The actual reason why you procrastinate and how to fix it

It's 6:00 p.m. You just got back home, and you've got a task that has been lingering in your mind, waiting to be checked off your list. It could be a project for work or school, house chores that can't be ignored any longer, or maybe it's about spending quality time with your loved ones. The intentions are there, but so is the overwhelming sensation of having too much on your plate.

You realize that you have a deadline due tomorrow. You sit down, determined to start, but then distractions begin. A quick glance at your phone turns into a deep dive through social media, a video binge on YouTube, or maybe just staring into space, lost in thoughts. Before you know it, time has slipped away. You find yourself cooking a meal, taking an unplanned nap, getting lost in smaller, less important tasks—anything but the main thing you intended to do.

This is the cycle of procrastination, and it's not just about being lazy. When you're feeling lazy, you're more likely to just lounge around instead of filling your time with less important activities. But why do we procrastinate even when it feels bad? More importantly, how can we break free from it? Everyone procrastinates sometimes, and there are several reasons behind that.

Just because you procrastinate, it doesn't automatically mean you have ADHD. ADHD procrastination is different from normal procrastination, and it's more extreme. We will get into the differences between ADHD procrastination and normal procrastination pretty soon, but before that, we need to understand the common reasons for procrastination, even if you don't have ADHD.

The most common reason why you're procrastinating is because you're overwhelmed. This isn't just about the volume of tasks, but also about their complexity or maybe the emotional weight. When we are overwhelmed, it becomes difficult to know where to start and what to do, and it leads to procrastination. Everyone talks about task management, but in my opinion, energy management is far more important than getting everything done.

I used to think being constantly busy and getting more done was the answer to success and fulfillment in life, but I completely disagree now. We don't get satisfied when we finish everything on our to-do list; we get satisfied when we work on what truly matters. How can we make sure that we focus on what truly matters?

I use a method called daily highlight and Eisenhower matrix. Every day when I wake up, I open my notion template, Kaizen system, and I set my daily highlight. Even if I procrastinate the whole day, I make sure to get my daily highlight done. When I set my daily highlight, I'm more intentional and focused with my time. I might have a tough day, but if I get my daily highlight done, I usually feel satisfied and fulfilled for the day.

There are three ways to pick your daily highlight: urgency, satisfaction, and joy. What's the most pressing thing I have to do today? If you have something that absolutely must be accomplished today, make it your highlight. At the end of the day, which highlight will bring me the most satisfaction? Maybe you have a particular thing you wanted to try out for a long time. Picking a daily highlight for satisfaction helped me break the someday cycle.

When I reflect on today, I ask myself what will bring me the most joy. Not every hour has to be optimized; at the end of the day, our goal is just to be happy. It can be anything, like reading a book at a café, hanging out with a friend, or maybe just going for a silent walk. Some days, my daily highlight is based on urgency; some days, it's joy, and some days, it's satisfaction.

A good rule of thumb is to choose a highlight that takes around 60 to 90 minutes. Choosing my daily highlight according to these three criteria helps me focus on what truly matters for today. To manage the broader spectrum of tasks and responsibilities, I use the Eisenhower Matrix. Because my ADHD brain is so bad at prioritizing, it has helped me so much.

Basically, you organize tasks based on their urgency and importance so you can effectively prioritize your most important work. We are going to divide tasks based on their urgency and importance. Urgent and important may seem like similar words, but understanding the difference between the two is crucial. Urgent tasks require your immediate action; they have clear deadlines. Important tasks will bring you closer to your goals.

Based on this, we divide all the tasks into four quadrants. Quadrant one is "Do." You'll place any tasks that are both urgent and important. These are the things with clear deadlines and consequences for not taking immediate action. For example, finishing a last-minute project that is assigned to you, or if your sink springs a leak and your whole kitchen floods with water.

Quadrant one tasks are inevitable. There should be no question about which tasks fall into this quadrant, because these are the tasks that are at the front of your mind and are likely stressing you the most. Spending too much time on quadrant one tasks leads to stress, burnout, and the sense that your day is out of your control.

I found myself yesterday crying in the shower for literally no reason. That's why we make time for quadrant two. Schedule not urgent but important tasks are the activities that help you achieve long-term goals. These might not have a deadline, making it easy to put them off in favor of more urgent tasks. For example, exercising, socializing, learning a new skill, or maybe a hobby or more traveling. You will tackle these tasks right after you tackle the tasks in quadrant one.

This is the sweet spot of time management, a spot where you're focused on problems, but also on opportunities and growth. That's why every single week on Sunday, I try to do my weekly reflection using my Kaizen system. It tells you based on the task inputs you've done during the week how much time you've spent on each quadrant and what to do next.

The next quadrant is "Delegate." This is where you put any tasks that are urgent but not important. These are things that need to be done but don't require your specific skills or affect your long-term goals, like getting the groceries or cleaning your house or booking flights. If you have the choice, invest money in delegating to buy time so that you can focus more on quadrant two. If you can't delegate these tasks, try to keep them from taking over your day. Save quadrant three tasks for times when you are low in energy, rather than putting them first in the morning.

So do them at the end of the day, and don't spend your most precious time here. Try to batch them all together and have just like a sprint of time where you do these quadrant three tasks. Once you've gone through your to-do list and added to the first three quadrants, you will notice that some tasks are left over. The tasks left over are the tasks that were neither urgent nor important. Place these remaining items onto your to-do list in the fourth quadrant, which is "Delete."

These unimportant, non-urgent distractions are simply getting in the way of you accomplishing your goals. When you're planning your tasks with the Kaizen system that my team and I built from scratch specifically for my ADHD brain, you can easily add tasks on the go and categorize them according to the quadrant.

You have a feature that syncs all the tasks and shows automatically how much time you spend in each quadrant, and based on that, it will give feedback on what to do next week. If you're interested in my Kaizen system, check the link in the description below.

Before talking about the difference between ADHD and procrastination, let's have a good understanding of what ADHD is. ADHD is a term that describes a way of being in the world. It's neither entirely a disorder nor entirely an asset; it's an array of traits specific to a unique kind of mind. ADHD is a curse and a gift at the same time. ADHD brains are built to jump from idea to idea, hobby to hobby, sensation to sensation.

You know, we can't do nothing. I sometimes have a hard time shutting my brain off when it's time to sleep because ideas never stop in my brain—all these video ideas, thumbnail ideas, you know, the things that I want to do never stop. People with ADHD often embody contradictions. We might struggle with focus, but then suddenly lock into a state of hyperfocus. One moment I'm pouring hot water for coffee, and next, I've accidentally spilled it on my hand and burned it.

A couple of weeks ago, some common signs of ADHD are here. There are so many silly things that we do because of ADHD. We get anxious from calms, and we are late to meetings because we zoned out while standing outside of the conference room. Or we go down rabbit holes on the internet instead of doing our work, and we have time blindness. We just don't have a sense of time when we're doing something we enjoy; our time passes by, and we don't even recognize that we got hungry.

You don't have to be hyperactive to have ADHD. Hyperactivity is usually seen in males and kids. ADHD in females, especially in female adults, is quite different. An important question to determine whether you have normal procrastination or ADHD is to ask yourself how long you have had these problems. If you think about how long you've been struggling to manage your time, to concentrate, and to control your impulses—like when I was trying to walk past my school entrance, I literally hit my head on the wall because I didn't see it.

Would you say it's been just weeks or months, or more like years? Picture yourself as a child; were you dealing with any of the same problems then? Do you remember also having trouble sitting in school, completing your homework, or maybe finishing a hobby project? Following the rules on a playing field, making and keeping friends in your neighborhood. According to the book "Taking Charge of Adult ADHD," having sudden short-term symptoms usually means it's not ADHD. Not having any ADHD symptoms as a child or as a teen probably means you don't have ADHD.

ADHD-like symptoms that arise only in adulthood or that haven't been going on for a very long time are probably being caused by something else, like extreme stress or maybe other mental issues. In many clinical studies, 98% of the patient symptoms started before the age of 16. It's also important to remember that normal procrastination often doesn't include the things that we enjoy.

I got diagnosed with ADHD, and sometimes I even procrastinate eating or just going to the toilet. I'm super hungry, and the food is in front of me, but I stare at it and I don't eat it. I procrastinate—why? I don't know. People with ADHD aren't crazy or dumb, even though we sound like that. Just like people who need glasses to see clearly aren't dumb or crazy or lacking—you know, just like they need glasses, people with ADHD need adaptations that support them.

ADHD symptoms can't be fixed, but they can be reduced by making adaptations. You need to take care of your sleep, diet, exercise, bad habits, and you might need to get professional help too. I will make more detailed videos about each part, but to manage all these, you need a good system.

I get asked so often how I am so disciplined and goal-driven with ADHD. I'm not disciplined, okay? I literally have the self-control of like a three-year-old. Last night, even though I had this deadline, I spent six hours playing a game, even though I told myself I would stop after 10 minutes, but I didn’t. I'm not disciplined; I just have a good system.

I've tried a bunch of apps and services that were labeled ADHD-friendly for years, but none of them could solve my problems. So I've decided to combine all the methods that I use day-to-day to manage this chaotic brain, and I sat down with a developer again and again and again, and created my own system. It's called the Kaizen system.

Kaizen means the act of continuous improvement in Japanese. It really highlights the function of this template, and it's also my life motto. That's why it's the channel banner. In the template, I guide you on how to set your goals correctly according to psychology so that you will struggle less with motivation. We go through the goal checklist to make sure you don't fall into the common goal-setting pitfalls, and after that, we set a micro-commitment that you will do every day to achieve this goal.

Don't be scared when you hear the word "every day." We set the micro-commitments so easy that even with ADHD, you can stay consistent. I use the micro-commitment method to establish the habit of working out. My brain never shuts up, and my thoughts are constantly crossing my mind, and I'm also scared of forgetting something.

For those times, we have a section called brain dump, where you can declutter your mind by jotting whatever crosses your mind. You can always revisit them and turn them into tasks so that you won't forget anything. We categorize the tasks based on their urgency and importance so that we know exactly what to do in that given moment. Even though I've been using the Eisenhower matrix for years, I always forget which quadrant is which and what I'm supposed to do.

So we have a visual representation for that to reduce distractions and get to know your procrastination patterns better. We have a section where you estimate how much time you will spend on a task and compare it with reality. You don't need to do this every single time, but when I do this, I'm more intentional and it also improves my sense of time a lot. I used to think it takes me around two hours to write a script; in reality, I just realize it takes me five hours. No wonder why I'm always trying to catch up with my deadlines.

People with ADHD tend to have perfectionism, and we blame ourselves a lot. Sometimes we procrastinate because we're perfectionists. I don't know if you're into this MBTI thing, but my MBTI personality is INTJ, and I like planning; but my ADHD is driving me nuts, and I hated myself for a long time for not acting the way I want myself to act.

That's why I started to do weekly or bi-weekly reflections—because sometimes I forget—so that I set a realistic expectation to myself and identify the patterns of procrastination I have. The template automatically calculates how much time you spent in each quadrant of the Eisenhower matrix and tells you what to do for the next week based on this feedback.

You can rearrange your schedule and be more realistic for the next week. You'll also be able to reflect on your micro-commitments so that if you weren't able to be consistent last week, you can adjust. The important thing that I learned about having ADHD is having a system that allows you to fail because you will fail—like I promise. At least from my personal experience, I always fail, but failing is fine.

With time, dealing with ADHD is kind of like developing a muscle. The more you understand yourself and your patterns, the more you will be realistic and also be less frustrated with yourself. Obviously, it's not a cure. Having a system that works for you is crucial, and I'm so sorry for talking about my notion template over and over and over again. But I genuinely think it's really good, and I'm so proud of it. I wish we had created it much earlier so that I wouldn't have lost my mind and gotten angry at myself every single day.

ADHD or not, if traditional methods of productivity didn't work for you, my Kaizen system might work. It's designed by a person with ADHD—me—who gets you because these are the things that I struggle with every single day. I have big goals not only to offer a notion template, but also when you get the Kaizen system, you will gain access to a community of people who have similar issues like you.

You will also get access to lessons and courses by me that dive deep into ADHD and how to deal with these issues scientifically, along with my personal tips. Also, we're doing a crazy Black Friday sale, so if you're interested, check it out from the link in the description. I really like it, and I think you will like it too. If you found this video helpful, I'm sure you will find this comprehensive video about ADHD helpful too.