Book SummaryThe Procrastination Cure, by Damon Zahariades

1-Page Summary1-Page Book Summary of The Procrastination Cure

The Procrastination Cure by Damon Zahariades is a practical handbook for understanding why you procrastinate and how to break the habit. A self-professed chronic procrastinator, Zahariades shares the strategies that helped him change his behavior, with the promise that you can apply the same techniques to manage your procrastination and enjoy a less stressful, more productive life.

Zahariades left a corporate job to create his own business focused on helping people be more productive. He’s written other books on the topic, including The Mental Toughness Handbook and _[The...

The Procrastination Cure Summary Procrastination Is Delay That Hurts You

Zahariades defines procrastination as delaying action on something that’s in your best interest to do now. He notes that this is more specific than just putting one task off in order to do something else, which can be a strategic choice. He emphasizes that everyone procrastinates—time is limited, and it’s human nature to choose an activity that will bring immediate rewards over one that will bring future satisfaction. Your goal, then, is not to get rid of this tendency, but to gain control over it so that it doesn’t cause problems in your life.

(Shortform note: Other experts, like Jane Burka and Lenora Yuen, define procrastination more broadly—and they say it isn’t always bad. In Procrastination, they say procrastination can be positive, negative, or neutral, depending on the circumstances. Zahariades’s definition matches closely with negative procrastination—when delaying a task has adverse long-term consequences. However, procrastination is positive or neutral when you’re delaying one activity to perform a...

The Procrastination Cure Summary The Fundamental Issue: You’re Wired to Seek Immediate Rewards

Zahariades identifies several reasons for procrastination rooted in the fact that your brain instinctively prefers immediate rewards to delayed gratification. By the same token, immediate negative consequences are a compelling deterrent, but delayed consequences aren’t. Put another way, procrastination is a conflict between the opposing interests of Present You and Future You. This explains why you may procrastinate when a task doesn’t energize you or when it seems like nothing bad will happen if you don’t do it. The more difficult and complex a task, the greater the reward your brain needs to perceive in pursuing it.

Next, we’ll discuss Zahariades’s recommendations if issues of motivation or reward cause your procrastination.

(Shortform note: From a neuroscience perspective, Present You might represent the amygdala, the region of the brain that controls your survival instincts, guiding you away from threats and towards rewards; while Future You stands in for the prefrontal cortex, where you do your higher-level reasoning and planning. The amygdala evolved much earlier than the prefrontal cortex, and even though the amygdala reacts faster, it’s not always accurate. When the...

The Procrastination Cure Summary Going Deeper: Examine the Thoughts and Feelings Behind Your Procrastination

We’ve explored some ways procrastination can result from the human brain’s search for rewards, but Zahariades considers other possible sources of the problem as well. He presents several models of how a task that stirs up strong emotions or triggers negative thoughts can lead you to procrastinate.

(Shortform note: Some experts believe procrastination is primarily a matter of emotional dysregulation, when emotions arise without your control. To help manage your emotions, Burka and Yuen, the authors of Procrastination, suggest mindfulness meditation and physical exercise.)

Overcome the Fears That Hold You Back

Zahariades suggests that the emotional culprit behind most procrastination is fear. This fear can take many forms, he explains:

• Fear of failure: When a task involves something you don’t have much experience doing, you don’t believe you’re good at, or that reminds you of a past experience that went badly
• Fear of success: When you’re not sure you can live up to high...

The Procrastination Cure Summary Getting Started: Understand What Stops You From Taking the First Step

The next group of issues that might be driving your procrastination relates specifically to initiating work on a task or project. Zahariades points out a few reasons why starting is the hardest part for many people. For one thing, if it’s a major undertaking, you may feel overwhelmed by the task at hand—and feeling overwhelmed for any reason makes it difficult to take action. You may also delay starting because you’re uncertain about what to do first or because you’re inclined to keep researching and considering options to avoid making a choice. Indecisiveness, Zahariades cautions, can be a symptom of some of the other causes of procrastination already mentioned, like aversion to risk, fear of failure, or perfectionism.

(Shortform note: In Predictably Irrational, behavioral economist Dan Ariely offers another explanation for decision-making struggles: He says [you have two...

The Procrastination Cure Summary Back to Basics: Tools for Keeping Track of To-Dos

Throughout the book, the author mentions a few tools that he implies you should include in your system for managing your time and tasks. Here, we’ve collected Zahariades’s tips and tricks for using lists and schedules to support your success.

The Lists You Need to Succeed

There are at least three lists Zahariades suggests you maintain. First, make a list of your short-, medium-, and long-term goals. Next, create a master to-do list of all your commitments. Use this to create your daily to-do list, which includes only the things you’re planning to do today. (Zahariades also mentions having additional, context-specific to-do lists, but he doesn’t go into detail about how these fit in to the rest of the system.) The final organizational component is a calendar where you can keep track of appointments and plan out your day. Next, we’ll take a closer look at how to use these tools.

(Shortform note: Zahariades’s method of managing tasks has a lot in common with the personal organization system David Allen describes in Getting Things Done. Allen recommends keeping a master list of “Projects” that have...

Shortform Exercise: Diagnose Your Procrastination Style

Zahariades recommends you identify which situations and circumstances lead you to procrastinate and reflect on the mental and emotional factors that might be driving that behavior.

Write down one of the root causes of procrastination that resonates most with you: fear of failure; fear of success; perfectionism; negative self-talk; issues around motivation, rewards, or consequences.