7 reasons you procrastinate (and what to do about it)
You want to write - so what's stopping you? Here are some common reasons for procrastination, with a suggested solution for each.
I can’t put it off any longer: it’s high time I wrote something about procrastination. There’s just always something more pressing or distracting to do. Replying to an email from a client is important. Watching Netflix is fun. Writing is hard.
If you’re a chronic procrastinator, you’re not alone. Every writer procrastinates. The starting point to overcoming it is to understand why you put things off. And (spoiler alert) it’s not because you’re lazy, busy or have poor time management skills. Procrastination is an emotional problem.
Why do we procrastinate?
“I hate writing, I love having written.” – Dorothy Parker
As your teacher used to say: “It’s your own time you’re wasting.” So why do we do it? It might be understandable to put off cleaning your apartment or doing the accounts. But why do we put off doing the thing we actually want to do: writing? Do we all just want to have written, like Dorothy Parker?
It’s important to realise that you don’t procrastinate because you’re lazy, feckless or irresponsible – so don’t beat yourself up for procrastinating. In fact, if you forgive yourself for procrastinating, research shows that you’re less likely to do it in future. So the first step to breaking the habit is to give yourself a break.
Not everyone procrastinates for the same reason. But most reasons come down to the same broad issue of coping with difficult emotions. And that’s something you can work on. Some of the most common reasons writers procrastinate include:
Fear
Perfectionism
Stress
Overwhelm
Habit
Time management
Impulsivity
Let’s take a more detailed look at each, along with some solutions you can try.
1. Fear
Procrastination is a coping mechanism. And what you’re likely coping with is fear. Fear of failure, rejection, criticism, being judged by your peers, putting your work out there, having to promote your work, the sheer scale of the task – or perhaps just fear of the blank page.
A great way to avoid anxiety related to your writing is not to write at all. You’ll never be judged on your book if you don’t write it! But you tell yourself that you will write it - just not today. Steven Pressfield wrote in The War of Art:
“Procrastination is the most common manifestation of Resistance because it’s the easiest to rationalize. We don’t tell ourselves, I’m never going to write my symphony. Instead, we say, I’m going to write my symphony; I’m just going to start tomorrow.”
Solution: Identify your fears – and find a healthier coping mechanism. This could include meditation, or talking your worries through with a writer friend.
2. Perfectionism
Perfectionism is also a type of fear. Fear that your writing will be bad. Fear that you’ll be rejected, judged and criticized unless your work is so perfect it’s beyond criticism. But this is unrealistic. Your work will be bad to start with: it’s supposed to be. But that’s OK, because you can re-write it later – and you have a growth mindset, right?
Even if your work is ‘perfect’, there will still be people who hate it – because art is subjective. All you can do is write what you want to write, write it as well as you can, and hope that some other people like it.
Perfectionism can result from poor self-confidence or impostor syndrome. And it can cause procrastination by making us want to put off challenging tasks – such as writing a novel. And there’s nothing more challenging than writing a perfect novel!
The link between procrastination and perfectionism seems self-evident. But the research doesn’t necessarily back this up. Dr Piers Steel, author of The Procrastination Equation, said in an interview for Radio 4’s One to One in October 2022:
“Clinicians used to see a lot of perfectionist procrastinators and they would see this constant link between perfectionism and procrastination because that’s who used to go to get clinical help. But when we actually looked at it we found that it was not a very strong relationship at all – in fact incredibly weak.”
He identified the stronger relationship as one between procrastination and impulsiveness (see point 7).
Solution: It doesn’t have to be perfect. Make a small, imperfect start today. Your first draft is supposed to be rubbish. Just spoil that intimidating blank page with something. Generate material you can work on later.
3. Stress
Procrastination is triggered by stress. If you’re stressed, you’re likely to have lower tolerance for difficult or uncomfortable situations – such as getting down to work on your novel. Your brain rebels against being asked to focus on a piece of writing, as it has quite enough to cope with as it is, thank you, what with your tax return, the soaring cost of living, juggling childcare, your difficult boss, your parents’ health issues and your impending divorce. Really? We have to write a chapter as well? Are you kidding me?
Let’s be realistic. There are times when there’s so much going on in your life that writing has to take a back seat. But the danger is that this can become a habit. You can end up putting off your writing endlessly this way, and use procrastination as a coping mechanism to avoid discomfort.
Solution: Practise mindfulness meditation. Focus on your breath for a few minutes each day. There are plenty of apps available to guide you, such as Calm. This is a great way to reduce stress, gain some perspective and reduce your tendency to freeze in the face of stress. And it works. MRI scans show that eight weeks of mindfulness meditation results in observable changes to brain structures involved in stress and emotional regulation.
4. Overwhelm
When you feel overwhelmed by the scale of the task in front of you, it’s natural to think “I’ll start tomorrow” – and do something easier today. You might feel overwhelmed by the very idea of your writing project, especially at the start. A novel can feel like a big, scary, impossible mountain to climb.
Or you might be prone to overwhelm because you take on too much. This is a particular risk if you’re a ‘people pleaser’ – if you constantly take on too many projects to avoid letting people down, and then find you can’t do them all. You feel so overwhelmed you keep putting off the huge workload you’ve taken on. And you end up letting people down anyway – including yourself.
Solution: Go small. You don’t have to boil the ocean. Prioritize, and pick one, small task. Write for just a few minutes. Breaking through that initial surface tension of your writing is the hardest part. But sit with that discomfort, as it won’t last long. And focus on the section, the paragraph, the sentence you’re writing right now, in the present – rather than on the anxiety-inducing whole book of the future. Our brains are better at coping with the present than the future. So work with that.
5. Habit
Perhaps procrastination has just become a habit. We can easily fall into a habit of procrastinating, and not know how to get out of it. You get used to using procrastination as a way to feel good right now – but at the expense of your future self. This can particularly be the case if you have a present-oriented mindset rather than a future-oriented mindset. Try to think of your future self – and give future you a break. They’ll thank you in a few years.
Solution: Break the procrastination habit. Build a writing habit instead, by writing something every day. It doesn’t have to be much, it doesn’t even have to be good – it just needs to be regular. You can increase the time you spend writing once you establish the habit. Allow time for your habit to build (most habits take about two months to form).
6. Time management
You may think you procrastinate due to lack of time or poor time management. But you have the same 24 hours a day as everyone else, and you can write a novel in 10 minutes a day. Procrastination may be the thief of time – but time isn’t the problem.
Procrastination researcher and author Dr Tim Pychl of Carleton University says: “It’s not a time management problem. It’s about really dealing with our feelings.” Procrastination is about our emotions – not our time.
Solution: Just get started. Ask yourself: “What’s the very next, smallest action I can take to get started?” It might be opening your notebook, or opening a Scrivener file. Put your focus on the action rather than your emotions. Starting is the hard part – so start small. Tell yourself you only have to write for 5-10 minutes and then stop, if you want. But you may find that you build momentum and want to carry on.
7. Impulsivity
Sometimes procrastination may be the result not so much of putting off your writing due to fear, stress, perfectionism or overwhelm, as being unable to resist scrolling through Twitter or playing that ridiculous game on your phone (you know the one). This is an impulse control issue more than an emotional regulation issue.
And modern life doesn’t help. Dr Piers Steel says the odds are stacked against us, when it comes to distractions:
“Corporations use our personal data to serve up ads but also distractions. We’re trying to diet in a candy store right now. So it’s really you against the world. World in this case is just a multi-trillion dollar platform based upon the top thousand brightest people in the world focusing billion-dollar machines and algorithms directly at your head. Good luck!”
Solution: Try urge surfing. This is a tool used in therapy to treat addictions – but it can be applied to any impulsive behaviour. The basic idea is that urges pass – so meditatively observe and accept your feelings without acting on them immediately. This gets easier, because when you stop feeding your urges, they lessen.
You may also be able to delay your urges by flipping around some of your procrastination activities and turning them into rewards. And create a distraction-free writing environment to remove some of those temptations in the first place. For example, turn off your social media notifications, or offload that iPhone game into the cloud for a while. Starve your distractions and feed your focus.
What type of procrastinator are you?
We all procrastinate, for various reasons – so don’t feel bad about it. It’s something we all have to live with as writers, and it doesn’t have to stop us from writing our book and achieving our dreams. Learn to recognise your triggers, and what strategies work for you – and you’ll get there more quickly and easily.
Which of these resonate most with you? Or are there other reasons you procrastinate? What solutions have you found helpful? Let us know in the comments!