I am in high school and always find myself leaving assignments (especially important ones) to the last minute by procrastinating a lot and, as a result, not getting a great mark.

What can I do to ensure I get my work done earlier and motivate myself to get it done instead of procrastinating?

Eleanor says: A lot of people who procrastinate think they’re just failing, when actually they have a treatable mental health condition. It’s worth asking a professional about your experience.

If you’re experiencing garden variety procrastination, I can tell you what’s helped mine. I’m an Olympic level procrastinator. I’ll take the toaster apart and shine its parts and put it back together before I open my emails for the day. I’ll read the footnotes to the footnotes on a Wikipedia page about the bolts they use on Boeings. I’ve seen listicles you people wouldn’t believe.

Here’s what I know.

We procrastinate because we’re trying to avoid the way that working makes us feel. It’s not because we’re lazy. If your parents or your teachers act as though you’re lazy, you can act as though they’re wrong. We do it because working makes us feel bad, bone-deep. Working out exactly which flavour of “bad” your work makes you feel will help, but the basic structure is we’re running away from a feeling by running away from work.

The things we run to have a pattern that’s well worth learning. If you can spot it – like the stripes on a poisonous snake – you’ll be able to avoid mistakes that some of your friends will spend years making. The pattern is: we run to things that promise one feeling while in fact undermining it. In procrastination, the feeling is fun. (In drinking it might be freedom; in gambling, being carefree).

We want fun instead of work, and procrastinating offers it.But the trick is, we don’t ever really get a fun day off, Ferris Bueller style. We just do endless non-work things within plausible leash-range of the computer. Then, when we surface from the bliss of self-erasure we find we have way too little time left for either work or fun.

Procrastinating accordion-crunches your time; it robs you of the hours you need to do what it actually feels fun to do.

You asked what you could do about it. There are too many wonderful resources and systems to describe in full here, but here are two basic ideas.

The first is habit. Start as small as you can. Don’t wrestle directly with big resolutions like “I’ll do all my homework every day”. Just promise yourself something small to start with: I’ll do one homework question first thing when I get home. Just one. Practice being happy with yourself for meeting that habit. A swimming coach I once knew liked to say: you’re faster than the people who didn’t turn up.

The second basic idea is calm. When work goes badly – and it sometimes will – practice responding to that matter-of-factly. So you got a bad mark, you put off something important. It happens.

We avoid things when we find them intolerable, so if you find your mistakes intolerable, you’ll avoid them, which means you’ll avoid fixing them. That can get messy. I know someone who moved country to avoid a procrastinated task. But the more you can tolerate, the less you’ll avoid. So practice tolerating the fact that you procrastinated. Say “I’ll own up to it and try again”. This might involve resisting an adult’s meanness or panic. That’s okay. You can tell them that it’s more helpful to point out what’s still fixable than to dwell on what you can’t change. And you can tell them I said to ask if they were ever late on their tax.

Try not to beat yourself up for the urge to run away from things that feel bad. You’re designed to have it – it keeps you safe. But try to have habits that keep you from running – and if you’re going to run, at least make it towards real fun.

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This article was amended on 11 November 2021 to include an opening sentence advising the letter-writer to discuss their concerns with a doctor.