Procrastinating isn't a sign of laziness or 'lack of willpower,' neuroscientist says: How to 'get unstuck'

For many of us, procrastination comes with a lot of emotional baggage, says neuroscientist Anne-Laure Le Cunff, PhD.

“We’ve been taught to associate procrastination with laziness and lack of willpower, and so whenever we procrastinate, we start blaming ourselves for not doing the thing that we said we were going to do,” Le Cunff says.

Those negative feelings only make it harder for us to get back on track, according to Le Cunff, the author of “Tiny Experiments: How to Live Freely in a Goal-Obsessed World.”

From her perspective, procrastination shouldn’t be a source of shame — it’s “really just a signal from your brain that something is not working quite right at the moment,” she says.

“Instead of ignoring that signal, instead of trying to push through and blaming yourself in the process, what would it look like to just listen to that signal?” she continues.