JUST DO IT! How to beat procrastination

It's human nature to delay until tomorrow what should be done today. But does it make us happy? The Weekly asks the experts how to rein in our natural tendency to procrastinate and tick off that to-do list now!

- GENEVIEVE GANNON

It took famed procrastinator Truman Capote six years to complete his seminal true crime book, In Cold Blood, not because he was dragging his feet but because the resolution was tied up with the fate of the two perpetrators. After he delivered the manuscript in 1965, Capote declared his next work would be “easy by comparison”. However, as he lay on his chaise longue, pencil in hand, his writing process stalled. He asked his publisher for an extension. Then another, and another. Capote died in 1984 having never finished the book. His formidable case of writer’s block earned him the reputation as one of the 20th century’s most notorious procrastinators.

We all know the heavy feeling of malaise that can descend when we are required to write a difficult report, clean the oven, file our taxes, or perform any of the necessary tasks of adult life. We do this even though we know delaying the inevitable creates stress and makes it harder to begin.

“I think it’s part of the human condition,” says Megan Pozzi, an unofficial procrastination expert. “As long as there are tasks that are unenjoyable then procrastination will exist.”

Since 2019, Megan has observed procrastination up close. She’s the Support for Learning team leader at Queensland University of Technology (QUT), where she and colleague Elizabeth Naish run an event called Night Against Procrastination, part of a program to help students combat it. They try to normalise procrastination without encouraging it.