In the case of procrastination, acceptance involves recognizing and agreeing that you are addicted to delay.  Acceptance involves looking at the urge to procrastinate without judgment. By itself, the urge to procrastinate is neither bad nor good: it is just a response that happens because our brain is trying to protect us from dangerous and/or boring things.

Accepting the Urge to Procrastinate Doesn’t Mean Procrastinating 

Accepting the urge to procrastinate does not mean you are agreeing to procrastinate. It just means you are being honest about your struggle. It means replacing your hatred of the urge to procrastinate with acceptance. The more you fight the urge, the more you focus on it, and it’s more likely that you will procrastinate.

Accepting the urge to procrastinate means not engaging in actions to remove or decrease the urge itself. It involves letting the urge to procrastinate be there as it is.

The next time you feel an urge to procrastinate coming on, try agreeing to accept it. Don’t fight it: Don’t let the urge to procrastinate become responsible for how you think, feel, and act.

Remember that your urge to procrastinate is in no way a measure of who you are as a person. The more you can separate yourself from the urge the more you can just watch it. For some, it can be helpful to give this urge a name in order to accept it and to clearly draw a line between you and the urge. When the urge appears, you can think, “Oh, there’s Procrastinus, he thinks completing these taxes is life-threatening, but I’m not really in danger here.”

Instead of fighting the urge to procrastinate, read my next post about focusing on your values to overcome procrastination.

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(c) 2014-2021, Monte W. Davenport, Ph.D.