你是否也常常拖延任务，即使开始后发现并不像想象中那么糟糕？文章指出，我们的大脑常高估任务的令人不适感，导致长期回避。为了解决这一问题，文章介绍了一种名为“拖延演习”的简单方法。该方法鼓励人们在短时间内反复接触厌恶的任务，并记录对任务不适感的预测及实际体验。通过这种方式，不仅能帮助建立“开始”的习惯，还能校准我们对任务难度和不适感的认知，从而有效克服拖延。

📊 **认知偏差导致拖延：** 人们普遍倾向于高估完成厌恶性任务时的不适感，这种错误的认知是导致长期拖延的主要原因之一。例如，即使是处理税务这样令人头疼的事情，一旦开始并设定一个短时间（如5分钟），往往会发现其难度被大大夸大了。

⏳ **“拖延演习”法的核心机制：** 该方法提倡在设定的时间内（如一小时），随机选择一系列令人厌恶的任务，并进行短时间的（如3分钟）专注尝试。关键在于重复“开始”这个动作，而非完成任务本身，以此来对抗“启动障碍”。

✍️ **记录与反思的重要性：** 在每次尝试开始前，记录下你对任务不适感的预测（例如，在0-10的评分中），并在结束后记录实际的体验感受。通过对比预测与实际，你会惊讶地发现，许多任务的实际不适感远低于预期，例如平均评分可能只有1.8/10，这有助于校正大脑的错误判断。

🔄 **建立“开始”的习惯：** 通过在一小时内反复进行10-15次任务的启动尝试，能够有效地培养一种即使面对不喜欢的任务也能主动开始的习惯。这种重复性的练习能够显著减少对任务的畏难情绪，使“开始”变得更加容易。

💡 **实际体验与预期差异：** 实践证明，多数情况下，开始执行任务的实际体验非常轻松，甚至会因为计时器过早结束而感到失望，并愿意继续工作。这种“反直觉”的体验是对抗拖延症的有力证据，表明我们的大脑对任务的负面预期往往是夸大的。

Published on July 28, 2025 8:54 PM GMT

Have you ever been endlessly procrastinating on some task, but then once you eventually, finally do it, you realize that it is not half as bad as you thought?

Somehow, many of us keep overestimating how unpleasant it will be to engage with certain types of work to a degree where we put them off for months, building up guilt and resentment, when ultimately all we needed to have done was to grapple with some minor inconvenience.

On the other side, many of us know the feeling of having some drive to continue a thing once we've started it, even though it's supposedly unpleasant. I can dread doing my taxes for months, yet once I set a 5-minute timer to start working on them and get over that initial little hump, the sound of the timer causes disappointment in me rather than elation.

I think there are two primary issues here:

Our brains somehow manage to maintain a horrendous level of calibration when it comes to predicting how unpleasant it will be to engage with aversive tasksIt's easy never to build a habit of just starting unpleasant things to overcome that initial aversion

Fortunately, there's a simple intervention that can potentially address both of these issues.

The Procrastination Drill

The idea is pretty straightforward: you deliberately spend time starting to engage with aversive tasks over and over again, for short bursts of time. Additionally, you take notes on both your prediction of how unpleasant each task will be and your actual experience.

I suggest to proceed as follows:

Take some undisrupted time, say an hour.Make a list of tasks you find aversive, or have put off doing for some time for other reasons. I suggest using https://www.randomlists.com/random-picker - just type the list into the text box, one per line, and you'll be able to pick randomly from that list.For the duration of your session, repeat the following:
Pick one of your tasks randomlyNote down your prediction of how unpleasant working on that task will be, and whySet a short timer to work on the task. Either something like a 3 minute timer^[1], or, for extra spiceyness, a more random or Poisson timer such as this one: https://www.jacobh.co.uk/poissontimer/ (just put the desired average duration in seconds into the text box; when it's over, you hear a sound)Work on the task until the timer goes offTake a quick note how unpleasant it actually was to work on the task

First and foremost, going through this many times may build a habit of actually starting rather than procrastinating. Within this hour, you can easily reach 10-15 repetitions of seeing an aversive task in front of you and just going for it rather than looking for excuses for why now is not the right time to do it.

Secondly, by taking notes on how unpleasant you expect the tasks to be and how unpleasant your actual experience is, you may learn something new. When I first went through this, I leanred two things:

Even when making the initial estimates, I was often surprised how low the numbers were (rating expected unpleasantness from 0 to 10). In the months prior, while I was avoiding many of these tasks, it was easy to associate them with some vague but strong feeling of aversion. But actually thinking things through and putting a number on it, the average number I assigned during my first drill was merely 2.9/10 - much less than I would have expected beforehand.My actual experience was even less bad. My assigned numbers here averaged 1.8/10. Engaging with these tasks was, for the most part, completely fine!

What's more, I was indeed often disappointed or annoyed by the random timer going off, sometimes even ignoring it to continue working on the given task for at least a few more minutes. This went as far as me rewarding myself after being done with the session by continuing to work on one of the tasks I started. A rather paradoxical experience!

Of course, your mileage may vary. Maybe you don't suffer from the underlying issues as much, or maybe this exercise just doesn't do much for you - but I suspect for some people it can be eye-opening. So, if you've never done this kind of exercise before, trying it once may be worth a shot.

1. ^{^}

   The ideal duration may depend on the nature of your tasks, but I suggest to keep it short. The idea here is not to actually get much done, but to practice starting. In that sense it's also different from resolve cycles, even though the format is somewhat similar.

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