Why Procrastination is Never the Real Problem

Procrastination’s got a bum rap. It has got to be one of the most overused yet misunderstood excuses there is.

Almost anytime someone’s not doing what they “should” be doing, we blame it on procrastination.

It’s like the red-headed stepchild who, sure, he’s done plenty wrong, but it’s not always his fault. He may have quite the record behind him, but that’s all circumstantial evidence, and you’ve gotta prove it’s him beyond a reasonable doubt.

Most of the time there’s an underlying reason, or series of reasons, why one would procrastinate.

Whether it’s fear of success, fear of failure, inability to prioritize, perfectionism, or otherwise – it’s not just because it makes you happy to push tasks off for the last minute. There’s an ultimate payoff, and that’s why we avoid taking positive action.

The thing is, I think we have it confused as to what the real ailment is and what’s just the symptom. What’s the cause and what’s the effect.

I remember studying Emile Durkheim’s book about suicide in college. My professor boiled down his research findings into two categories: people who commit suicide as a means to an end, and those for whom the desire to die is the end goal.

However, I’d argue (just as I did back then) that suicide is never the goal. There’s always something else. Whether it’s a feeling of pain that’s too constant and overwhelming or a lack of seeing how anything can get better, suicide is just a symptom (call it an “effect” if that’s more palatable) of the desire to get out of one’s current situation.

Type II diabetes, you know, is just a symptom of an unhealthy lifestyle.

Drug abuse, you know, is just a symptom of addiction.

Mass shootings, you know, are just symptoms of a diseased mind.

If we keep locking in on just fixing the symptoms, we’re never going to make much progress on solving the underlying issues and we’ll wonder why we keep ending up in the same situations over and over again.

We have to be able to identify the source of the bleeding before we end up in a wild, impassioned chase after a bunch of busy “progress”-look-alike distractions.