How to Stop the Procrastination Cycle: Why You Feel Lazy (But Aren't)

Written By Rhonda Lavoie

Show Notes

You are not lazy. If you were actually lazy, you wouldn’t feel guilty about what you aren't doing. For ambitious women, procrastination is often exhausting work where we spend precious energy on "safe" tasks because the real work feels like a threat. In this episode, Rhonda Lavoie breaks down why we choose the "Open Door Trap"—letting minor emergencies interrupt us so we never have to face our big, scary dreams.

We explore the four faces of resistance: the Perfectionist who is too terrified of judgment to finish , the Dreamer who is allergic to the friction of actual work , the Avoider who uses busyness as a shield , and the Adrenaline Junkie who uses stress as a drug. Learn why your brain is "redlining in neutral" and how a simple physical pattern interrupt can close the "open tabs" in your mind so you can finally get real rest

In This Episode:

  • (00:05) – Why "Lazy" is a lie and how the shame spiral starts.

  • (00:34) – The "Safe Work" Illusion: Why your brain keeps mental files wide open.

  • (01:45) – Introduction to the "Gap" between knowing and doing.

  • (04:53) – The Perfectionist: Why your brain is "redlining" while you're in the garage.

  • (08:18) – The Avoider vs. The Dreamer: Identifying your specific brand of resistance.

  • (10:02) – The Adrenaline Junkie: Why you use stress as a performance drug.

  • (12:42) – The Pattern Interrupt: How Paced breaks the "Digital Trance."

  • (13:48) – Recap & Your Weekly Challenge: Closing the files.

Resources Mentioned:

  • The Zeigarnik Effect: The science of why unfinished tasks drain your battery.

  • The Open Door Trap: Letting everyone else's emergencies take priority.

  • The Paced App: Trade steps for screen time to break the scroll.

This Week's Challenge:

Be brutally kind to yourself. Look at your to-do list and ask: "Am I actually working hard on the right thing, or am I just working hard to avoid the scary thing?". Pick one "scary" task and commit to being a "B student" for just 10 minutes to close that mental file.

🔗 CONNECT WITH RHONDA

·       Music for The Rhonda Lavoie Podcast written and recorded by Wade and Tan Fehr.

Transcript

[00:00:05] You are not lazy. I'm going to say that again because I know deep down you didn't believe me the first time. Listen to me, you are not lazy. You're sitting there in your car right now. Maybe you're in this school pickup line or you're pulling into a driveway for a listening appointment and you're thinking, Rhonda, if you saw my to-do list.

[00:00:34] If you saw how many times I picked up my phone today just to avoid a hard email, you change your mind. But let me tell you something, you weren't losing a fight against yourself. If you were actually lazy. You wouldn't be listening to a podcast about how to be better, lazy. People don't feel guilty about what they aren't doing.

[00:01:00] Lazy people don't feel guilty about what they aren't doing. You, you're drowning in it. You are staring at that one big task, that one that actually moves the needle, and instead you're color coding your spice rack or researching the market for the 400th time. That isn't a character flaw. It's a survival mechanism.

[00:01:27] Your brain isn't broken. It's just trying to protect you from something you're scared of. Bored by or overwhelmed with. Today, we're stopping that shame spiral and naming the monster.

[00:01:45] Hey everyone. Welcome back to the Rhonda Lavoie podcast. I am your host, Rhonda Lavoie. I am so glad you were here with me today. Lately, we've been spending a lot of time talking about willpower. How it's a limited resource, like a battery that drains every time you have to make a decision or resist an impulse.

[00:02:07] We looked at why we often feel like we're losing a fight against our own focus and how our devices are literally engineered by teams of neuroscientists and data scientists to steal our attention. But today I wanna get into that gap. You know, the one. It's that heavy, frustrating space between knowing exactly what you need to do.

[00:02:33] Maybe it's calling that client who's unhappy or finally starting that fitness program, or even just finishing the parent council minutes and actually putting your hands on the keyboard to do it. That gap. We usually call it procrastination, but here is the truth.

[00:02:52] For women like us, procrastination isn't doing nothing. It is often exhausting work. We are working our tails off on the wrong things just to avoid the one thing that matters. We are spending our precious energy on safe tasks. Because the real work feels like a threat, and that my friend is why you are so tired.

[00:03:22] You're working a double shift once on the distractions and once on the guilt of what you're avoiding. Before we dive in, I wanna ask a quick favor. This podcast is for the woman who is tired of the polished version of success. This conversation is helping you feel a little less alone in that struggle.

[00:03:46] Please hit subscribe and leave a five star rating. It helps so much in getting this conversation to the women who need it most. And if you have a friend who's currently productively procrastinating by cleaning her baseboards, do her a solid and share this episode with her. She needs to hear that she isn't lazy too.

[00:04:07] I want you to take a second right now. Maybe you are leaning against the kitchen island, waiting for the kettle, or sitting at a red light on your way to a showing, and I want you to really check in with yourself because when we talk about why we aren't getting the big stuff done, we usually just beat ourselves up.

[00:04:28] We tell ourselves we just need more grit. But I want to offer you a different lens. I wanna look at how we actually spend our energy, because for women like us, procrastination isn't about sitting still. It's about working incredibly hard on the wrong things just to feel safe.

[00:04:53] Let's start with the perfectionist. I call her the energy vampire because she will suck the life out of a project before it even has a chance to breathe. I want you to be honest with me. Are you her? Are you the woman who is working incredibly hard, but you're trapped in a loop? You'll spend 10 hours on a project that should have taken two because you can't release it into the world until it's perfect. Think about that listing Pres. Think about that listing presentation or that new marketing idea you've been sitting on. You've spent hours, maybe even days, tweaking the font and second guessing your branding, moving with the colors.

[00:05:38] You tell yourself you have high standards, but let's be real. You're just terrified of being judged and that's okay. I totally understand that. But every minute you spend perfecting is actually a minute. You are refusing to finish. And because you won't finish, your brain keeps that mental file wide open.

[00:06:03] It's what psychologists call the Zeigarnik Effect. It's like leaving a high performance laptop, running with 50 tabs open. The fan is spinning at a hundred percent. The battery is draining and the computer is getting hot to touch. That's you at 9:00 PM You're working a double shift once on the project and once on the anxiety of not being ready yet.

[00:06:26] You don't need a better plan. You need the courage to be a B student for 10 minutes so you can finally close the file and let your brain actually rest. Think about how that feels. You're exhausted. Your eyes are dry, but you're still clicking and dragging a logo, one millimeter to the left.

[00:06:50] You aren't resting. You're redlining your engine while the car is still in the garage. But maybe you aren't stuck in the fonts. Maybe you're stuck in the what ifs. This brings us to the dreamer. I love the dreamer because she has so much vision, but she's allergic to the friction of the actual work. She spends a staggering amount of energy researching.

[00:07:22] She'll watch five hours of tutorials on a new lead gen system or spend an entire afternoon color coding, a beautiful new planner she bought an indigo. She feels productive because her brain is moving fast. She's learning. It feels like progress, but at 1:00 PM she hasn't actually made a single prospecting call.

[00:07:46] It's like going to the grocery store when you're absolutely starving and exhausted. You're filling the cart with the possibilities, the salt and vinegar chips, instead of the actual fuel you need to get the job done. Planning gives you a hit of dopamine that feels like you're doing something, but it's a mood repair strategy.

[00:08:08] You spent all of your juice on the dream and left zero for the doing. , Aren't lazy.

[00:08:18] Now, this third one is the one I see the most in our circle. This is the avoider. She is the woman who uses her busyness as a shield to protect her from her own potential. And I want you to be honest here. Have you ever felt a rush of relief when someone asks you for a favor, because it gives you a valid excuse to put off your own work.

[00:08:47] The avoider is working harder than anyone else. She's the one volunteering for the extra parent council committee. She's the one scrubbing her baseboards. She's the one handling every minor client emergency that pops up. We choose the open door trap letting everyone else's minor emergencies interrupt us so we never have to face our own big, scary dreams.

[00:09:17] I remember being on my hands and knees scrubbing baseboards because I had a hundred percent chance of succeeding at that. It was safe work, but that complicated real estate deal that was messy, I might fail, I might get yelled at. So I chose the floor. I chose to be the reliable one for everyone else, so I never had to face the risk of my own success.

[00:09:41] It's a strategy to repair the mood in the moment, but it leaves you with a guilt hangover by morning because you spent your life's energy on things that didn't actually move your life forward. Finally, we have to talk about the one we often wear as a badge of honor, the adrenaline junkie.

[00:10:02] This is the woman who says, Rhonda, I actually do my best work at the last minute. You wait until 11:00 PM the night before a huge presentation to even start. You think you need the pressure to be creative. But let's be honest, you aren't a pressure performer. You're using stress as a drug. You wait until the panic of the deadline is louder than the voice of the inner critic. When the stakes are that high

[00:10:29] you don't have time to be a perfectionist anymore. So you finally move, but at what cost? You are redlining your nervous system. You are teaching your brain that the only way to be productive is to be in a state of an emergency. That isn't a workflow. It's a recipe for burnout. You're burning through a month's worth of juice in a single night, and then you wonder why you feel like a ghost for three days.

[00:11:01] I want you to really hear me on this. When you're caught in one of these four loops, you aren't actually resting. You think you're decompressing by organizing your spice rack or scrolling through Instagram, but your brain is actually doing a massive amount of invisible work. I saw this recently with my nephew, Jesse.

[00:11:23] He was getting enough sleep, but he was waking up exhausted. Hiding in his hoodie, hunting for coffee like he'd been hit by a truck. It's because even when we think we're mindlessly scrolling, our brains are processing thousands of images and hundreds of different emotions,

[00:11:40] every few minutes. Every task you avoid, every perfect project you won't release is like a tab left open on a laptop. The fan starts to spin. The battery dies twice as fast, and you wake up with a guilt hangover even if you didn't have a single drop to drink. You aren't a failure for being tired. You're just depleted because you have all of these open tabs. And this is where we have to get physical. When you are in that stuck state, that perfectionist freeze or that avoiders busy work, your nervous system is actually stagnant.

[00:12:21] You need a pattern interrupt that doesn't just talk to your logic, but moves your body. You don't try harder, you stop relying on the battery that you know is going to be empty by the end of the day. You use a system, and this is where Paced fits so naturally in my day. It doesn't lock you out like a prison.

[00:12:42] It uses that pattern interrupt we just talked about. When you hit your limit on those distracting apps. The ones you're using to avoid your real work. A cool down timer pops up. It's like a hand on the shoulder saying, Hey, you're in a trance.

[00:12:56] You should snap out of it now. Now here is why this matters for the perfectionist or the avoider. You can either wait for the cool down timer. Or you can use the walk to unlock feature pace tracks your steps, so if you get up and move, you trade those steps for screen time.

[00:13:14] 100 steps can give you back three minutes a time. Instead of sitting there feeling guilty, you're trading a bad habit. That mindless scrolling for a healthy one. Those 100 steps. Tell your nervous system, Hey, we're moving, we're awake. It breaks the spell of the fake work. Usually, by step 50 I realize I wasn't actually busy, I was just hiding.

[00:13:36] It gives me the friction I need to close the open tabs, finish the real work, and finally earn the right to actual deep rest.

[00:13:48] This week I want you to do something a little uncomfortable. I want you to look at your to-do list, the one sitting on the counter, or the digital mess in your notes app, and I want you to be brutally kind to yourself. Ask the hard question, am I actually working hard on the right thing, or am I just working hard to avoid the scary thing?

[00:14:15] Identify your monster. Are you the perfectionist tweaking the same email for the fourth time, the Dreamer buying yet another course you won't finish. The avoider rescuing everyone else's schedule while yours is on fire. Or the adrenaline junkie waiting for the 11th hour to feel alive. Stop the shame. You aren't a failure, you are just depleted.

[00:14:43] But here's the hard truth. Every time you choose the safe task, the baseboards, the spice rack, the endless research you are stealing from your future self. You are choosing the comfort of a clean kitchen over the legacy of a built business. You are choosing to be busy because being impactful feels risky, but your life isn't meant to be a series of managed emergencies.

[00:15:10] It's meant to be a series of closed files and real deep recovery. Give yourself the gift of actual rest. The kind that only comes when the hard work is done, not just avoided. Okay. I've put all of the links and the breakdown of these four types in the show notes at rhondalavoie.com. If you are an Android user, don't wait for your battery to hit zero.

[00:15:36] Go grab Paced on the Google Play store and set up the walk to unlock if you're on Apple, get on the wait list at getpaced.app This isn't just about an app, it's about putting a guardrail between you and the habits that are keeping you tired. If you are sitting there thinking, Rhonda, you were in my head today.

[00:15:59] Then I can guarantee you there is another woman in your circle who feels exactly the same way. She's the one who looks like she's doing it all, but is actually drowning in the silent workload of procrastination. Do her a favor, share this episode with her. Send her a text. Let her know she isn't lazy.

[00:16:19] Let's start a movement of women who are done with being busy and are finally ready to be impactful. Stop hiding from your life and start showing up in it. I'm Rhonda Lavoie. Keep it real, keep it honest, and for heaven's sakes, get it done. I'll see you next week.

Rhonda Lavoie
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Why You’re Always Tired: The Willpower Myth & The "Mind-Filled" Scroll