Undone: How to Change Our Procrastination Patterns

Get comfortable being uncomfortable and you will be able to unravel your procrastination pattern

At any given moment, we can be tempted to pause and distract ourselves. fizkes/Shutterstock

Procrastination starts from avoiding something out of fear. Then it becomes a pattern that hardens into a habit. We reinforce this procrastination habit through years of practice—and it hurts us in so many ways.

The procrastination habit can affect all areas of life, leading us to avoid taking concrete actions that improve our situation:

• Dealing with our finances head-on
• Establishing healthy habits (exercise, diet, regular checkups)
• Maintaining healthy relationships (avoiding difficult conversations)
• Creating meaningful work
• Decluttering and simplifying
• Getting to places on time
• Learning new things

And much more. Those are some of the most obvious examples, but we procrastinate all day long in smaller ways—by checking our phones, email, and favorite websites, by watching the news or TV shows, or by playing games. There’s no limit to the number of ways we try to avoid difficulty.