat the frog, you suffer twice. Not only when eating it, but you suffer all day thinking about it. And the day spent thinking only elevates how bad the experience is.

Procrastination is exactly the same. The task you're avoiding has to be done, regardless of how long you delay it, and so most of your suffering is self-induced and actually comes from the avoidance itself, regardless of how bad the task might be.

Procrastinating is an emotional problem, but it isn’t solved with emotions, it’s solved through habit formation.

If you could just train yourself to get the task done immediately instead of delaying it, you’ll actually get to experience how drastic the reduction of suffering is. In other words, learn to eat the frog as soon as possible.

If a task sucks, then it’s probably always going to suck and is not always something we can control. What we can control, though, is how much unnecessary suffering we add on top.

Like any habit, it takes time. You need to eat the frog exactly when you planned to eat the slug, preferably as soon as humanly possible. Do this for long enough, and you’ll never go back.

Do this for long enough, and you’ll start avoiding procrastination more than you ever used it to avoid tasks, because procrastination was always the problem.