Life is a Game
    ← Back to blog

    Procrastination Coaching Techniques That Get Clients Moving

    Coach listening as a client discusses a first step

    The most useful procrastination coaching techniques do three things. They lower the shame around the avoided task, shrink the first step until it is almost embarrassingly small, and make the plan specific enough that the client knows exactly when and where it starts. This guide is for a coach whose client keeps arriving without the action done. It also works if you are the client, stuck on one particular thing: the phone call, the presentation, the email to a stranger.

    Life is a Game
    Make Between-Session Steps Visible
    Life is a Game helps coaches break agreed goals into small steps, so clients can work on them between sessions and coaches can see what was done.

    TL;DR

    • Avoidance is usually about a feeling (dread, doubt, fear of judgment), not laziness. Ask about the feeling before you ask about the task.
    • Use a “just five minutes” start, and let the client decide whether to continue after the five minutes.
    • Replace “I’ll do it this week” with an if-then plan: when this happens, I will do that, in that place.
    • When a step is missed, review it with curiosity, keep what worked and ask what would make next week 10% easier.
    • If avoidance comes with persistent low mood, heavy anxiety or thoughts of self-harm, it needs support beyond coaching.

    Table of Contents

    Why clients avoid the one thing they said they would do

    A client who says “I’ll call them by Friday” and then does not is rarely short of information. They know what to do. What they do not have is a way to be comfortable while doing it.

    The Centre for Clinical Interventions in Western Australia describes procrastination work as noticing the urge without blame, challenging unhelpful assumptions and learning to tolerate task-related discomfort. That framing is useful for coaches because it moves the conversation away from willpower. The task is not the problem. The feeling that shows up when the client looks at the task is the problem.

    Typical hidden rules sound like these:

    • “If I can’t do it perfectly, I shouldn’t start.”
    • “I need to feel motivated first.”
    • “If I make the call, they will think I’m stupid.”
    • “I work best under pressure, so there’s no point starting early.”

    Each of these is an assumption you can examine together. None of them is a character flaw.

    Start with a non-blaming conversation

    Shame is the fastest way to make avoidance worse. A client who feels judged will stop reporting honestly, and you lose the one thing that makes coaching work: an accurate picture of what happened between sessions.

    The same Australian guidance recommends noticing the urge to procrastinate in a non-blaming, non-judgmental way rather than attacking yourself. In a session, that sounds like:

    • “What happened when you sat down to do it?” instead of “Why didn’t you do it?”
    • “What was the first thing you noticed in your body?” instead of “What got in the way?”
    • “What did you do instead?” asked with real curiosity, not as an accusation.

    Treat the answers as data. If the client tells you they cleaned the kitchen for two hours rather than open the document, you now know the avoidance behavior, and you can plan around it.

    Find the thought and feeling behind the delay

    The International Coaching Federation recommends helping clients identify, label and work on the thoughts and emotional reactions driving delay, rather than focusing only on finishing the immediate task. Their article walks through a short sequence you can borrow:

    1. The avoided task. “What exactly are you putting off?”
    2. The automatic thought. “What goes through your mind when you picture starting?”
    3. The emotion. “What do you feel when you think that?”
    4. An alternative view. “What else could be true?”
    5. Readiness. “With that in mind, what feels possible?”

    They also suggest asking why the task matters, more than once, until the client reaches the underlying motivator. A report that is “due” is weak fuel. “I want my manager to see me as someone ready for the next role” is stronger, and it also shows you what the client fears losing if the work goes badly.

    A worked example

    Say a client avoids phone calls to potential customers. The dialogue might run like this.

    • Task: call three prospects.
    • Thought: “They’ll be annoyed that I interrupted them.”
    • Feeling: tight chest, dread.
    • Alternative: “Some will be busy. Some may be glad I called. I can’t know before I try.”
    • Readiness: “I could make one call and see what actually happens.”

    Notice that nobody argued the client out of the fear. The thought was named, held up to the light and loosened just enough to allow one attempt.

    The five-minute start, and how to coach it

    The “five-minute trick” is the technique readers ask about most. The idea is simple: commit to working on the task for only five minutes, then decide whether to stop. The Australian action plan lists making a small start such as “just 5 minutes” among its practical strategies, alongside reminders and scheduling.

    Five-minute task start leading to a choice

    Why it works is easy to see. The client is not agreeing to finish a dreaded project. They are agreeing to sit with the discomfort for a short, defined time. Often the dread peaks before starting and eases once they are in motion. Sometimes it does not ease, and the client stops after five minutes anyway. That is still a success, because they started and they learned something.

    How to coach it well:

    • Make the five minutes real. Set a timer. A vague “I’ll try for a bit” invites negotiation.
    • Define the smallest visible action. “Open the document and write the first ugly sentence.” “Dial the number and let it ring.” Not “work on the proposal.”
    • Give permission to stop. If stopping is not allowed, it is no longer a five-minute task and the client’s brain will treat it like the big one.
    • Ask about the discomfort afterward. “What did you notice at minute one? At minute five?” This builds the skill of tolerating the feeling.
    • Count it. A started task is a result, whether or not it was finished.

    If your client freezes even at the idea of five minutes, the step is still too big. Try one minute, or just opening the file. Our post on a five-minute experiment for task paralysis goes through that shrinking process in more detail.

    Practice tolerating discomfort

    The Centre for Clinical Interventions suggests practicing mindful tolerance of task-related discomfort: observing the feeling without judgment and delaying the urge to escape long enough to make space for it.

    A short in-session exercise:

    1. Ask the client to picture the task they avoid.
    2. Have them rate the discomfort from 0 to 10.
    3. Ask them to describe where they feel it and what it does, without trying to change it.
    4. After a minute, rate it again.

    The point is not to get the number to zero. It is to show the client that the feeling can be present and they can still choose what to do next. This is an approach inspired by exposure principles: approach the uncomfortable thing in small, planned doses rather than waiting to feel ready.

    Turn intentions into if-then plans

    “I’ll do it this week” is a goal intention. It rarely survives a busy Tuesday. Gollwitzer and Brandstätter’s 1997 paper on implementation intentions separates a goal intention (“I intend to achieve X”) from an implementation intention (“I will do Y when situation Z occurs”). In their studies, the second form helped people start promptly once the specified moment arrived.

    So a coaching plan becomes:

    • Not: “Write the report.”
    • But: “When I sit at my desk after lunch, I will open the report and write for five minutes.”

    Another study, indexed by the American Psychological Association, found that people who formed implementation intentions were more likely to attend a first psychotherapy appointment than those who did not. That is a good reminder that this works on avoidance of emotionally loaded steps, not only on dull chores.

    Build the plan in the session

    ADDitude’s guidance on coaching and follow-through suggests spending at least 10 minutes planning how, when and where the action will happen, then adjusting the plan until the client’s confidence goes up. Use that as your checklist:

    Question Example answer
    What is the smallest first action? Dial the number
    When exactly? Tuesday, right after my 10 a.m. coffee
    Where? At the kitchen table, phone on the table
    What might get in the way? A meeting runs over
    What is the backup? Same step at 2 p.m.
    How confident are you, 0 to 10? 6, so shrink it until it’s 8

    The confidence question matters. If the client says 4, do not push. Make the step smaller or change the context until the number rises.

    The same source recommends anticipating barriers ahead of time, offering choices to build buy-in and discussing what following through, or not, would lead to. Let the client choose between two or three options. A step they picked is a step they own.

    What to do when the step was missed

    This is where many coaches lose momentum. The client comes back without the action done, both of you feel awkward and the session turns into a scolding or a pep talk. Neither helps.

    The ADDitude guidance suggests reviewing the attempts in detail, reinforcing partial success, linking successful steps to habit formation, treating failures as learning opportunities and asking what would make the client 10% more successful next week.

    A simple review script:

    1. Start with what did happen. Even opening the file counts.
    2. Get the sequence. What happened right before the moment of avoiding?
    3. Name the obstacle. Was it the task, the timing, the feeling or the plan?
    4. Adjust one thing. Smaller step, different time, different place.
    5. Ask the 10% question. “What would make this 10% easier next week?”

    A coach who can see what was actually attempted, and when, has a major advantage over one working from memory and good intentions. That is the gap we built our coaching platform to close, described below.

    Perspective: why we think small and specific beats big and general

    We build gamified, self-guided apps, and we have watched the same pattern play out again and again. People do not avoid because they lack goals. They avoid because the goal looks like a wall. Our approach is to break the wall into steps small enough that a person can complete one on a bad day, and then let them see that they did it.

    We also think specificity matters. A client afraid of making phone calls does not need a general productivity system. They need a ladder of steps that starts with something easy, like finding the number, and climbs at a pace they can bear. The same goes for focus, presentations or any other single stuck point.

    Two things we hold firmly. First, celebrating a small step is not a gimmick. It is how the brain learns that approaching the thing is safe. Second, coaching is not therapy. Our tools are self-guided wellness tools. They do not diagnose, treat or replace professional care, and a coach should know where their role ends.

    — Ryan

    Track between-session action with your clients

    If you coach clients who avoid action, we built a practitioner platform for that exact loop. You and the client agree on a goal, the app breaks it into small steps the client works through between sessions, and you see what was actually done before the next call. Clients get full access free while they are linked to you.

    Life is a Game

    Pricing is per coach: the founding cohort is £29 per month, and the standard price is £49 per month or £490 per year. You can see the details on our page for coaches.

    If you want to shrink a long list into steps first, our post on fixing to-do list overwhelm with microsteps is a good starting point.

    When avoidance needs more than coaching

    Procrastination sometimes travels with other difficulties. The 2018 systematic review by Rozental and colleagues notes that it can occur alongside anxiety, lowered mood, physical complaints and decreased well-being, and it recommends a screening interview at intake to assess for psychiatric disorders. The same review found psychological interventions gave a small overall benefit for procrastination, with larger effects in the subgroup using cognitive behavioral approaches, and it noted considerable variation between studies. In other words, the techniques help, but they are not magic.

    Watch for these signs:

    • Avoidance spreading across most areas of life, not one task or fear.
    • Low mood, loss of interest or exhaustion that lasts for weeks.
    • Anxiety strong enough to disrupt sleep, work or relationships.
    • Any mention of hopelessness, death or self-harm.

    If you see these, say so kindly and encourage the client to talk with a licensed mental health professional or their doctor. The U.S. Veterans Health Administration’s self-management worksheet for depression recommends taking small steps toward larger problems and contacting someone if thoughts of death or self-harm occur. In the U.S., anyone in crisis can call or text 988, the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline.

    FAQ

    What is the five-minute procrastination trick?

    You commit to working on a task for just five minutes, then decide whether to continue. It lowers the barrier to starting because the commitment is small and has a clear end. Many people keep going once they have begun, but stopping after five minutes is allowed and still counts.

    How do I coach a client who keeps avoiding action?

    Start by asking what happens when they try, without blame. Identify the thought and feeling behind the delay, shrink the step and build an if-then plan with a time and place. At the next session, review what was attempted and adjust one thing.

    What is the 70/30 rule in coaching?

    It is a common rule of thumb that the client should do most of the talking, roughly 70 percent, while the coach listens and asks questions. It is a guideline, not a formal standard. With avoidant clients it helps because the client finds their own reasons and next steps.

    Is chronic procrastination a sign of a mental health problem?

    Not necessarily, but it can occur alongside anxiety or low mood. If avoidance is widespread, long-lasting or comes with distress, a licensed professional can help sort out what is going on. A coach can encourage that step without trying to assess it.

    Your first tiny step

    Pick one task your client, or you, have been avoiding. Write the smallest possible first action on a sticky note, such as “open the file” or “dial the number.” Set a timer for five minutes tomorrow at a specific time and place. When it rings, you are allowed to stop.

    Sources

    Related

    Working on this yourself? See Focus Quest

    ← Back to blog