Make the first step ridiculously easy
A task can be too large to begin. Decompose it until the first physical action is obvious.
Written Mar 2019 · Updated Sept 2026
When I am procrastinating, the task in my head is normally too large.
“Write the proposal.”
“Build the website.”
“Sort out the company.”
None of these is an action. They are containers full of decisions.
So I decompose the task.
Then I decompose it again.
I keep going until the first step is ridiculously easy to do.
Kaizen starts with a change you can repeat#
There is a Japanese idea close to this: kaizen.
The word means improvement, or change for the better. At Toyota it became a practice of continuous improvement: finding a better way in the work, every day, rather than waiting for one enormous transformation.
Kaizen is not literally a philosophy of procrastination. And the popular internet version that says you only have to do something for one minute is too neat.
The useful connection is smaller and more practical.
Do not begin by demanding a different life from yourself. Make one change small enough to do, observe and improve again tomorrow.
For writing, the first step may be:
Open the document and write three bad headings.
For exercise:
Put my shoes beside the door tonight.
For a difficult email:
Write the person's name and the one thing I need to say.
This works partly because procrastination is not always a time-management problem. Research links it to task aversion and short-term mood repair. Avoiding the task removes an unpleasant feeling now, while the future version of me receives the cost.
Making the first step smaller does not finish the work. It makes the feeling attached to starting easier to cross.
The step should be physical and unambiguous. “Research” is not a step. “Open the report and copy the three figures I need to check” is.
It also helps to attach the step to a moment:
After breakfast, I will open the document and write three bad headings.
Psychologists call this an implementation intention: an if-then plan that ties an action to a situation.
Do not make a better plan for the whole mountain.
Find the first stone you can pick up now.
Research sources
- Toyota, “There is always a better way”
- JICA, “KAIZEN: Japan's approach towards improved quality and productivity”
- Fuschia Sirois and Timothy Pychyl, “Procrastination and the Priority of Short-Term Mood Regulation” (2013)
- Piers Steel, “The Nature of Procrastination”, Psychological Bulletin (2007)
- Peter M. Gollwitzer, “Implementation Intentions”, American Psychologist (1999)