The thing you keep putting off: just five minutes to start

Keep putting things off? What helps

Procrastination is rarely laziness. Often, thinking about the task brings up something unpleasant (boredom, fear of doing it badly, not knowing where to start), so we do something else and the discomfort goes away for a while. The task doesn't go away, though; it only gets heavier.

This exercise uses two methods common in cognitive behavioural therapy for procrastination. The first is an if-then plan, which psychologists call an "implementation intention", introduced by the psychologist Peter Gollwitzer: you decide in advance, "If it's a certain time, or I'm in a certain place, or I've just done a certain thing, then I'll do this action", so there's nothing left to negotiate when the time comes. The second is the five-minute start: shrink the task to a first step you can do in five minutes, and after five minutes, stop or carry on.

To be honest: if-then plans generally help people reach their goals, as Gollwitzer and Paschal Sheeran found when they brought together a large body of research; but there's less research on procrastination specifically, and a review by Alexander Rozental and colleagues found results vary. So treat it as an experiment: try it a few times and see if it suits you.

This exercise isn't therapy. If what's behind the putting off is that lately you can't get going on anything, even things you used to enjoy, it may be more than procrastination; the behavioural activation practice is made for getting moving when your mood is low, and talking with a counsellor can help too.

If-then plans (implementation intentions) were introduced by the psychologist Peter Gollwitzer, who with Paschal Sheeran brought together a large body of research on them; for psychological treatments of procrastination, see the review by Alexander Rozental and colleagues.

How it works

1. 1Write down something you keep putting off, pick what you usually tell yourself (like "I'll do it later"), and rate how hard it is to start right now (0 to 10).
2. 2Shrink it to a first step you can do in five minutes, like "open the file and type the title"; if it's still too big, break it smaller.
3. 3Make an if-then plan: if it's a certain time, I'm in a certain place, or I've finished a certain thing, then I'll do that step.
4. 4Pick the thing that most often gets in your way (your phone, say) and arrange to move it out of the way first.
5. 5Try five minutes straight away, or wait for your cue; after five minutes, stop or carry on. Then rate again how hard starting feels, and keep it all on your start card.
6. 6Afterwards, tick the day each time you do it; if you miss it, ask what got in the way and change the cue, not yourself. This step happens outside the exercise, so it's written on your start card.

References

1. Gollwitzer, P. M. (1999). Implementation intentions: Strong effects of simple plans. American Psychologist, 54(7), 493–503.
2. Gollwitzer, P. M., & Sheeran, P. (2006). Implementation intentions and goal achievement: A meta-analysis of effects and processes. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 38, 69–119.
3. Rozental, A., Bennett, S., Forsström, D., Ebert, D. D., Shafran, R., Andersson, G., & Carlbring, P. (2018). Targeting procrastination using psychological treatments: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Frontiers in Psychology, 9, 1588.