The procrastination trick ironically hiding in my email backlog

I’ve been doing something rather unglamorous this week, clearing out old emails. 

There were hundreds of them, going back over a year, sitting unread in my inbox, mocking me. Newsletters I subscribed to and never quite got around to reading. Topics I was definitely going to look into. Any day now.

Somewhere in the pile I found a newsletter from Ali Abdaal, the British doctor turned productivity YouTuber, (dated February of last year). Ali’s a big name in the self improvement space, over 5 million YouTube subscribers, a book called Feel Good Productivity, etc. Since I was on a deleting frenzy, I almost deleted it unread. But the subject line caught my eye as it was about procrastination. Specifically, a technique he’d been using that he called the “Might As Well” method.

I’ve written about trying to get started on tasks before as it’s one of my weaknesses that I’m always looking for ways to overcome. The idea I came across in the email is simple enough that it almost sounds too obvious to bother writing down. Instead of forcing yourself to do the thing you’re avoiding, you just do the very first physical step. Not the task itself, just the opening move.

Let’s say you need to shower but can’t seem to make yourself do it. You don’t focus on the shower, instead just go in the bathroom with the intent to turn the water on. That’s it. Walk to the bathroom, turn the tap. By the time the water’s running, you’re already there, so you might as well get in.

Or you need to do the laundry but you’re stuck on the couch. Don’t think about the clothes. Just stand up. Once you’re up you might as well walk to the laundry. If you’re scrolling social media and can’t stop, stand up while still scrolling. This somehow reduces friction and helps break out of stuck mode.

The science underneath this method goes back to psychologist Peter Gollwitzer, who spent years researching why people fail to follow through on things they genuinely want to do. His conclusion was that vague intentions like “I’m going to exercise more,” or “I’m going to start that project” almost never works, because the brain has nothing concrete to grab onto when the moment arrives. What actually works, he found, is specifying the very first physical action in advance. Not the goal. Just the opening move.

People who planned exactly how they would start something were significantly more likely to do it than people who just wanted to. He called these “implementation intentions,” which is basically saying: decide what your first tiny action will be, before you do the thing.

What they are describing is the getting unstuck problem. And for anyone dealing with burnout, brain fog, chronic illness, or just the particular paralysis that comes from having too much to do and feeling too overwhelmed to start, this matters more than standard productivity advice usually acknowledges. The standard advice around motivation assumes you have a baseline level of physical and mental fuel to draw from. When that baseline is lower, the gap between “wanting to do something” and “actually doing it” gets wider. Shrinking the first step doesn’t fix the underlying problem, but it makes the gap crossable on more days.

So turn on the water. Put on the shoes. Open the document. Pick up just one thing on the floor.

You might as well.