Procrastination is primarily a mechanism for mood regulation rather than a sign of laziness.

“We say at the core, procrastination is about mood regulation. So a task may elicit lack of confidence, feelings of incompetency, insecurity, fear of failure, anxiety. You put that task aside, and you've just regulated your mood.”

Procrastination is often an issue of emotion regulation rather than just a time management problem.

“procrastination is basically in general the downside the darn the doubt negative procrastination is just an emotion regulation problem right it has nothing to do with time”

Procrastination is an emotional avoidance strategy used to escape the discomfort of confronting one's own limitations and finitude.

“you don't want to feel what it feels like to be limited and imperfect and so if you hold on to a project if you keep it in your mind in the world of fantasy it can stay perfect it can be later that you're going to do this great thing”

Procrastination is a purely visceral emotional reaction to the aversion triggers of boredom, frustration, unpleasantness, being far away, lack of structure, or lack of meaning.

“But the the interesting thing about procrastination is it's a purely visceral and emotional reaction to something that we don't want to do. There's very little logic embedded within it whatsoever.”

Procrastination is often a way to avoid the unpleasant emotions associated with a difficult task.

“I’ve learned is that when I’m procrastinating about something what happens it’s because of a story I’m telling myself oh that’s going to be too difficult or oh it’s going to take too much time and that difficulty or that too much time is going to lead to some other unpleasant emotions”

Overcoming procrastination requires lowering the activation energy needed to begin a task by reducing environmental and emotional obstacles.

“whenever you get started with a task it always takes more energy to get get started because you're pushing the boulder up the hill we have to overcome the hump of procrastination in order to even get started with a task”

Procrastination is often a result of waiting to feel ready or prepared, and the best way to overcome it is to take the smallest possible step.

“Break it down into the smallest possible step and just do the thing.”