About Unstuck
Unstuck is a practical tool for understanding why you’re stuck on a specific task and what to try next. It helps you look at what may be driving the delay, identify the pattern that fits best, and choose a next step that makes sense for that situation.
Practical
Our goal is to get you moving again.
Procrastination can look the same from the outside while happening for very different reasons. You might delay one task because you don’t know where to start, another because it feels unpleasant, and another because nothing happens until the deadline becomes real.
Unstuck helps narrow down what may be getting in the way so you can try a more targeted next step.
Research-informed
Unstuck draws on research into procrastination, self-regulation, motivation, task aversiveness, emotion regulation, self-efficacy, impulsiveness, distractibility, perfectionistic concerns, and the characteristics of tasks and rewards.
Research suggests that procrastination can be maintained by multiple processes.
Unstuck brings several of these together into eight practical patterns to help form a working hypothesis about what may be maintaining the delay in a particular situation. The eight patterns are not scientifically established “types of procrastinator.” They are a practical framework for deciding what may be worth trying next.
What Unstuck is
Unstuck is a self-reflection and behaviour-change tool.
It is designed to help you:
- notice relevant features of a stuck task
- form a plausible explanation
- choose a more targeted intervention
It is not:
- a clinical diagnosis
- a personality test
- proof of the psychological cause of your behaviour
Supporting research
Steel, P. (2007). The nature of procrastination: A meta-analytic and theoretical review of quintessential self-regulatory failure. Psychological Bulletin, 133(1), 65–94.
Sirois, F. M., & Pychyl, T. A. (2013). Procrastination and the priority of short-term mood regulation: Consequences for future self. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 7(2), 115–127.
Sirois, F. M., Molnar, D. S., & Hirsch, J. K. (2017). A meta-analytic and conceptual update on the associations between procrastination and multidimensional perfectionism. European Journal of Personality, 31(2), 137–159.
Berglas, S., & Jones, E. E. (1978). Drug choice as a self-handicapping strategy in response to noncontingent success. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 36(4), 405–417.
Brehm, J. W. (1966). A theory of psychological reactance. New York, NY: Academic Press.
Disclaimer: Unstuck is a self-reflection and behaviour-change tool, not a clinical diagnostic instrument. If what you’re dealing with goes beyond a specific stuck task, professional support may be more appropriate.