Understanding Why We Procrastinate

Procrastination is a side topic to the key executive function of task initiation. For neurodivergent brains, procrastination is much more complex than it looks. While not starting is often stigmatized as laziness or a lack of willpower, it is actually related to several brain-based skills known as executive functions. Scholars have found that procrastination has various causes that are helpful to be aware of when trying to overcome its presence in our lives.

Reasons We Procrastinate

There are three primary reasons that we often procrastinate. First, sometimes we procrastinate because we aren’t very interested in or motivated by the task or question. In other scenarios, we don’t start because we are too anxious about a task, and that anxiety makes us want to avoid it (this can be experienced consciously or unconsciously). A third scenario is that, other times, the task carries a lot of emotional baggage because it is one we have been chastised for not being able to do or have failed at in the past. In this case, the task has accumulated a lot of self-flagellation or perhaps negative comments from others. This is what Coach Brendan Mahan calls a "wall of awful." When we develop it, it is very difficult to start a task in a scenario where we have a wall of awful—one that has accumulated so much baggage that we dread it and are often immobilized by it.

Overcoming Procrastination

So what do we do when we need to get started on a task? It really depends on the reason why we’re procrastinating in the first place. If the issue really is about a lack of motivation or interest, as Elaine Taylor-Klaus (2020) outlines through the PINCH framework in her book The Essential Guide to Raising Complex Kids with ADHD, Anxiety, and More, it can be helpful to leverage motivators like play, interest, novelty, challenge, or hurry up (deadlines/accountability). In this case, it can be helpful to spend some time thinking about the task and how we could make it more playful, interesting, novel, or challenging, or whether we could add a deadline or some external accountability to the task.

If anxiety is fueling procrastination, then other strategies may be in order. Many of us are driven by anxiety to procrastinate on a task because it is so important to us and we are anxious about it, which leads us to avoid it. If we are anxious about the task, it is important to understand that we may be motivated to avoid it. To overcome avoidance, it will be important to make the task less anxiety-provoking, so we have less desire to avoid it. This may involve making the task smaller or changing the setting in some way so that our urge to avoid is less.

If we have a wall of awful on our hands, we can try some of the strategies above but, if they still don’t work, we may need to try to really understand what’s going on behind our emotional baggage and consider working with a therapist to help us understand how we might be taking the task to be something personal about ourselves, how we might be staying stuck in old failures or how we might be reading failure into similar tasks from the past that are getting in our way.

Conclusion

To conclude, the complex executive function challenge of procrastination has several possible causes. To know which strategies to try, it helps to understand what is fueling the procrastination of a particular task. If you are stuck on a task in a way that is emotionally distressing and feels linked to how you are conceptualizing your identity and worth, you may want to consider working with a therapist on the blockages you’re facing related to a particular kind of important task for you.

To find a therapist, please visit the Psychology Today Therapy Directory.