Overextended and Overwhelmed: The Real Reason You Procrastinate

In this week’s episode of The Baggage Reclaim Sessions, I chat with my friend and coach Tiffany Han about why we procrastinate and the emotional baggage that drives it. We dig into how procrastination isn’t about laziness but often serves as a tension-relief valve for our overextended lives, and how our childhood experiences around effort, achievement, and rest shape our relationship with productivity.

Tiffany shares why “just write it down” or “just do it” advice misses the deeper issues, and we explore how people pleasing, perfectionism, and fear of failure contribute to our procrastination patterns. If you’ve ever beaten yourself up for not getting everything done, or felt shame about your to-do list, this conversation offers a refreshing perspective on how to redesign your relationship with procrastination and, ultimately, with yourself.

IN THIS EPISODE…

• Procrastination is not a sign of laziness, but often serves as a protective mechanism and tension relief from a chronically overextended life. What appears as “putting things off” is frequently your body’s way of pushing back against unrealistic expectations and obligations that don’t align with your actual capacity/bandwidth and desires.
• Our relationship with productivity is deeply influenced by childhood conditioning about worth, effort, and achievement. Whether you were praised for efforting, taught that rest equals laziness, or learned to use procrastination as a form of control in a chaotic environment, these early patterns shape how you approach tasks as an adult.
• Modern life has normalised an unsustainable level of overextension, with our attention constantly fragmented across multiple platforms and responsibilities. The capacity we had five or ten years ago doesn’t match our current reality, yet we continue to expect ourselves to function as if nothing has changed.
• Shifting from obligation-first to desire-first thinking helps reduce procrastination. By examining what you genuinely want versus what you feel obligated to do, you can identify the gap where tension, friction, and burnout reside. You can make more authentic choices about how you spend your energy.
• Redefining “enough” is crucial to breaking procrastination patterns. Rather than striving for 100-150% effort on everything (which is unsustainable and leads to burnout), experiment with what 70% or even 50% effort looks like on different tasks. Most people won’t notice the difference, but your capacity and wellbeing will significantly improve.

LINKS MENTIONED AND RECOMMENDED RESOURCES

• Tiffany Han website | Tiffany Han on Instagram
• Tiffany’s podcast episode Beat Procrastination (and Stop Beating Up YOU) | Focus Without Frenzy workshop
• Tiffany’s procrastination freebie
• The Tension Relief of Procrastination
• Ep.31: Procrastination Isn’t About Laziness, ‘Mutual’ Agreements, It Gets Better
• Ep. 219: You Are Allowed To Rest
• Why Am I Experiencing Resistance About the Thing I Say I Want or Need?
• Overcommitting and our fear of missing out or being labelled antisocial
• Here’s why you have no time and are overcommitted, overloaded or overwhelmed
• Self-care: Feel Better About Yourself with a “What I Did Today” List
• We need to talk about “selfish”
• Knowing the Line Between Putting You First and Being “Selfish”
• The Joy of Saying No: A Simple Plan to Stop People Pleasing, Reclaim Boundaries, and Say Yes to the Life You Want
• People-Pleasing Styles: What Your Pattern Reveals About Your Past and Present
• World Health Organisation and the stages of burnout, including excessive ambition (too much expectation)
• More Authentic Yes is Great for Our Body’s Stress Levels
• Revisited: Can’t figure out what’s bothering you? You’ve normalised treading water in stress
• Ep. 271: We’ve Got to Stop Harming Ourselves with Insane Politeness and Toxic Professionalism
• Ep. 229: Burning Out from Being There For Others
• Ep. 100: Are You Exceeding Your Bandwidth? (You Are Not The Energizer Bunny)
• Giving 100 Percent Effort All The Time is a Boundary and Bandwidth Issue
• How to say no when you don’t have the bandwidth to say yes
• Even if You’re the Strong One, You Need Help and Support Too
• Ep. 143: Is An Outdated Version of You Deciding What You’re Capable Of?
• The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
• Ep. 268: Get Out of the Field of Shoulds by Choosing Desire Over Obligation
• Ep. 291: Trusting Myself Through an Unexpected Health Journey (where I talk about the cancer diagnosis)
• Ep.20: Do Neglected Chores Break a Relationship? and The 8 Types of Inner Critic
• Ep. 243: Revisited-What’s the baggage behind it?
• Laziness Does Not Exist: A Defense of the Exhausted, Exploited, and Overworked by Devon Price, Ph.D.
• Ep. 283: Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents
• Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents by Dr. Lindsay C. Gibson
• Ep. 279: Return of Nat (Come on, where I talk about helping our daughter while she was struggling with her mental health).
• Reclaimed membership

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