The 6 Types of Procrastination {12.16.25}

In today’s episode, we break down the six distinct ways of procrastination and how each one delays your progress in a different way. 

Once you understand the pattern you fall into, you can interrupt it faster, reclaim your momentum, and rebuild the self-trust you need to reach your goals.

Inside the episode, you’ll learn about:

1. The Overplanner
Why constant organizing and researching feels productive but secretly keeps you from starting.

2. The Avoider
How dodging discomfort stretches your timeline and shrinks your confidence.

3. The Perfecter
The truth about waiting for the perfect moment that never comes.

4. The Overthinker
How too many mental loops drain your energy and block decision-making.

5. The Distractor
Why staying busy with low-stakes tasks is not the same as moving forward.

6. The Fader
What happens when initial excitement fades and consistency disappears.

You’ll walk away knowing exactly which type you lean toward and the small shifts that help you break the pattern before it derails your goals.

If you’ve ever wondered why you “can’t just start,” this episode hands you the clarity you’ve been missing.

Want to push your procrastination aside and start 2026 strong? Join Jen's free 5-Day Procrastination Detox Challenge for small business owners, January 5th - 9th.  Learn more here: https://www.jenlaffin.com/pdc26

Thank you for listening!


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Transcript

0:44

welcome back to the Goal Getter Guide. I am your host and Guide, Jen Laffin. Today we're talking about. Procrastination and in particular the six different ways that we can procrastinate. Now, I know there are a lot of feelings around procrastination and a lot of ways that we use procrastination to shame ourselves, and I want the goal of today's show to be that a little education. Is going to go a long way in helping you to stop procrastinating. Plus, at the end of the show, I'm going to tell you about a free five day procrastination detox challenge that I have coming up in just a few weeks here. So make sure you stay tuned until the end. So procrastination is not. A moral failing. We all procrastinate in one way or another. It is not a sign that you're lazy. It's simply that primal brain choosing comfort in the moment instead of your progress in the long term. And the more that you understand how you procrastinate, the faster you can interrupt the pattern and get back into motion. So let's dig into these. Six types, how they show up and what you can do to shift each one. Alright. The first type of procrastination is the over planner. The over planner loves structure. They love clarity. They love organizing. They can spend hours researching the right tool, color, coding their calendar, rewriting their plan, and perfecting their notion dashboard. And all of this feels productive and that feels really good. It gives them a little dopamine hit that says, Hey, look at me. I'm making progress. But there's one thing missing. Action. The Overplan forgets that no amount of planning replaces the data that you actually get from doing the work. Over planning delays momentum. And the more you delay, the heavier the goal feels, which makes you only want to procrastinate more. So here's how you break that pattern. Set a planning timer and when it ends. You move even if the plan isn't perfect, especially if the plan isn't perfect. The second type of procrastinator is the avoider. The avoider procrastinates for one reason. The task feels uncomfortable. Maybe it's something that's emotionally risky or new, or maybe it's something that you haven't done before and your brain is whispering to you. This is too hard. Avoiders, don't avoid the task. This is really important. You're not avoiding the task, you're avoiding the feeling that comes with the task, but when you avoid discomfort. Your goals stretch farther and farther away, and your confidence shrinks because you teach your brain that you can't handle hard things. So how do you break this pattern? Name the feeling you're avoiding. Is it fear? Is it uncertainty? Is it possible embarrassment? Once you name it, you remove its power and can do the task in spite of it. The third type of procrastinator is the perfector, the Perfector is convinced that there will eventually be a magical moment where clarity, motivation, time, and confidence all magically appear at once. But you and I both know that moment does not exist. Perfectors believe that they need the perfect plan, the perfect idea, or the perfect conditions before they begin, but all that does is guarantee that they'll never get started. Perfectionism kills momentum, and momentum is the only thing that leads you to mastery. How can you break this pattern, lower the bar not on your goal? This is important not on your goal, but on your first step. Your only job is to begin messy, and I love to use the five minute rule for this one. The five minute rule states that if you are getting the urge to procrastinate. Because you're waiting for perfection. Tell yourself that you are going to start working on whatever it is that you are feeling like you need to avoid that. You're going to start working on it for five minutes, and at the end of five minutes, if you don't like what you're doing, you can quit. You can stop for the day. The fourth type of procrastinator is the overthinker. The overthinker gets stuck in mental loops. Should I do this or should I do that? What if it doesn't work? What if it does work? And then I'm not ready for the next step? That one, by the way, is a fear of success. You replay possibilities. You run different scenarios, and you try to predict outcomes you cannot possibly know yet. Decision making becomes your bottleneck and every minute you spend thinking about acting. Drains your energy. It erodes your self trust and it makes withdrawals from your self-trust bank. You stop believing that you can make strong decisions. So how do you break this pattern? Tell yourself that you need to make a choice within 24 hours, any choice, because action brings clarity, not continuous thinking. The fifth type of procrastinator is the distractor. Distractors love, staying busy. They love their inbox. They love creating Canva graphics. They love the bookshelf that suddenly needs organizing, or the podcast that suddenly needs a ton of research. It all feels helpful, but it doesn't actually move the needle. Distractors, choose low stakes activity over high impact tasks. You end the day tired, but not satisfied, and you reinforce the story that you're working hard, but you are not seeing any results. How can you break this pattern? Pick the one task that matters most today. Don't overwhelm yourself with your to-do list. Complete it before you give yourself the right to do anything else. And finally, the sixth type of procrastinator is the fader. The fader starts strong Week one, they are all in week two, eh, a little less. By week three, momentum is really slipping, and by week four, you're quiet, quitting on your own dreams. We are about to see this fascination of the fader coming up the early part of January, consistency. Builds self-trust, and when you let things fade out, you chip away at your confidence to be able to follow through and do hard things. How can you break this pattern? Create a commitment that you can actually sustain. Get super clear on why it matters to you. Small and steady beats big and inconsistent every single time. So there you have it, the six different kinds of procrastinators. Procrastination always has a root cause, and the more you understand your flavor of it, the easier it is to interrupt the pattern and to shift yourself into action. So ask yourself, which of these six types describes me today? Not forever, just right now, and then step into action. A good place to start taking that action is in my upcoming five day procrastination detox challenge for small business owners in January. It is completely free and it will help you take intentional action to create important momentum into 2026. To learn more, see the show notes or hang out right after this episode for more details. Thank you for listening today, my friends. I will see you right back here next week for a special year end episode that will teach you a different way to set goals for the new year. I will see you then.