Why Do I Procrastinate on Small Tasks I Know Take Five Minutes?

Why do I put off a task that would take five minutes?

You are not putting off five minutes of work. You are putting off what those five minutes set in motion. Your list measures a task in minutes, but your head measures it in consequences.

Take an email to a supplier whose price went up. Writing it takes you four lines. Sending it means you have to decide whether to keep them, and you might get an answer you don't like. The four lines were never the heavy part. The decision was.

Almost every small task you keep moving carries one of three triggers: a decision you haven't made, a reply you dread, or a result someone could judge. A task can be small in time and still heavy for you.

Why does procrastination make a small task heavier the longer it waits?

Every day it waits, you add something to it. On paper the task stays the same size. In your head it picks up one more uncomfortable fact: it still isn't done.

On Monday, a callback to a client is just a callback. By Thursday it's a callback plus an explanation. You pay for the delay twice. You pay once in the task itself, and again every time you read it on your list and decide once more not to start.

This is the same loop behind procrastination in general: discomfort, switch, relief, repeat. I took it apart in Why Do I Procrastinate on Everything?. The difference here is that the small size hides the loop from you. "It's only five minutes" sounds like a reason to wait, not a warning sign.

How do you start a small task you have avoided for days?

Write the trigger down in one line, then give the task five minutes on a timer. Writing it down separates the work from what the work sets off. The timer gives you a start with a clear exit.

For the supplier email, your line reads: "Trigger: I have to decide whether we stay with them." Now you know what you're actually dealing with. Open the email and write the first sentence. When the five minutes are up, you're allowed to stop.

You end up with one of two results. Either the task is done, because the work really was that small. Or the real obstacle is now in plain view: a decision you can put on your calendar as its own item. Either way, you know whether the task itself was ever the problem.

You might think this is too simple. It works because it doesn't ask you for more self discipline. It asks you to look once at what the task carries, and you can repeat that on the next one.

Under the method sits one habit: acting like the person who deals with whatever comes up, without waiting for a better moment. If you want to build that over four days instead of on a single task, start here:

Try the free four-day challenge