Being good at school came at a price for me. It made me a serious procrastinator.
When the perfect and obedient school kid is faced with life's biggest challenges, he magically thinks he should be able to come up with a perfect-scoring answer, just like in his school tests.
But trying to get a “perfect score” in the project of life is a monumental (and impossible) task - so who the hell wouldn't procrastinate?!
Days and weeks would pass where I’d get nothing done on college, work or life projects. I’d throw the time away scrolling on social media, burrowing down Wikipedia rabbit holes, or playing computer games. I’d feel bad, so then I’d comfort-eat to make me feel temporarily better. Finally, with time pressure mounting, I’d get to business with a stressy and frazzled mindset.
Not a great way to get shit done.
My procrastination meant that I:
Rain-checked far too many social events.
Missed out on applying for my dream job.
Missed out on living in the perfect apartment.
Took hours to do things that should have taken minutes.
Had terrible sleeping habits from pulling too many all-nighters.
Set up this Substack in 2021, but only started writing consistently 2 years later.
So how did I dig myself out?
First, I'll tell you what procrastination actually is. Then I'll talk through 2 core principles and the tools within them that I used to dig myself out:
Principle 1: Direction Is More Important Than Speed
Do it badly
Do it for a minute
Do it in slow motion
Principle 2: Be Curious About Discomfort
VIEW framework
Mindfulness and meditation
What is procrastination?
For me, the best way to frame procrastination is inspired by the Internal Family Systems (IFS) approach1. I'm not going to talk about IFS in detail here - but you can read more about IFS from these great Substack writers:
, and .Say there's a particular task you're procrastinating on. Part of you clearly wants to do the thing. But there's a second part that's holding you back.
The first part is the motivator. It knows that doing the task will bring rewards, be fun, and help you progress. The second part is the protector. It holds you back. It's that part with the negative voice that says: "what if it's not good enough?", "what if you don't get it done in time?", "what if people laugh at you" or "what if you've bitten of way more than you can chew?" And then finally, it says: "better spend your efforts doing something where the reward is more immediate and probable."
This is the core thing about procrastination - at least one part of you wants to do the thing. If no part of you wanted to do it, you'd just feel plain aversion, NOT the unease of procrastination.
Anyways, you can feel the tension between these parts of yourself. It feels uneasy, gloomy, and conflicting. That's the feeling of procrastination. You inadvertently hold onto this tension, as you simultaneously fuel the part of you that wants to do the task, and also the part that's holding you back.
The feeling gets worse, so you find releases for the tension.
Doomscrolling.
Rearranging the cutlery drawer.
Baking an unnecessary batch of banana bread.
These releases feel temporarily good (ish) but they don't solve the problem of actually doing the task... so you never feel great about yourself.
Eventually, time pressure kicks in and with sheer willpower, you'll force yourself to do it at the last minute.
Sound familiar?
People hide away from this reality when they say things like "I work better at the last minute" or "I work well under pressure." But using this type of pressure to coerce yourself into working is unsustainable. You need to have better tools in your toolbox.
So what's the solution here? Well, there are 2 steps:
Embrace Principle 1: Fuel your motivating part by understanding that direction is more important than speed. This is the superficial layer of actually doing the task at hand.
Embrace Principle 2: Fully acknowledge and embrace that your protector part exists. The second part is not bad. It's a protector! It's trying to save you from potential pain. So listen to it, and give it the dues it deserves by being curious about the discomfort it’s warning you about. Ignoring this part of you will just enrage it and make it fight back stronger. It also means you'll remain in conflict with yourself - and that's never a good thing. This is the deeper layer of finding comfort in discomfort.
Principle 1: Direction is more important than speed
When doing anything big, you'll definitely face detours, failures and obstacles. But if you're playing long-term games, day-to-day variability in your productivity doesn't have a huge impact on the bottom line.
When you realise this, you start venturing into Slow Productivity territory, which Cal Newport has written about. (His book hasn’t come out yet, but I bet it will touch on many ideas that authors like
, and have been exploring for a long time, including seasonality in work.)Slow productivity is about sustainable productivity.
This is the land where productivity gains compound, big ideas simmer, and the monstrous task you're putting off becomes a piecewise problem to solve one step at a time, in a much slower rhythm.
There are lots of procrastination "hacks", but they all stem from this single principle: direction is WAY more important than speed.
Principle 1, Strategy 1: Do It Badly
When doing something badly, you embrace the principle of direction is more important than speed, because getting something done is better than getting nothing done - even if it's not the polished final result.
On the face of it, it sounds weird - but yes - actually try to do the task badly. This inverts the fears of your protector part, because it uses that energy to simply get going whilst acknowledging that the outcome will fall short of your ideal perfectionism.
When you intend to do something badly, you can also have more fun with it. Try to paint badly, and you might come up with new styles. Try to write badly and some combination of words might spill on the page that you'd never have come up with if you were meticulously crafting away. Bad does not mean malicious, it just means more care-free. Creativity hides there.
The freedom that comes from intentionally doing something badly lets you actually have fun doing the thing too.
Doing something slap-dash lets you make your mistakes up-front. Then it's easier to see what needs to improve.
Obviously this strategy doesn't work for some things like neurosurgery, job interviews, or high-stakes sports games. But these are not situations where procrastination is an issue anyways: you procrastinate when preparing for the interview or exam, not during it. You procrastinate in training for sporting events - not during the sporting event.
Principle 1, Strategy 2: Do It For A Minute
This is a common strategy for procrastination, but I have a different take on why it works.
Most people say "Do it for a couple of minutes, and then you'll probably find that you'll carry on working anyways." I think this is a cheap trick. You don't want to trick your mind into working for you. You want to work with it non-coercively.
This strategy, again, wins because direction is more important than speed. Doing something for a minute is better than not doing it at all. That's the real reason it's a winner - no tricks involved.
But here's where I deviate from the standard story. Most people would say "work for a minute or 2 and then you'll probably want to carry on." I say, set a timer for a minute, and then STOP working, get up and go do something else. You've achieved what you wanted to.
This builds up accountability with yourself, and proves that you can do what you set out to do. It's fine to then set another 1-minute timer (or longer), but the core idea is that you learn to trust yourself, and expand your capacity along the way.
Your journey out of procrastination paralysis starts by trusting you can work for a measly minute when you want to. So get at it!
Principle 1, Strategy 3: Do it in slow motion
Had enough of "direction is more important than speed” yet? Well I haven't... so you're stuck with me.
I’ve found that the best, most fun, and most direct way to embrace the fact that direction is more important than speed is to do tasks intentionally slower than your normal pace.
Type slower, read slower, literally m o v e s l o w e r.
When you type slowly, the next word comes easier - try it out. When you move slowly, the tennis stroke becomes smoother. Slow motion opens two doors:
Slow is smooth and smooth is fast: This door opens the idea that moving just a bit more slowly actually gives you the space to do things better, which saves time in the long run. Have a look at this essay by
, this essay by or one of my old essays for more on this idea.Curiosity: This door - as I will explore below - opens the idea that when you move slower, you give yourself more space to be curious and actually notice the fun you're having whilst doing something. It literally makes room for curiosity - and curiosity is the most underrated positive emotion.
Slow motion is the antidote to people who set their hair on fire trying to get an entire college thesis done in one night and supposedly "work well under pressure.” (**cough cough definitely not speaking from experience**)
Principle 2: Cultivate Curiosity
Overcoming procrastination is not about building your ability to do deep, focused work. It's also not about finding motivation to do hard things either. The only sustainable way out is by cultivating curiosity - not just about the task, but also the discomfort that you are anticipating.
Being curious is easy. It feels relaxing to ask the question "Hmmm, what's interesting about this mundane task?", or "Hmmm, I'm curious to see what happens when I actually start doing a bit of work".
There's a surrender involved, a feeling of letting go - you don't know what the outcome is going to be. You don't attach yourself to the perfect outcome. Instead, you become curious about what the outcome could be, by actually doing the thing.
Because there's a surrender involved with curiosity, it's easier to slip into that mindset compared to forced focus or willpower. You stop holding on so tightly, and let go a bit. Even then, it takes a bit of work and time to really get the swing.
Here are the two main ways I've learnt to cultivate curiosity.
Principle 2, Strategy 1: Use The VIEW Framework
VIEW stands for Vulnerability, Impartiality, Empathy and Wonder. It's a reference to a state of mind that you can enter to become more present and empathetic to your current feelings.
It's been pioneered by Joe Hudson at the Art of Accomplishment. I personally haven't paid for the courses but have heard great things. Even without the paid content, their podcast is an absolute goldmine, and they offer lots of free zoom sessions if you sign up to their website. I can't recommend it enough.
The idea behind being in a VIEW state of mind is that you are open to being:
Vulnerable in admitting your truth, even if it's scary.
Impartial to the result of a goal, and more focused on process.
Empathetic to the states of minds of others when you are in conversation with them (or in the case of procrastination - with yourself).
Look at things with lens of wonder or curiosity, without feeling a need to know what the answer is. It’s about being in the question.
Simply put, you can enter a VIEW state of mind by asking open-ended what or how questions, like:
"What’s the part of me that's holding me back from doing this task?"
"I wonder what it would feel like to not try so hard when I sit down to work"
"How could I move the needle in a fun way today?"
The idea behind what and how questions is that they foster a sense of curiosity in an active way. Why questions can be quite demoralising, because you always end up hunting for desperate, illogical and emotionally charged reasons to berate yourself for why you're not doing something. What and how are more wondrous.
I've personally found that the VIEW framework is really easy to slip into that state of mind. It's easier than meditation (below) because you enter the state of mind actively, rather than passively.
Hudson warns that if you see VIEW as a method or a practice, it won’t work. It’s a state of mind. It’s the backdrop - not a forefront verb or noun.
Principle 2, Strategy 2: Mindfulness and Meditation
Straight-up, I want to make it clear this is not woo-woo spirituality meditation... though you may well end up there.
When I talk about mindfulness and meditation, I'm specifically talking about how it can help cultivate curiosity. If the W in VIEW was about actively cultivating wonder, meditation can be about noticing it more subtly, more passively.
There are superb guides on meditation from
here and here - so I strongly recommend you read them.In the context of procrastination, the idea that I'd like to share is that a meditation practice doesn't need to be about a particular thing. It's not about focusing on your breath, a mantra, or "clearing your mind." It’s definitely not about directly curing your procrastination either.
It's about becoming curious about anything that comes up in your mind when you just sit.
The cue that I like using is "Oh interesting". It works like this. I sit, and thoughts happen. Each time a thought comes up, I say to myself: "Oh interesting... xyz came up... Oh interesting... abc came up..." and so on. It's about being open to whatever arises, and welcoming it wholeheartedly. Yes, even all the negative emotions.
The idea is that this helps you sit with the negative emotions that your protector part might throw at you, so that you can understand when they come up, and learn to accept them rather than suppress them. Pushing these negative emotions away will turn them into tormenting dragons.
The result is that you'll get more comfortable with discomfort. You'll begin to become curious about the internal tensions that pull you in different directions, and be able to make a more conscious decision about what you want to do.
Final thoughts
So there we have it - how I won my 10 year battle with procrastination. Some of it might work for you, and some might not.
That's fine, everyone's different.
I'll leave you with a few questions to answer in the comments:
What's worked for you in your journey to overcome procrastination?
Is there anything you disagree (or agree) with in my approach? What do you think I'm missing?
What are you putting off right now that you could apply some of these principles to? You got this!
Until next time,
Zan.
One Liners
“How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.” - Henry David Thoreau
How to beat the competition: play your own game.
“A fit body, a calm mind, a house full of love. These things cannot be bought - they must be earned.” - Naval Ravikant.
Recommended reading from Substack:
🛋️
on how a couch can make you happy.🤔
on how entropy can help us think better.💰
on why investment literature focuses on the wrong things.👨🎨
on the power of creating before consuming.🛞
on getting your flywheel spinning.
Recommended reading beyond Substack:
Song of the week:
Thanks to
for introducing me to IFS several months ago - it was the final piece in the puzzle for me.
There is no better time for this article to pop up in my inbox than now. I have exams, university applications, and work to do which led me to procrastinate due to stress. "Principle 1, Strategy 2: Do It For A Minute" will be my ultimate savor. Thank you for the life-saving tip :)
Appreciate you sharing this all too common battle so many of us face on a daily basis. Great stuff! And appreciate the shoutout :)