Researchers at UC Santa Barbara have identified a brief two-minute reflection exercise that can help people overcome procrastination. Their study, published in BMC Psychology, focused on the moments just before beginning a task and found that addressing emotional resistance can make it easier to get started.
“Most interventions aim to change who we are in the long run — our personality, habits or traits, but procrastination happens in the moment,” said doctoral researcher Anusha Garg, co-author of the study along with Shivang Shelat and Professor Jonathan Schooler from UCSB’s Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences. “If we can design tools that make it easier to step over that line, we can help people change behavior right when it matters,” Garg added.
The research team developed Dawdle AI, a free mobile app designed to put these findings into practice. The app guides users through short exercises aimed at reducing emotional barriers and encouraging action. In their study, participants who completed the guided exercise reported improved mood, less resistance, and were more likely to start their tasks within 24 hours compared to control groups. “The goal wasn’t to eliminate procrastination overnight,” Garg explained. “It was to make starting feel a little lighter — to give people traction in the exact moment they’re stuck.”
The approach is based on the temporal decision model of procrastination. This model suggests people delay tasks when the perceived unpleasantness outweighs expected rewards. The intervention aims to reduce this aversion by encouraging users to name their emotions and pair each task with a small reward after completion.
In follow-up research not yet published, Garg’s team investigated whether breaking down tasks alone could motivate action or if pairing them with rewards was necessary. Early results suggest both steps are important for increasing motivation. “When participants only broke the task down, they felt a little more motivated,” Garg said. “But when they also paired that step with a small reward — like a walk, a snack or texting a friend — the motivation boost was significantly stronger. The reward makes the effort itself feel worthwhile.”
Dawdle AI incorporates these insights by providing an animated guide named Pebbles who helps users talk through what they are avoiding, break tasks into subtasks, and select rewards for each completed step. The app also includes features such as timers and streak tracking.
The app launched at UCSB in November 2025 alongside ambassador programs and events aimed at helping students use this science-based tool in their daily lives. Garg noted that bringing psychological research out of academic journals and into practical use was an important goal: “So much psychological research ends up locked in journals,” she said. “We wanted this to live in people’s hands.”
Garg hopes reframing procrastination as an emotional hurdle rather than a fixed trait will lead individuals toward practical strategies instead of self-criticism: “We procrastinate because we’re human,” she said. “But if we can learn to navigate that starting-line moment — to notice it, label it and tip the scales toward reward — we can start almost anything.
“The hardest part isn’t the work itself. It’s just starting. And that’s exactly where science can help.”
