Start where it hurts

How to stop procrastinating on… anything

Pick the thing you keep putting off. Each guide explains why that specific task gets postponed and what to do about it, right now.

29 entries · updated 4 September 2026

Chores

3-step start

Laundry, dishes, the bin, the form, the phone call. None of it is hard, all of it is pending. Here's how to clear the list.

Cleaning

3-step start

The mess grew gradually, but the guilt arrived all at once. How to clean when the whole place feels like too much.

Cold Outreach

3-step start

The prospect list is ready. The template is polished. The send button remains untouched. Rejection avoidance in its natural habitat.

Cooking

3-step start

You bought the ingredients. The ingredients are watching you order a takeaway. Here's how to actually cook.

Updating Your CV

3-step start

You've wanted to leave for a year. The CV is still the 2019 version. It's not the formatting you're avoiding.

Decluttering

3-step start

It's not dirt, it's decisions. Every object in the pile is a choice you've been postponing, some of them for years.

Difficult Conversations

3-step start

You've had this conversation forty times, all of them in your head. The other person hasn't heard any of them.

Dissertation

3-step start

Months of runway, one enormous document, and a supervisor you've stopped emailing. The perfect procrastination storm.

Emails

3-step start

The inbox is either checked forty times a day or avoided for a week. Both are procrastination. Here's the middle path.

Exercise

3-step start

You don't need more motivation, you need a smaller workout and a fixed time. Here's how skipped sessions become kept ones.

Going to bed

3-step start

Too tired to do anything, too unwilling to sleep. Revenge bedtime procrastination is real, named, and fixable.

Homework

3-step start

Set by someone else, due too soon, and less fun than literally anything. Here's how to get homework started and finished.

Job applications

3-step start

High stakes, vague process, and every application invites rejection. No wonder it's easy to avoid, here's the system that makes it routine.

Laundry

3-step start

Washing is easy. The chair of clean unfolded clothes is the real boss fight. Here's how to beat it.

Learning a Language

3-step start

Downloaded the app in January. Streak died in February. The language is still there, and so is the wanting to.

Learning to Code

3-step start

Four courses started, none finished, and a folder called projects with nothing in it. Welcome to tutorial hell.

Making Appointments

3-step start

The dentist. The GP. The overdue haircut. A two-minute call you have successfully avoided since spring.

Paying Bills

3-step start

The envelope you haven't opened. The banking app you haven't checked. Avoiding money news doesn't stop it being true.

Phone scrolling

3-step start

You opened it to check one thing. Forty minutes later you're watching a stranger renovate a van. The feed is not an accident.

Reading

3-step start

The stack on the nightstand keeps growing. Ten years ago you read constantly. The books didn't change.

Replying to messages

3-step start

You read it, meant to reply, and now it's been eleven days and replying feels like it needs an apology and a paragraph.

Revision and exams

3-step start

The exam is close enough to scare you and far enough to ignore. How to start revising when the pressure itself is the blocker.

Showering

3-step start

You want to be clean. You like being clean. You have been sitting on the bed in a towel for forty minutes. Here's why.

Side projects

3-step start

The app, the book, the business idea: you chose it, you love it, and you haven't touched it in six weeks. Here's why.

Starting a Business

3-step start

Three notebooks of ideas, forty saved videos, zero customers. The research phase has a way of becoming permanent.

Studying

3-step start

The classic. Vague goals, distant deadlines and a phone within reach, here's how to actually sit down and study.

Taxes

3-step start

The return you've been dreading is usually two evenings of admin. The dread, on the other hand, runs all year.

Work tasks

3-step start

Forty browser tabs, a tidy inbox, and the one task that matters untouched at 4pm. Sound familiar?

Writing

3-step start

The blank page is a mirror. Essays, reports, novels, blog posts: why writing invites avoidance and how to start anyway.

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