How Perfectionism Leads to Procrastination & Strategies to Help You Start Tasks
How Perfectionism Leads to Procrastination & Strategies to Help You Start Tasks
Perfectionism and procrastination go hand in hand. If you’ve ever found yourself staring at a blank page, avoiding a task, or feeling paralyzed by the idea of starting something imperfectly, you’re not alone.
Many people—especially those with ADHD, high-functioning anxiety, or executive dysfunction—struggle with the fear of not doing something “right.” Instead of starting, their brains trick them into avoidance.
Sound familiar? Looking at your kitchen to see the oven needs to be cleaned, the dishes done, and the floor swept and feeling like it’s too much to do so you do… nothing.
The good news? There are strategies to break the cycle of perfectionism and procrastination, and I’m sharing them in this post.
Why Perfectionism Leads to Procrastination
Contrary to popular belief, perfectionists aren’t just people with high standards. Perfectionism is deeply rooted in fear—fear of failure, fear of judgment, and fear of not being good enough.
Here’s how that fear creates a procrastination cycle:
1️⃣ You set impossibly high expectations – The task feels so overwhelming that your brain convinces you to avoid it.
2️⃣ You avoid discomfort– Instead of starting, you distract yourself, feeling momentary relief.
3️⃣ Guilt and anxiety build– The deadline looms, but now you feel even more stuck.
4️⃣ You panic and rush– Eventually, you have to finish, often under stress.
5️⃣ The cycle repeats – Your brain learns that avoidance = short-term relief, reinforcing the habit.
This cycle is exhausting, especially for people with ADHD and executive dysfunction, who already struggle with task initiation and follow-through.
The Difference Between Being Stuck vs. Procrastinating
Many people assume being stuck and procrastinating are the same, but they’re different:
🔹Being stuck = You want to do the task, but you can’t get yourself to start.
🔹 Procrastinating= You don’t care about the task and keep putting it off.
Understanding this difference matters because if you’re stuck, you don’t need more motivation—you need a strategy to navigate discomfort.
How to Push Through Perfectionism & Get Started
Now that we understand why perfectionism fuels procrastination, let’s talk about how to break free and take action.
1. Shift Your Self-Talk
Your inner perfectionist is likely saying things like:
🚫 “This has to be perfect.”
🚫 “I need to do it right or not at all.”
🚫 “I’m not ready yet.”
Try reframing:
✅ “Done is better than perfect.”
✅ “The first goal is to start, not to finish.”
✅ “I can always improve it later.”
Even small shifts in language help reduce anxiety and lower the pressure to perform perfectly.
Putting a dent in your dishes will make you feel better, even if you aren’t able to get to the whole kitchen.
2. Lower the Starting Bar
If starting feels overwhelming, make it ridiculously easy. Instead of thinking, “I have to finish this report,” tell yourself:
✔️ “I’m just going to open the document and type one sentence.”
✔️ “I’ll set a 5-minute timer and brainstorm ideas.”
✔️ “I’ll write a messy draft that no one will see.”
Once you start, momentum kicks in, and starting becomes easier. Maybe washing those 3 dishes gives you the motivation you need to sweep too.
3. Focus on Progress, Not Perfection
One of the biggest perfectionist traps is believing that every step must be flawless. But here’s the truth:
💡 Your first draft will be messy. Your first attempt won’t be perfect. And that’s okay.
Instead of aiming for perfection, ask yourself:
👉 “What’s the smallest step I can take right now?”
Small progress is still progress. And all those little steps add up over time.
4. Choose Your Discomfort
Avoiding a task feels good in the moment, but it leads to a different kind of discomfort—the stress of unfinished work.
Ask yourself:
🔹 “Do I want the discomfort of starting now, or the discomfort of rushing later?”
🔹 “Which discomfort will serve my future self?”
This mindset shift helps you take control of the discomfort instead of letting it control you.
5. Use External Support & Accountability
If perfectionism keeps you stuck, external accountability can help you break free.
💡 Try this:
✔️ Tell a friend your goal & check in with them.
✔️ Join a coaching group for structured support.
✔️ Use body doubling (working alongside someone for accountability).
The more structured and external the support, the easier it is to break the procrastination loop.
Final Thoughts: Start Before You Feel Ready
The secret to overcoming perfectionism isn’t waiting until you feel ready. It’s starting before you do.
🌟 Your first goal isn’t to finish. Your first goal is to start.
If you’re struggling with perfectionism, procrastination, and task paralysis, you don’t have to figure it out alone. Executive function coaching, is designed to help you break through the mental roadblocks keeping you from taking action.
Curious about working with an executive function coach to navigate perfectionism?
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Sarah Lovell (00:01.678)
Hello fellow recovering perfectionist. Today we are diving deeper into how perfectionism can hold you back and what to do about it. Perfectionism isn't just about having high standards. It's about fear of failure, fear of judgment, fear of not being good enough and wanting to avoid all of that discomfort. So today we're talking about how to navigate the discomfort of starting tasks when your perfectionistic brain is telling you to avoid them at all costs.
If you're already feeling a little uncomfortable hearing that, you're in the right place. And I promise you, you will leave this episode feeling validated and with a new strategy to navigate discomfort. Let's jump in.
Music intro. And then podcast.
Ahem.
Sarah Lovell (00:57.272)
So last episode, I told you about my middle school circus gym class and how I noticed perfectionism there as an adult, not in the moment. But if you missed that one, I highly recommend listening to that episode after this one because each of these perfectionistic episodes are going to build off each other and talk about perfectionism in a different way. And so today I'm gonna share a story.
We're going to fast forward to my junior year of high school, specifically my AP trigonometry class. And so just to paint a picture of when I was in full perfectionism mode, I was an AP student. I had all A's. I was in strategic clubs and activities to boost my college application process. And so I signed up for this AP trig class because all my friends were doing it and
Basically, I felt the expectation to keep up with other people and to kind of push myself, even though math had never been my thing and is still not my thing. But being a good student was basically the core of my identity. And I immediately realized I was in over my head. I didn't ask for help. I didn't go to office hours. I avoided even attempting the homework because it was so uncomfortable to not know how to do it.
And I literally, full disclosure, would copy my friend's homework because it was just so uncomfortable and so embarrassing to not know how to do something. I BSed my way through that class. I failed every test. And I couldn't ask for help because it was uncomfortable. I had never had to ask for help before in that way. I had never done
experienced that type of discomfort of not knowing how to do something. And so it was a totally new experience for me. And looking back on it, I realized I didn't want my teacher to know I was struggling, although it was obvious to him. Like, I was failing. I was essentially failing that class. And my parents were super supportive. And they never forced me to do anything. They...
Sarah Lovell (03:18.89)
encouraged me to ask for help. They encouraged me to work with a tutor, but they viewed it as a learning opportunity. And I'm so grateful that they kind of gave me this space to fail and learn from it. I was gifted a D in that class. I didn't actually have an F on my transcript. I don't know why or how that teacher was so kind to me. But looking back on this, this was a pivotal moment in my life.
because I can now look back and realize I hated the discomfort. I hated the fear of failure. And my brain basically said, well, what if I try, like what if I actually put in effort into trying to learn this and I still fail? And that was scarier than not trying and still failing. And the reason I share this story is because I work with a lot of recovering perfectionists.
who or they're fully in perfectionism mode. They're not even breaking free from it yet, but they avoid doing things, starting them at all because they don't want to experience that discomfort exactly like how I was feeling. When I work with college students, I work with a lot of one-on-one college students in coaching who maybe did really well through high school.
It was academically pretty easy for them or the content came really easily and they didn't have to create systems to study or they didn't have to create systems to keep up with stuff. Same is true for adults. If you were able to kind of get through, get by, even if you weren't thriving, even if you were just getting through, eventually something happens that there's a shift and you're like, no, I need to change how I'm doing things. I need to work through discomfort, right?
And so I think that's an important lesson that perfectionism and procrastination go hand in hand because in both situations, you are trying to avoid discomfort and your brain is trying to protect you. I think it's really important to name that for ourselves, that like your brain truly thinks it's doing a good thing. It thinks that it's helping you.
Sarah Lovell (05:41.494)
avoid this discomfort when in reality it's just creating new discomfort, right? There are lots of different types of discomfort. There's the discomfort of being stuck or procrastinating and knowing that the task is looming over you, that eventually it's going to catch up or eventually you're gonna have to work on it, right? So that the discomfort of that procrastination or being stuck. And those are different. If you've listened to my other episodes,
You've heard me describe the difference, but I'm going to pause right here very quickly to tell you the difference because it's important to acknowledge. Being stuck is you want to do the thing, but you can't get yourself to start. Procrastinating is it's not important to you. You don't really care about it. And so you keep pushing it out. And the reason it's so important to distinguish those things is because oftentimes I'm so, I support people on both things, but a lot of the times I'm supporting people on being stuck on the thing that they want to do.
and it's so uncomfortable to not be able to start it because a giant piece of you wants to do the thing and a piece of your brain, whether it's the perfectionistic part of your brain, the self-preservation part of your brain, it's saying, no, no, no, don't do it because it's going to be uncomfortable. So that's one type of discomfort. Another type of discomfort is what I was experiencing in junior year AP Trig was the discomfort of asking for help.
and the risk of if I try to do it, what if I fail?
There's also the discomfort of not being good at something immediately. The fear that you'll never be good. And so I think in those situations, like the question that you can ask yourself is, well, and I guess it's not a question, but like a statement would be, if you don't try at all, you'll never know if you could be good. You don't even have the opportunity to work towards being good.
Sarah Lovell (07:40.482)
And so this is something I talk about with clients all the time. We experience discomfort in life. That is an uncomfortable truth. We can't avoid discomfort. Even when we try to avoid it, we're still sitting in a different type. And so an uncomfortable question is what type of discomfort will you choose? Are you going to choose like me, junior year of high school, to sit in the discomfort of not doing anything?
truly being stuck? Or will you choose the discomfort of pushing through that initial discomfort and experiencing the discomfort of trying, experiencing the discomfort of being seen trying? And in both situations, like we, I'll delete that sentence out.
So I want to highlight that you learn in discomfort. You grow in discomfort. You need discomfort in your life. And believe me, discomfort will find you. You don't have to go looking for it. But here are some strategies that you can use when you're experiencing the stuckness of discomfort related to perfectionism, related to fear of failure. That, and I talked about in the last episode,
fear of letting others down, fear of letting yourself down, right? So it all starts with mindset and self-talk. I'm a broken record on this because we can't make change until we notice what our brain is telling us, challenge it and reframe it and shift it. it's gonna sound pretty simplistic, but I promise this does make a difference.
Notice when you use the word perfect. So like, that's a perfect plan. That's a perfect idea. You know, whatever it is, where do you use the word perfect? I even notice when I talk with clients, I'll say like, perfect. Replace it with a different word. Great, wonderful, beautiful, splendid, amazing, lovely, good, done. So just notice when your brain is auto-populating the word perfect and can you shift it a little bit?
Sarah Lovell (10:02.604)
All right, now for something a little bit more concrete that you can take even bigger action on. It's shifting your self-talk around the goal, adjusting the goal. So the first goal isn't to finish. The first goal is to start. And if you're focusing on the finish line, it's going to feel even bigger and more uncomfortable to try to get started.
And I'm not really a runner, but I use a running analogy here. Like you got to start at the start line of the race. And the start of your goal is approaching the start line, getting ready to work on the goal. And then you do your first couple of steps. And then before you know it, you've done a lap. And maybe you're taking a water break along the way, right? But you've adjusted how you're thinking about your goal. You're not focusing on crossing the finish line.
at beginning. Yes, it's important to acknowledge maybe where the finish line is. Maybe you don't know, but you have to adjust what you're focusing on to be the small steps at the beginning. And if I could go back to 17 year old Sarah, I would suggest adjusting the goal that I had in mind. My goal, I honestly don't know what my goal was in that class. I think my goal in that class was to be like not seen and like just get through it. But
My academic brain was like, I wanted to get a good grade. That was probably the underlying goal, even though I took zero action on it. Like I avoided everything. But I would suggest setting the goal of asking for help with no expectations of an outcome. Because the goal isn't to improve the grade to start. The goal is to get over the discomfort of asking for help in my situation.
So I think it's really important to acknowledge what are the different, like what's causing discomfort here? What's popping up? And how can I make that the starting line goal? The goal was not to learn, literally I can't even pull out math terms for this class, right? But the goal was not to be able to successfully solve a problem right away. The goal was to like show up for office hours and say, hey, I know you know I'm failing this class. I have no idea what's going on.
Sarah Lovell (12:26.762)
right, to ask for help. And so this is something that I talk with clients about all the time. In our hot seat coaching call in my coaching membership, Stuck to Started, a client came with the question of wanting to create a website for her business. And she was very quickly able to identify that perfectionism was holding her back. She was worried about the writing. Like she had lots of ideas. And she even said, like, I'm trying to get the perfect wording.
And her biggest fear, so I asked a bunch of questions to get more information and narrow in on where is the perfectionism, where is she getting stuck here? And her biggest fear was not getting everything she wanted to say on the website. So even though that's not using the word perfect, using the word everything, which is an all or nothing word, right? If I can't do everything, might as well not do it, right? And so I challenged her on that.
And I asked her in a supportive way, not in a mean way. But the way that I coach is I ask you a lot of questions. And so I asked her, OK, do you think it's realistic to get everything on the website in your first iteration? And she was like, no, definitely not. So she was able to reality check that with me. And so I said, OK, well, what would done look like? What would be?
the important features of a first iteration of your website. And she said, I could have three important pieces of information that highlight what my business is. My bio, I can copy and paste from something I've already written so that I don't have to focus on making it perfect. I already have something I can take from. And in the future, I can expand on this and come back to it.
But like the most important thing was that she was like, my website says what I do, it has an about me, and it has a contact page. And I was like, that is so great that you're able to go from my website needs to be perfect and have absolutely everything I want to say to hear some concrete things that I can focus on and break down into different steps. And then she can send it and make it live and adjust it over time.
Sarah Lovell (14:47.886)
And when she left that meeting, she was like, I feel so much better. She was like, I'm actually excited to do some of this work now because I have not only clarity, but that she had calmed the perfectionistic part of her brain. She had acknowledged what was causing her discomfort. She acknowledged the fear of not being able to say anything, everything. And then she had, what is my starting line? What does my first lap look like? Versus.
what does finishing look like? So if you're looking for support navigating perfectionism and the discomfort of taking action on the goals in your life that you want and need to do, I would love to have you join my coaching membership Stuck to Started. And I am truly obsessed with this membership and the way that I get to support people and the way that the members support each other. There's so many different ways to utilize this membership.
So you can learn more about it on my website, executivefunctioningfirst.com slash membership. There's also a link in the show notes. And if you have questions, seriously, email me, DM me on Instagram. Like I truly chat with people before they join the membership to help them make sure that it's a good fit. And then can I ask you one quick favor? If you've been listening to the podcast and you enjoy these episodes, can you think of one person in your life?
that you think would also enjoy hearing about perfectionism, executive functioning, like learning about their brain, and would you text it to them or tell them about the podcast from start to started? My goal is to spread this information far and wide. I firmly believe that these resources, these free resources should be in the hands of more people. So thank you so much for considering sharing this podcast.
Next episode, I'm going to be talking about how perfectionism can steal your joy because it's not just in work and school that perfectionism pops up. So I'm gonna talk about how you can shift your thinking so that you can have more joy and ease in your life. Thank you so much for being here and talk again soon.
