It’s About Time: Procrastination, Purposeful Pauses, and Just Do It!

Procrastination - the thief of time

Procrastination is often referred to as the thief of time. You know the feeling: the delay, the hesitation, the avoidance, the excuses. Hours, days, weeks can slip by while the thing you said you would do remains untouched. Yet if we look closely, procrastination is not laziness or weakness. It is not a personality flaw. It is a program, a process, and like any program, it runs better in some contexts than others.

That was the theme of our recent NLP MasterCLASS Practice Group: It’s About Time. We had students logging in live from all over the world: Canada, Italy, Wales, South Africa, Poland, Colorado, Munich, Madrid, and many other places. The chat was alive with greetings, humour, and playful interruptions, and the energy quickly built into something very different from a lecture. These sessions are not about being told information. They are about experiencing, reflecting, and installing new ways of thinking.

The evening was structured in two halves. I (Steve Crabb) led the first segment on procrastination, its mechanics, and how to decode it. Tina picked up with the essential counterbalance: action. Together, the two sides gave students not only insight but a felt experience of how to shift their internal coding from stuck to moving.

If you missed it live, this summary will show you what you missed, and why attending these practice groups, and even more so, why being part of the SAOC membership, is something you really should not delay.

Procrastination as a Process, Not a Personality Flaw

When people talk about procrastination, they often see it as a weakness or part of their identity, even a badge of honour. “I am just a procrastinator,” they say, as if it is a fixed. But in NLP, we understand something deeper: every behaviour has a purpose. 

Even hesitation, procrastination and inaction are not fixed or unchangeable; there is no mindset set in stone when you know how to do 'mind alchemy - NLP". Sometimes waiting is exactly the right move. You need more information. You need to avoid making a rash decision. You need to give yourself space to reflect. In those situations, procrastination can appear as wisdom. Being able to change your mind is part of evolving and giving yourself more range and choices compared to those who haven't done any NLP.

It’s only when the program runs on autopilot in the wrong context that it becomes a problem. When hesitation steals momentum, it eats into the only non-renewable resource we all have: time. Mastery of self is not about erasing procrastination altogether. It is about recognising when it serves you and when it sabotages you, and knowing how to shift state and change gears so you can act when you need to and and you know how to change your mindset at will.

That is where NLP gives us an edge. It is the study of human excellence. And excellence does not mean adequacy. No one ever had “He lived an adequate life” carved on their gravestone. Excellence means making conscious choices about how we use our precious minutes, our valuable hours, our irreplaceable days.

The Language of Delay

Language reveals a great deal about our unconscious coding. We looked at some common phrases around procrastination and time-wasting:

• Killing time

• Dragging your feet

• Putting it off

• Spinning your wheels

• Stuck in a rut

• Tomorrow never comes

• Busy doing nothing

• Paralysis by analysis

• Kicking the can down the road

• Someday I will syndrome

On the surface, these are just sayings. But when students reflected in the chat on how they felt when hearing them, the responses were powerful.

• “Negativity, physical discomfort, guilt and shame.”

• “Felt heavy on my chest.”

• “Strong visual images, killing time was striking a clock with an axe.”

• “Dragging your feet felt like being chained, like a prisoner trying to move on.”

• “It made me feel all serious and depressed.”

• “Killing time hit hard, felt very serious and sent me on a deep hole of introspection.”

• “It sounded judgmental and shame-based.”

One student even said: “Who wants to kill time, the only thing we have?”

That is the power of words. They are not neutral. They carry submodalities, trigger feelings, and reveal how procrastination is encoded in the nervous system. Some saw movies, others felt bodily sensations, others heard nagging voices. The same phrase produced different responses, but nearly all carried a negative charge.

This is a key insight: procrastination is not just a behaviour. It is how we represent the behaviour internally, the pictures, sounds, and feelings we attach to delay. Change the code, and the behaviour changes.

Doing Nothing Purposefully versus Procrastination

Take time to stop, slow down and think

Here is the crucial difference. Doing nothing purposefully is not procrastination. It is incubation. It is a conscious, intentional pause that allows the unconscious mind to connect ideas and bring forward better solutions. It leads to a positive outcome.

Procrastination, by contrast, is an unconscious pattern of avoidance. It is a delay for the sake of not engaging. It leads nowhere useful.

Both may look the same on the surface. Someone appears not to be taking action. The difference is in the outcome. Incubation produces movement, creativity, and clarity. Procrastination leads to feelings of guilt, shame, frustration, and wasted time.

This was a key moment in the practice group. Once students saw the distinction, they began to recognise that they already know both states. They have moments when they delay and gain clarity, and moments when they delay and lose momentum. The skill lies in distinguishing between the two and making an informed choice.

Hare Brain and Tortoise Mind

To deepen the discussion it is useful to consider Guy Claxton’s model from his book Hare Brain, Tortoise Mind.

The hare brain is fast, logical, decisive, and analytical. It is perfect for clear and simple problems. It mirrors the drive to get things done quickly, to tick them off the to-do list, to clear the desk. At first glance, this feels productive. But from an NLP perspective, this is not always excellence; it is often just busyness. When the focus is purely on speed, the result is frequently shallow work, errors, and mediocrity.

The tortoise mind is slower, intuitive, receptive, and playful. It incubates, digests, and lets insights ripen below the surface. It is what happens when we step back and let the unconscious process take over, giving space for clarity, creativity, and deeper understanding.

Our culture tends to worship the hare: quick decisions, instant results, speed. But for complex problems, haste wastes more time. You end up in false starts, shallow answers, and endless rework. Sometimes the fastest way forward is to slow down.

It is important to recognise that this is not a digital choice between flat-out action or coming to a complete stop. There are nuances. The hare and tortoise represent two ends of a spectrum of mental processing. Mastery lies in recognising when speed is useful and when spacious reflection serves better.

Doing nothing purposefully, creating incubation space for the tortoise mind, paradoxically saves time. It prevents wasted effort. It produces deeper, more creative solutions. It aligns action with wisdom rather than panic.

The Time Dilation Reframe

To make this distinction visceral, we ran the Time Dilation exercise. Students thought of a project they had been putting off, soemthing they wanted to do, it would nbe positive it was within their abilities and resourcefulness and yet they hadn't taken purposeful action - yet!

Then I invited them to imagine two perspectives around this subject, event, project activity.

• First: imagine you had all the time in the world to do this. 

• Second: imagine you had just one hour to do this.

The contrast was dramatic. The chat exploded with feedback.

• “All the time felt expansive, but I procrastinated more. One hour made me laser-focused.”

• “More time felt lighter, less pressured. Less time brought stress in my chest.”

• “Too much time felt like no structure. Deadlines make me move.”

• “With time pressure, I felt angry at myself, like screaming ‘Sit your butt and do it.’”

• “With all the time in the world, I felt relaxed and creative. With one hour, I froze.”

• “Time pressure made me go into overwhelm, I could physically feel.”

• “Having more time made me procrastinate longer. Limited time was a relief, no weighing options, just doing.”

• “One hour gave me clarity instantly. All the time gave me confusion.”

This exercise demonstrated to everyone that procrastination is not simply about time itself. It is about how we code time. Too much space can feel overwhelming, too little can feel suffocating. Each person discovering their own balance where the hare and tortoise can work together.

And here is the real learning: awareness of your own coding is the first step to mastery.

Ways We Procrastinate

Once the group had experienced the mechanics of time and perception, we explored some of the most common ways procrastination shows up. It is not one behaviour. It is a whole family of strategies, all running variations of the same program.

Using the same subject matter fo rthe Time Dilation thought experiment they then got to explore the submodalaties of four perspectives.

They looked at:

1. Overwhelm – the task feels too big, so the mind freezes or seeks escape.

2. Underwhelm – the task feels too dull or pointless, so it is endlessly delayed.

3. Fear of failure – avoidance in case the outcome does not work, or exposes weakness.

4. Fear of success – avoidance because success would bring pressure, expectation, or change.

Students immediately identified with the phrases and understood how these associated with their project would alter the submodalities. In fact, these changes in submodalities provide insights into how people engage in procrastination in its various forms and nuances.

After the exercise the chat filled with examples of experiencing and recognising these four patterns.

One participant wrote, “Fear of failure stronger than what I want.” Another shared, “Not setting up my business, doing more courses instead.” Someone else noted how underwhelm made them push aside routine tasks until they piled up. These honest reflections brought home the reality: procrastination is not abstract; it is lived, and it costs.

The clues to how people procrastinate are found in the submodalities, as are the solutions.

Reflections

Beyond those four, there are many other ways procrastination can manifest. Some of the most common include lack of clarity about where to begin, endless preparation or research instead of doing, waiting for motivation or the right mood, distraction-seeking in emails or social media, fake productivity and busyness, low energy and fatigue, no accountability or deadlines, and people-pleasing or prioritising others’ tasks.

These did not form part of the live session, but they are worth noting here to illustrate the bigger picture. However procrastination appears, the key realisation remains the same: it is not who you are, it is a program you run. And because it is a program, it can be changed.

Further Reflections on Incubation

We did not run additional incubation tools in the session, but it is worth mentioning one here to illustrate how purposeful pauses can create clarity.

The Open Loop Pause: Pose a question to yourself such as “What is the most important thing I could do with my time this week?” Then resist the urge to answer. Step away. Do something else. Let the unconscious process continue in the background. Notice what insights surface later without effort.

This is a practical way of distinguishing procrastination from incubation. Procrastination leaves you stuck. Incubation, although it may appear the same on the surface, actually produces movement and clarity.

From Insight to Action

By this point, the group had recognised their own procrastination patterns, tested the Time Dilation frame, and explored how language and submodalities shape delay. They had shifted state. They could see that procrastination is not who they are, it is simply a code they run.

This was the perfect handover to Tina. She stepped in to build on that energy, guiding the group into the other half of the equation: ACTION. Awareness without action is still delay. Action without awareness is just busyness. The integration of the two is where excellence lies.

Tina provided students with a guided hypnotic installation to help them overcome hesitation, take the first step, and generate momentum. The feedback was immediate. Participants described leaving lighter, clearer, and energised. One comment summed it up beautifully: “I felt the weight of procrastination lifted, and suddenly taking action felt obvious rather than effortful.”

The evening was successful due to this blend. My section created the awareness of procrastination as a program and offered tools for reflection. Tina’s section turned that awareness into movement. Together, the two halves created a complete shift.

Why You Should Not Miss This

If you were not there, you missed more than information. You missed calibration. You missed the installation of the 'Just F*** Do It !" machine. You missed the live energy, the laughter, the reflective pauses, the shared discoveries. You missed the chance to explore your own coding in real time, with feedback from a community spread across the world.

And if you were there but are not part of the SAOC membership? Then you also missed the replays. Which means you missed the chance to revisit, to catch what you did not absorb the first time, to deepen the learning.

These practice groups are not lectures. They are living laboratories of learning. They are installations of NLP in action. And if you are serious about mastering these tools, you cannot afford to procrastinate on showing up.

Somethings to Think About

Procrastination is a thief of time when left unconscious. However, upon examination, it becomes a teacher. It shows us how we code tasks, how we relate to time, and how we avoid or engage with our own potential.

Doing nothing purposefully is different. It is incubation, reflection, a tortoise-mind strategy that produces deeper wisdom and saves time in the long run.

The skill is discernment. Knowing when hesitation is wisdom, when it is fear, and how to shift from delay into movement.

That is what we explored together. And that is what you will continue to miss if you are not part of this ongoing practice.

If you were there, thank you. You contributed to a global experience of insight and laughter.

If you were not, do not let procrastination rob you twice. Join us live for the next Practice Group always the 3rd Thursday of the month.

And if you want the full benefit, including replays, deeper dives, and ongoing growth, join the SAOC membership when the membership doors next open.

Because time is finite, the question is: how will you best use it?

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