5 Causes of Procrastination: How to Stop Stalling & Get Ahead of the Game

You sit down at your computer, swearing to yourself you’ll stay focused today and knock out writing all these articles. Two hours later, you’ve stress cleaned the kitchen, reorganized your email inbox, and gotten lost in a research rabbit hole on the bioactivity of ashwagandha.

It’s me. I’m the problem.

It’s not like we’re lazy - I got a lot of stuff done this morning. But procrastination isn’t about laziness; it’s about avoidance. You’re staying busy, but you’re not really doing anything - you’re just finding excuses not to do THE thing. And all it does is make you more stressed because you’ve made everything more urgent by whittling away the time you have to do it. Then you feel sh*tty about yourself for it all. 

But guess what? It’s (sort of) not your fault! If you know the reasons you’re avoiding the stuff you definitely should be doing, it’ll make it easier to just… do it. Let’s look at 5 major types of productivity avoidance and how to work around all your workarounds.

1. Being Overwhelmed: Progress Paralysis 🫠

Whether you’ve got one big task or what seems like 400 small ones, the weight of what’s imminent can paralyze you. That’s because your brain interprets that feeling as a threat, so it signals to avoid it, relaying the message: “Why don’t we just… not?”. 

How to just… do? Break down what needs to get done and when. If it’s just one big thing, separate it into steps. Not only does creating lists help you organize your time, but it helps you organize your mind - both lead to feeling more capable and less wary of getting down to it. Plus then you get to check things off the list as you go, and everyone knows how good that feels.

Need a little help? Anti-procrastination adaptogens like ashwagandha and calming nootropics like theanine can reduce physical and mental reactions to stress, helping you get out of that waiting-until-the-last-minute cycle.

2. Feeling Low-Energy ALL THE TIME 🚩

Procrastination can also be a sign of fatigue - physical and/or mental. And it is HARD, if not impossible, to get motivated when you’re running on fumes. We don’t sleep well; we’re always at a screen; we’re always behind. It’s discouraging. Plus, fatigue makes you hungry for bad stuff like fats and sugars, so then you mess up your systems even more by eating Taco Bell 3x a week.

Those crunchwraps, though.

You need energy to get motivated and become that productive person you know you are inside. That doesn’t mean OD’ing on caffeine. It means prioritizing the things that help your body create, store, and use energy in a functional way. Take steps to improve your sleep health, eat a nutritious diet, and keep a regular exercise routine and stick to it even when you don’t want to.

For a healthy energy boost? Nootropic drinks with paraxanthine offer a caffeine-free solution to innate energy. Ginseng and lion’s mane are great helpers, too.

3. Distractions Are Everywhere! 🫨

Don’t feel like finishing that presentation? Doom scroll on your phone and pretend it’s just to keep up on current events. Not here for the 6 hours of studying you need to get in today? Waste half of it messing with the formatting of your study guide. Need a 30-minute break to get some sun in? Whoops - you just took a 2-hour walk and listened to 3 episodes of your favorite podcast. The options for distraction are endless!

A great way to keep focused is to break your time down the way you broke your tasks down. Ask yourself to stay engaged for 30 to 40 minutes at a time and then give yourself a 5 or 10 minute distraction break. It’s actually good for neural plasticity to be able to switch from task to task. 

During focus times, put your phone away and turn off notifications so you’re not tempted. And working in a pro-focus supplement like saffron or eleuthero can help, too.

4. Fear of Failure: The Procrastinating Perfectionist 🆘

Much like feeling overwhelmed, the everpresent imposter syndrome can stop even the most impressive person from performing at their best. You’re so worried about doing it well that it’s easier to not do it at all - that way you can’t fail at it or embarrass yourself. But you also can’t be your best self that way. It limits potential failure but it also limits potential success.

There’s a phrase used in many professional fields - “Good enough for government work”.  Aim to do something well, not best-of-all-time-flawless well. Action kills fear because it makes the unknown real, taking away that ominous whatif feeling. Stop thinking that term paper has to be perfect off the bat; write a draft that’s just a mind dump and worry about refining it after. Try hanging that drywall for the first time - who cares if you drilled the screws in too far? That’s what patching mud is for.

Adaptogen stacks can help with this, too. An energy drink might make you more anxious, but feel-good drinks with ashwagandha or reishi promote dopaminergic activity in the brain, which means better mood, less stress, and more motivation.

5. You Simply Don’t Want to Do It 🙄

Being alive is full of having to do things you don’t want to do. Because society. This one might be the most difficult to overcome. After all, exactly zero people enjoy massive inventory audits or tediously scrubbing out the fridge twice a year. But here we are. This is how to-do lists get so backed up that we’re all the way back to #1 - overwhelmed.

One solution is to find the why of it all. What’s the purpose? What’s the benefit? Why am I doing this? There’s a decent answer to at least one of those. When you find it, cling to it like a branch at the edge of a cliff. And when you’re finally done with that dreaded task, do something you want to do, simply because you want to do it.

#treatyourself

And double down on that ashwagandha - get that dopamine going!

Get it Together & Get Going with MTE 🚀

Best practice for becoming your best is to first, do best by yourself. That means taking that time for positive talk, self-care, and self-encouragement. Support yourself the way you’d support any loved one - why is that so hard, by the way? Asking for a friend. A super-convenient, healthy way to start is to add MTE to your daily routine. Stacked with adaptogens for stress, nootropics for focus and motivation, and paraxanthine for a caffeine-free alternative for energy, MTE is the ideal companion when you’re struggling to stay on task. 

And now that you’ve got some insight into why you always stall on grocery shopping or finishing that assignment for your statistics lab, it’ll be easier to get yourself out of that distracted state and into a clear, focused zone. An anti-procrastination drink and feel good supplement for energy and focus, with regular use, MTE will totally revamp your motivation and productivity game. Go ahead - quit stalling and check it out!