Walking through Newton Center days after the big storm, I noticed a man shoveling his sidewalk. Why now, I wondered, days after everyone else had cleared their walks? I almost crossed the street to ask, but caught myself. Maybe he’d been away. Maybe sick. Maybe it wasn’t even his property. Or maybe – like most of us – he’d simply been putting it off.
We’ve all been that person, staring at what needs doing and… not doing it. Not because we’re bad people, but because we just can’t seem to get it together. We stall out.
Here’s what makes this struggle so universal: our brains evolved to prioritize immediate threats and rewards because that’s what kept us alive. But modern life demands something unnatural – the ability to consistently choose distant, abstract future benefits over present comfort. The relentless planning, deadlines, and delayed gratification that define our days? These are relatively recent demands on the human psyche. Research suggests that 80-95% of us struggle with procrastination. We’re not broken. We’re human.
When we face a task, we don’t just assess the work itself – we experience emotions about it. Anxiety: “What if I fail?” Boredom: “This is so tedious.” Resentment: “Why should I have to do this?” Insecurity: “I don’t even know how to start.” Procrastination, researchers now understand, is primarily an emotion regulation problem. We delay not to avoid the task, but to escape the uncomfortable feelings the task triggers.
This creates a vicious cycle. Avoiding the task provides immediate relief, which reinforces the behavior. But avoidance breeds new negative emotions – guilt, shame, mounting anxiety. These make the task even more difficult when we finally face it, which makes us more likely to procrastinate again.
Every morning, I wake up telling myself: “Treadmill time!” And then I immediately… check my phone for messages. Minutes pass. I glance at the clock: “Hmmm, probably don’t have time now before work.” So I skip it, knowing full well I’d have a better day if I did thirty minutes on the treadmill followed by fifteen minutes of meditation. Sometimes I bypass the phone entirely and just do it. Sometimes I give in to feeling good now and guilty later.
Our tradition has language for this struggle: yetzer tov and yetzer hara – not simply “good inclination” versus “evil inclination,” but the ongoing tension between immediate gratification and intentional living. The rabbis understood that this isn’t about moral superiority. It’s about being human.
Judaism begins with the assumption that we are flawed. We avoid difficult tasks. We duck confrontation. We choose the easier path. This isn’t wickedness – it’s the predictable way we try to manage uncomfortable emotions. The tradition doesn’t demand perfection; it asks for awareness and return.
But here’s what matters: excessive self-judgment only makes procrastination worse. The shame we pile on ourselves becomes yet another uncomfortable emotion to avoid, deepening the cycle. The wisdom tradition suggests something different – not harsh self-punishment, but patient self-awareness. Not “How could I be so lazy?” but “What am I feeling? What am I avoiding?”
At a certain point, the yetzer tov breaks through – not through willpower alone, but through recognizing that continued avoidance will only compound our suffering. The voice that says: this won’t get easier by waiting. The feelings won’t improve on their own. Start small. Start now.
rebhayim
Before Shabbat 