The Task You Keep Not Starting (procrastination)

The habit loop: a cue, a craving, a routine, a reward. Procrastination is that same loop with a bad feeling as the cue and a quick escape as the reward, and this lesson takes it apart.

Before you start. Habits & Behaviour Change (the loop that runs you) showed that a habit is a loop: a cue sets off a craving, the craving drives a routine, and the routine pays a reward that makes the loop run again. It also showed that removing the cue is the cheapest way to break a loop. Here the cue is a feeling, which you cannot put in a drawer, so this lesson needs one more tool: a way to change how hard a task pulls on you. Why some goals feel like yours is in Motivation & Habit; useful, not needed.

The idea in 30 seconds

Procrastination is putting off something you intended to do while expecting to be worse off for it, and it survives because the relief comes first and the cost comes later.
It runs as a habit loop with a bad feeling as the cue and an escape as the reward, which is why it is mood repair, not laziness.
Temporal motivation theory says a task’s pull is expectancy times value, divided by one plus impulsiveness times delay, so a distant reward pulls weakly until the deadline is close.
Impulsiveness is close to a trait, but delay is yours to change: aim at today’s session (process) instead of the finished thing (product), and the reward stops being far away.
A small process reward beats a weak temptation and loses to a strong one, so also remove the temptation and shrink the first step.
Forgiving the last slip makes the next start easier, because self-blame is one more bad feeling feeding the cue.

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