This emotion will stop you from procrastinating

We convince ourselves that we'll start tomorrow, but when tomorrow comes, we put it off again, thinking we'll do it the next day. Before we know it, days turn into weeks, months, or even years, and we find ourselves stuck, having never started or completed what we intended. This cycle is known as procrastination.

Everyone has felt this way. I've been there too.

But there’s one thing that can fight procrastination: pain. When the pain becomes greater than the fear, we'll finally start doing the things we've been avoiding. When the pain is greater than anything else, you will change, even if you didn’t want to.

The pain will push you to take action, and it won't even require much effort. You won't need a huge amount of motivation because the pain will drive you to do it anyway.

This applies to every aspect of your life. When the pain prevails, that's when we change and transform into completely different people. It's also when we make things happen.

Suffering can lead to growth and changes in our behavior, personality, and psychological development.

That’s what happened. I spent years saying I wanted to change careers, but I did nothing. When I finished work, I was so tired that I’d tell myself, "I’ll do something tomorrow to change my career." But I never did anything. Years passed, and people kept asking about my career path, but I hadn’t done anything. I felt ashamed, and once again, I did nothing. After finishing work, I felt so tired that I just wanted to sit on the couch with a book or watch TV.

Bad things kept happening at work, and I felt demotivated, but I did nothing. I felt depressed, and still, I did nothing. I feel some pain, but it’s not greater than my procrastination. My days are spent scrolling through social media—hours lost, trying to escape my reality.

But one day, everything changed. That day came when my team leader indirectly slapped me in the face by removing me from a big project I had been working on for two years, only to assign me to smaller tasks and put someone with no experience in charge. She made it clear, in a way, that she didn’t think I was worth it. That hurt me deeply. The pain was so strong that it finally broke my inertia. For the first time, I started working for myself and managed to accomplish more in a single day than I had in the entire previous year. The pain of staying stuck, of being slapped down over and over, became greater than my exhaustion. That pain pushed me toward the change I had been avoiding, giving me the strength to fight and finally do what I had been putting off. The pain I feel has turned into fuel to fight my procrastination. Because of that, I stopped scrolling through social media and started studying and searching for new job opportunities.

I feel grateful for this pain—it gives me adrenaline and the strength to fight back. Sometimes, life gives you pain to change you, to redirect you toward something better.

Pain is a powerful emotion, and it acts as a catalyst for change. Sometimes, we get stuck in our comfort zone until the pain becomes so unbearable that it forces us to act, to change, to do what once seemed impossible. Often, change doesn’t come by choice, but out of the necessity to escape the situation that causes us pain. And when that pain is greater than anything else, it pushes us, even when we don’t have the strength or motivation.

You’ll stop procrastinating when the pain becomes greater than the reason you procrastinate.