That's your interpretation, not what the article says. In short: yes. Procrastination isn’t a unique character flaw or a mysterious curse on your ability to manage time, but a way of coping with challenging emotions and negative moods induced by certain tasks — boredom, anxiety, insecurity, frustration, resentment, self-doubt and beyond. “Procrastination is an emotion regulation problem, not a time management problem,” said Dr. Tim Pychyl, professor of psychology and member of the Procrastination Research Group at Carleton University in Ottawa. Nobody procrastinates on a task that will have a payoff of success or accomplishment. They procrastinate on a task that they feel the negative emotions will outweigh the positives. The article further argues that we can estimate the negative emotions accurately but not the positive ones, and further that we can dissociate the present from the future: “We really weren’t designed to think ahead into the further future because we needed to focus on providing for ourselves in the here and now,” said psychologist Dr. Hal Hershfield, a professor of marketing at the U.C.L.A. Anderson School of Management. Dr. Hershfield’s research has shown that, on a neural level, we perceive our “future selves” more like strangers than as parts of ourselves. When we procrastinate, parts of our brains actually think that the tasks we’re putting off — and the accompanying negative feelings that await us on the other side — are somebody else’s problem. Their suggestion? Realize that we don't do stuff that sucks because it sucks. Another tactic is the related practice of self-compassion, which is treating ourselves with kindness and understanding in the face of our mistakes and failures. In a 2012 study examining the relationship between stress, self-compassion and procrastination, Dr. Sirois found that procrastinators tend to have high stress and low self-compassion, suggesting that self-compassion provides “a buffer against negative reactions to self-relevant events.” In fact, several studies show that self-compassion supports motivation and personal growth. Not only does it decrease psychological distress, which we now know is a primary culprit for procrastination, it also actively boosts motivation, enhances feelings of self-worth and fosters positive emotions like optimism, wisdom, curiosity and personal initiative. Best of all, self-compassion doesn’t require anything external — just a commitment to meeting your challenges with greater acceptance and kindness rather than rumination and regret. This is a thousand word article saying "you don't do stuff that sucks because it sucks." I knew that. I've got a motorcycle that hasn't run in two years. And part of that is because whenever I start working on it, I have a new opportunity to check a dozen fruitless things, attempt to order a part from six thousand miles away, have that part shipped to the wrong state by a careless German, run out of time, leave things dismantled, go off to California for four months and forget everything I've learned so that I can do it fresh and shiny new when the weather isn't pouring down rain again. I don't work on that motorcycle because it sucks. The reward is the bike is working again, but that reward has become so abstract, and the sucking so concrete, that it takes a real force of will to power through it. It ain't laziness. It's pain-avoidance. And now here I am, waiting for a response from Dresden.Wait. We procrastinate because of bad moods?
Procrastination is a perfect example of present bias, our hard-wired tendency to prioritize short-term needs ahead of long-term ones.
One option is to forgive yourself in the moments you procrastinate. In a 2010 study, researchers found that students who were able to forgive themselves for procrastinating when studying for a first exam ended up procrastinating less when studying for their next exam. They concluded that self-forgiveness supported productivity by allowing “the individual to move past their maladaptive behavior and focus on the upcoming examination without the burden of past acts.”