GUIDED PRACTICE
Breakthrough Digital Procrastination
Digitally mediated environments intensify procrastination through constant interruption and attentional capture. These conditions compromise sustained focus, task completion, and psychological wellbeing, particularly under pressure.
Support that takes context seriously.
Persistent procrastination and avoidance are increasingly shaped by environments of constant interruption, infinite choice, and algorithmic distraction. These are not personal failures, but predictable responses to systems that monetise attention and fragment inner life.
I work with the psychological consequences of the systems we now live inside. Trained in psychology (PhD, MPhil, MSc Cantab), my background spans academia, strategy consulting, technology product work, and clinical practice — which means I’ve helped build environments that fragment attention and then sat with the procrastination, avoidance, and mental fatigue they produce. This work grows out of that tension: not asking why individuals delay or struggle to start, but how systems quietly train distraction, overload, and deferral.
What's Included
- 9 step-by-step video and audio trainings (a total of 5 hours of instruction)
- 5 demonstrations of techniques to reduce anxiety for you to immediately practise.
- Downloadable timetable and reflective journal
- Scripts and templates for exactly what to do when you’re struggling
- Reminders and instructions for you to download and follow
Module 1
What Exactly is Procrastination?
Procrastination is often framed as laziness or poor self-control. Research suggests otherwise. Meta-analytic work by Professor Piers Steel shows it is widespread, making it less a personal defect than a predictable feature of modern life. In algorithmically organised environments — including AI systems designed to sustain engagement — attention is constantly redirected and rewarded for short-term relief. Even tools that promise help quietly compete for attention. Procrastination emerges here as an attentional response shaped by design. The question is no longer “why can’t I start?”, but “what is training my attention not to?”
Module 2
It’s not all Smoke and Mirrors
Procrastination is not a failure of will. Neuroimaging studies show reduced activity in brain regions involved in emotional regulation, making discomfort harder to tolerate and avoidance more appealing. In digitally mediated environments, this is intensified. Systems designed to reward immediate relief train attention toward distraction and away from difficulty. Procrastination emerges not as indifference, but as an attempt to regulate emotion under constant stimulation. This module focuses on recognising these dynamics and learning how not to be governed by short-term relief, restoring choice where avoidance has taken over.
Module 3
Evolutionary Mismatch,
Research in behavioural genetics suggests that tendencies linked to procrastination are partly heritable. This does not make them flaws. In earlier environments, hesitation and delay often served adaptive purposes — allowing time to assess risk, conserve energy, or avoid error. The problem is mismatch. Brains shaped for scarcity and friction now operate in digitally saturated environments of infinite choice, constant alerting, and algorithmic distraction. Traits that once supported caution are overstimulated, turning delay into avoidance. This module examines how inherited dispositions interact with contemporary digital conditions to train procrastination — shifting the focus from self-blame to understanding how attention has been shaped, and how it can be reorganised.
Module 4
Reframing Procrastination
Procrastination is not a failure of planning or motivation, but a response to discomfort. Tasks that evoke stress, boredom, or shame trigger avoidance because they are hard to stay with. As Timothy Pychyl has shown, procrastination functions as immediate mood repair: attention shifts toward whatever offers quick relief. In digital environments, that relief is always available, reinforcing avoidance through repetition. Over time, this response becomes habitual. Procrastination is learned, not chosen — and what is learned under certain conditions can be relearned under different ones. The task here is to understand how attention has been trained, and to restore the capacity to stay with difficulty long enough for action to begin.
Module 5
Reclaiming Attention Through Mindfulness
Mindfulness is not a relaxation technique. It works at the level of attention and regulation — capacities increasingly eroded in environments shaped by constant alerts, feeds, and AI-mediated interaction. Research links mindfulness practice to changes in prefrontal brain regions involved in decision-making and emotional regulation. As researcher Shauna Shapiro notes, mindfulness is about changing our relationship to thought and emotion. Drawing on Jon Kabat-Zinn’s approach, this module treats mindfulness as a practical counter to AI-driven attentional capture — restoring the capacity to notice without immediately reacting in systems designed to keep attention unsettled.
Module 6
Attention, Loneliness, and Shared Time
Research in psychology and neuroscience shows that sustained digital engagement fragments attention and keeps the nervous system in a state of low-level vigilance, while displacing shared social time — a key source of regulation and wellbeing. Since the pandemic, this shift has intensified loneliness and anxiety, even as AI-mediated systems promise constant connection. This module explores how attention is shaped by digital environments, why loneliness has become structurally embedded, and why shared time, collective activity, and presence remain central to psychological health. The focus is on understanding these dynamics and identifying conditions that support community and meaningful connection.
Module 7
Self-Compassion in an Algorithmic World
Learning new habits is difficult not because of weak willpower, but because contemporary digital environments amplify self-criticism, comparison, and constant optimisation. Algorithmic systems that measure and reflect us back to ourselves intensify frustration and self-blame. Drawing on Dr Kristin Neff’s research on self-compassion, this module explores self-kindness as a psychologically robust response to pressure. It examines how AI-mediated feedback and automated “support” reshape self-relation, and how self-compassion can counter environments that privatise distress and internalise blame.
Module 8
Designing Against Distraction
Rather than teaching people to “manage” distraction, this module looks at how distraction is designed. Drawing on psychology and behavioural research, it examines how AI systems exploit novelty, uncertainty, and reward to keep attention circulating. Participants explore how small changes to environments, defaults, and expectations can reduce cognitive load and protect attention — shifting responsibility away from the individual and back toward design.
Addendum:
Counter-Habits
This closing session focuses on making the work liveable in AI-saturated, distraction-heavy environments. Rather than adding new techniques, it examines how digital and AI systems fuel procrastination by absorbing attention and delaying commitment. Drawing on research in psychology and attention, the session explores simple forms of boundary and friction that interrupt avoidance without relying on willpower or self-criticism. The emphasis is on small, durable structures that can hold under everyday digital pressure — including when distraction returns.
Insight matters, but sustaining change usually requires structure and support. If you’d like to explore one-to-one work, you’re welcome to book a conversation.
THE ALGORITHMIC MIND
Counter-Practices
Contemporary life is organised around optimisation — productivity, performance, self-management — a logic that now shapes inner life, attention, and relationships. These counter-practices offer a brief step outside that rhythm, slowing attention and reconnecting us with shared presence, curiosity, and embodied meaning-making.
About you…
You may be functioning well on paper yet feel inwardly crowded — not broken, but overstimulated. You may be looking for moments, not solutions: brief encounters with awe, thought, or conversation beyond metrics and performance. Moments that restore space, curiosity, and a sense of being more than a unit of output.
About these Counter-Practices…
These counter-practices are research-informed experiences designed to resist optimisation and extraction. The aim is not self-improvement, but reorientation — restoring attentional depth, sensory richness, and shared inquiry. Through time-bounded, facilitated sessions informed by psychology and neuroscience, participants engage with art, music, and complex material in ways that slow perception, ease vigilance, and support deeper attention, emotional regulation, and collective meaning-making.
Keeping it authentic, fearless and compassionate
Get involved by working with me directly. Alongside receiving one-to-one support, you’ll be contributing to the development of NeuroClear — an emerging, evidence-based clinical platform focused on assessment and support for neurodivergent adults.
