WHY Do We Procrastinate as Overachievers?? Here Are the 4 Triggers That Lead to YOU Self-Sabotaging Your Own Life.

Do you wonder too, WHY do we procrastinate, even when you genuinely want to get your shit done? This post is dedicated to the ambitious, loving-to-get-shit-done overachievers, who keep staring at the same task while cursing themselves to hell, and drowning in self-hate because of it.

Let’s not sugarcoat it: procrastination doesn’t just steal time. It steals your mood, your confidence, your bandwidth and most importantly, your sense of self-trust & self-respect. You delay one thing, and before you know it, your inner self-talk starts spiralling & spinning your whole personality into some kind of lazy Bond villain who needs to be murdered at least twice. But in all honesty, you’re a normal, decent, feeling human who actually cares a lot. You just feel stuck and can’t really grasp the WHY behind the inaction. And sorry to say, but the inner drill sergeant makes that ‘stuckness’ AT LEAST ten times worse.

What you’re going to learn is why we procrastinate as overachievers, or at least, what the triggers are! This way, you know how to spot the four tripwires that make you unconsciously ‘abandon ship’. You’ll learn how to stop treating procrastination like a moral failure, and instead, start psychoanalysing it like a signal from your nervous system. Most importantly, you’ll learn how to shift the focus on safety, structure, and a SLAY then PLAY payoff loop that makes action feel possible again.

After you have learned to decode your procrastination patterns, you will be able to start faster, recover quicker after a slip, and choose your next move with clear-headed rationality instead of panic and punishment. As a result, you’ll feel more grounded, more in charge, and way more aligned with the things that resonate & are true to you.

This post is all about understanding ‘why do we procrastinate’, so you can recognise the triggers, stop that harsh self-judgment and start moving again in the right direction with rebellious self-control.

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Why Do We Procrastinate

Let’s just kick this door right open and start with dismantling the toxic masculine belief about willpower straight up: Procrastination is not you being ‘weak’. Procrastination is you seeking a sheltering harbour away from real or perceived pain.

Because this is about your nervous system hijacking your rational thinking. It sees a task, predicts discomfort, and then tries to protect you with delay, distraction, or dumb little side quests that feel safer. Can you see how punishment makes this dynamic even worse? Because if you respond with shaming yourself, you basicallyconfirm the threat and turn the whole thing into psychological internal warfare. No wonder it takes so long to get out of it!?

What I would like you to consider is this: your ‘next level’ won’t come from bulldozing your bandwidth. It will come from making action feel safe, and then bribing your nervous system like the brilliant creature it is. That’s where a Dopamine Dosing Discipline comes in. You SLAY, then you reward with PLAY. You put in effort, then you take back with a planned, pre-approved dopamine dose or other self-reward that refuels youwithout wrecking your adulting life.

Now let’s talk about those four triggers that make you reach a standstill, so we can get ahead of them, alright? We’re going to tackle: overwhelm, boredom, fear of failure, and the ‘I can’t start until I have the whole plan’ trap. So let’s go!

Trigger #1 – Overwhelm.

Overwhelm is the fastest way to make you procrastinate, because your nervous system reads ‘too much to carry’ as ‘danger’. Your system doesn’t see the small steps anymore. It sees a thousand tiny decisions, possible mistakes, and the risk of getting swallowed by the whole project. So you freeze. And then you scroll. And then you hate-scroll your own life choices. Lovely innit?

Here’s the shift: when you feel overwhelmed, you don’t need more pressure. Don’t do something small either, first, you need to manage the pressure, and make sure it goes down! So hit that pause button, walk away from it all, and take as much of that darn pressure off as you can! Wash your hands with warm water, sit on the couch for a few minutes, watch something relaxing, and make sure you’ve truly been ‘out of it’ before coming back to the battlefield of chores.

RELATED POST:
How To Cope With Being Overwhelmed: The Case For Taking Back Control

Next, make the threat feel less personal. Overachievers often make tasks mean something about their worth. So the moment it’s hard, willpower shows up and whispers, ‘if you don’t do this perfectly, you’ll be called out for it’. Do me a favour, and kick that voice in the shin. Your worth is not negotiable with anyone, let alone with internalised brain bullies.

Finally, give yourself a clear endpoint for the first sprint. Set a timer, and not a life sentence. When it rings, stop on purpose. Then, no matter how it went, you earn a small dopamine dose. That is not ‘being soft’. That is you building a positive reinforcement feedback loop where your nervous system learns: effort equals payoff, not endless suffering.

Trigger #2: Underwhelm.

Underwhelm looks harmless, but it’s super sneaky. Needing meaning is one of lives necesities, and it’s the most overlooked AND misunderstood. If a task feels like pointless admin, your system won’t really mobilise. You don’t procrastinate because you ‘lack discipline’. You procrastinate because the task offers zero dopamine, zero meaning and zero emotional payoff.

So make the reward visible, and tie it to something that DOES have meaning. That workout equals a body that can carry your dreams, not just your groceries. That budgeting session equals the financial safety you carve, and even the ability to buy pleasure on purpose instead of panic-spending out of stress.

Then, stop pretending you must enjoy it. You only need to pull yourself through it! Give it a container: a short sprint, a playlist, a coffee, a “get it over with” ritual. Boring tasks love structure because structure makes them finite. Whatever you do, don’t ever expect it to become fun or motivating. Just acknowledge that it’s a drag, and get it over with as fast as you can.

Also, don’t wait for ‘motivation’ like it’s a flaky friend who might show up. Start ugly, start annoyed, start with a grumpy face. The moment you move, your brain catches up. Momentum is the self-controlled version of inspiration.

Quick detour before we go into fear and perfectionism: If you love the SLAY then PLAY concept, but you keep turning your rewards into chaotic binges, do grab our free Dopamine Dosing Discipline printable. It helps you build a personalised dopamine dosing menu, set healthy boundaries around your guilty pleasures, and do ComeBackPrep so you can actually stop the fun and return to adulting life without a hangover of shame. In other words, you get pleasure, whilst simultaneously holding on to your power.

Ready to give the Dopamine Dosing Discipline a try yourself? Sign up for rebellious self-control with this FREE Self-Reward Strategy. Simply fill out the form below:

Trigger #3: Fear of Failure

If you procrastinate hardest on the things you care about most, let me reassure you again: you’re NOT lazy. However, it’s more likely that your nervous system feels threatened. Fear of failure makes every action feel like a permanent threat to the current status-quo. You imagine the outcome, the consequences, the judgment, and suddenly your laptop becomes like a witness stand. No wonder you ‘can’t focus’, right!?!

Overachievers often grew up with praise for results, not for effort. So your nervous system learned a brutal equation: flawless performance equals emotional safety. That’s WHY you subconsciously stall. Because delay becomes the sheltering harbour. Do you see? If you don’t try, you can’t ‘fail’. At least, not publicly.

RELATED POST:
How To Stay Committed To Your Goals: An Overachiever’s Strategy To Get Whatever You Want (Fair And Square)

Now for the antidote: let’s stay aware of thescientifically proven fact that your work gets better from mistakes, and gets worse from perfectionistic tendencies. So, in order to overachieve your work, you NEED to make room for mistakes and fuckups. You need that data to get better, it’s part of the growthcurve! You need attempts & reps. So give yourself permission to make a version that sucks on purpose. Yes, on purpose. That one mindset shift breaks the spell, because it tells your brain: you’re safe even while you learn. And from there, you can always mould it into ‘what it should be’.

Also, I know this is hard, but please, at leastTRY! Try to separate outcome from identity. A rejected pitch means the pitch needs work, not that you are a joke. There is a huge difference between DOING something wrong, and BEING a bad person. Don’t identify things that don’t say anything about you. Because. A messy workout means you showed up, not that you’re doomed. Talk to yourself like a strict but deeply caring coach, not like a bully with a megaphone. Always, always, always, try to practise CARE over punishment.

Finally, choose a small ‘exposure therapy’ practise for yourself. Just to get comfortable with the discomfort. Send the email to one person. Share the draft with one friend. Take one action that proves you can survive discomfort. That is how you build kick-ass confidencethat is going to last.

Trigger #4: Not Knowing The Whole Plan

This one is THE overthinker classic.I have been here, SO. Many. TIMES! You tell yourself you can’t start yet because you don’t have the full plan. You need the perfect system, the perfect sequence, the perfect timeline, and preferably a crystal ball and a blueprint on a wall with red threads connecting all the subjects like a homicide detective… But. Meanwhile, the task sits there, ageing bad like milk, and you keep‘researching’ the blueprint like it’s a hunt for the Holy Grail. The problem is that you never start, never put research into action, and therefore, never test the waters.

But by now, you’re catching on to the pattern, right? All behavioural blockages are tied to PAIN! Sooo… what it truly is about is safety again. A full plan feels like protection from mistakes. Planning gives you the illusion of control, while action forces you to meet reality. So you cling to the planning phase, because it hurts less than being wrong.

Here’s the fix: swap masterplans for next-steps. A plan is not a prerequisite for movement. Movement also creates the plan. Decide what the next 10 minutes look like, and only that. Your job is not to see the whole staircase. Your job is to step on the first step and take that darn step. After that step, you can reassess, sketch and scheme away, and then take another step. Keep the ball rolling, whilst also building out that masterplan. That’s how you become more strategically effective without getting trapped in the self-doubt roundabout.

If you want to level up fast, also set a rule: planning counts only when it produces an output. A draft, a sketch, a calendar block, a checklist. Otherwise, it’s sad but true: it’s just intellectual procrastination in a fancy outfit.

Why Do We Procrastinate (Summary)

Why do we procrastinate as overachievers? Because procrastination acts like a sheltering harbour against real, or perceived PAIN! This perceived pain, like overwhelm, boredom, judgment, and the panic of not having control is being protected with your procrastination. So, when you attack yourself for it on top of it, you add even more threat, and your nervous system doubles down on… more delay.

The tools are simple in concept, but hard emotional work to put into practice. Hit that pause button when overwhelmed, and reassess the scenario. Make boring tasks non-negotiable, expect them to be a drag and tie it to what deeply resonates & aligns with you. Treat fear of failure like a training ground by allowing messy prototypes and small exposure. Replace masterplans with next-steps, and then run a quick feedback loop. Finally, always reward your efforts with self-rewards and optin on a SLAY then PLAY routine, and dose dopamine with healthy boundaries, so effort has an actual payoff.

Picture a week where you start faster, recover quicker, and stop turning one delayed task into a whole identity crisis.

I wish you that kind of power and freedom. I truly believe this is a possibility for all of us, as long as we choose to care, instead of to punish procrastination. So! Now, go get a system, get a grip, and get shit done <3

This post was all about understanding ‘why do we procrastinate’, so you can recognise the triggers, stop that harsh self-judgment and start moving again in the right direction with rebellious self-control.

We aim to help you out as much as possible, but please keep in mind that the content is only for general informational and educational purposes. We offer our services based on independent research and life-experience only, and so our strategies can never serve as a substitute for professional advice. Trust me, we do not have 'everything figured out', are all still huge works in progress, but hey, what works for us, might work for you too! This is allll up for you to decide... It might not work for you, and that's okay, so cherrypick the stuff that resonates and leave the stuff that doesn't, and let's go!