You’ve tidied your desk, plucked your eyebrows, planned what’s for dinner tonight and had a quick online browse for new winter boots. It’s amazing how productive you can be when you’re avoiding doing something! We all have tasks and projects that we do our best to avoid, even though we’re well-aware they need doing. And what’s frustrating is that when you finally do knuckle down and get stuck in, you often discover it’s no big deal, and find yourself thinking, ‘Why didn’t I start this earlier?’

It’s not just you – everyone procrastinates, because we don’t always do what’s best for ourselves, even when we know what we should do. And thanks to internet shopping, social media, email and endless box-sets, there are more ways to distract yourself than ever before.

It’s wrong to dismiss procrastination as laziness, and we often procrastinate by busying ourselves (ever noticed that only time you feel like tidying your drawers is when you have a tricky phonecall to make?). What we procrastinate about is super-personal, and something that seems like a huge task to you may seem like a breeze to someone else. But at the heart of all procrastination is fear. It’s most often fear of failing, but sometimes it’s fear of success, because that brings change. We are all vulnerable to the change paradox, wanting things to change, but without anything changing! Procrastination also protects against disappointment. What if you achieve your dream and find it’s not want you want afterall? Procrastination is a great way of maintaining the status quo.

Perfectionism and procrastination often go hand-in-hand as not completing a project means it can never be judged as coming up short. The flipside of perfection is feeling like you’re not good enough. So, you put off having that dinner party because your house isn’t perfect. It’s a defence against feeling criticised. But you’re also more likely to procrastinate if you’re intelligent and creative. Procrastination is thinking about the potential consequences of an action, and then trying to avoid those consequences by avoiding the action. If you have a good imagination you can very vividly create an alternative reality of what might happen, which means you’re more likely to procrastinate to avoid it.

Procrastination is rooted in the oldest parts of your brain, the amygdala or ‘lizard’ brain, part of the brain’s limbic system that controls your most basic of survival functions. Your smarter, more developed past of the brain craves success and delivery of your ideas to the wider world. But your lizard brain, the source of all your resistance, is scared of what might happen if you do something it’s never seen you do before.

But the irony is that although it’s essentially a protective mechanism, procrastination often ends up making life harder. It not only creates a mental loop – you keep thinking ‘I really must get started on that report’ – which generates low-level feelings of stress, but not knuckling down can make you feel ineffective at work, and chip away at your confidence. Feeling bad about the fact you’re procrastinating, worrying that you’re letting people down or that you’re a bad person, creates another layer of negativity. In one study, students who perpetually procrastinated ended up with lower grades and higher stress levels at the end of term than non-procrastinators.

Procrastination can also affect your physical health if you stops you making positive lifestyle changes like exercising or losing weight. It’s particularly toxic in relationships, when one partner procrastinates about making a commitment or deciding whether to have a baby, but can also damage friendships. It’s hard to listen to a friend talk about the same problems over and over again if they never do anything about them.

The solution to procrastination is rarely simply ‘getting more organised’. be that they need to be more organised. While that may help, what’s really at the heart of the matter is mood management. What we’re doing when we procrastinate is trying to avoid uncomfortable feelings. So, you waste 30 minutes on Facebook before starting a new project not because you’re lazy or disorganised, but because you’re trying to soothe your anxiety and give your mood a boost – what psychologists call ‘giving into feel-good’.

Most of us will never eliminate procrastination but it’s definitely possible to procrastinate less. Most of us, don’t be too hard on yourself – studies show that most of the stress associated with procrastination is generated by self-criticism, sending your motivation into a further downward spiral. Forgive yourself, and remember you’re only human – then get on with it!

READ MORE – 6 Ways to Beat Procrastination