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⏳ From Procrastination to Precrastination
Day 27 of 30 — A Mindset Shift That Changes Everything
Selim Uysal
June 28, 2025
Hi friend,
Some people are always late:
🚌 To the bus
📅 To meetings
📨 To emails
💡 To ideas
And not because they don’t care, but because they delay starting.
This is procrastination.
But there’s another path.
Psychologist Adam Grant calls it precrastination, the act of starting early, sometimes too early, to reduce stress or clear mental space. (You can check this TED Talk by him, if you’d like to dig deeper on this.)
It may sound extreme. But in practice?
It’s a peaceful way to work.
🧠 What Helps the Shift Happen?
Not everyone is a natural precrastinator
But a few science-backed mindset and behavior tweaks can help anyone move in that direction
1️⃣ Use Micro-Deadlines
Breaking a big task into smaller, time-boxed chunks can unlock momentum fast.
Even setting a 10-minute deadline creates urgency and beats the paralysis of “too much to do.”
This aligns with Parkinson’s Law: work expands to fill the time you give it. Shrinking the window forces action.
2️⃣ Prepare to Start
Half the battle is just showing up ready.
Leave visual cues and remove friction: gym shoes by the door, a draft doc already open, a half-written email waiting in your inbox
As James Clear explains in Atomic Habits, our environment silently shapes our behavior. Make it work for you.
3️⃣ Practice Micro-Momentum
The first two minutes matter more than most people realize.
Open the document. Write one line. Hit “send” on the calendar invite.
This idea is rooted in the 2-minute rule: if it takes less than 2 minutes, do it now. (from Getting Things Done, by David Allen)
And once you start, you often keep going. Momentum builds from motion, not motivation.
4️⃣ Align with Identity
Instead of thinking, “I have to do this,” reframe it as:
→ “This is what focused people do.”
→ “This is how professionals work.”
Behavior follows identity.
Each small win becomes a vote for the person you want to become, something Charles Duhigg and BJ Fogg both highlight in their work on habit formation.
⚡️ The Paradox of Energy
Effort doesn’t always drain energy; it can create it.
Just like a workout releases the DOSE chemicals (You can check the book by The Dose Effect by TJ Power):
→ Dopamine (motivation)
→ Oxytocin (connection)
→ Serotonin (calm)
→ Endorphins (joy)
So does a small, productive win.
Completing one task early builds momentum for the rest of the day.
🤖 How AI Can Help Beat Procrastination
AI and automation remove friction and reduce decision fatigue.
Here’s how they help precrastinators stay on track:
✨ Beginner Uses
Use ChatGPT to rewrite email drafts quickly
Generate a meeting summary from raw notes
Draft a newsletter intro from a one-line idea
🧠 Prompt idea:
“Turn this idea into a 150-word newsletter intro: [your note]”
⚙️ Intermediate Automations
🧠 Prompt idea:
“Summarize this voice note into 3 takeaways and one next step.”
Let AI handle the prep work, making it easier to get started.
🎯 Today’s Takeaway:
Precrastination isn’t perfectionism.
It’s reducing stress by reducing delay.
A small start today makes space for deep focus tomorrow.
Start earlier than you think you need to.
And finish with peace of mind.
💬 Want help setting up simple automations to avoid last-minute stress?
Reply “early” and I’ll help map one out.
—
Thanks for reading!
Selim
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