Stop Procrastinating: Stoic Philosophy, Akrasia, and Psychology to Overcome Delay
🎧 Show Notes: Procrastination
Host: John Sampson
Episode Theme: Moving beyond the belief that procrastination is laziness. It is a profound signal rooted in emotional avoidance, and how ancient philosophy combined with modern psychology offers a four-step framework to overcome it.
Procrastination by the Numbers:
15–20% of the population suffers from chronic procrastination.
Among college students, this figure is higher, with 50% reporting consistent procrastination.
🧠 The Dual Lens: Philosophy Meets Psychology
Procrastination is often thought of as poor time management, but this episode redefines it as a failure of emotion management. We avoid tasks because they create short-term discomfort, anxiety, self-doubt, or fear of failure.
Philosophical Perspective
Aristotle's Akrasia: Knowing the right thing to do but lacking the internal will or discipline to act on it. It is a "voluntary neglect of rightful action".
Stoicism & Memento Mori: A moral failing and a "greatest waste of life" because it deprives us of the only thing we control: the present. The reminder that "you could leave life right now" should determine what you do, creating urgency.
Plato's Charioteer Metaphor: The charioteer (reason) must manage the noble horse (spirit/discipline) and the ignoble horse (appetite/base pleasure) to guide the soul toward purpose.
Psychological Perspective
Emotion Regulation Theory: Procrastination is a coping mechanism to avoid negative feelings associated with a task, creating a cycle of short-term mood boosts and long-term stress and guilt.
Temporal Motivation Theory: Motivation is high when Expectancy (confidence) and Value are high, but low when Delay (time until reward) and Impulsiveness are high. Deadlines work because they shorten the Delay (hyperbolic discounting).
Neurobiology & Dual-Process Theory: The impulsive limbic system, seeking immediate gratification (dopamine hit), overrides the rational prefrontal cortex when faced with an anxiety-provoking task.
✅ The 4-Step Framework to Overcome Procrastination
The most effective strategies blend ancient wisdom with modern techniques:
1. Awareness
Stoic Daily Reflection / Mindfulness: Before you change a pattern, you must see it clearly. Pause and non-judgmentally identify the specific emotion driving the avoidance (e.g., fear, boredom, self-doubt).
Ask yourself: "What am I feeling right now?"
2. Reframe
Stoic Dichotomy of Control / Cognitive Restructuring: Challenge irrational, perfectionist thoughts ("I have to be perfect or I'm a failure"). Focus energy only on the one thing you can control: your actions in the present moment.
Focus on: Taking positive action now, not the perfect outcome.
3. Align with Values
Aristotle's Virtuous Action / Intrinsic Motivation: Increase motivation by connecting the undesirable task to a core personal value (e.g., doing this task because I want to be a dependable person).
Ask yourself: "How will this task serve who I want to become?"
4. Take a Micro-Action
Aristotle's Habituation / Behavioral Science: Starting is the hardest part. Shrink the task down to something tiny to create momentum. Use Implementation Intentions (pre-planned actions) to remove ambiguity.
Commit to: Open the document, write one sentence, or work for just ten minutes.
The Big Takeaway: Every time you choose action over avoidance, you're not just getting something done, you're building the kind of person you desire to be. You don't have to wait until you 'feel ready'—just take the next small step, today, not tomorrow.
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Welcome to the Weekly Wisdom podcast with your host, John Sampson.
We’ve all been there, staring at a blank screen. Deadlines looming over our head, maybe it’s a commitment you made weeks ago, or a task that has been on your to-do list for what seems like forever. When we think about it from a rational perspective, we know we just need to start, that the work isn’t going to go away, the time we have left to complete the task is getting shorter, and we know our anxiety is only going to get worse. But, we have this unconscious force pulling us away, and all of a sudden, we’re checking social media, grabbing a snack, or starting on some unimportant and mindless task that we can knock off our list just to make us feel like we’re accomplishing something. We know what we need to do, but we somehow do the opposite.
We call this procrastination, and 15-20% of the population suffers from chronic procrastination. Among college students, it’s worse, 50% report consistent procrastination, with 80-95% reporting that they do it at least occasionally.
Now, we often think of it as laziness or poor time management. But what if it’s something more profound? What if it’s a signal, a message from the unconscious about how we’re relating to our time, our fears, and our purpose?
Today, we’re going to explore procrastination through two lenses, ancient philosophy and modern psychology, to uncover why we do it, and more importantly, how to respond in a productive way when we find ourselves doing it.
By the end of this episode, you’ll have a framework that blends the wisdom of these philosophers with the science of motivation and behavior change. And you’ll walk away with practical tools you can start using today, not tomorrow.
So, if procrastination isn’t just laziness, and it’s not just bad time management, then what is it? To answer that, we need to look at it through two lenses, one polished by centuries of philosophical reflection, the other sharpened by decades of psychological research.
For philosophers, it’s a moral question, a failure of character. For modern psychologists, it’s a matter of self-regulation, emotional avoidance, and the intricacies of the human brain. Let’s start by defining procrastination in both worlds, because once we see how these perspectives overlap, the path to overcoming it becomes a lot clearer.
So, what exactly is procrastination then? Most of us think of it as the act of putting something off, but that is just the symptom, not the cause.
From a philosophical perspective, the Stoics might say that it’s a moral hesitation, a failure to act on what is within our control. Aristotle called it akrasia, knowing the right thing to do, but letting desire or fear pull us in another direction. You might call it a lack of self-control or a weakness of will.
Aristotle discussed how human excellence requires not merely knowledge of the good, but the stable, habitual capacity to act on that knowledge. And, in his view, someone who is procrastinating knows what they ought to do, but nevertheless fails to do it.
He likens this person to a “city which passes all the right decrees and has good laws, but makes no use of them.” So, this procrastinator knows what needs to be done, but lacks the internal discipline to see it through. Procrastination then, in Aristotle’s view, is a voluntary neglect of rightful action due to deficient character.
For the Stoics, procrastination was a failure to live in the present, focusing too much on what is outside of our control, and lacking the will power to embrace necessary discomfort. This then was a profound moral failing, that we would waste the time that we have by not doing the things that we should be doing.
Seneca says in “On the Shortness of Life”, “yet postponement is the greatest waste of life; it deprives them of each day as it comes, it snatches from the present by promising something hereafter.” From a modern perspective, we might say that tomorrow isn’t promised to us, so we need to take full advantage of the time we have now, which, as the Stoics believed, is what is within our control.
Like Seneca, Marcus Aurelius also believed that procrastination was a failure of character and encouraged himself throughout his meditations not to let time slip by, saying, “Remember how long you’ve been putting this off, how many extensions the gods gave you, and you didn’t use them. At some point you have to recognize what world it is that you belong to; that there is a limit to the time assigned you, and if you don’t use it to free yourself, it will be gone and will never return.”
He also says, “you could leave life right now. Let that determine what you do and say and think.” The concept of Memento Mori, or a reminder of death, was an important principle in Stoicism, so Seneca and Marcus saw the misuse of the time that we do have as a failure to act in the right way, and therefore a failure of character.
Their belief goes back to the dichotomy of control, a key tenet of Stoicism. What is in our control as it relates to time is the present, not the past and not the future. Think how many times you have put something off thinking that you would get to it tomorrow and then something else comes up and you no longer have time to do what needs to be done.
From a psychological perspective, we can define procrastination as the voluntary delay of an intended action, despite expecting to be worse off for the delay. Researchers have shown that it’s rarely about poor time management. Rather, it’s more typically about emotion management. We don’t avoid things because we can’t schedule them, but because they create discomfort, anxiety, self-doubt, boredom, or fear of failure. It feels better to do something else in the short-term, but it costs us in the long-term.
There are different psychological theories of the causes of procrastination.
Cognitive theories suggest that procrastination is the result of maladaptive thought patterns, distorted self-perceptions, and misjudging the task itself. If we think that a task is going to be boring, or unpleasant, then we try to avoid it. This theory suggests that many times those thoughts are distorted by overestimating how difficult the task will be; and this is especially true if we don’t believe that we are capable of completing it; or our thoughts can be distorted by underestimating how long it will take us to complete it. So, we think we can delay it because it will only take X amount of time, when in reality, it will take much longer.
Behavioral theories suggest that procrastination is a learned behavior and that we reinforce it by creating patterns of avoidance and immediate rewards. We get that immediate reward through the delay itself when we stop ourselves from doing something that we believe will be unpleasant. I’m sure you’re familiar with delayed gratification, and this is really taking the opposite approach of that, where the immediate gratification outweighs the future reward.
These behavioral theories also suggest that our environment and our habits or routines can play a big role in our procrastination. If there are distractions readily available, or if we have a habit of delaying or stopping a task to do something else, it increases the likelihood that we will procrastinate more when trying to start a similar task in the future.
Temporal Motivation Theory combines some of the cognitive and behavioral theories and also adds in an element of motivation. The theory states that motivation for any given task at a given time is determined by four key factors:
- Expectancy – confidence in one’s ability to achieve the goal
- Value – importance or desirability of the outcome
- Delay – amount of time until the reward is realized
- And impulsiveness – sensitivity to delay and tendency to favor instant gratification
Motivation increases with higher expectancy and value but decreases with greater delay and higher impulsiveness. As an equation, it would be: motivation equals the product of expectancy and value, divided by the product of delay and impulsiveness.
This helps account for the increase in motivation we experience when a deadline is approaching. The amount of time until the reward is realized gets shorter, which in turn reduces the denominator and increases our motivation. This is called hyperbolic discounting, and any of us who have been procrastinators at some point in our lives can understand this feeling and how quickly we begin to act on something we’ve been putting off in order to meet that deadline.
Self-regulation, self-control, or what I think of as discipline, is another key theory. Recent studies have shown that self-discipline, a feeling that you can effectively regulate your own behavior, is strongly correlated with lower procrastination. The more self-discipline we have, the more competent we feel, which then strengthens our intrinsic motivation. Going back to the temporal motivation equation, increasing your feelings of competence will increase your confidence in your ability to achieve your goal, which then increases the numerator in the formula and therefore increases motivation.
Another prominent modern theory on procrastination is emotion-regulation, which states that we do it as a way to cope with negative emotions or moods. So, if a task is associated with anxiety, frustration, boredom, fear of failure, or self-doubt, we’ll avoid it in order to avoid these feelings. A study in 2020 found that people who had trouble managing unpleasant emotions also reported more academic procrastination.
However, this creates a cycle where we get that short term mood boost, like the behavioral theories suggest, but we cause ourselves more long-term stress and guilt, which then leads to more anxiety. Because we struggle to effectively predict our future emotional state, we don’t realize how much worse these feelings of guilt and anxiety will be, and the cycle worsens with time.
From a neurobiological standpoint, procrastination results from the limbic system overcoming our prefrontal cortex. When there is an anxiety-provoking task, the limbic system creates avoidance, steering us toward emotionally satisfying distractions, and if the prefrontal cortex is unable to overcome these impulses, procrastination will result.
Dopamine also plays a role, as we get the short-term reward from that instant gratification of delaying a task we don’t want to do. At the same time, when deadlines approach, the dopamine drive rises, which enhances our motivation, focus, and even creativity. This helps explain why some of us who are naturally procrastinators tend to perform well under time pressure.
If we zoom in on the moment we procrastinate then, we can see that we’ve got this tug-of-war going on. On one side is comfort, the pull toward safety, ease, and the familiar. On the other is growth, the push toward challenge, uncertainty, and the possibility of failure.
Plato’s charioteer metaphor captures this beautifully. In this metaphor, the soul is compared to a chariot pulled by two horses. The charioteer represents reason or intellect, the part of the soul that should be in control, and the part responsible for guiding us toward a higher purpose. Then there are the two horses, a noble one and an ignoble one.
The noble horse is driven by spirit and seeks honor, discipline, and listens to the voice of reason, or the charioteer. The ignoble horse is driven by appetite and is stubborn, seeking base desires and pleasures, often fighting against the charioteer, or reason. The charioteer’s job is to manage these two horses, using the noble horse to help control the ignoble one.
Modern psychology echoes this in the dual-process theory: our reflective system knows the long-term value of action, but our impulsive system is louder in the moment.
This conflict is universal. Regardless of whether we consider ourselves to be procrastinators, the question isn’t whether we feel it, but how do we respond when this conflict shows up. And that’s where philosophy and psychology together can give us a roadmap.
Having explored what procrastination is, why it happens, and the inner conflict that fuels it, we can now see how the wisdom of the ancients was, in a way, practicing modern psychology without the benefit of modern scientific studies and technology. And the most effective strategies for overcoming procrastination today are a powerful combination of timeless philosophical principles and modern psychological techniques.
One of the clearest connections is between the Stoic concept of Dichotomy of Control and the modern technique of Cognitive Restructuring. Epictetus taught that we can only control our own actions and efforts, not the outcomes or the opinions of others. We explored this thought in our first episode on seeking external praise. Procrastination when viewed through this lens, is often driven by focusing on things outside of our control, such as the fear of failure or a desire for perfection, in the sense of what others will think of us if we fail, or if the result is not perfect.
Cognitive restructuring aims to help a person identify and challenge irrational, unhelpful thoughts and replace them with more balanced ones. This is a direct, practical application of Stoic philosophy, which tells us to stop worrying about a future outcome that is outside of our control. Cognitive restructuring tells us to challenge the irrational belief that you must be perfect and focus on the actionable present. This empowers us by getting us to focus on what is within our power.
Similarly, the Stoics believed that it took time to develop good character, and that you should not be overwhelmed by the enormity of it, but take it step by step. Cognitive behavioral therapy also teaches to break down large projects into smaller, more manageable goals. By chunking out large tasks into smaller tasks, it becomes less intimidating and allows us to get started and then build momentum through smaller wins.
Aristotle believed that the best way for us to acquire virtue was through habituation, that repeated actions build character, making it easier and more natural over time to exhibit our desired behavior. Good habits make prompt, appropriate action easier, while bad habits form resistance, inertia, and the tendency to delay. So, procrastination signals a lack of forming these good, or virtuous, habits. You may have the right intention and knowledge, but you don’t possess the character or disposition to take action in a timely way.
When we think about it, you can come up with many examples of how much habits influence our daily lives. You have a routine in the morning; when you’re getting ready for bed; when you’re about to sit down to watch your favorite show. Many of these habits form naturally, but, you can also form them intentionally. In psychology, the term implementation intentions is used to describe pre-planned responses to anticipated obstacles to action. You can use these pre-planned responses to develop new routines for yourself. You can set a specific time that you will begin your task and that you will work on it for just ten minutes to start. Or, before I do this other activity, I will work on this task for a period of time. If you repeat these same actions in the same context each day, it becomes a habit cue, which will reduce procrastination by removing any ambiguity about your next action.
One of Aristotle’s core beliefs was that our actions should be tied to our values. One approach informed by temporal motivation theory is to increase our intrinsic motivation, doing something because it feels meaningful and is aligned with your values rather than due to external pressure. So, if we can reframe a task from one that we believe to be meaningless, into one that we can connect with our personal values, we can increase our motivation to take action. Even if that alignment is simply that I’m going to do this task because I’m the type of person who others can depend on.
Mindfulness is one emotion regulation technique that involves increasing our own awareness, in a nonjudgmental way, of our emotions and urges, reducing automatic avoidance. Marcus Aurelius was doing this inherently when he was writing his meditations to himself.
A big part of the teachings from the Stoics on this subject is designed to enhance our motivation by committing ourselves to accountability. In those meditations, Marcus touches on these when he says to himself:
“Concentrate every minute on doing what’s in front of you with precise and genuine seriousness, tenderly, willingly, with justice. And on freeing yourself from all other distractions. Yes, you can – if you do everything as if it were the last thing you were doing in your life, and stop being aimless, stop letting your emotions override what your mind tells you”
and
“At dawn, when you have trouble getting out of bed, tell yourself: “I have to go to work – as a human being. What do I have to complain of, if I’m going to do what I was born for – the things I was brought into the world to do? Or is this what I was created for? To huddle under the blankets and stay warm?”
He knows that he will encounter this inner conflict we discussed before, as we all will, and he knows that at times he will be weak, so he’s readying himself with the thoughts he will need to overcome by using personal accountability that aligns with his values to therefore increase his intrinsic motivation to act.
In both Marcus’s and Seneca’s teachings, there is an urgency created as it relates to taking action now. This is the theme of Memento Mori, and Marcus talked about it when he said you could leave life right now. Seneca discusses it throughout his essay “On the Shortness of Life.”
In one section he says, “in guarding their fortune men are often closefisted, yet, when it comes to the matter of wasting time, in the case of the one thing in which it is right to be miserly, they show themselves most prodigal.”
We tend to think that we have all of the time in the world, but the reality is that it can be gone in an instant, so we should guard it, and make sure that we’re making good use of it while we have it.
Because, as he also says, “the greatest hindrance to living is expectancy, which depends upon the morrow and wastes today. You dispose of that which lies in the hands of Fortune, you let go that which lies in your own. All things that are still to come lie in uncertainty; live immediately!”
Whether you think of this in terms of life ending before you know it, or just that things always come up unexpectedly that will take your time, the takeaway is the same. You can’t count on tomorrow, you can only control the present, so act accordingly.
“Why do you delay, why are you idle? Unless you seize the day, it flees. Even though you seize it, it will still flee; therefore, you must vie with time’s swiftness in the speed of using it, and, as from a torrent that rushes by and will not always flow, you must drink quickly.”
There’s an urgency that he’s stressing in this text.
Think back to the temporal motivation equation, motivation equals the product of expectancy and value divided by the product of delay and impulsiveness. And remember we said the phenomenon known as hyperbolic discounting reflects the fact that the time reward decreases when the deadline approaches. So, what Seneca is doing, is he’s shortening the deadline and therefore reducing the time reward. And he’s doing this by pointing out that the time reward itself is flawed, that we’re not guaranteed tomorrow, and that we need to act now.
So, let’s move from theory to practice. Here’s a four-step framework that blends this ancient wisdom with modern psychology, and it’s something you can start using today.
Step 1 is Awareness
Before you can change any pattern, you have to see it clearly. The Stoics practiced daily reflection, noticing their thoughts without judgment. In modern psychology, this is called mindfulness. So, the next time you catch yourself avoiding a task, pause and ask yourself, “what am I feeling right now? Is it fear, boredom, overwhelm? Clearly identifying what it is that’s driving your procrastination will take away some of its power and allow you to develop a better plan for overcoming this obstacle.
For example, if you are afraid to start because you are afraid that whatever you produce won’t be perfect, realize that’s a pretty common cause of procrastination, and there are ways around it.
One way is to remove the focus on quality at all just to get yourself moving in the right direction. Jock Willink, the host of the Jocko Podcast talks about this as it relates to his writing. He says that he commits to writing 1,000 words a day, but that they don’t have to be good. He’s just focused on getting himself to get the writing in, exercise those muscles, and he knows he can go back and edit later. But, what happens when you build these repetitions, is that the quality naturally gets better over time, without you having to focus on that perfectionism.
Step 2 is reframe
Focus on what it is that you can control, which are your actions in the present moment. Take those thoughts you identified in the awareness step and challenge those that are irrational, like “I have to be perfect or I’m a failure”. Instead, just concentrate on taking positive action and taking advantage of the present moment
Step 3 is to align your actions with your values
Just as Aristotle said, our actions should be aligned with our values and our ultimate purpose. Modern psychology tells us that this alignment will help our intrinsic motivation, making it much easier for us to begin that task we’ve been putting off. You can try asking yourself how this task will serve who it is that you want to become. Or, you can think of it in terms of, “I want to be the type of person who begins these tasks at this time, or completes them within a certain period of time.”
Step 4 is to take a micro-action
As Aristotle discussed, we build ourselves through habits, and that takes time and happens through small, repeated acts. Through behavioral science, we know that starting is often the hardest part. So, shrink the task to a small action: open the document, write one sentence, set up the first tool. Create the momentum that will become your ally.
Breaking it up into smaller tasks will also help you create more of a sense of urgency if you also include much shorter deadlines for completing those small tasks. When you chunk it up in this way, you can help reduce the time delay reward and trick your brain into thinking about this as a priority item. You will also help to reinforce these actions through the release of dopamine. Once you’ve set that goal and defined timeline, and then you hit it, you will get a dopamine release. And the good news is that it’s the best kind of release, because it’s one that you’ve earned by doing the actual work, rather than by procrastinating.
This framework isn’t about forcing yourself into productivity at all costs. It’s about acting in alignment with your values, even when discomfort shows up. And when you practice it, procrastination will shift from sabotaging you to signaling you, then you’ll be able to respond in a productive way.
So, what have we uncovered today?
Procrastination isn’t just a bad habit to crush, and it isn’t just poor time management. It’s a signal, telling us about our discomfort, and if we listen closely, we can identify what is causing that discomfort, which will help us to overcome. The Stoics remind us to act on what’s within our control. Aristotle challenges us to align our actions with our values. And modern psychology gives us the tools to work with our minds, not against them.
The truth is, you don’t have to wait until you ‘feel ready’. You don’t have to win the entire inner battle in one decisive moment. You just have to take the next small step – today, not tomorrow.
Here’s my challenge for you: before the day ends, choose one thing you’ve been putting off. Apply the four-step framework we explored – awareness, reframing, alignment with your values, and micro-action – and see what shifts.
Remember, every time you choose action over avoidance, you’re not just getting something done, you’re building the kind of person you desire to be.
Until next time, thank you for listening and make sure you subscribe.
