How to Stop Procrastinating: Psychology-Based Strategies

Procrastination is a common challenge that everyone faces. To learn how to stop procrastinating, it’s essential to recognise that it’s an emotion regulation problem, not laziness or poor time management. 

While it’s possible to spend time analysing and trying to figure out why we procrastinate, it’s more effective to implement small changes into your daily life, to make decision-making easier. By adopting psychology-based strategies, we can learn to manage tasks that we struggle to complete. 

As part of our procrastination article series, this post builds on practical solutions discussed in a previous post, The Psychology Behind Why We Procrastinate. In this post, we’ll share five psychology-based strategies for overcoming procrastination.

Tips for overcoming procrastination

The field of productivity psychology offers many tips for better managing your tasks, ranging from web-based apps to manual time-blocking tools. While these procrastination management tips are helpful, it’s critical to have a broader approach to implementing procrastination solutions:

1. Turn awareness into action

Developing an awareness of our procrastination triggers is the first step to identifying where we need to make changes. 

When looking at workplace tasks, we might get stuck on the following:

• Complex tasks that require time and effort
• Projects that require collaborative input 

However, if we recognise this tendency to procrastinate when we feel challenged or when seeking feedback, we can approach our work differently. In this case, the problem isn’t that you don’t know what to do; it’s that you feel overwhelmed or aren’t sure how to proceed on your own. 

In the next section, we’ll explain how making tasks smaller and more concrete can help.

2. Make tasks smaller and concrete

Productivity psychology offers many tools for time blocking, focusing and prioritising tasks. These tools are helpful, but only once you have defined exactly what you need to do. Therefore, to prevent procrastination, it’s essential to break tasks into smaller “micro-tasks” and make them easier to complete.  

Following the workplace example above, this can look like the following:

• Seeking clarity on deliverables
• Scheduling a meeting to define roles and responsibilities 

In fact, viewing tasks as incremental rather than as large, monumental achievements can change how we work, empowering us to favour progress over perfection.

3. Use “If X, then Y” planning

While breaking down tasks into smaller, more concrete actions can help, we also need to train ourselves to avoid distractions. While we might get into a good routine for completing tasks, we will inevitably encounter more difficult or boring ones that require greater motivation.

In this case, it’s helpful to use “if x, then y planning”. This approach is one of the most effective procrastination tips, as it blocks attempts to find something else to do. 

For example: “When I sit down at my desk, I will go through my emails/task list.” That way, you are training your brain to focus for a limited time period, which can feel more manageable than “I have to get through a task, but would rather be checking social media on my phone”.

It’s also helpful to come up with an additional alternative. In this case, planning becomes “if x, then y, or otherwise z”. If you are feeling particularly unmotivated on a given day, this could look like: “When I sit down at my desk, I will go through my emails and task list or spend half an hour on the first task at the top of my list.” In this way, we actively shortcut our tendency to procrastinate by setting up alternatives.

4. Build accountability

While it’s possible to train our brains to focus on smaller tasks and to change how we plan our day, accountability is key to sustainable productivity. Because we’re often answerable only to ourselves, this is one of the most challenging parts of learning how to stop procrastinating. When we’re the only person we have to answer to, it’s easy to find excuses.

One way to build accountability is to have an accountability partner. This person doesn’t have to check up on you, but they can be there to check in regularly and give you a nudge when you haven’t done what you set out to do. When you manage your own time, checking in with someone else can be an effective way to stay accountable. The point isn’t to have someone hovering over your shoulder. It’s about communicating your goals to someone else so that they can help you to achieve them.

As an article titled “How to Stop Procrastinating” on the Positive Psychology website notes, setting deadlines is another way to keep yourself accountable. 

5. Check environmental cues

While we might do our best every day to be productive, our environment can affect us in ways we might not have realised. 

Some tips for enhancing your environment include:

• Putting your phone in a drawer or another room 
• Eliminating noise, discomfort and other distractions 
• Setting up your workspace ergonomically to maximise comfort
• Allocate a dedicated workspace, away from your bed or TV

Procrastination is managing emotions, not just time

As we’ve discussed in the other articles in our procrastination series, such as Procrastination: The avoidance of tasks (and how to avoid it), procrastination is an emotion-regulation issue, so managing the negative emotions associated with specific tasks is key.

With all of the tools discussed above, you can create practical ways to manage your tasks even when negative emotions are coming up. Occasional feelings of anxiety or demotivation are normal. But when we equip ourselves with tools to overcome procrastination, we can address it when it arises and interrupt unproductive patterns of thinking and behaviour.

Equip yourself with the tools to manage procrastination

At SACAP, we focus on providing real-world applied psychology skills to help you live a more purposeful and fulfilling life and pursue a career in psychology and related fields.

On the topic of procrastination, we offer a variety of short online courses through SACAP Global that can help you manage stress and anxiety, as well as achieve your goals, including the following:

• Stress Management and Resilience
• Managing and Preventing Anxiety
• Motivation Mastery: Unlock Potential & Achieve Goals

If you’d prefer to pursue a more in-depth qualification in the field of psychology, our accredited SACAP degree programmes offer insight into various aspects of human behaviour, including procrastination, which is relevant in many contexts, including business management:

• Bachelor of Psychology
• Bachelor of Social Science Honours in Psychology
• Bachelor of Social Science Honours in Business Management