- A brief reflection exercise reduced emotional resistance and helped people start avoided tasks
- The research underpins a mobile app, Dawdle AI, built to deliver the technique in daily life
- Pairing small steps with small rewards appears to make effort itself feel more worthwhile
Most advice about procrastination focuses on long term change: forming habits, building discipline, reshaping identity.
The new research from the University of California, Santa Barbara takes a different angle. It treats procrastination as something that happens in a single moment, at the starting line between intention and action.
Doctoral researcher Anusha Garg and colleagues asked a simple question.
If you target that tiny pause before starting, can you make it easier for people to take the first step on a task they have been putting off?
The two minute intervention
In a large study published in BMC Psychology, participants completed a guided reflection exercise that lasted less than two minutes. The exercise drew on the temporal decision model of procrastination, which frames the choice to start as a balance between:
- Task aversion, or how unpleasant starting feels
- Outcome utility, or how good it will feel to have the task done
The exercise combined two elements. People were asked to:
- Name how they felt about the task, a technique known as affect labelling, which can lower emotional intensity
- Break the task into a smaller first step and pair that step with a small self chosen reward, such as a snack, a short walk or texting a friend
Compared with control activities, this brief reflection led to better mood, less emotional resistance and a higher reported likelihood of acting on the task within the next day. The aim was not to abolish procrastination overnight, but to make starting feel lighter and more achievable.
Why rewards matter
In follow up work, Garg’s team examined whether simply breaking tasks down would be enough. Early results suggest that while creating sub tasks increases motivation, the effect is stronger when people also attach a small reward to the first step.
This fits with the theory of learned industriousness, which suggests that when effort is consistently paired with reinforcement, effort itself becomes rewarding.
Over time, starting a difficult task can begin to feel like a small success rather than a burden.
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From lab to app
Rather than leave these findings in academic journals, Garg partnered with computer science students to build a free mobile app designed to bring the intervention into everyday life.
The app features an animated guide who invites users to:
- Describe what they are avoiding
- Break the task into smaller pieces
- Choose rewards for completing each step
It also provides timers, progress tracking and encouraging feedback to reinforce momentum. The app essentially replicates the structure of the study in a usable format that can be opened in the exact moment someone feels stuck.
Launched on the UCSB campus in November 2025 and now available on the App Store, Dawdle AI is being promoted through campus events and ambassador schemes as a practical tool for students and others who struggle with procrastination.
Changing how we think about procrastination
By reframing procrastination as a temporary emotional hurdle rather than a fixed character flaw, the research aims to reduce shame and focus on strategy.
The message is blunt: people procrastinate because they are human, but they can learn to manage the starting line.
Noticing that moment, labelling what it feels like, choosing a tiny next step and pairing it with a small reward can be enough to tip the balance towards action. The work suggests that the hardest part is rarely the task itself.
It is almost always getting started.
