Tim Arrigo explains procrastination as avoidance rooted in poor emotional regulation. When you can't tolerate the feelings a task triggers, you delay it instead. He identifies three behavioral styles—approaching, attacking, and avoiding—and traces procrastination to the avoiding pattern, a learned behavior tied to how you manage emotions.
But yeah, procrastination and setting goals and habits and sticking to them. Yeah, procrastination is a— it's actually, uh, it's a coping mechanism, right? It's, it's an avoidant behavior. So you have 3 types of behaviors. You have approaching, you have attacking, and then you have avoiding, right? So procrastination is avoidance, right? Procrastination is an inability to self-regulate. I can't handle I can't handle the way it makes me feel. So what I'll do is I'll avoid the way it makes— it's really, it's a failure to self-regulate. It's a failure to regulate our own emotions. And as a result of not being able to regulate ourselves, we just avoid the action we need to take and we push it off for a later date. So procrastination is something you learn.
