Isn’t Procrastination Just Laziness? Part 1

What Procrastination is and Why You Do It

One of the thorniest problems for creatives (and other folks, of course) is procrastination. Procrastination is a universally experienced problem for most people at one time or another. Yet it’s easy to understand if the thing you’re putting off doing is doing a deep clean of the wall-to-wall carpet or your taxes, but not so obvious if it’s writing a chapter for your historical mystery, or practicing before your cello recital, or making preliminary sketches for an oil painting. How can it be that the thing you ostensibly want to do, have chosen to do, the thing that is your passion and brings you the most joy . . . can also be incredibly painful.

The first thing to understand is that procrastination in some ways is a survival mechanism. Your primitive brain is trying to help you out. Here’s how this works. Think about it for a moment. Perhaps you’ve just enjoyed having coffee with a friend who’s also a writer. It’s been great to connect with them, share what you’ve been working on so far, and they share what writing contest they’ve decided to enter. You have a stray thought, ‘I should do that too.’ And then another thought, ‘But I don’t need to think about that now. I need to finish my current chapter.’ It may have been no more than a second or two, but I’ll bet you had some kind of feelings attached to that stray thought. And some other feelings that came after that second thought.

So, you get home and fire up the laptop. Then you’re in the kitchen getting a glass of water. You head back to your desk and you think, ‘I’ve got all afternoon. That chapter probably won’t take long. I’ll just check email first.’ So, you’re checking email, and every time you consider opening up Scrivener, you feel something unpleasant. So, you’re texting a friend. So, you’re finding yourself researching fiction contests which you tell yourself ‘counts’ but you kind of know you don’t need to be doing that right now. And time marches on and you look at the clock and think well, it’s probably too late to get much done now anyway. And you sigh, close the laptop and turn on the tv. Feeling both relief and guilt. And it’s happened before so you kind of feel like shit for having wasted your time. Hey primitive brain, how can that be helpful?

Your brain is perceiving discomfort, in this case anxiety, as a threat. And it’s trying to help you out in this moment by moving you gently away from the threat. And it works, oh how it works. Maybe in the past you’ve been able to write easily and well and felt good about that. And then you hit a snag – a chapter that seems lifeless to you, a character arc that just doesn’t work, a plot point that should’ve been there but you simply left out by accident. And you have thoughts like – I’m a bland writer, I’m going to have to dump this character, I’m going to have to rewrite this entire section. Whatever it is, whatever those thoughts are, they’re likely connected with lots of pesky feelings and body sensations – anger at yourself, disappointment, anxiety, your heartrate going up, your muscles tense, a headache, nausea. Whatever they are, whatever you’re experiencing, it feels awful. And you think ‘you know what, fuck it, I’m going to throw in the towel on it today.’ And guess what, the moment you close that laptop, maybe even as the thought entered your mind, you felt better. Your heartrate calmed, you stopped feeling sick to your stomach, the anxiety decreased. Your primitive brain, if it was able to pat itself on the back, would be doing that. I saved you from the threat! Don’t you feel better now? And you do! So what’s the problem?

The problem is procrastination works in the immediate moment and is extremely reinforcing. In simple terms, you go towards something, your anxiety starts to creep up, you move away from it, even a little, your anxiety starts to decrease. What happens is that if you characteristically respond to anxiety and any associated uncomfortable feelings or unpleasant physical symptoms by moving away, you are telling your brain there is a threat and it’s good to stay away from it. Unfortunately, when you try to write, or practice a piece, or pick up your sketchpad, those warning signs come up to let you know you’re being threatened somehow, and you need to back away. For God’s sake go watch a YouTube video! Go reorganize your sock drawer! Go eat something! But stay away from writing! (or playing, or painting). You’re convincing yourself over and over by repetition that what you love to do is actually threatening and you need to save yourself from it. You’re also convincing yourself more and more that you’re actually unable to deal with the perceived threat in any other manner than avoidance.

And if you happen to be neurodivergent, you probably experience time blindness as well, so for you there are thoughts like ‘this will take forever’ ‘this is never going to end’. If you’re trying to do something that is boring or tedious for you, that can be experienced as a threat as well. Because who wants to do something boring and tedious that will go on and on?

If it was an actual threat, and you moved away from it, there would likely be no negative consequences to you. Yet the act of creation isn’t an actual threat, it has deep meaning for you and is connected to your identity, and there are definitely repercussions to you for a pattern of avoidance.