Why you procrastinate, and why it is not laziness: procrastination as avoiding a feeling, and how to undo it feeling by feeling

In the autumn of 1830 Victor Hugo had taken an advance for a novel about Notre-Dame de Paris and was already late. His publisher was threatening penalties. According to his wife's account, Hugo bought a bottle of ink and a thick knitted shawl that covered him from head to foot, then had his clothes put away so he had no way to leave the house. He wrote through the winter, and The Hunchback of Notre-Dame was finished the following January.

The story is usually told as a discipline trick. But it also shows something else: the most famous writer in France, who badly wanted this book to succeed, still procrastinated so much he had to lock himself in. If procrastination were laziness, Hugo would be a strange candidate for it.

Procrastination is a way of managing emotion

The usual view is that procrastination comes from laziness or poor discipline. But if that were so, procrastinators would feel relieved at dodging the work. In fact they feel worse, and more guilty.

The psychologist Tim Pychyl at Carleton University in Canada has studied procrastination for over twenty years, and he sums it up as a problem of regulating emotion, not of managing time. People avoid a task not because it is hard but because it stirs up an unpleasant feeling: fear of doing it badly, boredom, vagueness about where to start, or fear of being judged. Avoiding the task soothes that feeling instantly. That is the reward, and it strengthens the habit of avoiding.

That is why every "just push through" piece of advice misses. You are not short of willpower. You are avoiding a feeling, and you are rather good at it.

Your future self is a stranger

In 2009 the psychologist Hal Hershfield scanned people's brains while they thought about themselves now, about a stranger, and about themselves ten years on. Brain activity when thinking about "me in ten years" looked more like thinking about a stranger than like thinking about oneself today.

That explains a very familiar phrase: "I'll deal with it tomorrow." Tomorrow's person, in our heads, is someone else, with more time, more energy and fewer qualms. And we are very happy to hand them the work.

Ask which feeling you are avoiding

Before a task you keep pushing back, ask specifically: what does this make me feel? The answers tend to fall into a few familiar groups, and each has its own fix.

• Vague, with no clear first step. Fix: write down the smallest step you could do in two minutes.
• Afraid of doing it badly, because the version in your head is perfect. Fix: allow yourself a bad draft, and tell yourself plainly that it is the bad one.
• Bored, because the task is dull. Fix: pair it with something pleasant, or set a 25-minute timer and stop when it rings.
• Resentful, because the task seems pointless. Fix: this needs a conversation with whoever assigned it, not more discipline.

The 25-minute timer has a charming history. In the late 1980s an Italian student, Francesco Cirillo, frustrated that he could not study, took his family's tomato-shaped kitchen timer and challenged himself to focus for ten minutes. He called the method Pomodoro, Italian for tomato. The ten minutes later became twenty-five.

Procrastination borrows from the future to pay for comfort now. The interest rate is steep, and it is collected in self-confidence.

The two most effective moves

First, shrink the first step. The brain prices the cost of starting, not of the whole task. If starting takes two minutes, the sum changes. Open the document and type one sentence. Promise nothing more. Most of the time you will carry on, and even if not, you have broken the deadlock.

Second, forgive yourself for last time. In 2010 Pychyl's group followed students across two exams. Those who forgave themselves for procrastinating before the first exam procrastinated less before the second. Self-blame does not make you more diligent. It only adds the very discomfort you are avoiding, and makes the next start harder.