As best as I can tell from my 20+ years teaching, procrastination stems from 3 main emotions — fear, shame, and anger. Naturally there are other factors at play, but in Pareto’s 80/20 fashion, I’m focusing on the core emotions that, if addressed, seem like they could help end procrastination.

I’m long-time follower of Tony Robbins writings. Tony has long believed that human beings are motivated to act for one of two reasons — to avoid pain or to gain pleasure. Moreover, humans will do far more to avoid pain than they will to gain pleasure. Surely, you’ve heard the vignette of the person who puts off doing their tax returns (avoiding pain), even though it would be pleasurable to have the tax return done. Around April 15, the pain of NOT doing taxes outweighs the pain of doing them.

Check out Tony Robbins’s book, Unlimited Power.

Fear – the worrisome procrastinator

Fear and self-doubt drive the chronic worrier. We’ve all had that student who needs constant reassurance at every turn. Am I doing this right? They are so afraid of making a mistake, that they become like a deer in the headlights — so-called analysis paralysis — the freeze part of fight, flight, or freeze.

To overcome this fear of failure, students should learn to expect failure. School reward accuracy and punish failure. As a result, most students shy away from uncertainty.

But no one is perfect. And mistakes are how we learn. However, there is one huge technical problem… This fear of failure can stem nor only from schools but from well-meaning bulldozer parents who have used so many sani-wipes cleaning up their child’s problems that the child hasn’t developed the immunity to fight any problems.

Lastly, this category also includes the imposter syndrome. No matter how good the output, they worry what others will think of their product. They may know that they are good enough, but are uncertain.

Shame – the perfectionist procrastinator

While shame certainly overlaps with fear, I’m thinking of the neurotic procrastinator who is always fearful of being exposed even though they are plenty competent. The perfectionist is similar to the worrisome student. But the perfectionist student fails to ship anything without an ironclad guarantee of an success. They demand it of themselves, making them sometimes neurotic. An A- is a good grade!

They may also exhibit the “getting ready to get ready” syndrome. When the planets are in perfect alignment, they will ship. Hence, they procrastinate.

Anger – the rebellious procrastinator

Finally, we have the rebellious procrastinator. This seems to be the lion’s share of procrastinators, so I’ll write the most in this section. Many students are disenfranchised by the establishment. And everything is someone else’s fault — the principal, the teacher, the homework, the test, their parents… Well, you get the idea.

Complain, complain, complain!

Knowing you’re falling short often lead to complaining. In order to rebel against the establishment, these students will complain about everything under the sun whether it makes sense or not.

However, consider the dog chasing the car. What happens when the dog catches the car? Similarly, what happens when a policymaker decision makes it nearly impossible to fail. For example, my school has a minimum grade of 50, do-overs on test. When all the legs are kicked out from underneath the complaint table, there is nothing left but to look in the mirror. Don’t let your safety nets become hammocks!

Although I have my own opinions, I’m not quite sure why so many young people are so angry. Building a time machine to go back and raise them up right isn’t an option, so they need some other way of coping. Now we’re back to the sani-wipe analogy.

Source: The Procrastination Cure by Jeffery Combs

Until next time…

Remember that success is a planned event. Believe in yourself.

Pay attention, do the work, and don’t give up!

And don’t forget to check out my new YouTube channel!

www.youtube.com/@PlanetNumeracy