Matt D'Avella on procrastination, reviewed: the two-day rule and friends
Matt D'Avella's 2020 video approaches procrastination through habit maintenance: rules like never missing two days in a row, shrinking the required effort until resistance fades, and removing friction from the environment. It is personal practice presented as such, with less hype than most of the genre.
Watching loads the player from youtube-nocookie.com. Video by Matt D'Avella; embedded for review purposes.
| Creator | Matt D'Avella |
|---|---|
| Length | 10 minutes |
| Published | 2020 |
| Type | Creator commentary |
| Best for | Treating procrastination as a habit-maintenance problem |
What the video argues
D'Avella, a documentary filmmaker known for minimalism and year-long self-experiments, frames procrastination as what happens when a habit lapses and restarting costs too much. His tools: the two-day rule, never skip the habit twice in a row; scaling the task down until it is too small to resist; and arranging the environment so the right thing is the easy thing. The tone is unusually honest for the genre, he presents himself as a procrastinator managing the condition, not a guru who cured it.
Where it aligns with the research
Each tool has a research cousin. Missing one day does not derail habit formation, Lally's habit study found exactly that, which quietly justifies the two-day rule's tolerance for a single lapse. Shrinking the task is the getting-started principle. And environment design is among the better-supported self-regulation strategies, with Svartdal's work showing how situational friction shapes procrastination. None of these are cited in the video; the alignment is convergence rather than scholarship.
The honest criticism
It is a video about maintaining momentum you already have, and is weakest where procrastination is worst: the project you cannot start at all, the avoidance driven by dread rather than lapsed routine. The habit frame also does not fit one-off aversive tasks, the tax return is not a habit. Watch it for maintenance strategy and the calm production, not for a way out of a deep avoidance spiral.
Anecdotal habit advice that converges with the habit-formation and environment literature without citing it.
Lally, P., van Jaarsveld, C. H. M., Potts, H. W. W., & Wardle, J. (2010). How are habits formed: Modelling habit formation in the real world. European Journal of Social Psychology, 40(6), 998-1009. https://doi.org/10.1002/ejsp.674
Svartdal, F., Dahl, T. I., Gamst-Klaussen, T., Koppenborg, M., & Klingsieck, K. B. (2020). How study environments foster academic procrastination. Frontiers in Psychology, 11, 540910. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.540910
Related
Don't break the chainEnvironment designLally's habit formation studyHow long habits really take
Frequently asked questions
Does the two-day rule have research behind it?
Not directly, but it is consistent with Lally's finding that missing a single day did not materially harm habit formation. The rule adds a hard stop before one lapse becomes a lapsed habit, which is sensible even though the specific rule is untested.