Solving the Procrastination Puzzle

About 100 pages from the researcher whose work established procrastination as an emotion-regulation problem rather than a time-management or laziness problem, a finding that has held up. Highest ratio of usable insight to reading time in the productivity domain.

The chapter guide

Procrastination often protects present mood at the expense of a valued intention, so predecide how to stay with the discomfort, make the first action tiny, and remove predictable escape routes.

1. Introduction: How procrastination defeats our intentions

   The introduction frames procrastination as a common failure to act on our intentions and previews a concise, research-based route toward change.

2. Chapter 1: What Is Procrastination? Why Does It Matter?

   Procrastination is needless delay of an intended action despite expecting the delay to make the outcome worse, and it differs from strategic or unavoidable delay.

3. Chapter 2: Is Procrastination Really a Problem? What Are the Costs of Procrastinating?

   Repeated procrastination is associated with poorer performance, more distress, and worse health, so its costs extend beyond a late task.

4. Chapter 3: What’s the Most Important Thing We Need to Know about Procrastination?

   People often postpone aversive tasks to improve mood now, trading progress toward a valued goal for immediate emotional relief.

5. Chapter 4: Why We Won’t Feel Like It Tomorrow

   Affective forecasting, present bias, and a weak connection to the future self make tomorrow seem easier and more motivating than it is likely to be.

6. Chapter 5: Excuses and Self-deception: How Our Thinking Contributes to Our Procrastination

   Biased planning, irrational beliefs, and self-protective explanations reduce discomfort now while preserving the delay that created it.

7. Chapter 6: The Power of Getting Started

   Beginning even one rough subtask often makes the work feel less aversive and creates progress that supports continued action.

8. Chapter 7: Why Getting Started Isn’t the Whole Solution

   Goal pursuit also requires predecisions for the distractions, obstacles, and setbacks that can pull action off course after a successful start.

9. Chapter 8: Willpower, Willpower: If We Only Had the Willpower

   The chapter presents self-control as a limited but trainable resource that can be restored, strengthened, and supported by motivation and implementation intentions.

10. Chapter 9: What’s Bred in the Bone: Personality and Procrastination

    Traits such as low conscientiousness, emotional instability, impulsiveness, low self-efficacy, and socially prescribed perfectionism can shape procrastination risk without fixing behavior permanently.

11. Chapter 10: Cyberslacking on the Procrastination Superhighway

    Networked devices make immediately rewarding distraction continuously available, so online procrastination is best interrupted by limiting access before work begins.

12. Concluding Thoughts: On the Road of Self-Change

    Lasting change comes from strategic predecisions and repeated conscious action, with no promise that a new response will quickly become automatic.

Scorecard

Universality

4 of 5

Evidence

4 of 5

Reread value

3 of 5