What Your Procrastination Is Actually Trying to Tell You

Have you ever continually procrastinated something or felt unmotivated to do it, and then felt as though you had to force yourself to do the thing at the end just because you knew you had to do it? A lot of times, and you may have heard that. Procrastination is actually an emotionally driven issue, which is true, but what if it’s also deeper than that?
Deeper than just your emotions, but coming from your subconscious mind and what it could be communicating to you through the behavior of procrastination. It’s not all about I’m lazy, I don’t wanna do anything. It could be that more is happening under the surface. That’s what I’m gonna dive into in this episode.
I’m gonna share a personal example of a shift that I recently experienced, a transition. I’m also in with this podcast, and hopefully that can help you if you are currently in a place of feeling stuck. Procrastinating unmotivated. Or maybe you can relate if you felt this way in the past, because it is a very human experience to have, and I want you to know that you’re not alone.
So let’s get into it.
Hi, I am Tati. I’m a licensed therapist and coach. So first, let’s talk about what procrastination is. It’s really just delaying or putting off something that you want to do or maybe that you have to do, but anything else seems more interesting in the moment. Maybe you find yourself cleaning off your desk or your house and wondering, why am I doing this?
And realizing, oh, it’s because that there’s that other thing that I really have to do that I don’t wanna do. So anything else becomes more interesting potentially. Or you just feel like doing nothing and so maybe you’re completely unmotivated and feeling stuck and wondering what’s going on and shaming yourself and being hard on yourself in the process and feeling as though, well, I know I should.
Air quotes be doing this thing. I know I want to be doing this thing, but. Something’s happening that’s preventing me from doing the thing. So I mentioned in the intro that emotions can be driving procrastination. So this can be maybe fear. You’re afraid of a negative outcome that can come from doing something you are afraid of, failure or disappointing somebody else or anything else that might be preventing you from doing the thing.
It can also be, maybe you just dislike the emotions that come up when you’re doing the thing. Maybe it’s boredom or maybe it’s usually having to focus intently, so it requires a lot of mental energy. And so your brain is like, eh, don’t feel like doing that right now because it feels. Too difficult. You could also be feeling overwhelmed.
And so because of that, maybe it feels like this is too much. I have too much on my plate, or I’m, I’m overwhelmed by everything that’s going on, mentally, emotionally, physically, whatever that might be. And so your brain wants to avoid the thing. Now I wanna talk about the layer underneath that that I mentioned before.
Procrastination can be something that your subconscious mind is telling you and communicating just through your behaviors, right? Because our subconscious mind isn’t something that’s magical or mystical. It is essentially anything occurring in our mind that is below conscious awareness. So this is something that happens in all of us.
We are never going to be a hundred percent consciously aware of what’s going on in our mind because there’s so much going on, even just to keep us alive that we’re not necessarily consciously aware of. And that doesn’t include things like. You know what your brain is taking in as far as the information in any situation.
You’re taking in so much information when you’re just entering a room through your senses, and maybe when you’re in a conversation that your mind is taking in the information, but it’s not consciously processing all of it. And so. There’s a lot of things that our minds are doing below the surface.
Essentially, if you imagine like the surface is this line that above it is conscious awareness, below it is subconscious awareness. An example of how the subconscious mind works is if you’ve ever had the experience where you have a problem or something that you’re struggling with. And you try really hard to figure it out or think about it, but then maybe after you sleep on it or after a few days, all of a sudden you have some clarity on it without necessarily trying harder to figure it out.
That’s your subconscious working on things in the background that can also be happening where subconscious beliefs or feelings can be affecting your behaviors. So coming back to procrastination. Maybe your subconscious mind is communicating to you, this doesn’t feel right, or maybe we can do this differently, or something else is happening here.
Maybe this is worth more exploration. Of course, this doesn’t apply to every situation that you’re procrastinating. There’s times where we have to do things because we have responsibilities, because you have a job. That we just don’t wanna do. And it doesn’t have to mean that there’s some deeper subconscious reason there, right?
You might just procrastinate cleaning your house because you don’t feel like it, and that’s normal and a part of being human. But what I’m talking about are the moments where there’s a procrastination behavior occurring and something else is happening that might be causing the procrastination. So this is all very abstract.
So let me make this specific. Coming back to my example. So I’ve noticed with myself that I have been procrastinating filming podcast episodes, putting off, outlining them, putting off recording them until the absolute last minute. And this is a continual pattern that I have experienced recently outside of the fact that I got sick really before I got sick.
I was supposed to have batched a bunch of episodes and I didn’t do it, and I was kind of reflecting what’s, what’s going on here? Why am I procrastinating this? Is there something else happening under the surface? So when I reflected on it, I realized, okay, I. What comes up when I think about recording the podcast?
This is episode 2 69. Now, I’ve done so many episodes and as far as my character, my personality, it is so important for me to stick to my word, to be loyal to what I promise to be consistent. This is like the disciplined part of my brain speaking. You need to be consistent. You need to do an episode. And I think that discipline was competing with the creative part of my mind that’s like.
Well, I, I do still have this excitement and this passion for it, and it’s something that like, I know these ideas are still coming, but this isn’t working with the way that I’m doing things. It feels like I’m forcing things to fit into this structure that I created. That is kind of the typical expectation of All Right, release weekly episodes, and it was resulting in, wait until the last minute.
Kind of putting something together and feeling like it was a superficial episode of something and, and preventing me from going deeper into things, which is the way that I think, the thing that really makes me feel excited, like I love diving deep into topics and. Exploring things with more research and time and space, and this structure that I had created for myself kind of conflicted with that.
The interesting thing is then I created this structure for myself, but at the same time, I was also kind of projecting this, that other. People, you, my listeners, my audience were expecting this from me. So this kind of quote unquote cage that I created for myself. And I know there’s a lot of negative connotations there, and I don’t mean that to mean that this was something negative that I felt trapped in, but my brain was kind of creating that and then projecting all these expectations, like, well, I said that I was gonna be weekly and I said that I was gonna be consistent, so.
You, the listeners, my audience are, are holding me to that. So I, I need to do that. Like, if I don’t do that, then that means that I’m failing or that they’re not gonna see me as reliable or trustworthy. So essentially that brought me to the underlying kind of belief that was happening here, and that was, this feels like a never ending commitment, right?
Given the fact that I created this for myself, I have the privilege of having the freedom to choose what I want to do. I was still creating these boxes for myself, and that looked like I’m gonna have to make weekly podcast episodes for the rest of my life, which obviously isn’t realistic, but that’s kind of what it felt.
Like emotionally and as far as bringing those subconscious beliefs or fears to the surface. And then I kind of connected it, or it formed into this analogy with something else that I’ve experienced, and that is exercise routines and healthcare. So like eating nutritious foods and moving my body and all of that I have found for myself personally, of course, everybody’s different.
When I have a goal of, okay, I just want to work out regularly, or I wanna eat nutritious foods regularly, more fruits and vegetables, whatever that can look like, and it feels like this endless goal that I’m just committing to for the rest of my life. It’s hard to feel motivated to for that because it feels like this giant kind of commitment that I’m making, that there’s the achievement of doing the thing itself.
But it’s hard for me to connect with. A feeling of accomplishment from that. So what I’ve found for myself is that it’s helpful for me to have small, specific goals and containers. So, for example, I signed up for a half marathon later this year. That is a larger goal. I haven’t run consistently. As much as I would want to, to train for this goal.
So the smaller container before that is training for a 5K and then training for the half marathon after that. And so that feels exciting to me because it feels like something that I am intentionally working towards, that there is a, a set plan towards it. Same thing with, you know, if I do strength training, it’s helpful for me to do like a 12 week program and then take it from there rather than I’m just endlessly doing this the same kind of exercises or.
Routines forever. I connected this to the podcast issue of, alright, what if I take the same framework and apply it here rather than the idea of doing episodes weekly for the rest of my life? What if I try to look at this differently and think, okay, maybe I can have the smaller, not necessarily goals, but these smaller intentions of.
I know sometimes people do seasons. I kind of reflected on that and, and listened to what came up and I was like, uh, because that still feels like, okay, I’m doing a season for. Six months or for whatever the period is, and then taking a break and it’s like still feels like it. It’s random and it’s continuing to create for the sake of creating.
Then I thought of, well, what if I do themes, like these pockets of theme deep dives, and that is something that really excited me and so. I kind of went into that and started brainstorming, and I was like, wow, I have all of these ideas. I have this list of ideas that I can even make them into these pockets of themes, and that allows me to deep dive and do maybe more research or get deeper into a certain concept.
And tying that with taking a break in between. So I don’t wanna commit to, I’m taking a break for a certain amount of time and then doing a certain number of episodes, but this opens up freedom to allow my creativity to thrive, and then my motivation has come back. This is kind of like my transition of, I’m communicating, this is what’s coming up for me.
This is where I’m thinking of leading things. And that in and of itself is creating a space for actually me to connect more with myself and express myself in a more authentic way. And I, I kind of. Thought of this as the process that many of us go through when you’re learning something new, when you’re cultivating a new skill, or starting a new position or whatever that looks like, right?
There’s phase one, which is you’re learning from somebody else’s framework. You’re kind of taking that and doing it, and so. You are kind of doing things according to how somebody else has done them. Phase two is the, the combination platter of you’re taking somebody’s framework and then kind of putting yourself into it.
And so you’re kind of balancing the two at once and finding a way that. That feels and, and how that looks. And I’ve realized that now I’m transitioning into phase three, where now I’m kind of going off on my own path, letting go of any of the frame previous frameworks. And of course that doesn’t mean that I’m never influenced by anybody else because that’s impossible.
’cause as humans were. All influenced by each other. We’re all connected, and that’s not a bad thing, but what I’m doing is letting go of the, the cages, the boxes that I’ve made for myself and choosing to just do what feels authentic to me and. For my situation, I have the privilege of having more freedom to do that because I’m self-employed.
However, even if you are somebody who is employed, this can apply to you in your internal shift, in your behavior, in how you are showing up at work and how you are choosing to do things right. We might have different restrictions as far as how much freedom we have in certain contexts, but that does not mean that we are completely trapped.
One example of this is I was working with a client who is in upper level management, and in that transition into that role, he found that, you know, he was looking at the other leaders in his workplace and, and seeing how they were doing things and how that differ from the way that he approached things.
And he kind of. Took on some of that approach when he first started, but then his goal was to kind of combine the two and see, well, this is their leadership style, but this is what feels authentic to me, and so how can I take those two, inject myself into this style, take what works, and then form that into my own approach.
So that’s how this can apply if you are somebody who’s employed. This can apply outside of work in personal situations with your family members anywhere. Even if you wanna take the exercise example that I shared. So ultimately what I am encouraging is that you use your behaviors, whether that is procrastination or your emotions, whether that is feeling stuck or overwhelmed as signals.
Signals to encourage you to reflect and ask yourself. What is happening here? Is this trying to communicate anything to me? It could be what I just shared. It could be something completely different, right? There’s nuance within this it. There’s no right or wrong or perfect. It’s about listening to yourself and building that muscle of listening to yourself.
Because oftentimes, if you’re a high achiever, you can kind of be conditioned to this pattern of continuing to push through and ignore that inner voice that is telling you that something’s not working. That’s maybe trying to communicate, you’re heading towards burnout. This isn’t sustainable. So building that muscle of listening to yourself and questioning the boxes, the cages you might be putting yourself in subconsciously without even realizing it, that is powerful.
And what this looked like for me, the process was first noticing. Noticing what was happening and how I was feeling, what the pattern was, what the behavior was of, oh, it’s been a couple weeks and I keep putting this off. What’s happening here? Number two was then I sat down and I journaled, and I intentionally became curious about this.
This is what I’m noticing. Why could this be for me? This is something I have done over and over again, so it’s a skill that I’ve built that has become more automatic. If there’s something that you’re new to, then it can take time and intention, and I have a resource that I will share at the end of this episode that can help you with that.
Step three for me was processing this more deeply in therapy to kind of get a another perspective. Allow me the space to verbalize and process what was coming up. But again, I wanna emphasize it doesn’t always look the same, and it doesn’t have to. This I hope, is just your permission. Slip two, take what’s happening.
Take what your experience is and not just brush it over and say, I should be doing more. I’m so undisciplined, I’m so lazy. What’s wrong with me? And beat yourself up. But use these as signals to recognize what’s happening and to understand yourself better. Because when you can do that, that’s when you can get to a place where you feel less stressed and anxious and overwhelmed, and you’re better able to manage stressful situations when they do arise.
It’s not about eliminating these negative experiences because they’re helpful signals, but it’s about actually listening to and recognizing them. And this is a process. So if you’re interested in this, this process of. Letting go of recognizing and identifying places where you might be putting pressure on yourself, where you might be feeling stuck.
I have a free guide to help you through that. It’s called From Pressure to Ease. You can learn more about it and download it for free by going to calmlycoping.com/pressure, or click on the link in the description as far as the plan for this podcast moving forward. There’s one new episode coming next week because I am participating in what’s called podcast on, and that is where we support charities through our podcast.
Super excited for that. So keep an eye out for that episode, and after that I will be taking a break. And this isn’t like months long break. This is a, a shortish break so that I can rebuild this creative energy, have time to go deeper into research and creating the plan. Then I plan to come back with a set of episodes on a specific topic and continue from there.
If you have any ideas for themes that you would want me to cover, then definitely leave that in the comments. If you’re watching on YouTube, I may even create a poll so you can check out my YouTube community space to see if there’s a poll there with suggestions I’ve given. I have tons of ideas, things like an entire theme series focused on nervous system regulation, an entire theme series focused on the origins of hustle culture.
So many things that I can dive deeper into, and so I’d love to hear from you if there’s anything specific that you’d like me to cover. Thanks so much for being here with me. Thank you so much. If you are a returning listener to calmly coping, or if you’re just here for the first time, I am super grateful for each and every one of you.
While you wait for next week’s episode, I have other episodes about calming your mind, improving work-life balance, and feeling more confident from within. So be sure to check out these episodes here. Thank you so much for tuning in today, and until next time, be calm.