The man had driven his truck for years. It wasn't new, and it wasn't impressive, but it had carried him faithfully through work sites, long winters, early mornings, and late nights. The seats were worn in the places his body leaned into most. The steering wheel knew his hands. The truck had become an extension of how he moved through the world, reliable, quiet, and expected to endure.
The dates don't matter, I wanted to say. It's the 31-day stretch that's important you could do it whenever. But of course this is wrong: we reserve these privations for January on purpose. Despite, or perhaps because of the month's prodigious capacity to disappoint, we go out of our way to make January hard on ourselves. It starts with the tremendously misleading idea of a clean slate.
Lingering tasks make us feel bad. The Zeigarnik effect, first documented by psychologist Bluma Zeigarnik a century ago: explains that unfinished tasks stick in memory better than completed ones, creating a cognitive burden and potential anxiety trigger. Research shows that incomplete tasks cause rumination and might even disrupt sleep patterns. We also have a natural drive to finish what we start, because abandoning tasks feels
Whether it is putting off doing the laundry, paying your bills, or getting your shopping done, we all procrastinate. As students, the urge to procrastinate is even stronger when you're surrounded by opportunities to have fun. But procrastination has been found to lead to poorer academic performance, higher levels of stress and anxiety, and academic burnout. Lee, Othman, & Ramlee (2025) were interested in determining if there were other treatment modalities besides Cognitive Behavioral Therapy that might help avoid procrastination.
I have no idea how to make myself do things in the consistent, reliable way that others seem to: work out, get dressed, cook a veg bowl, book appointments. On rare days, I miraculously do them all. Most others, I thumb screens, nap relentlessly and eat neon-colored snacks covered in sugar and salt. After seven years of freelance life, it's gotten dire.
This article very nearly didn't exist. For several weeks, it made a conspicuous effort not to. It began, or rather did not begin, when I was invited to pitch a second article for Big Think about virtually any topic in neuroscience. Triumph. I had freedom and unlimited time. What could be easier? A lot, it turns out. Weeks went by, and I did not write. My inbox began to fill with cheerful nudges from Stephen, my editor. Still keen to write something?
Don't underestimate the power of Amazon wedding gifts. You know that rule that you have a year after the celebration to dive into the wedding registry and give the newlyweds the perfect gift before you become a rude, uncaring friend? Every single time I'm required to buy a wedding present, I procrastinate so much that I end up sending something juusssst before the 365th day hits. At my worst,
Have you ever felt the need to start a task, but you just can't get to that first step? Maybe it's a household chore, a course you've wanted to pursue for a while, even something incredibly trivial-starting simply feels impossible. This experience, a combination of overwhelm and mental freeze, defines the reality of millions of people around the world. And there's a name for it: task initiation paralysis.
Much of our common understanding of hypnosis has been gleaned from mind-control plots in Hollywood movies or hokey on-stage demonstrations. On this episode of How To!, Carvell Wallace brings on Stanford University psychiatrist and researcher Dr. David Spiegel to talk about what hypnosis is (and isn't), as well as its potential to address stress, pain, and even athletic performance. Plus, with Carvell wrestling with an ongoing major project, Dr. Spiegel tests our host's hypnotizability-then leads him through an exercise aimed at confronting procrastination.
Do you look at your To Do List and see all the things you need to do, but decide to procrastinate instead? Or go on YouTube or Tiktok instead of finishing your tasks? This method might be for you. I've tried so many things to try and get stuff done. But I found nothing worked. Until I tried this method. I call it the " Anti-Pomodoro" technique. I've seen a video where the creator called it the "Breadcrumb" method. But the foundation is the same. The answer? Work in 5 minute sprints. Press enter or click to view image in full size
I remember the eureka moment I had about procrastination when I was still a high school Latin teacher. There was a lot of talk about "time management" and "SMART" goals going around the faculty in-service day training. But then one of the teachers spoke out, "This isn't time management as much as it's about an emotion they'd rather avoid." At the time, I volunteered to be a practice client in a coaching session,
In seconds, they had pulled up ChatGPT and dropped the text into the prompt box, which spat out an AI-generated annotation of the chapter. These annotations are used for discussions; we turn them in to our teacher at the end of class, and many of them are graded as part of our class participation. What was meant to be a reflective, thought-provoking discussion on slavery and human resilience was flattened into copy-paste commentary.
