Three Strategies to Stop Procrastinating Today
By Emma Zande
Fall 2025 Intern
It’s 6 p.m., and your phone chimes with the calendar reminder you set about that essay. Could it already be due tomorrow? You vaguely remember trying to sit down and work on some research and an outline, but you never got very far into the writing process. You sigh and open your computer to start typing your essay. Not only that, but you’re staring at the blank document, and your stress grows as the minutes tick by. Then, your phone chimes again. Your favorite creator has uploaded a YouTube video. I mean, they’re not very long, and if you watch just one video, you’ll be ready to start writing. . . . Right?
What is Procrastination?
Not every task we put off is due to procrastination. Time management and planning often requires us to move tasks around to make the best use of our time. However, procrastination occurs when we avoid a task, we said we would do for seemingly no reason, despite expecting negative consequences. And it impacts about half of all students.
Although it seems unbelievable that we would do something that we know can harm us, procrastination is the result of our brain seeking to protect us from pain. When we are faced with a task that causes us fear or anxiety, we can often become overwhelmed by the task, and afraid of the outcome. Maybe the task is unclear and we’re not sure how to approach it, or we don’t believe in the reason for accomplishing the task. Regardless of why the brain has decided that the task will be painful, it seeks to protect you from it.
What Happens Inside the Brain When we Procrastinate?
This induces a conflict between your brain’s emotional and rational areas, or the limbic system and the prefrontal cortex. The limbic system, charged with controlling your basic emotions (like fear, pleasure, and anger), seeks immediate gratification and the avoidance of discomfort. Your prefrontal cortex, on the other hand, controls your executive function, including planning, goal-setting, and time management.
When we view a task as threatening, our brains respond as they would to any incoming threat. Your amygdala releases hormones, including adrenaline, which creates a fear response. Your fear response can overpower the impulses from your prefrontal cortex and cause you to put off the task, doing something that allows for immediate gratification instead.
Procrastination is the Result of Emotions
Our brain’s response to these tasks might seem extreme—after all, it’s not like we’re truly in any danger of being harmed by the task itself. However, our brain is responding to our emotions surrounding the task.
Rather than stemming from laziness or poor time management, procrastination is a problem of emotional regulation. When we view a task as unpleasant and aversive, whether it be unpleasant or downright nerve-racking, we’re more likely to procrastinate working on it. Our brain is not avoiding the task itself but is indirectly avoiding the negative emotions associated with the task.
Procrastination is the brain’s strategy for coping with negative moods and emotions and is even more prevalent in people who don’t have adequate self-regulation skills. Likewise, people who are experiencing multiple other stressors are more likely to procrastinate. Other people who are prone to procrastination are those with low self-esteem, anxiety, or perfectionism.
This short-term avoidance leads to a long-term increase in stress. Studies have shown that when students are prone to procrastination, they initially experience less stress and more positive emotions than their peers. However, they eventually experience much higher levels of stress, often compounded by poor academic performance. Frequent procrastinators are prone to high levels of stress, anxiety, depression, shame, and physical ailments.
Procrastination increases stress by creating a cycle of avoidance. When we delay a task, we experience temporary relief, but as deadlines approach and accumulate, we experience greater anxiety. The brain’s stress response is triggered by this increasing anxiety, and the longer we procrastinate a task, the more stress-inducing it becomes, and the more powerful our brain’s fear response becomes. Therefore, the task becomes much more mentally difficult than it was the first time we avoided it.
How to Stop Procrastinating
Traditionally, people urged procrastinators to build up their time management and discipline skills. However, because procrastination typically arises from our emotions surrounding a task, putting too much pressure on yourself can contribute to procrastination by making the threat feel even more intense. Instead, we need to address and reduce our negative emotions around a task.
This can mean breaking a larger task into smaller components. By tasking yourself with the smaller, manageable pieces of a large task, you can trick your brain into spreading out the stress. When you see each piece as manageable, your negative thoughts, like doubt or anxiety, will be less oppressive. Even if you stack many of these pieces into one work day, breaking a large task up can improve your mood, attitude, and workflow.
It could also look like journaling about a task that’s causing you stress. Instead of reaching for a device when you feel the urge to procrastinate, consider quickly writing down why a task is stressing you out, seeking to understand the deeper impulses behind this avoidance. Not only can this provide you with a healthy outlet for stress and act as a sort of “mini procrastination” session before beginning a task, but it may also help you become more self-aware and gain more emotional regulation over time.
But mostly, it’s about cultivating an attitude of self-compassion. Instead of placing huge pressure on us to always be creating the best work, achieving unrealistic goals, and finishing a million tasks, we need to view ourselves with compassion. By practicing self-forgiveness, self-love, and planning for the future, we can help to avoid perpetuating this cycle of stress and procrastination.
At the end of the day, procrastination isn’t a moral failing—it’s just your brain trying (a little too hard) to keep you safe. And while that protective instinct is sweet in its own chaotic way, it doesn’t exactly help when deadlines start stacking up like mismatched Jenga blocks. By approaching your work with smaller steps, a little more emotional awareness, and a whole lot more self-compassion, you can disrupt that stress cycle long before it spirals.
Here at Publishing Solutions Group, we know that stressed brains don’t produce their best work—and you don’t have to do it all alone. Whether you’re wrangling a mountain of content, trying to make a complex project feel less overwhelming, or simply need support to keep things moving forward, our team is here to help you turn intention into progress (without the last-minute panic spiral).
Because when the emotional weight of a task lightens, even just a little, your best ideas finally have room to breathe.
Photo by Pedro Forester Da Silva for Unsplash
