Is Procrastination Laziness? What's Really Going On When You Don't Start

No. Laziness means doing little and missing nothing, while procrastination means working hard on everything except the one task that sets off a feeling in you. One week of notes shows you which feeling it is.

How can you tell whether it's laziness or procrastination?

You can tell by what you do instead of the task. That is exactly where I draw the line between the two: laziness means doing little and missing nothing. When you procrastinate, you do a lot, just not the one thing, and it won't let go of you.

Take an ordinary Tuesday. You answer emails, call back two suppliers, clear your filing. The quote for your biggest client stays open, and in the evening it's still on your mind. Someone lazy would have forgotten it.

Laziness avoids work. Procrastination avoids a feeling.

Why is it always the important task that procrastination leaves undone?

Because it's usually the only task that asks you for a judgement. Answering emails feels safe. In the quote you set a price, and that price can be turned down.

The mechanics come down to three terms. The trigger is the discomfort the task stirs up in you. The avoidance is how you respond in that moment. The relief is the drop in tension that follows. It rewards your avoidance, and that's why you repeat it next time.

The feeling differs from person to person: uncertainty, boredom, the fear of a difficult message. You'll find more on this in Procrastinating Because It's Unpleasant. For you, only one thing counts here: your drive is intact. It just gets redirected at one point.

How do you find out in one week what's behind your procrastination?

For seven days you write down two things: what you do instead of the task, and which feeling shows up just before. That's all it takes. After a week you're reading a pattern instead of a puzzle.

A line looks like this: "Tuesday, 9:40 a.m. Opened the quote, wrote an email to a supplier instead. Before that: unsure about the price." One line costs you ten seconds. After seven days it's there in black and white whether, for you, it's uncertainty, boredom or worry about the answer.

You're thinking: but I know what to do. That's exactly the point. Your knowledge sits in your head, the avoidance happens in the moment. The note makes that moment visible to you.

Then comes the first move: five minutes on exactly this task. Not the whole task, just the way in. You open the quote and type in the price line, even if it isn't final yet. After five minutes you're allowed to stop. The task now has separate parts instead of one solid mass, and you work differently with parts.

Laziness is something you'd have to train out of yourself. Procrastination you only have to see through and answer differently at one point. You take the next step over four days: the challenge takes you from recognising to acting, with no selling during those four days.

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