Procrastination Isn’t the Reason You Can’t Get Things Done
Once you stop framing procrastination as the problem, you can finally adjust your habits and own your time
I am a lifelong procrastinator. It has fueled some of my best work and has also caused me a boatload of guilt and anxiety. And I realized, after more than a decade of deadline-driven work, that it’s not my main time management problem. In fact, it’s not really a problem at all.
The reason that my to-do list is never completed and that I never feel like I am getting enough done has far less to do with procrastination than with my chronic habit of overcommitting to work, and then underestimating how long that work will take me. Recognizing this, and adjusting my habits to address it, has transformed the way I structure my days.
More significantly, it has radically changed how I think about myself and my work habits. When I focused on my tendency to procrastinate, and took that on as an identity, I felt so much anxiety around the task at hand that it made me even less likely to dive in and start it. Once I understood that trying to do too much in too little time was the real problem, that dynamic shifted. Labeling myself a procrastinator is a prime example of fixed mindset — the idea that we are inherently good, or bad, at…
