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How Can Athletes Ditch Procrastination in Sport and Life?

  • May 1, 2025
  • Mental Wellness, Performance Anxiety
Athletes

Kevin Chapman, PhD headshot.Have you waited until the last night before a report is due to write it? Or delayed doing laundry until you don’t have any clean clothes left? That’s procrastination, and it’s very common!

While it doesn’t always lead to bad outcomes, procrastination often comes with negative side effects, such as loss of sleep and damaged relationships, so it’s not a good habit to develop.

Here, TrueSport Expert Kevin Chapman, PhD, clinical psychologist and founder of The Kentucky Center for Anxiety and Related Disorders, is explaining why we tend to procrastinate and how to stop procrastinating once and for all.

 

Why do people procrastinate?

“Procrastination is avoidance, plain and simple,” says Chapman. Often, we tell ourselves we work better under a tight deadline or that we enjoy that ‘last minute’ feeling, but the reality is that we’re avoiding something.

“There are a lot of reasons why we procrastinate, but it all comes back to avoiding some feeling,” Chapman says. “One reason we procrastinate is because we’re experiencing anxiety, and it’s our way of trying to manage anxiety, which actually backfires and ultimately makes the anxiety worse.”

Another reason people procrastinate is due to lack of perceived reward. “If you perceive that an experience isn’t rewarding, then you’re likely to push it off to the last minute because it’s not motivating,” Chapman says.

“For athletes and students, fear of failure is another big reason for procrastinating,” he adds. “You push things off because you don’t want to make a mistake or look bad.”

 

What does procrastination look like for athletes?

Sometimes it’s hard to spot procrastination in our own lives. “Consider training goals,” says Chapman. “Say you know that you have to run a mile and a half at a certain time, and you have to be able to lift a certain amount by the time the football season starts. At the beginning of the summer, you know you need to get to work so you can hit those targets by September. But many of us will procrastinate on a goal like that for a variety of reasons.”

Maybe getting started in the gym is intimidating, or you lack motivation because you would rather relax over the summer. Regardless of why you procrastinate, the result is the same: you don’t put in the work and you’re unprepared to meet performance goals.

 

How do you stop procrastinating?

Start by identifying your procrastinating behavior. “Then, identify what emotion is attached to that behavior. Ask yourself, what emotion am I avoiding by procrastinating?”

From there, you can start planning. Chapman suggests using a sheet of paper with two columns. On the left side, list your procrastinating behavior. In the other column, come up with an alternative action—something you can do instead. It’s not necessarily the opposite of the procrastination behavior, but it is an action that moves you in the right direction.

Young male teen writing in a notebook at a desk.“For example, if I’m afraid of failure and that’s stopping me from going to the gym, my first step to list in that column would be to read the email and the PDF that coach sent me for the summer. That’s it,” says Chapman. “Next, I’ll ask a friend to train with me, or even just text me weekly to check in that training is going well.” These tiny steps add up to big results. The key is to shift into a task-based mindset: Focus on what the next task should be, rather than focusing on what could go wrong or the emotion you’re trying to avoid.

If low motivation is your problem, Chapman suggests breaking tasks down into more manageable chunks, and assigning small rewards to those smaller stepping stones. Did you hit the gym three times this week? Great—that’s a new pair of shoes, or a weekend hangout with friends.

The key isn’t just in making the alternative action plans, Chapman says. The real magic happens just by taking any action instead of putting it off entirely. These tiny actions help your brain separate the procrastination from the strong emotion. And once that happens, it’s easier to stop procrastinating altogether.

Sometimes, you have to dig a bit deeper to get to the root cause of your emotions. For example, fear of failure is often actually anxiety and shame attached to letting other people down. “In sport, this is particularly true,” says Chapman. “We don’t want to look bad, and we don’t want to let our coaches, teammates, and family down. So with fear of failure, we really have to start by asking if our expectations are realistic. We have to shift our focus to the process of competing, and not the outcome of competing—and you can do that with your two columns you’re working on!”

 

But what if you’re someone who thrives on a tight deadline?

Often people will say that they’re ‘good at procrastinating.’ They believe that they get the best grades and have the best performances when they’re under pressure. So, should they lean into procrastination since it’s helping them?

Definitely not, says Chapman.

“I vehemently disagree that anyone is doing better by procrastinating,” he says. “Even if the outcomes are decent, procrastination is still a form of emotional avoidance and that’s never good.”

“And the true high performers are not the ones putting stuff off,” he adds. “Putting something off to the day or hour before it’s due may work in the short term, but your body is paying attention. Your cortisol levels and your stress hormones are going higher and that’s not helpful or healthy. You may have done well on your report, but you were likely to be emotionally dysregulated during and afterwards, and you might have been hard to be around. It’s just not the recipe for success.”

_______________________

Takeaway

Procrastination stems from trying to avoid an emotion, such as fear, boredom, or anxiety. Identify the places and times when you tend to procrastinate, and write out the emotions that might be blocking you from getting the job done. Then, think through small action steps that you can take rather than focusing on the things that are stopping you from getting started. Often, taking these tiny first steps will help your brain move through procrastination and break the habit entirely.

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Goal-Setting Lesson Video Transcript

Hi. I’m Trevon, Trey, Jennifer. Team USA wheelchair basketball player, paralympian, and true sport athlete. Today, I want to talk to you about goal setting. And there are three things that I would like you to know. First, successful athletes set goals and a planned roadmap. Second, goals should be written down, assessed over time, and changed if necessary. And third, goals need to be challenging in order to be worthwhile. As a freshmen at Edinboro University, I was a part of a team that made the national championship game. And at that time I recognized I was the low man on the totem pole, but I felt in my heart that I knew my dreams were so much bigger than winning a national title. I wanted to make Team USA. I knew what achieving my lofty goal was not going to be easy and that I would need to work hard every day.

So, as a reminder, I created a pyramid of goals that I kept right above my bed. This pyramid reminded me of the accomplishments that I was working towards and visually represented my need to create a solid foundation underneath me before reaching the top. In the bottom roll of my pyramid of goals I listed goals such as obtaining my bachelor’s degree, becoming a scholar athlete award recipient, and becoming an All-American. The middle row listed winning a national title and playing for a professional team. And at the top row, the most challenging of them all, I listed becoming a gold medalist for Team USA.

By understanding that there are smaller stepping stones to achieving my ultimate goal of being on Team USA, I was able to stay motivated and to stay focused on completing the smaller stepping stones fully before moving onto the next one. Now I’ll be the first to admit that not every goal that I listed on my pyramid was accomplished, but seeing my goals every day when I went to bed, I was able to push through the days that I felt like doing nothing in hopes of achieving the bigger picture. Remember, create a clear goal roadmap, assess your goals often, and continue to challenge yourself. I hope that you never stopped dreaming big or reaching for the stars. And I look forward to seeing where your roadmap takes you.

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So I changed my diet. I went along with what I was being told to do, even though I’d had great success at a slightly heavier weight and higher body fat percentage, and became much leaner than ever before. It seemed like a successful change at first, but I didn’t have nearly the results I’d had before. And I believe becoming leaner than my body naturally wanted to be was what caused my ACL to tear. In the end, it cost me heavily going into the 2012 London games. The takeaway for me, and hopefully for you, is that it’s important to know what works for you and your body and to not compare yourself to others. You should do your research and experiment with your diet to find what makes you feel the best, rather than focusing on what you look like. Today, if I feel like having a chocolate chip cookie, I have one, just not every day.

I’ve learned what a properly balanced meal for my body looks like and I recognize food as the fuel that keeps me throwing. I hydrate and allow myself time to recover. And I listen to and communicate with my body so that I can be the best version of myself. In the end, you are in control of how you see, treat, and respond to your body. We only get one and it’s amazing to discover how many things our bodies can do. Be a true sport athlete. Love who you are in this moment and get excited for all the places your body will take you.

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I believe that sportsmanship reveals true character. So, no matter what situation I encounter during competition, I know it’s important to always treat people with respect and be a good sport. Remember, be a fierce competitor, find grace in all your victories and losses. And I hope to see you out there.

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You have the ability to affect even deeper change, to take what’s in your hands and do something even more extraordinary. You can be both the coach who provides the skills needed to win the game and the coach who helps them learn and succeed beyond the sport, to become all stars wherever they land in the future, and to enjoy their lives more now, because the confidence and courage they find working with you will stay with them when they need it the most. There are games to be won, lives to change. Coaches have the power to do both.

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At first glance, dietary supplements look the same. They seem safe and healthy, but just because the label says a product is a dietary supplement, that doesn’t mean it’s safe. Unfortunately, you can’t tell whether a product is safe or not just by looking at the label. Most vitamins, minerals, fish oil, and other supplements containing nutrients are probably just fine, but supplements are not evaluated or approved by FDA before they are sold. Although it is rare for vitamins or minerals to be contaminated with drugs, there has been at least one case of a vitamin containing an anabolic steroid.

At the other extreme are products that contain drugs, stimulants, anabolic steroids, or other hormones. Even though these are not technically dietary supplements, many of them are labeled as supplements. For example, body-building products sometimes contain anabolic steroids or Selective Androgen Receptor Modulators, known as SARMs, or other hormones. Some pre-workout or energy products contain illegal stimulants like DMAA, ephedra, or other amphetamine-like stimulants. Weight loss products might contain prescription drugs like sibutramine, or hormones, like human chorionic gonadotropin, also known as hCG. All natural or herbal sexual enhancement products might contain hormones or Viagra-like drugs. Products like these can harm your health and career, but they’re for sale online, in some nutrition stores, and they’re labeled as dietary supplements.

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