Putting Things Off: What Is Procrastination Really Trying To Tell You?

Emma Bryant: Hello and welcome back to The Purposeful Shift. I'm Emma Bryant and I am really glad that you have chosen to spend some time with me today. In today's episode I am exploring procrastination, it impacts us, how we can think differently about it, and whether actually it's simply something we need to become more curious about rather than try to avoid or solve. So I'd like to start with a question. Have you ever had something on your to-do list that really mattered to you, but somehow, despite your best intentions, you just couldn't seem to start? Perhaps it was an email that you needed to send or a report that you needed to write, a difficult conversation that you knew you needed to have, or maybe it was something really, really exciting. Maybe you were planning on launching a business or recording a podcast or applying for a course or starting a creative project that you have been thinking about for months. But instead of getting started on the one thing that you really want to do, the thing that really feels like it matters to you, you found yourself doing literally almost anything else instead. So for me, it's things like tidying the kitchen or replying to messages or doom scrolling on Instagram. And all the while the thing that you actually really wanted to do stayed exactly where it was, not getting done. Waiting for your attention, waiting for your time. And I've been thinking about procrastination quite a lot recently, and I don't think or I don't feel like ⁓ I am particularly bad at managing my time. But I do have lots and lots of ideas bouncing around in my mind. And I've started to notice that the things that I put off very rarely things that I don't care about. It's quite the opposite, actually. They're things that matter most to me. So over the past few weeks, I have been trying to define something that should be quite straightforward. I have spent ⁓ More than 20 years working in marketing, largely with charities over the last 10 years, but over the last couple of years I've realized how much I really enjoy working with women who are running small heart-led businesses. So up until recently, my offer or my focus was on helping women to develop their ideas and to start or grow their own heart-led businesses. But what I kept finding was that nearly always The problems that the women had that I was working with came back to marketing as their biggest stuck point, their visibility, their position, their marketing of their business. And this is something that I know, it's something that I've been doing for kind of 20 plus years. So if I started to apply marketing into the work that I was doing with these amazing women, it enabled me to do something that I feel confident and knowledgeable about, something that I love, which is helping them to find clarity about who they serve, ⁓ how they talk about what they and how they communicate that confidently. But the slightly ridiculous part about all of this ⁓ is that is exactly the work I help other people with. Yet when it comes to doing it for myself, I found I was putting it off. I would open a blank page of ideas for Instagram or for website content or for blogs that I wanted to write or articles on Substack ⁓ write a few notes and I'd close it down again and think I'll come back to that later. I haven't got space for right now. I'm going to come back and I'm going finish finish it. And then I would forget about it. Or worse, I would braindump lots and lots of ideas, but then not take them any further. So they just sat there on my laptop as another file that I ultimately forget about. And I did it the other day. I wrote down three or four different ideas for Substack articles that I could finish. I even did some voice notes to get things started. And I never went back and finished them. And one of them was about the eclipse the night before. And so obviously it's been a few days now and it's too late to share that. Or maybe it isn't if I rehash it a little bit, but I haven't done anything with it. I haven't taken it any further. And I would tell myself that I'm feeling tired, or that now is not the right time to finish this because I need to spend my time doing something else, or that I had some client work that I needed to do, which was more important because that paid work had to come first. Or that I think about this whole idea and the articles and the strategy behind them much more clearly tomorrow because I think better in the morning and it was now kind of late afternoon. And I noticed that this was becoming a pattern of avoidance for me. I was choosing not to choose. I was choosing not to make a decision and not to move forward. And it's left me feeling quite curious about why I was staying stuck when I know what it is that I want to do and know how to do it. For years, I think many of us have been told that procrastination maybe connected to or linked to laziness ⁓ poor discipline or bad time management. ⁓ if we could just somehow become a little bit more organized ⁓ a bit more motivated or a little bit more productive, ⁓ we would stop putting things off and actually get the stuff done that we want to do. But the research that I found actually paints quite a different picture and it has me thinking. What if procrastination isn't actually about the task that we think we're putting off at all? What if it's trying to tell us something about how we're feeling about the task that we're putting off? And that question has completely changed how I have been thinking about my own behaviour recently because the feelings behind the task are really interesting. So naturally, I did what I often do when something like this catches my attention and sparks curiosity in my brain. I go down a rabbit hole. I started reading about this a little bit more because I wanted to understand whether procrastination really was poor time management or whether there was something else going on within me my potentially ADHD perimenopausal self. ⁓ the first thing I discovered through a bit of a spanner in the works to what I had believed before the research. ⁓ So one of the leading researchers in this area is called Professor Timothy Pichel, and I'm sure that I have pronounced that incorrectly, and I apologise. I'm just going to call in Professor Tim. He argues that procrastination isn't really time management problem at all, ⁓ but that it's an emotion regulation So in other words, When we procrastinate, we're often not avoiding the task itself. We're avoiding the feelings that the task creates. So that's an interesting way to look at what I'm putting off and the feelings that I have associated with that. Because when I considered that blank page on my laptop, I realized that I wasn't actually avoiding writing something down. I write copy for clients all the time. I'm not a copywriter, but I do marketing copy and it's something that I'm really comfortable with. And I wasn't avoiding marketing per se. I'm pretty confident in that generally too, having worked in marketing roles for more than 20 years and having marketed my own businesses. So what was I actually avoiding? And if I think about it and I'm truly honest with myself, I think in this instance, I was avoiding making a decision. Because once I decide that I want my business to become this, feels real. It means putting my head above the parapet. It means saying to the world, this is what I do now. This is the next iteration or version of me. And yes, it is different to what I was doing 12 months ago. And yes, I've changed my mind again. And yes, I've evolved. And yes, you can keep up. that's a much more vulnerable thing for me to do because I have lots of ideas. Bouncing around in my head, I describe it like a pinball machine. I like experimenting with things. I change my mind often, I test things, I test businesses, not just the ideas, but the actual businesses themselves. I launch businesses and if they don't work, I stop doing them and I switch to something else. So sometimes they do work, sometimes they don't. And if something no longer feels right to me, I'm actually quite comfortable stopping doing that because I do listen to my feelings around that thing. And if I'm honest though, I do still sometimes catch myself calling that quitting, even though it's not quitting, it's recognizing that that thing is no longer serving you. And perhaps what that actually is is learning. It's learning to recognise our feelings and how they're impacting the task or the thing that we're doing. So maybe you've experienced something similar. Maybe you have thought about applying for a new job, and you're not actually avoiding updating your CV as the task itself, but you're avoiding the possibility that you might not get the interview because that's a totally different situation. Or maybe you've been putting off having a difficult conversation, and it's not the act of talking to somebody or the conversation itself, but the discomfort that might. come with it for you or the other person because of what you need to talk about. Or perhaps you've been meaning to book a doctor's appointment or sort out your finances or start exercising or finally tackle something that has been sitting on your to-do list for months and that task itself might only take you 10 or 20 minutes. It might not even be a particularly difficult or challenging task to complete. But perhaps the feeling that's attached to that task feels enormous to you. And when I start looking at procrastination through that lens, something else begins to make sense to me. Because if procrastination is about managing our uncomfortable emotions, then it also explains why we often then choose to do something else instead. Something that feels easier or more familiar or gives us a quick sense of achievement or a dopamine hit. Suddenly tidying that kitchen drawer starts to feel incredibly productive. You know the one that I mean where everything gets done to that drawer. Or replying to emails becomes strangely urgent, even though all of those emails they can just wait. Nothing there is actually urgent. It could wait till the next day. Or organising a cupboard of towels and linen before your next guest arrives to stay with you in three weeks feels like an excellent use of your time right now. And of course, those things aren't likely to be more important than the tasks that we're putting off. But for just a few moments, they make us feel better because they don't challenge us, and the feelings associated with them are different to the feelings that are associated to the task that we are putting off. So Professor Fuchsia Sirois, which I'm 100% sure I'm pronouncing incorrectly, so I'm just going to call her Professor Fuchsia because that's a beautiful name, research also focuses on procrastination. She describes this as short-term mood repair, where we choose the thing that helps us feel better in the now, even we know it's likely to make us feel worse later. And the activity might not make us feel worse. But the fact that we've delayed more might make us feel worse. And I thought that phrase was really interesting because to me that's exactly what it feels like. For a little while, we've escaped this discomfort. I feel better about myself for a period of time. But then something else creeps in. It's another feeling, maybe it's a guilt or a feeling of frustration. The thought that we really should have just started yesterday and we've put that thing off yet again. And though the task hasn't changed. All of a sudden the emotional weight and the feelings that we're carrying around with that task become even more heavier than they were before because we put it off and because we've added these extra layers on top of guilt and frustration. So I thought that was a pretty scary thought, that the more we procrastinate, the greater the feelings attached to doing the task, and potentially the harder it will still become to just get on and do it. And I wondered if you've ever noticed that. that the longer you leave something, the bigger it seems to become. And in my experience, it's not often because the task itself has changed, but because the story in my head about the task has changed. And what might have started as a really simple 20-minute job somehow turns into this enormous thing that could hang over me for hours or days, maybe even weeks. And I think, ⁓ just get to it tomorrow. It's not as important as this other thing. Until you get to a time when you just can't put it off anymore. Perhaps there's a deadline associated with it or somebody's coming to stay and you just need to clear the spare room or whatever it might be. And you have to face it. And maybe it then feels 10 times harder to start than it would have if you just started in the first place. Maybe it's because every day that we don't do the thing, we're adding something else to it. We're adding guilt or frustration or pressure or shame or embarrassment. None of those negative emotions are what we want to be feeling. And then it's no longer just the task that we have to face. It's everything that we've been thinking about the task whilst we've actually been avoiding it for however long that period of avoidance might have been. And one of the things that really resonated with me whilst I was listening to a book called Powerful by Maisie Hill was her encouragement to become curious about our behaviour rather than immediately judging ourselves for it. So instead of asking ourselves, why am I like this or why can't I just get on with it? She encourages us to ask different questions like, what's going on for me today? What do I need? What's making this feel difficult for me right now? And I like this much more compassionate exploration of procrastination. I think we often jump straight into criticizing ourselves before we've taken the time to understand what's actually happening in our minds and in the worlds in our worlds around us. Maybe we do genuinely feel. Distracted or tired or overwhelmed right now. Maybe we're trying to make a decision that feels much bigger than the task itself. And I'm facing a couple of those at the moment in relation to my marketing business. The tasks themselves are small, but the implications are large and I don't want to feel like I've made the wrong decision or that I should have done something slightly differently and it's going to come back to bite me on the bum later on. There's also another idea that often gets mentioned when people talk about procrastination, and it's called Parkinson's Law. It's a really interesting observation that I think many of us will recognise, and it suggests that work expands to fill the time that we've given ourselves to complete it. So if you are given two days or one month for the same task, you will take that time to do the task. So I personally find deadlines helpful. Well, I think I find deadlines helpful, but I still leave things to the last minute quite often, which makes me wonder if I gave myself less time or false deadlines, how that would impact me. for example, on my MA course, we've got three weeks until our next assignment deadline. And I know that I will be rushing to finish it in that last week rather than just doing it now and getting it finished ahead of time. So if I think I could set myself a false deadline for maybe one week's time, so I'm two weeks ahead of schedule. But actually, I've tried this before, and if I'm honest, I think I would know that I've invented the deadline. So what happens to me then is that I tend to just ignore it anyway and go back to the original deadline. So I don't think that's actually that helpful for me. I think deadlines Are helpful generally, and I also think there's a difference between choosing to leave something until later spending weeks carrying that around in our heads. ⁓ one gives us space, ⁓ choose to sequence tasks, we delay starting something, and we allocate it into its own time slot in the future. That gives us control, that is our choice, we are exercising our power about when we do that thing. The other Where we're carrying that around in our head for weeks and we're still putting off starting and finishing, that quietly drains our energy. That's hanging around in our minds, waiting to be done, wondering when it will be its turn, constantly, like the child in the car, are we there yet? Are we there yet? And maybe that's why procrastination can feel so exhausting if we're not recognizing it. because if we're not doing the task. Maybe we're still thinking about it. And if it's a big task or the feelings attached to the task, however big it is, if the feelings are big, then the chances are that we are quite often thinking about it. And if we haven't allocated it a time or a deadline and it's just sitting there in our minds waiting its turn, cueing, then of course it's going to be exhausting. It's going to be taking up our brain space. so one thing that kept coming back to me while I was thinking about all of this is that if procrastination is trying to protect us ⁓ from our own uncomfortable feelings like guilt, frustration, etc., then perhaps trying to force ourselves through feelings isn't always the answer. So obviously deadlines matter, discipline matters. But I wonder if we have become so used to criticizing ourselves that we don't give ourselves the space and time to think about what the task is actually asking of us. it might be a small task, a decision that seems simple, something that should only take five to ten minutes, but maybe the consequences of that small task are big. So maybe it's asking us to make a difficult decision, like the legal structure of my business. Or it's asking us to risk getting something wrong, which is small in the moment, but then we have to own that later on, which could have longer term consequences. Maybe it's asking us to be seen, to be visible, to be vulnerable, to be open to judgment. Is it simply asking us to begin before we feel ready when we don't feel like we have enough confidence or knowledge or experience to do the task in the first place? Over the last few podcast episodes I have talked about perfectionism, about being afraid to be seen trying, about imposter syndrome, and now today about procrastination. And they're all slightly different experiences, but I feel like they are all very much connected. They're all moments when we are faced with discomfort. And it's human nature for us to want to protect ourselves from discomfort. But that doesn't mean that we should avoid discomfort forever. Maybe we can start by responding to ourselves with just a little bit more understanding. So, following on from all of this research, I'm now trying to change how I converse with myself, basically. So, rather than me saying, why can't I just get on with this task at hand? I'm now trying to ask myself instead, what is it about this task that's feeling difficult for me today? And sometimes when I've tested this, the answer is really surprisingly obvious. It's because I'm tired or I'm overwhelmed. Often it's a bit deeper. And I'm worried about making the wrong decision. sometimes ⁓ just built the task up in my mind to be something that's much bigger than it actually is. And I know the answer to that question, or once I've explored that a little bit, ⁓ I usually do something with that. I can take a break, I can sequence the task and put it somewhere else in my calendar, or I can break the task down into smaller chunks. Or perhaps I can ask for help from somebody else. sometimes it is just a decision that has to be made, a decision that I don't want to face, but it just has to be done. And you know that moment when you finally make the decision, you finally take the action, and you feel like a weight has been lifted off your shoulders. Sometimes we just need to do ourselves a favor, tackle it face on, get it done, and feel the weight lifting. Because one of the things that I have learnt is that thinking about a task and doing the task are two very different things. And thinking about the task rarely makes it any smaller, but starting the task often does. Before we finish today, I would love to leave you with a couple of questions to reflect on this week. So if you can think of one thing that you have been putting off, just one thing. And then ask yourself, what am I actually avoiding here? Is it the task or is it the feeling that comes with the task? And if it is the feeling, what might help you move forward with a little bit more compassion for yourself? Not by forcing yourself, not by waiting until you feel motivated, but by understanding what your mind might actually be trying to protect you from. So I guess my message from today's podcast is perhaps procrastination isn't something that we need to keep fighting, but something that we just need to be a little bit more curious about. Because once we understand what procrastination is trying to tell us, we can stop seeing ourselves as lazy or motivated or un or lacking discipline, which are all really unfair, and instead begin asking ourselves a much more helpful question like, what do I need to do in order to take the first step today? Thank you so much for listening to The Purposeful Shift. If today's episode resonated with you, I would love to continue the conversation through my weekly newsletter where I share reflections, practical exercises, and gentle prompts inspired by these episodes. You can find the link to sign up in the show notes. Until next time, take care of yourself, keep following your curiosity and remember sometimes the hardest part isn't actually finishing the task. It's understanding what has been stopping us from starting. I'll see you soon.