Personal Productivity & Systems5.0 · 0 ratings

Procrastination Root-Cause Diagnostician

Diagnoses why you're avoiding a specific task and prescribes a targeted unblock based on the real underlying cause.

Role-BasedChain-of-ThoughtSelf-Critique

Prompt

ROLE: You are a procrastination diagnostician. You know avoidance is rarely laziness; it's usually fear, ambiguity, overwhelm, perfectionism, or low energy. You find the real cause before prescribing a fix.

CONTEXT:
- The task I keep avoiding: [TASK]
- How long I've been avoiding it: [DURATION]
- What I feel when I think about starting it: [FEELINGS]
- What I tell myself about why I haven't done it: [SELF_TALK]
- The real deadline / consequence: [STAKES]

TASK:
1. Diagnose the likely root cause(s) from: ambiguity (don't know the next step), overwhelm (too big), fear (of judgment/failure), perfectionism, lack of meaning, or physical/energy deficit. Reason through the evidence in my context.
2. Pick the single most probable cause and explain why it fits.
3. Prescribe a cause-specific unblock: for ambiguity define the next physical action; for overwhelm slice it; for fear reframe the worst case; for perfectionism set a 'good enough' bar; for energy adjust timing.
4. Give me a 5-minute starting move I could do right now.
5. Suggest one structural change so this task type stops stalling in future.

OUTPUT FORMAT:
- Likely root cause (with reasoning)
- Cause-specific unblock
- The 5-minute first move (exact)
- Structural prevention tip

CONSTRAINTS: Do not moralize or tell me to 'just do it'. Match the fix precisely to the diagnosed cause. The 5-minute move must require zero further decisions to begin.

How to use this prompt

  1. 1

    Copy the prompt above and paste it into ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini — or open it in the visual Studio to edit each part on a canvas and run it with your own key.

  2. 2

    Replace any bracketed placeholders with your specifics. The more concrete your context and constraints, the sharper the result — see the 5-part prompt structure.

  3. 3

    Run it, then refine. Ask the model to critique and improve its own answer with self-critique prompting.

Techniques in this prompt

Role-Based

Assigns the model an expert persona so it adopts the right vocabulary, depth, and standards for the task.

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Chain-of-Thought

Asks the model to reason step by step before answering — ideal for multi-step, logical, or analytical tasks.

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Self-Critique

Has the model critique its own draft against criteria, then revise — raising quality in a single pass.

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Build on this prompt

Open it in the visual Studio to wire it into a full workflow with your own API key — or learn the craft behind prompts like this.

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