How To Stop Procrastinating with Body Doubling

What is Body Doubling?

Body doubling is doing your work in the presence of another person. You work while someone – let’s call them your body double – watches you work. They can do their own stuff, help you with your task, or just be there and watch you. The body double can be physically present with you or join you in a video call – it doesn’t matter. The important thing is that there is someone who knows you should be working on your task and who keeps an eye on you. That’s body doubling, and it’s possibly the best anti-procrastination method in the world.

You may think it’s too simple and there must be more to it – some additional step, something else you need to do. After all, every other productivity method expects you to keep doing something to stay productive; start Pomodoro, meditate, check a calendar, prioritize or organize. But body doubling doesn’t expect you to do anything. Someone tells you to work, you work, they watch. That’s it.

This simple method is surprisingly effective at overcoming procrastination. You may think that letting someone watch you wouldn’t stop you from procrastinating, but studies show that it does. Even better, the method has been battle-tested by thousands and thousands of procrastinators and people in the ADHD community (note: you don’t need to have ADHD to use body doubling). For many, it’s the only method that succeeds in stopping procrastination. Life-long procrastinators who unsuccessfully tried all other methods have turned their lives around after discovering body doubling.

What is WorkMode?

In this article we focus on utilizing virtual body doubling to increase productivity in the work environment. Sometimes we refer to WorkMode. WorkMode is our virtual body doubling app, used by people from all walks of life, including software developers, lawyers, college students, AI engineers, PhD students, and project managers. We help people overcome procrastination, with a particular focus on improving their work productivity.

What Does a Body Double Actually Do?

The only thing they need to do is be ‘present’ to watch you work on your task. Their role is to trigger one of the most potent mechanisms in your brain: social pressure. You don’t need to be a social person to subconsciously feel social pressure and body doubling can help you use that to your advantage.

Your body doubling partner can help you create a to-do list, prioritize tasks, help you organize your day, remind you about breaks and more. However, their primary role is to be there with you to make sure that you work.

Why Body Doubling Works

Body doubling works because people behave more like wolves than tigers; we’ve evolved to be social creatures. Subconsciously, we want to be accepted and to fit-in, because we care how others perceive and think of us. We’re not like tigers. Tigers aren’t social and they don’t care what other tigers think of them (to say the least). Even the lone wolves amongst us feel social pressure and conform to some norms. For example, when we go to a job interview we wear appropriate clothes rather than turning up dressed in sweatpants and a hoodie. So while tigers don’t care about societal norms, humans, like wolves, are heavily influenced by them.

Body doubling takes advantage of this by using our primal, deeply engraved need for social acceptance to overcome procrastination. When someone watches us, our evolutionary need to behave in accordance with society’s expectations takes control. Society expects us to be productive because unproductive members are a burden to a group. For this reason, if you tell someone keeping an eye on you that you’ll be working, you’ll work. You don’t want them to catch you playing video games or scrolling through social media, as it would feel uncomfortable to find yourself in such a situation. Your subconscious might even think it’s dangerous for you to not be productive, as you might be ostracized by your group. This effect is so strong it overcomes your urge to procrastinate.

It may seem that social pressure forces you to work, that it’s like a stick to push you to do something you don’t feel like doing. Fortunately, that’s not the case – at least for us procrastinators. Think of it as having multiple voices in your head. One of them, the rational one, wants you to work, but others scream, “let’s watch YouTube”, “let’s do something fun”, or simply, “I don’t want to work!”. It’s hard to focus when everyone is speaking at the same time. Instead, the social pressure you experience while body doubling amplifies your rational voice while silencing the others. It doesn’t force you to be productive, it makes it easy for you to be productive.

Body doubling makes it easier to focus on what’s important. Instead, the presence of a productivity partner (your body double) stops you from spending time on social media or on your phone.

Advantages of Body Doubling

Body doubling is one of the most effective anti-procrastination methods, yet surprisingly given its success, it’s still one of the lesser-known productivity tools. However, it has several advantages over other methods.

It’s passive – you don’t need to do anything for it to work

Perhaps the best feature of body doubling is that it’s passive – it does not rely on you taking any action. You start a body doubling session and without doing anything else, you benefit from its effects as it continues. You know someone is watching you and that’s enough to make you productive. The presence of your body double tricks your brain to go into a work mode.

Other productivity methods may have failed because they rely on you taking some action and having the motivation to do so. For instance, start the next Pomodoro session, organize your calendar, start with the hardest task of the day and so on. However, that’s your whole problem! You’re a procrastinator because you struggle with motivation and with taking action. To implement these methods and stop procrastinating, you must… stop procrastinating. It might be a problem if you suffer from executive dysfunction.

Someone makes decisions for you and it’s absolutely liberating

Imagine yourself starting your work day. You can sit in front of your computer, or make yourself a coffee. Everybody deserves a coffee in the morning, so it’s an easy choice. Once you have the coffee, you can start your computer or clean up your desk. You’ve heard that a clean desk improves productivity so you proceed to clean your desk. Once you’re done, you can either start working or check the new to-do app that everyone raves about. You like shiny new to-do apps and you like to import and organize to-do lists. It doesn’t matter that you rarely mark any items as completed. After you’re done you can work or take a short break and… and so on.

Or, or, or…. “Or” is a very dangerous word for a procrastinator. Each “or” means you need to make a decision, and each time you make a decision, there’s a danger you’ll choose to procrastinate. The best way to fix it is to limit the number of choices you make. No choice – no problem!

If you’re curious, here’s the Super Mario & Darth Vader vs 1,000,000 zombies video

Fortunately, body doubling does that for you. You outsource productivity-related decisions to your partner. They decide for you that it’s the start of your workday and they give you the signal to start working. You decide the tasks you’re going to work on, but those tasks will be work related. When you extend your lunch break, they decide for you that the break is over and it’s time to get back to your tasks. Even when you slip and start scrolling through social media, it’s them who make the decision for you to stop doing it.t.

Your body double makes these decisions for you, and it’s absolutely liberating. It sounds like a paradox, we know. Think of it this way: when you choose to procrastinate, do you feel YOU are in control or that procrastination is deciding for you? When you think of your past self and all the wasted time, do you think: “Yes, that’s what I wanted to do. That’s how I wanted to spend that time”? In a sense, delegating some of the decisions to your body double frees you because it allows you to do what you really want to do: learn, work, advance your career or finish your PhD.

It’s so simple you can’t do it wrong

Body doubling is a simple and low-effort method, and simplicity is greatly undervalued. Just as simple machines tend to function reliably while complex ones are prone to malfunction, the same applies to anti-procrastination methods. More complicated methods like GTD and Habit Stacking sound great in theory, but they fail most people who try them. Why? Because while they might work if you follow their rules exactly, they break down when you slip and deviate from them. Are you good at diligently following rules?

Body doubling is simple; you need just you and a body double. You tell them what you’ll work on and they say, “Ok, I’ll keep an eye on you,” and that’s it. It’s not rocket science. You don’t need to ‘get good at body doubling’ before it is effective. You don’t need to read a book about it. For a lot of people, it just works.

After 15 minutes you know if it works

And this is another great thing about the method. No method works for all procrastinators, but you can test body doubling almost immediately, without any preparation (click the button below to test it NOW), and in fifteen minutes you’ll know whether it’s right for you. It’ll either transform you into a productive person from the start or, after 15 minutes, it won’t have an impact on you. You can test it quickly, and if it doesn’t work, you can proceed to look for another method with absolutely nothing lost. Contrast it with other methods and productivity apps that require a considerable time investment to learn, implement, or do ‘the right way’.

Remember: You don’t fail productivity methods; productivity methods fail you. If you’re unable to apply an anti-procrastination method, it’s simply not suitable for you. Imagine being ill and a doctor prescribing you a drug that should make you better. It might be the best drug ever, but it’s not your fault if you find that it doesn’t help. You need a different drug. If an anti-procrastination method relies on, for example, task initiation skills and you struggle with task initiation, the method won’t work for you. How could it? You need a different method.

It’s easy to recover after you slip and procrastinate

A great feature of body doubling is that it allows you to trip over and recover. Even if you slip into procrastination for a moment, your body double is there to help you get back on track. Suppose you should be replying to emails, but instead work on refining your CV (which might be important but not urgent). In that case, they’ll notice it and ask you to get back to writing emails. If you’re distracted because you switch between tasks constantly, they’ll notice that too and will help you time-block and focus on a particular task.

With other methods, you are the one who needs to regain control. When you play a video game or binge-watch a tv show, it’s hard to decide to stop now and not in five minutes or after the next episode. With body doubling this problem doesn’t exist, because it’s your body double who tells you to get back to your task. You don’t recover, your partner recovers you.

Body Doubling is a Multi-tool for Productivity

Many of us procrastinate for multiple reasons. For example, we may experience fear of failure as well as struggling with keeping focus, quickly giving in to the temptation of browsing social media. But most anti-procrastination methods only address a specific issue. Their primary focus is either on task avoidance (Two-Minute rule, Eat That Frog), time management (Pomodoro, Time Blocking), or impulse control (various countdown methods, various apps), etc. They may work great for people who struggle with productivity because of one of these issues, but for many, that’s not enough.

Your body double is like multiple anti-procrastination tools combined: they help you with task initiation, task aversion, and can help clarify what you should be working on. They also keep you focused so that you avoid distractions like social media and TV shows or video games. A body double partner can even assist in managing your time better – for example, you can tell them, “Hey, I’ll work on the design of my website, but I can spend only two hours on it because I need to do my taxes by tomorrow.”

Start Body Doubling Now

Do you want to give body doubling a try? Are you a lifelong procrastinator? Do you feel like you’ve been living your life at a fraction of your true potential? Do you want to be more productive and finally stop procrastinating for good? Great!

With WorkMode (that’s us!), you can start now. We offer body doubling services for procrastinators. Hiring someone to watch you work might be the smartest thing you ever do. You can be so, so much more productive. Start now – literally, now. Connect with us and get into Work Mode.

Don’t underestimate the power of starting now. Right here, right now, you’re going to make a decision. You can either connect with us and try body doubling, or you can allow procrastination to take control again and postpone it. If you act now, you can win. If you postpone it, you add another item to your to-do-never list. Connect with us and turn “To do” into “Done”. Rebel against procrastination. Don’t let it make the decision for you.

We’ve made it super easy for you to connect with us and try body doubling. No registration, email, or credit card is required to try WorkMode. This is a procrastinator-friendly service.