The reason you procrastinate (It's not what you think) | Mel Robbins

okay how many procrastinators are in the room raise your hand and everybody else is just procrastinating on raising their hand I'm about to change your life because this piece of research changed mine procrastination has nothing to do with work the people that write to us the most that struggle with procrastinating PhD students engineers entrepreneurs people that have a lot on their plate that have a lot of things that they need to juggle and that are analytical and thinkers by nature procrastination is a form of stress relief what are you stressed about bingo and it makes

you have fat doesn't it yeah how many of you can relate to that she said that what's stressing her out is she wants to retire she hasn't saved up enough money what's really stressing you out is finances and money and the fear that you have what happens when you struggle with procrastinating and thank you for being so honest there's it stresses you out maybe you feel the same way and we felt that way I know exactly what you're talking about you carry around this dark cloud because you don't think you're gonna make it you're stressed

about money all the time or maybe your mom's health is declining and it really stresses you out or maybe your best friends are going through a divorce or you're going through a divorce and that really stresses you out and so you walk around with this big-ass thing on your shoulders all the time and then you walk into work and you sit down and you've got a list of phone calls to make which requires your prefrontal cortex and your prefrontal cortex looks at the list and it's like oh my god you want me to make 15

phone calls I've been worried about the money all day can we just look at cat videos I need a break and next thing you know two hours is gone you've been online shopping even looking at cat videos and then of course you look at the 15 phone calls you're like I didn't make him I didn't make him I didn't make the research on procrastination is undeniable it's black and white number one all of you that procrastinate procrastination is not the issue it's stress you're procrastinating to give yourself a little break at work it's sort of

like taking a smoking break almost you know you're just taking a break so number one because you're all stressed out and procrastinators are very hard on yourselves this is gonna sound super stupid but you got to forgive yourself you have got to actually have a talk with yourself where where you feel yourself starting procrastinate you go look you know I really screwed up I know I'm in a mess financially I forgive myself I'm just gonna do the best that I can you have to address the thing that's underneath it so that's self-awareness of knowing oh

my god here's that stress again about finances screwing me over and preventing me from doing the small things that will actually fix my finances second thing that you're gonna do procrastination is a habit right you get triggered by stress the habit is to procrastinate so when you get triggered by stress your new habit is oh there's my stress again I'm gonna actually tell myself okay you've done the best you can it's okay we're gonna do a little bit today you're gonna create what we call starting ritual a starting ritual is something that pushes you to

start the best one on the planet the five-second rule so you've said okay there's my stress again I forget myself now we're gonna five four three two one I want you to only work for five minutes that's it five minutes make phone calls for five minutes here's what we know based on the research 80% of you will keep going the trick is starting you see I want to break the connection between the trigger which is stress and the response which is procrastination and whenever you feel stressed which is normal you have a choice here's that

gap in five seconds flat the habit of procrastinating and beating yourself up will take over or you can close the gap five four three two one and you can make a different choice I'm just gonna get started I'm just gonna be okay with where I'm at and I'm just gonna get started got it good [Applause] you