Tasks you keep putting off
A task that keeps moving to tomorrow needs a decision more than it needs effort. Give it one of three answers: do a smaller version today, move it to the day it can happen or to a list for later, or let it go. Most stuck tasks are too big, too vague or no longer wanted.
Updated 30 October 2026
Why some tasks get stuck
The research on procrastination points at the task as much as at the person. In Steel’s review of 691 correlations, the strongest and most consistent predictors included how unpleasant a task is and how confident a person feels about doing it (Steel, 2007). In daily life, a stuck task is usually one of three kinds.
- Too big. Sort out the garage is a weekend, so it never fits into a Tuesday evening.
- Too vague. Car insurance doesn’t say what to do first, and working that out is the unpleasant part.
- No longer wanted. Someone else fixed the tap, or the moment passed.
Carrying any of them for another week changes nothing about why it is stuck.
Which kind of stuck is it?
Three questions sort most stuck tasks in a few seconds.
- Could you finish it in one sitting? If not, it is too big.
- Do you know exactly what you would do first? If not, it is too vague.
- Would you mind if it disappeared from the list tonight? If not, it is no longer wanted.
A task can fail more than one question; start with the first one it fails. Too big and too vague both take answer one, a smaller version today. No longer wanted takes answer three. A task that passes all three questions and still slips is waiting for a better time, and that is answer two.
Answer one: today, in a smaller form
If the task still matters, find the part you could do today. Rewrite a vague task as its first visible action, something you could start with what is in front of you:
- Car insurance becomes Find the renewal letter and note the price.
- Plan the trip becomes Ask Sam which weekend works.
- Tax return becomes Put last year’s return and this year’s certificates in one folder.
- Sort out the garage becomes Clear the shelves by the door, 30 minutes.
Big jobs get done in parts. Three half-hours across a week move the garage forward, while the free Saturday it seems to need may never come.
Spurt has lengths past an hour: 2 hrs, Half day and A day or more. Those jobs come up in the picker as parts, such as Do 30 min, and the time you put in stays on the task, which then reads Half day · 45 min in.
Answer two: a real date, or a list for later
Some tasks matter but can’t happen this week: the boiler service before winter, the passport renewal next year. Give them the date they can happen, and they stop appearing every morning until then.
Others have no date and no urgency: learning to make bread, sorting the old photos. They don’t belong on today’s list. Move them to a list for later, where they wait without asking for attention, and look at that list when you have time to choose something new.
Spurt calls that list Someday. Swipe a task to the right to park it there; it keeps its notes and items.
Answer three: let it go
Deleting a task can feel like giving up, but many tasks expire on their own. If the reason you wrote it down has gone, delete it. If it matters after all, you will write it down again.
Spurt keeps deleted tasks for 30 days in Recently deleted, at the bottom of Lists, with Put back.
When it is small and clear, and still unpleasant
Some tasks are none of those three kinds. The call to the bank takes five minutes, you know what to say, and you still don’t want to make it. That is the unpleasantness Steel’s review points to, and the practical move is to shrink the part you dread. Write the sentence you will open the call with. Draft the awkward email without deciding yet whether to send it. Put the task first in a block of time, before the rest of the list is there to hide behind.
When it is waiting on someone else
Some tasks stall because the next step belongs to another person, such as a quote from the plumber or a part on order. Rewrite the task as your own next step, with a date: Chase the plumber for the quote on Friday. Until Friday it is off today’s list.
If the task should be someone else’s altogether, hand it over. In Spurt you can send a task to anyone on a shared list with you, or anyone you’re connected with. It arrives in their Inbox with your name on it, and you see when it is done.
When a repeating task keeps slipping
A task that repeats and is carried most days is usually set to the wrong rhythm. If Water the plants is set to daily and you water them twice a week, the task shows as late most days for no good reason. Change the repeat to match what you do, every Monday and Thursday instead of every day, or three days after you last did it, and it comes back only when it is due.
In Spurt a repeat can be every day, weekdays, every week or two, every month or every year, or a pattern of your own: chosen weekdays, the last day or the first Monday of the month, or a number of days after you finish. Each one keeps its pattern’s days, so finishing it early or late, moving it, or parking it in Someday never shifts the ones after it.
Why being hard on yourself makes it worse
Guilt can feel like motivation, but the evidence points the other way. Wohl, Pychyl and Bennett followed 134 first-year university students across two rounds of midterm exams. Those who had forgiven themselves for putting off revision before the first exams reported less negative feeling in the weeks between and procrastinated less before the second (Wohl, Pychyl and Bennett, 2010, as reported by Jarrett, 2010).
That fits the mood-repair account of procrastination: if putting a task off is a way to feel better now, then a task wrapped in guilt is one more reason to avoid it (Sirois and Pychyl, 2013). Treat a missed day as information about the task and give it one of the three answers.
This is why Spurt shows a task that has waited in grey, with how long it has waited, such as Carried 3 days, and never turns it red or counts what is overdue.
A weekly look at what has waited
Once a week, take a few minutes to go through every task that has waited three days or more and give each one an answer.
Spurt’s Tidy is built for this. Once a carried task has waited three days, Tidy appears at the end of the Carried over header. It lists those tasks oldest first, each with Today, Someday and Delete, and Move all to Someday answers the rest at once.
Sources
- Jarrett, C. (2010, 4 May). The cure for procrastination? Forgive yourself! Research Digest, The British Psychological Society. British Psychological Society
- Sirois, F., & Pychyl, T. (2013). Procrastination and the priority of short-term mood regulation: Consequences for future self. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 7(2), 115-127. White Rose Research Online
- Steel, P. (2007). The nature of procrastination: A meta-analytic and theoretical review of quintessential self-regulatory failure. Psychological Bulletin, 133(1), 65-94. PubMed
- Wohl, M. J. A., Pychyl, T. A., & Bennett, S. H. (2010). I forgive myself, now I can study: How self-forgiveness for procrastinating can reduce future procrastination. Personality and Individual Differences, 48(7), 803-808. DOI