Apparently I needed five weeks, multiple warning letters and extra money to complete a task that took two minutes. The task was paying my tolls. They weren’t expensive. I just kept not paying them.
I can’t point to one exact reason. I forgot about them. They were annoying. There wasn’t any urgency yet, and I didn’t want to deal with the website or login. Whatever combination it was, the tolls stayed unpaid until the warning letters started showing up. When I finally logged in, it took about two minutes.
The task never became difficult
There weren’t 14 hidden steps waiting for me. I didn’t need a better system or a detailed plan. I needed to log in and pay. Some small tasks really do hide a harder starting point. This wasn’t one of them.
That’s what makes tiny tasks like this so irritating. Sometimes the task really is as easy as everyone says it is, and I still don’t do it.
“If it takes two minutes, do it now” sounds completely reasonable. I knew paying would be quick. That still didn’t make me do it.
Research on procrastination has found that things like task aversiveness, delay, impulsiveness and distractibility matter too. A 2026 review of ADHD and procrastination research found the strongest connection with inattention. None of that can tell me exactly why I avoided these specific tolls, and I’m not going to assign myself a reason the evidence can’t support.
For five weeks, the actual task barely changed: log in, pay tolls, done. What changed was everything I added by waiting. Warning letters. Extra money. More mail. I made a tiny task more expensive without making it any harder.
I’m not going to pretend this taught me to do every two-minute task immediately. Clearly, I have met me. But it did give me a better question for the small things I keep pushing off. Instead of only asking how long something will take, I also need to ask what gets worse if I leave it for another week.
Sometimes the honest answer is nothing. Fine. It can wait. But if the answer is fees, warning letters or fewer options, the task may deserve more urgency than its size suggests.
I’m not promising I’ll never do this again. I would just like to pay the next toll before the toll company and I become pen pals.