I am unlikely to do an activity when I don’t feel like doing it. Procrastination is a form of mood repair; I procrastinate because I believe my motivation to do an activity might improve after some time has passed. Mood repair can happen after avoiding an activity, but the odds are low. This means doing nothing won’t get me closer to actually doing the dreaded activity.

By acknowledging the stubbornness of mood to fix itself, it’s better to disregard mood entirely and do the activity anyway. That’s easier said than done because the task aversion can be so strong, no amount of logical thinking or evidence of the ineffectiveness of procrastination can push me to do the whole activity. The alternative then is to do less.

Doing less doesn’t sacrifice forward momentum. Any step no matter how small pushes me forward. The most important thing about “small” here is I personalise what is sufficiently small based on my own standard and needs, and no one has the right to dictate how small I can go. Some days, a small activity is anything I subjectively feel is small; other times, 5 minutes of anything is small but when my mood is downright awful, even a few seconds of work is decently small. With this, I can move forward everyday which is especially crucial if I have frequent obstacles that stifle action taking; in my case I’m prone to depression and anxiety, and it’s very difficult for me to do anything most days because every activity can appear too large for me to even consider.

Takeaways:

1. Procrastination is an ineffective form of mood repair. It doesn’t fix my mood nor does it encourage me to do the activity after the delay.
2. Don’t do nothing. No matter how shit I might be feeling, opt for doing less. And don’t look at other people’s conception of what is less; just find my own version of less.