The hidden cost of putting things off

Every month, the same ritual plays out at my desk. A reminder pings: submit gas and electric metre readings. And every month, I do the same thing - hit snooze, push it to tomorrow, repeat. Some months, I don’t bother submitting the readings at all.

After snoozing the reminder for the fourth day in a row, I finally decided to just get up and do it. Out of curiosity, I set a timer to see how long it would actually take. Two minutes and 20 seconds. That’s it (and it only took that long because I had to reinstall the app after months of neglect).

That moment got me thinking: how many other things do I procrastinate over, convincing myself they’ll take too much time or effort, when in reality they take minutes to complete? Worse, how much time do I waste avoiding the task compared to simply doing it?

I decided to test this theory. For weeks, I’d been walking past a pile of school uniforms waiting to be bagged up for the donation bank. Each time I saw it, I scolded myself, made a mental note to sort later/tomorrow - and yet I left it sitting there all summer. When I finally tackled it, the job took less than 10 minutes. Then there was the box of paperwork that had been cluttering up my office. I’d been moving it from one corner to another for months (even tripping over it a few times), only to discover it took just 23 minutes to sort, file, and shred.

The real mess wasn’t the uniforms or the paperwork - it was the hours I wasted tripping over them in my house and in my mind. That’s when it hit me: I wasn’t just ‘bad’ at getting things done - something deeper was going on. The more I thought about it, the more I realised procrastination isn’t really about time at all, it’s about how our brains handle discomfort.

The truth is, avoidance doesn’t always look like doing nothing. More often, it looks like doing everything except the thing that matters. I’ll catch myself doom scrolling through social media, reorganising my inbox or adding things I probably don’t need to my Amazon wishlist (ironically, they’re usually linked to organisation). In the moment, these distractions feel easier, even justifiable - but really, they’re just sophisticated forms of procrastination. And they come at a cost: more anxiety, more shame and the same unfinished task still waiting for me - only now with extra time wasted circling around it.

Each time I finally completed one of these tasks, I felt a small wave of relief and satisfaction - a quiet dopamine hit. The task was done, the weight lifted, and the space (both physical and mental) was clear again. This made me wonder: if the reward is so instant and obvious, why do we keep putting these things off?

The answer lies in how our brains are wired. Procrastination isn’t laziness - it’s avoidance. Our brains are wired to avoid discomfort, and even the smallest job can feel bigger than it is when we imagine the effort ahead. That sense of heaviness is often enough to keep us from even starting. In the moment, hitting snooze on a reminder feels easier than facing the task. But in reality, we’re just trading short-term comfort for long-term mental clutter.

In the end, procrastination isn’t really about the size of the task - it’s about the time and headspace it quietly steals. A job that takes five or 10 minutes can cost me weeks of low-level guilt, endless avoidance rituals and hours lost to distraction. And that’s time I can never reclaim.

So, the question became: how do I stop wasting more of it? Spotting the problem was easy - fixing it is where the work begins. I haven’t shaken off procrastination completely, but I’ve found a few tricks that make it harder to fool myself - and stop me from trading ten minutes of effort for weeks of avoidance.

• Do it now. If it takes less than two minutes, I just do it - meter readings, quick replies, putting things away.
• Start small. For bigger jobs, I give myself five minutes. Starting is the hard part, and once I’m moving, I usually keep going.
• Call it out. Doom scrolling or fussing with my inbox looks busy, but it’s just procrastination in disguise. Naming it helps break the spell.
• Chase the finish. I try to hold on to the dopamine of completing a task. That relief lasts far longer than the empty hit of scrolling.
• Remove friction. I make starting easier by removing excuses - charity bags ready, apps updated, shredder plugged in.

The jobs I put off usually take less time than choosing something on Netflix - and yet I’ll still spend weeks putting them off. Procrastination, it seems, is the longest-running series in my life. But unlike the shows I binge, it doesn’t entertain or enrich me - it just steals time I can’t get back. What I’m learning is that even small steps forward feel much better than standing still.