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Procrastination

why do I procrastinate

Procrastination is not a time-management failure but a mood-repair strategy: the task provokes an unpleasant feeling and delay relieves it. This is why better scheduling rarely fixes it and why reducing the emotional weight of starting usually does.

What to do about it

Shrink the first step until it is too small to dread. Two minutes.

Books that work on this

Each is a 90-day programme. Start with the first — later books assume the work in the earlier ones.

Part of the Discipline series.

How people say it

Nobody looks this up by its clinical name. These are the ways it actually gets said.

  • why do I procrastinate
  • I put everything off
  • I know what to do and do not do it
  • procrastinating on important things
  • starting is the hardest part
  • I clean the house instead of working
  • last minute panic every time
  • avoiding the thing that matters
  • why do I self sabotage

Written by Brian Spiker, who has run Spiker Carpet and Tile Care since 2013 — the receipts. More terms in the encyclopedia.

About the author

Brian Spiker has run Spiker Carpet and Tile Care since 2013 — a real service business with real customers, real Google reviews, and 13 years of work most self-help authors will never do.

He writes the way operators talk: brutal, funny, and built from work that actually has to get done. Verify everything at spikercarpetandtilecare.com.