#254| Why Most Advice About Procrastination Is Completely Missing The Point: Overwhelm, Productivity, Time Management & People Pleasing

What if procrastination has nothing to do with laziness—and everything to do with the emotions you’re avoiding?

If you constantly put off important tasks while staying busy with everything else, this episode will help you understand why. High-achieving women often assume procrastination means they’re undisciplined or bad at time management, but the real issue is usually emotional avoidance. This conversation uncovers the hidden fears, perfectionism, people-pleasing, and resentment that keep you stuck in cycles of overwhelm and self-criticism.

Listeners will:

•  Understand the real emotional drivers behind procrastination and why discipline isn’t the problem 
•  Learn how fear, perfectionism, judgment, and resentment silently fuel avoidance behaviors 
•  Discover the one simple awareness shift that helps you move from self-criticism into action 

Press play to uncover the hidden emotion behind your procrastination so you can finally stop spinning your wheels and start moving forward with clarity.

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Life can be overwhelming, but on this podcast, you'll discover practical strategies to overcome overwhelm, imposter syndrome, and negative self-talk, manage time effectively, set boundaries, and stay productive in high-stress jobs—all while learning how to say no and prioritize self-care on the Overwhelmed Worki...

Transcript

Michelle Gauthier 0:00

You know what you need to do. You're just not doing it. You're listening to Overwhelmed Working Woman, the podcast that helps you be more calm and more productive by doing less. I'm your host, Michelle Gauthier, a former Overwhelmed Working Woman and current life coach. On this show, we unpack the stress and pressure that today's Working Woman experiences. And in each episode, you'll get a strategy to bring more calm, ease, and relaxation to your life. Hello, friend. Today we're going to be talking about procrastination, where you spend so much time thinking about something you should be doing, but not actually doing it. Let's dig in and understand what's going on here. Today, when you listen, you'll learn what procrastination is and why the way most people think about it is actually wrong. You'll learn about the real emotions that are driving procrastination and why identifying yours is the only thing that actually can help you move the needle. And then I'll share with you one awareness shift that changes how you relate to procrastination going forward. Everybody procrastinates sometimes. Some people really suffer from this, and some people it's occasional, but this is just part of the human condition.

Why Laziness Is The Wrong Label

Michelle Gauthier 1:16

Let's talk about what procrastination actually is, because I think what most of us believe about it is wrong. Maybe you've been taught that procrastination means you're lazy or you're undisciplined or you're bad at time management. And if you're this high-achieving, overwhelmed working woman who prides yourself on getting things done, labels like that can be particularly painful. So a lot of times women like us really beat themselves up if they perceive that they're procrastinating because it doesn't match what you know about yourself. But here's the truth: procrastination isn't about the task. It's about how the task makes you feel. It's not about avoiding the work, it's about avoiding the emotion that the work brings up. And your brain, which is so very good at its job, is trying to protect you from that discomfort by finding literally anything else to do. This is why you can knock 20 things off your to-do list in one afternoon and still not touch the one thing that actually matters. Doing those 20 things felt just fine, but the one thing, it just feels like something. Until you know what that something is, you'll keep trying to fix a discipline problem when you actually have an emotions problem. I saw this play out recently with a client who is a senior executive and totally a person who gets things done and she would clear her entire inbox, reorganize her files, prep for meetings that weren't for like another week, anything to avoid this one specific project that just kept sitting at the top of her list. And when we slowed down and looked at what was actually happening, it wasn't laziness or disorganization, it was fear. As we broke it down, we found out that she was terrified that if she started it and it wasn't perfect, that her team would lose confidence in her. That's a lot of pressure. And the task wasn't the problem. The feeling that was attached to the task was the problem and the thing that was preventing her from actually getting started.

Procrastination is Emotional

Michelle Gauthier 3:03

Once you accept that procrastination is emotional and that it's a feeling that you're avoiding, the next question is, what is the feeling? I'll tell you a couple of the ones that I usually see when I help my clients investigate this. Number one is fear of failure. What if I do it wrong? If you're a person who has a long track record of doing things well, starting something uncertain or messy means risking that track record. So your brain says, don't start, and then you can't fail. Right along that same line as perfectionism. So if I can't do it absolutely right to the A plus degree, I'd rather just not do it at all. And this one is pretty sneaky because you might say, well, I just have really high standards, but it's avoidance dressed up as quality control. Another one is fear of judgment. So what will people think about me if I do this? This one is especially common if you tend toward people pleasing. So if the task involves being seen, being evaluated, being controversial, if you're doing something that's new or different that could feel risky to you if you have a fear of judgment from other people. And then there's this fourth one that doesn't get talked about enough, but I think is really relevant for us, which is resentment. Sometimes you're avoiding doing the thing because on some level you don't actually want to do it. It's on your list, but it was never really your choice. Maybe it belongs to someone else's agenda or someone else's priorities, and your avoidance is your only form of protest. I think this too can tie into people pleasing. So I had a client who owns a business and is a mom of three. And she kept putting off her weekly business report that her partner wanted from her every Friday. And she told me she just couldn't make herself do it. And when we dug in, she realized that she'd never agreed to do the report in the first place. And it wasn't helpful to her personally. It had just been assumed and she took that on as a task without really thinking through it. So her avoidance wasn't procrastination. It was her way of saying no to something she never actually said yes to. And once she had that conversation with her partner and restructured the expectation, the problem just disappeared. She didn't have to get more disciplined. She just had to feel her feelings and get to the bottom of that and set a boundary about what she was and wasn't willing to do.

Ask Yourself One Question

Michelle Gauthier 5:14

So now if you're thinking, okay, procrastination isn't, doesn't mean I'm lazy. It means I'm having a feeling. So what am I supposed to do about that? But I just want to remind you that the first step to solving any problem is having awareness of it. Next time you catch yourself avoiding something, instead of asking, why can't I just start this? Just shift slightly and ask yourself a different question. What am I feeling right now about this task? And that's it. That's the shift. Is it dread? Is it anxiety? Is it boredom? Something that feels vaguely like fear, but you can't quite name it. You don't have to fix the feeling to move forward. You just have to name it. And naming it, getting specific about what's actually happening takes away a significant amount of its power. Here's what it might look like in practice. So instead of sitting down and thinking, I have to do this and I just can't make myself do it, you pause and you say, okay, I notice I feel dread when I think about this. Probably because I'm worried it won't be good enough. And that's it. You haven't solved anything yet, but you've moved from spinning in self-criticism to understanding what's actually going on. And from there, you can usually do something about it because most women are sitting in self-criticism. I'm so bad at this. I should just do it. What's wrong with me? And self-criticism is not a strategy. It has never helped anyone start a task. Awareness is not the whole solution, but it's the only real starting point. You can't solve a problem if you haven't clearly identified what's actually going on. So before you try another productivity system or another timer trick, get curious and just ask the question, how am I feeling? and find out what's actually going on. So here are the takeaways from today. Number one, procrastination is not a discipline problem and it doesn't mean you're lazy. It is a feeling problem. And the task isn't the issue, feeling the feeling attached to the task is. The tip that I'm leaving you with today is just to ask yourself a question, how do I feel about this task? And that will help you shift from being stuck and spinning into being able to take action. That is the starting point. If battling negative self-talk, saying yes when you actually want to say no, or feeling like you can't even trust your own brain anymore is keeping you stuck in that cycle of overwhelm. And every week you try to reset and every week is just as overwhelming as the one before. Have a solution for you to understand what's going on. The reason that the cycle keeps repeating is because you haven't identified the primary driver of what's causing your overwhelm in the first place. And that is exactly why I created the overwhelm quiz. Because when I work with my one-on-one clients, the first thing we do is find the biggest thing that is causing their overwhelm. And then we get to work on it. So I created this quiz. It takes less than two minutes, and it tells you the root cause of your overwhelm and exactly what your first step should be in solving it. Because you can't fix something that you haven't correctly named, just like I'm talking about with the procrastination. The link is in the show notes. Take it today and learn the reason why you're feeling stuck in overwhelm. Thank you for listening to the Overwhelmed Working Woman podcast. If you want to learn more about my work, head over to my website at MichelleGauthier.com. See you next week.