These people stopped procrastinating. You can too with this advice, they say
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Sam Dylan Finch was 27 years old when he reached a breaking point.
Having dealt with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and procrastination for much of his life, Finch was proud he’d earned enough trust to be offered a director’s position at a company whose mission he deeply cared about, he said.
Finch was eager to do the best he possibly could, he added, but it wasn’t long before he froze.
“As much as I cared about what I was doing, that almost made it worse,” said Finch, now a 33-year-old writer, content creator and ADHD peer support coach based in Minneapolis. “Even the thought of deciding what to wear, putting a breakfast together and figuring out how to order all of my tasks and prioritizing which things were most important — it just felt like there was such a large cognitive load and so much external pressure that I basically responded by collapsing.”
Finch often stayed in bed until just one minute before his first video meeting of the day. After it was over, he’d crawl back into bed as he cried over not understanding why his dream job had turned into a nightmare he just couldn’t push through, he said. Those circumstances eventually turned into the worst depression he’d ever experienced.
“I was no longer just getting things through in the eleventh hour,” Finch said. “I was just blowing past deadlines, and … I was not recovering the way that I used to be able to.”
With the threat of job loss, fear of failure, and a concerned and frustrated partner, Finch faced a life that felt so unmanageable he could no longer get out of bed, he recalled. He knew he couldn’t live that way anymore — but how he could improve was another challenge.
Procrastinating, or intentionally putting off necessary tasks, is something everyone does from time to time, said Robin Nordmeyer, founder and managing director of the Center for Living Well with ADHD and an ADHD coach. But some people can develop a chronic tendency, ending up in a hamster wheel of tasks they can’t ever seem to finish.
Repeatedly not following through on tasks you know you can do can also lead to other problems — self-esteem issues, depression, anxiety, relational discord and even an increased risk of physical health problems, said Dr. Fuschia Sirois, professor of social and health psychology at Durham University in England. Those ailments can include flus or colds, insomnia, digestive issues, and cardiovascular problems.
That vulnerability to illness is likely due to the stress procrastination causes, Sirois added, and the behavior can lead someone to not prioritizing healthy lifestyle habits that reduce the risk of disease.
Here’s how you can break the cycle.
Understanding why you procrastinate
Emotion regulation has been identified as the core reason why people procrastinate, Sirois said. When a responsibility triggers negative emotions and you’re unequipped to manage those feelings internally, externally managing them by delaying the task can provide instant relief.
That’s why overcoming procrastination should start with exploring what it is about certain tasks that make you want to avoid them, Sirois added. Exploring and implementing practical strategies is important but should be addressed only after you understand the root cause of the behavior.
The emotions people seek to regulate with procrastination can have roots in several different categories of issues. After years of procrastinating since elementary school, Paige Mariah Delaney, a marketing manager and content creator in Chicago, realized around age 28 that the pattern was her brain’s way of protecting her from the discomfort of potential imperfection or failure — a common reason, experts told CNN.
Until Delaney was honest with herself about her behavior and how it affected her life — to the extent of experiencing panic attacks — she had convinced herself that she simply worked better under pressure.
“I think we just tell ourselves things to make us feel better, when, in fact, I do not work better under pressure,” Delaney, 32, said. “I would do it fast, but it wasn’t my best quality work.”
Another common contributor is a sense of defiance or resistance to demands from others, according to experts. That was the case for Finch, who, with a therapist’s help, realized his procrastination was also partly due to unresolved trauma from having grown up in an authoritarian environment where he had little agency, he said.
For some, procrastination results from a mental health disorder such as depression, or especially a neurodevelopmental disorder such as ADHD, experts said. That’s because ADHD stems from underdeveloped or impaired executive function or self-regulation skills, which aid planning, focusing and sustaining attention, remembering instructions, and multitasking.
The brain of a neurodivergent person is wired for passions and novelty, which trigger the motivation to start and stay engaged with that interesting task, Nordmeyer said. When a duty or activity isn’t exciting, that executive dysfunction kicks in. Poor emotion regulation is another “core defining diagnostic criteria” for the disorder, Sirois said. All these factors can make various tasks, even the most basic ones such as brushing your teeth, feel much more daunting than they are.
Journaling and working with a therapist can help you determine what your reasons are for avoiding obligations.
Tips and tricks to try
Similarly, every individual also must develop the coping, time- and task-management strategies that work best for them, sources said. Here’s a list of tools you could experiment with, based on professional advice and what has worked for Finch and Delaney.
Change your motivators and reward yourself during and after tasks. Finch historically used self-criticism, pressure, and the odds of upsetting other people or losing his job to motivate himself to complete a task — only to later realize that made him deeply unhappy and burned out.
He had to figure out what kinds of positive supports would make him care more and feel excitement about working on a task. Those adjustments have included listening to soothing music while he’s watering his plants, for example, and sometimes leaving his gaming console in the kitchen to urge him to get out of bed earlier to have a little playtime before work.
Other rewards can be chatting with a friend while folding laundry or going to a unique grocery store to make shopping more enticing, experts said.
Work with a mental health professional. They can help you tailor strategies to your tendencies and needs. The therapies that made the biggest difference for Finch were the safe and sound protocol, which targets the nervous system via music, and somatic therapy, a mind-body healing method for trauma recovery.
Create a schedule. Without one, an aimless day can lead to overwhelm and delaying responsibilities, sources said. Try planning out your days — each morning or at the beginning of the week — Delaney suggested, and listing the necessary steps of each task. Finch loves the app Routinery for gamified task management, he said.
Allow yourself to start imperfectly, and work on tasks piecemeal. Both approaches have been critical for Delaney. Not knowing everything from the start is OK, and you can always improve your work later. Delaney also follows what she calls the two-minute rule: committing to do just two minutes of work often turns into following through on more.
Another strategy helpful for focus and paced time management is the Pomodoro Technique, Nordmeyer said. It involves using a timer for three 25-minute intervals of focused work, with a five-minute break between each. After the fourth interval, you can take a 30-minute break before repeating the process, which you can tailor to your needs.
These methods also help combat the all-or-nothing thinking that can make a task seem too daunting, leading to feelings of paralysis, experts said.
Stop making your to-do lists so long. A gigantic list can feel overwhelming and keep you from starting. Write down a few important tasks and if you do all of them, then you can add more.
Nordmeyer recommends using the “Eisenhower Matrix” for prioritizing tasks according to urgency and importance. The tool divides tasks into four categorical boxes: what you’ll do first, schedule for later, delegate or delete.
Consider how you could be harming yourself. Though you shouldn’t be too self-critical, thinking of the chaos, distress or relational discord that could result from procrastination is sometimes necessary. Consider the fact that just as you don’t want to let others down, you also deserve to experience things such as ease, cleanliness, health and a sense of accomplishment.
Try mindfulness techniques. Quietly sitting with your emotions, doing breathing exercises or meditating can help you regulate any distress surrounding a task, Sirois said.
Make sure your foundation is right. Getting enough good-quality food, sleep, exercise and relaxation can also support the energy levels needed for motivation, attention, discipline and emotion regulation, according to experts.
Use social support. Loved ones can be helpful for holding you accountable in various ways, including checking in to see whether you have made that doctor appointment you said you would or working on their own project next to you as you’re fulfilling an obligation. What can also be helpful is playing YouTube videos featuring a content creator who studies, cleans or performs another task, inviting the viewer to do the same and offering virtual accountability, Finch said.
“If I could have figured this out by myself, if another listicle or procrastination book was going to be the thing that did it for me, I would have already crawled out of that hole,” Finch said.
Things really can get better
The road to recovery isn’t linear, and the destination needn’t be perfection, sources said. The supports and strategies you need may also change over time as life events, demands or energy levels shift.
But both Finch and Delaney are now able to meet deadlines and completing tasks much more often than not. And their efforts have done wonders for their productivity and quality of life.
“When I actually do see things through or check boxes, it’s a boost to my self-esteem,” Delaney said.
Finch is no longer drained by the constant stress, shame and urgency of procrastination, and has gained “irrevocable confidence,” he said. “It was like someone changed gravity.”
Editor’s note: If you or someone you know is struggling with mental health, help is available. Dial or text 988 or visit 988lifeline.org for free and confidential support.
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