Avoidance & Escape Patterns
Procrastination
Putting off tasks to escape discomfort, pressure, boredom, fear, or self-evaluation.
Reviewed by licensed therapists
What it is
Procrastination is often misunderstood as laziness, but it’s usually emotion regulation. You put something off because starting brings up discomfort: boredom, confusion, pressure, fear of failure, resentment, shame, or not knowing where to begin. Avoiding the task gives short-term relief, which reinforces the habit. The problem is that the task usually returns with more pressure attached. Procrastination becomes a loop: discomfort leads to avoidance, avoidance creates consequences, and consequences make the task feel even worse. Putting things off is usually emotion management, and often a sign the task is genuinely unclear, oversized, or loaded, not a sign you don't care.
Additional resources to explore: CBT can help with the thoughts that make tasks feel threatening. Behavioral activation can be useful when avoidance is linked to low mood, low reward, or shutdown. Behavioral activation is an evidence-based approach that can reduce inactivity and avoidance by reconnecting people with meaningful or reinforcing activities. Executive function coaching can help if procrastination is driven by task initiation, sequencing, time blindness, or neurodivergence.
Tips / how to work on it
Don’t start by trying to “feel motivated.” Start by making the task smaller and more concrete. Ask, “What is the next step I can take?” Not “work on taxes,” but “open the folder.” Not “write the deck,” but “make a blank document and list three headings.” Then set a tiny timer, like 5 or 10 minutes. The goal is to reduce the emotional barrier to entry. Once you start, momentum has a chance to appear.
A useful exercise: use the five-minute entry. Commit to doing the task for five minutes badly, incompletely, or without finishing. When the five minutes end, you can stop or continue. This works because procrastination often happens when the task feels overwhelming.
More reading
- Deconstructing Stigma, Why We Procrastinate: The Psychology of Putting Things Off
- APA, Why we procrastinate and what to do about it, with Fuschia Sirois, PhD
- Cleveland Clinic, How To Stop Procrastinating
- APA, Psychology of procrastination: Why people put off important tasks until the last minute
- Rozental et al., Internet-Based Cognitive Behavior Therapy for Procrastination
Educational, not diagnostic.