{"id":43927,"date":"2026-02-16T06:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-02-16T05:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/strtgy.design\/articles\/why-do-you-procrastinate-on-strategy-3-reasons-and-how-to-stop\/"},"modified":"2026-02-22T18:14:23","modified_gmt":"2026-02-22T17:14:23","slug":"why-do-you-procrastinate-on-strategy-3-reasons-and-how-to-stop","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/strtgy.design\/en\/strtgy-notes-en\/why-do-you-procrastinate-on-strategy-3-reasons-and-how-to-stop\/","title":{"rendered":"Why do you procrastinate on strategy? 3 reasons and how to stop."},"content":{"rendered":"\n
IN VERY BRIEF Stop procrastinating alone.<\/strong> Work on your strategy with MAKE PROGRESS\u00ae.<\/a> See the Growth Machine in action.<\/strong> Geely 2030, deconstructed<\/a> Strategic Debt Explained in Full.<\/strong> Get the book<\/a> .<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n\n
\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n
\n

\u201cPlans are just good intentions unless they immediately degenerate into hard work.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Peter Drucker, the man who invented management according to BusinessWeek<\/p>\n\n

\n\n

Every week I meet dozens of professionals and executives who readily recognize the importance of working on their company’s strategy<\/strong> …<\/p>\n\n

Such important work that no one has even started doing it yet!<\/strong><\/p>\n\n

The ancient Egyptians had two words<\/strong> for this: one meant laziness, the other meant waiting for the right moment<\/strong> . The problem is that those who procrastinate on strategy think they’re doing the latter, but are actually doing the former. <\/p>\n\n

The Greeks called it akrasia<\/strong> , that is, acting against one’s better judgment<\/em> .<\/p>\n\n

You call it “I didn’t have time.”<\/p>\n\n

Everyone calls it “procrastination.”<\/strong><\/p>\n\n

Over the past 5 years, I\u2019ve facilitated strategy work with hundreds of professionals and businesses using the MAKE PROGRESS\u00ae method, and the pattern I see most often is always the same.<\/p>\n\n

The founder of a 20+ person agency told me, “We know how to develop strategies for clients, but we’ve never written one for ourselves.”<\/em> In two years, they’d gone from 10 to 21 people, but management was still the same as when they were 10. He couldn’t separate client<\/em> work from business work. Every time he tried to stop, an emergency arose. The first email in the morning set the tone for his day. He started with a 3-minute exercise: identifying the bottleneck in his Growth Machine. That single starting point unlocked the rest. <\/p>\n\n

I’m about to show you the exact mechanism<\/strong> and a 3-minute exercise<\/strong> to nip strategic procrastination in the bud<\/strong> .<\/p>\n\n

Now, don’t say you’ll read this newsletter later, okay? Finish what you just started… <\/p>\n\n

Because your brain always chooses\u2026 something else.<\/h2>\n\n

Your brain has a simple rule: do the things that yield immediate results first. Update project KPIs? It can wait. Make a call? Do that now. The strategy works the same way: it always loses to anything that gives you immediate satisfaction. <\/p>\n\n

In 2006, researchers Piers Steel and Cornelius K\u00f6nig demonstrated this with a model called Temporal Motivation Theory (TMT)<\/strong><\/a> and explained it with this formula:<\/p>\n\n

Motivation = (Expectation x Value) \/ (Impulsivity x Delay)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n

Where,<\/p>\n\n