“Sometimes our procrastination takes the form of magical thinking, where we imagine that we did a task we hadn’t. I’m often surprised when I notice the unmade bed in my bedroom. ‘Strange,’ I’ll think. ‘I thought I made it this morning!’”
Why It’s Hard to Stop Procrastinating. We find it challenging to complete numerous mundane and monotonous tasks, such as folding laundry, matching socks, paying bills, filing papers, opening mail, and so on. It’s easy to convince ourselves to tackle them at another time.We may say, “I’ll do it later,” when we don’t want to do something at that moment — but we don’t want to do it later, either. We just don’t want to do it! We wish the task would mysteriously and magically go away.
Other times I leave a task for later, return, and the task is still waiting for me. I am surprised it wasn’t automagically done!— like cleaning the kitchen — I was the one who needed to do it. I couldn’t magically summon a housekeeping robot to rescue me.