When we procrastinate, parts of our brains actually think that the tasks we’re putting off — and the accompanying negative feelings that await us on the other side — are somebody else’s problem. To make things worse, we’re even less able to make thoughtful, future-oriented decisions in the midst of stress.

Students often procrastinate because they don’t see how a project is relevant or important to them, don’t understand the material, or just don’t know how to get started. When you boil it down, procrastination is a combination of motivation, confidence, and comprehension issues.

Academic procrastination has an adverse impact on the academic progress of students and thus induces stress and anxiety,21 and stress can have a negative effect on emotional well-being. Procrastination and delay behaviors have an adverse impact on student academic progress and thus increase the stress.

So, procrastination etymologically means putting off something until tomorrow, a tomorrow that is usually less defined. Every student one time or another has been a victim of procrastination, that urge to eschew studying and postpone writing those essays for another day.

Procrastination can also show up in conjunction with various mental health issues — ADHD, eating disorders, perfectionism, anxiety, depression — because it is an avoidance strategy, Eddins says.

Yes, everyone procrastinates sometimes. But ADHD procrastination is different. It’s different, first, because it’s more extreme. For people with ADHD, procrastination is often something that occurs over and over, causing real problems at work, at school, at home, or in personal relationships.

Action step: Next time you find yourself putting things off because of fear or self-doubt, find a way to put some distance between yourself and your thoughts. Write your anxieties down and read them back to yourself.

Nancy Schimelpfening, Verywell.com’s expert on depression, also offers the following tips to help deal with procrastination:

1. Make a list of tasks and prioritize what needs to be done.
2. Reward yourself for completing difficult tasks.
3. Use relaxation strategies to deal with anxiety about completing tasks.

Sometimes, however, procrastination interferes with your day-to-day life and could be a sign of a mental disorder, like attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, depression and anxiety.

Procrastination is linked to mental health problems like stress and anxiety, and these, in turn, are linked to health issues. If your procrastination leads to feelings of depression, over time this depression will start to affect other areas of your life.

5 signs you may be a chronic procrastinator

1. You have difficulty coping with change and transitions. When a project ends, you feel anxious and aimless.
2. You’re lost without a road map.
3. You are chronically late.
4. You have a staggering to-do list.
5. You focus on nonessential office work instead of what needs to get done.

Anxiety: Those who experience anxiety may tend to become preoccupied by fear of failure. Lack of confidence in one’s ability to complete a task can lead to procrastination in order to avoid failure in the short-term.

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1. Forgive yourself for procrastinating in the past.
2. Commit to the task.
3. Promise yourself a reward.
4. Ask someone to check up on you.
5. Act as you go.
6. Rephrase your internal dialog.
7. Minimize distractions .
8. Aim to “eat an elephant beetle” first thing, every day!

Here’s how to stop procrastinating once-and-for-all:

1. Understand your motivation.
2. Know the emotional cost.
3. Make a to-do list with items you usually avoid.
4. Break large goals down into smaller ones and make sure they’re realistic.
5. Change your language.
6. Sketch it out.
7. Reward yourself.