Personal Productivity

Rachel Jennings
March 6, 2026

A recap of our latest PeopleUnboxed webinar, that explored how to prioritise effectively and challenged views on procrastination.

In February 2026, Aggie and C har ley unboxed the science behind why we delay certain tasks, how to tell the difference between helpful and harmful procrastination, and shared a powerful framework for taking back control of your time and energy.

You can catch the full webinar here, but if you prefer to learn by reading, then you’re in the right place….

Not all procrastination is bad.

More than 95% of people admit they procrastinate. So, if you’ve ever stared at your to-do list and felt simultaneously overwhelmed and paralysed, you’re not alone. But here’s the thing: not all procrastination is the enemy, and working harder is rarely the answer.

People procrastinate for different reasons; there are two main driving forces behind delaying a task. This flow chart helps determine what the driving force behind your procrastination is:

"A flowchart titled “Why do we procrastinate?”. From this title, two main branches extend downward. To the left is a box labelled “Fear of failure / avoidance” branches downward into another box reading “Driven by fear, avoidance, or overwhelm.” Below this, the flow splits into two smaller red boxes: “Delay starting” and “Task feels boring or unclear”. Both of these feed into a final box at the bottom labelled “Perfectionism.” To the right from the title is a box labelled “Intentional delay” branches downward into a box reading “To prioritise or create pressure.” Below this box, the branch divides into two smaller boxes: “Strategic delay for creativity” and “Using deadlines for motivation” Both lead into a final box at the bottom labelled “Choosing to do other tasks first.” — “A flowchart titled “Why do we procrastinate?”. From this title, two main branches extend downward. To the left is a box labelled “Fear of failure / avoidance” branches downward into another box reading “Driven by fear, avoidance, or overwhelm.” Below this, the flow splits into two smaller red boxes: “Delay starting” and “Task feels boring or unclear”. Both of these feed into a final box at the bottom labelled “Perfectionism.” To the right from the title is a box labelled “Intentional delay” branches downward into a box reading “To prioritise or create pressure.” Below this box, the branch divides into two smaller boxes: “Strategic delay for creativity” and “Using deadlines for motivation” Both lead into a final box at the bottom labelled “Choosing to do other tasks first.”

The webinar introduced a clear distinction between two types:

Passive procrastination – avoidance driven by fear of failure, overwhelm, or boredom. This is the kind that drains your energy and chips away at your self-esteem.
Active procrastination – a strategic, intentional delay. You work better under pressure, or you need thinking time to let ideas percolate. This can actually boost creativity and performance.

To diagnose which type you’re experiencing, Charley and Aggie shared three powerful questions:

3 boxes to identify which type of procrastination you are experiencing. Green box reads, 'Deep of shallow talk?'. Red box reads, 'Fear or control?'. Orange box reads, 'Numbing or incubating distraction?'. — 3 boxes to identify which type of procrastination you are experiencing. Green box reads, ‘Deep of shallow talk?’. Red box reads, ‘Fear or control?’. Orange box reads, ‘Numbing or incubating distraction?’.

Your answers reveal whether you should fight the delay or lean into it. It could be that these questions elicit a mix of passive and active procrastination tendencies. It’s about reflecting on whether the actions and behaviours are serving you or if you need to utilise other strategies to maximise effectiveness.

They then revealed some tips for how to navigate passive procrastination, whilst this isn’t an extensive list it certainly helps generate some ideas for strategies you could implement:

Strategies for overcoming procrastination in 5 multicoloured boxes vertically stacked. The top green box reads, 'Make tasks stimulating'. The grey box, 'Break it down'. The green box, 'Just start'. The yellow box, 'Connect to purpose'. The red box, 'Remove distractions'. — Strategies for overcoming procrastination in 5 multicoloured boxes vertically stacked. The top green box reads, ‘Make tasks stimulating’. The grey box, ‘Break it down’. The green box, ‘Just start’. The yellow box, ‘Connect to purpose’. The red box, ‘Remove distractions’.

Urgent ≠ Important

One of the most powerful tools shared in the session was the Eisenhower Matrix, a simple but transformative system for prioritisation. Named after a US President (who had also been a WWII General, he had a philosophy that helped him stay sharp and focus on what really matters:

“Urgent tasks are never important, and important tasks are never urgent”.

You might be wondering “okay, but what does that mean, exactly?”. Important things are either important to you or to your organisation, and the key here is that only YOU can do them. Urgent tasks are the ones that need to be addressed today, maybe tomorrow at the latest. I’ve recently heard a simplified version of this calculation – when a task lands in your inbox, ask yourself two questions:

Is it me? (Am I the right person to do this?)
Is it now? (Does it need to happen today?)

This gives you four clear quadrants to apply the strategy to:

A four‑quadrant Eisenhower Matrix chart, in different colours. The top‑left is labelled “DO – it now.” The top‑right is labelled “DECIDE – plan when to address this'. The bottom‑left is labelled “DELEGATE – who else could take care of it?' The bottom‑right labelled 'DELETE – or automate'. — A four‑quadrant Eisenhower Matrix chart, in different colours. The top‑left is labelled “DO – it now.” The top‑right is labelled “DECIDE – plan when to address this’. The bottom‑left is labelled “DELEGATE – who else could take care of it?’ The bottom‑right labelled ‘DELETE – or automate’.

Do it now: If your task was deemed both urgent and important, these are critical tasks that need to be done today and can’t be postponed or given to anyone else. Sometimes these will be tasks that you planned for a given day with your long-term goals in mind, sometimes it might be tasks that popped up last minute. Beware of those last-minute tasks – these are the ones you should really be looking into and asking: “is it me and is it now?”.
Decide and plan when: This quadrant will contain all the tasks which do not need urgency, like long-term projects, or long-term goals that have to be approached gradually or done over a period of time. The important thing to remember here is that you need to assess how long you will need to prepare for that task, or to achieve that goal, put it in your diary and then treat it as urgent when the time comes.
Delegate who: Things that are urgent but not important are good material for delegation, they are likely to be things that other people can do easily enough and might just need your approval. If you have someone you could delegate to, remember that this quadrant is an important tool – you should be focusing on the tasks where you can make a real impact, the things that only you have the skillset to do. If a task could be done equally well by someone on your team and give them an opportunity to develop, delegate it strategically.
Delete or automate: A lot of distractions will go in here, as well as old and obsolete processes, possibly meetings that could be emails. We should avoid these tasks if we can. The alternative is automation – available to us way more than it was back in Eisenhower’s time.

If you’d like to give this a go we have an interactive Time Management resource you can download and try for yourself.

The session’s poll revealed that most attendees spend the majority of their time in Quadrant 1 – firefighting. The goal? Migrate as much work as possible into Quadrant 2, where things get done strategically, not reactively.

To do this, you need to understand your time stealers, and which one’s are being imposed on us (e.g. network problems, unclear communication or lack of training) and what we are inflicting on ourselves (poor organisation, lack of concentration or indecision).

A few practical strategies that resonated most with the room:

Protect your focus. Research shows it takes over 20 minutes to recover from a single distraction, so put yourself on Do Not Disturb.
Manage your energy, not just your time. Build in breaks to replenish.
Know your rhythm. Schedule deep work for when you have the most energy.
Connect to the why. Use intrinsic motivation and understand the purpose of a task
Start small to beat perfectionism. Break tasks into slices to get early validation and build confidence incrementally.

Work with your brain, not against it.

Being more productive doesn’t mean doing more.

In fact, it might be the opposite – you should focus on the things that really matter, tasks where YOU can really make a difference. The rest should be judged with the “is it me and is it now”.

As Bruce Lee put it:

“It is not daily increase but daily decrease, hack away the unessential.”

Productivity isn’t about cramming more in. It’s about ruthlessly focusing on the things that actually matter and letting go of everything else. Good luck!

If you’d like to explore this topic further, here are some resources that were shared:

Tim Urban explains how the minds of procrastinators work: Inside the Mind of a Master Procrastinator | Tim Urban | TED
A longer version of the above TED talk in the form of an article: Why Procrastinators Procrastinate — Wait But Why
Mel Robbins talks about getting out of the habit of procrastinating: The ONLY Way To Stop Procrastinating | Mel Robbins
A great explanation of the two types of procrastination: What Procrastination Looks Like from the Inside
A quick recap about how to use the Eisenhower matrix: The Eisenhower matrix: How to manage your tasks with EISENHOWER
10 productivity strategies which might work for you, whether you have ADHD or not: ADHD and Motivation: 10 Productivity Hacks for Adults with ADHD – ADDA – Attention Deficit Disorder Association
If you’ve tried a lot of time management strategies and you’re feeling demotivated, watch this video: 5 Lies I Believed About Productivity (As Someone With ADHD)
A case for avoiding distractions (and a good explanation of context switching): It takes 23 mins to recover after an interruption
If you feel like your time management struggles stem from time blindness, check out this article: ADHD Time Blindness: How to Detect It & Regain Control Over Time – ADDA – Attention Deficit Disorder Association