Loneliness
Loneliness Makes Us Procrastinate More
How feeling lonely mars productivity—and what to do about it.
Posted May 5, 2025 Reviewed by Devon Frye
Key points
- Loneliness can make procrastination worse.
- Many of us associate challenges with being alone or being rejected or shamed—hence why we procrastinate.
- We can combat procrastination by bolstering our social ties and sense of community.
- We can also reduce procrastination by imagining the presence of supportive others.
Procrastination plagues us all, though some of us report a more chronic experience of pushing off un-fun tasks to the final hour (or never completing them at all). Some studies estimate that around 25 percent of adults and 80 percent of college students habitually procrastinate. While there are many reasons we wait until the last minute to do what we should have done days, weeks, or months ago, one unexpected factor influencing procrastination is loneliness.
Loneliness is the negative perception that one has no or too few friends and loved ones. It’s different from isolation, which is the objective fact of being alone. Loneliness is more of a feeling than a fact—one can have many friends but still feel lonely.
Loneliness is known to predict a range of poor physical and mental health outcomes, including greater risks of heart disease and stroke, dementia, anxiety, and depression. Even cancer. Not surprisingly, it can zap our motivation and make even the smallest of tasks—responding to a text or email, say—seem insurmountable.
As Mark Goulston, M.D., explains in Get Out Of Your Own Way, the link between loneliness and procrastination is about more than just the energy loss people with loneliness experience. It can often be related to negative experiences in childhood, wherein we learned to associate challenge with the pain of being alone.
Imagine a child learning to walk in the presence of attentive caregivers, who encourage that child each time he or she falls down, and praise that child for each step he or she manages to take. That arduous task the child is attempting becomes more bearable—rewarding, even—in the presence of loving adults who amply encourage and affirm the child. Contrast this with a child attempting the task of walking, only to be met with shame and annoyance when he or she falls flat, coupled with a lack of enthusiasm when he or she succeeds.
Each polar opposite instance will shape these children in different ways. In the latter, that child learns early on to associate difficult tasks with pain, making those he or she attempts independently in the future seem all the more impossible—and more appealing to put off. In the former instance, however, the encouraged and supported child will learn to associate challenge with reward, priming him or her to be more likely to embrace daunting tasks head-on, instead of shirking his or her duties.
“There are… many reasons people procrastinate,” Goulston writes: “self-doubt, boredom, fear of failure, the feeling of being unready or unprepared, and so on. But these feelings, by themselves, don’t necessarily lead to procrastination. Often, what tips the scales is going through them alone, with no one to help you, bolster you, or cheer you on.”
It’s not just early life experiences that shape our relationship with loneliness and procrastination. Imagine the teenager or young adult who is severely bullied, ostracized, humiliated, or otherwise socially tortured, particularly during times when they struggle with a challenging task or situation. These experiences program them to link difficulty with feeling shame and rejection. In the absence of ample evidence to the contrary—a supportive community or friend group who provides encouragement, say, or even a mentor—that individual may struggle to feel confident seeing hard tasks to completion as they go forward in life.
How to Address Your Own Procrastination
If you struggle with procrastination, ask yourself: Do I feel lonely? What were my early experiences with challenge, difficulty, and frustration? Do I recall being supported and encouraged, or do I recall being shamed, rejected, put down, or otherwise hurt?
More importantly, here’s another key question to ask: Does my ability to complete tasks change when I am surrounded by one or more encouraging or supportive people?
Chances are, the answer will be yes. Social support has been linked to a reduction in procrastination across many different studies. So, if you are struggling with procrastination, rally support from friends, coworkers, family members, or even hired professionals (think: coaches, therapists, or other professional supports that fit your needs… and budget).
“The key to overcoming loneliness-based procrastination is to enlist the support of other people,” Goulston points out. “A procrastinator can become an activator when he's around others.”
What if you don’t have anyone in your life currently whom you would feel comfortable tapping as an anti-procrastination ally? “If you can’t find an actual partner or monitor, try conjuring the image of a loving parent, grandparent, friend, or teacher—someone you would not want to disappoint,” advises Goulston. This is someone you can imagine encouraging you when you’re down and praising you when you’ve accomplished whatever it is that you’ve been avoiding. “Even if only imagined, the support of another person can be the key to getting done what you would otherwise put off.”
If you consider yourself lonely, you may also be procrastinating on making and cultivating friendships or connections to community. Especially if you’ve had a history of being hurt by others, emotionally or physically. But tackling your loneliness by building connection is key not just to helping you meet important deadlines, but also to reducing your overall stress and improving your wellbeing.
If you’re nervous about this prospect, start with a support group. You can find these through Psychology Today or other online directories. Book clubs, continuing education courses, local volunteering organizations, and religious organizations can also be helpful inroads into making and strengthening those meaningful ties that will help lower your sense of loneliness.
Challenge yourself to step slightly outside your social comfort zone. You may be surprised at how much scarier this seems in your head than it is in actuality. Just like those seemingly terrifying tasks that, once you stop procrastinating and complete them, end up being much more feasible than you imagined.
