5-Min Energy

Overcoming Procrastination with Mindfulness

Mark Latimer

06 Mar 2025 — 2 min read

“Overcome“ 🎨 Visual Energy Inspired By Ernst Ludwig Kirchner

Procrastination isn’t laziness.

It’s avoidance. It’s resistance. It’s the quiet war between what you should do and what you feel like doing.

And for most people, it’s not about the task itself. It’s about the feeling attached to it.

The fear of starting.
The discomfort of not knowing how.
The weight of wanting it to be perfect.

So they delay. They fill the time with small, meaningless tasks. They tell themselves they’ll start when they feel ready.

Except readiness never comes.

Why We Put Things Off

Procrastination isn’t a time problem. It’s an emotion problem.

Your brain sees the task as a threat—maybe not a physical one, but a psychological one. So it avoids.

And avoidance feels good in the moment. But long term? It creates more stress, more guilt, more work.

The solution? Shift your approach.

How to Move Through Resistance

Mindfulness isn’t just about meditation. It’s about noticing your patterns, catching the resistance before it turns into a delay.

Try this:

Start before you feel ready. Action creates momentum. Motivation comes after you begin, not before.
Break it into micro-steps. Instead of "write the report," start with "write the report title." Instead of "go to the gym and workout" commit to "go to the gym and hangout" Lower the entry point.
Detach from perfection. Most delays happen because of fear—fear of not doing it well enough, of failing, of looking foolish. Done is always better than perfect.
Name the feeling, not the excuse. Instead of saying, I don’t have time, say I feel resistance. Naming it removes its power.
Create a start ritual. A deep breath. A five-minute timer. A song. A simple cue that tells your brain: It’s time to begin.

Start Now, Not Later

Some people wait for the perfect moment—the right mood, the right energy, the right clarity. But perfection is a lie.

Others start messy, start small, start before they feel ready.

And the ones who do?

They don’t just finish more.

They become unstoppable.

Because success isn’t about never feeling resistance.

It’s about moving forward.

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