Laborit's Law: The Science Behind Why We Procrastinate (And How to Beat It)
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Hey there, fellow entrepreneurs and business leaders! Brandon here, and today we're going into something that hits close to home for every business owner I know – the mysterious force that makes us tackle our emails instead of that big strategic project, or organize our desk drawers when we should be making sales calls.
Meet Laborit's Law, also known as the Law of Least Effort. This isn't just another productivity hack – it's a fundamental understanding of how our brains are wired, and once you get it, you'll have a powerful framework to transform how you and your team approach work.
What is Laborit's Law?
Laborit's Law, also called the Law of Least Effort, suggests that humans prefer to carry out simple tasks that give immediate satisfaction to avoid stress or inconvenience. As a result, we postpone the most tedious activities in favor of the most straightforward ones – in simple words, we procrastinate.
This principle comes from Henri Laborit (1914-1995), a French surgeon, neurobiologist, and researcher who revolutionized our understanding of human behavior. He focused his career on studying stress-related mechanisms and how our brains are wired to avoid stress and seek immediate gratification.
Think about it seriously for a moment. Your brain is constantly making calculations: "What's the easiest path to feeling good right now?" This isn't laziness – it's evolutionary programming designed to conserve energy and avoid potential threats. The problem? In our modern business world, the easy tasks often aren't the important ones.
According to Laborit, our behavior drives us to do what makes us happy first. At work, our instinct makes us avoid stress, which is why we procrastinate – postponing difficult tasks until tomorrow.
Let's Simplify Laborit's Law Using Coffee – Our Favorite Drink as an Example
Imagine you're running a coffee shop (stay with me here, this is going to make everything crystal clear).
Every morning, you walk into your shop with a list of tasks:
Easy Tasks: Wipe down the already-clean counter, organize the perfectly arranged mugs, check social media for "market research"
Important but Difficult Tasks: Call that supplier about the pricing dispute, work on the quarterly budget, have a difficult conversation with an underperforming employee
What does your brain want to do? It sees those mugs and thinks, "Ooh, I can make those look PERFECT in 5 minutes and feel accomplished!" Meanwhile, that supplier call sits there like a storm cloud, getting bigger and more intimidating each day.
Here's the kicker: While you're making those mugs Instagram-ready for the third time this week, your coffee shop might be bleeding money because you haven't resolved the pricing issue with your supplier. You're choosing the marshmallow (immediate satisfaction) over the full meal (long-term success).
This is Laborit's Law in action. In a business context, it indicates that 80% of your productivity comes from 20% of your tasks. The principle helps you resist the temptation to first complete the 80% of tasks that only yield 20% of your productivity.
How This Started: The Birth of a Game-Changing Principle
Henri Laborit built his career studying stress-related mechanisms in his own eutonology laboratory, examining the body's reactions to all types of stress including burns, injuries, cold, and surgical shocks. What he discovered was revolutionary: our avoidance behaviors aren't character flaws – they're hardwired survival mechanisms.
In the 1950s, while other researchers were focused on external behaviors, Laborit was looking inside the brain. He realized that what we call "procrastination" is actually our brain's attempt to protect us from perceived stress and threat. The problem is, in business, growth lives on the other side of discomfort.
How We Can Use Laborit's Law
Understanding this law is like having a GPS for productivity. Here's how it works:
Step 1: Recognize the Pattern Start noticing when you're gravitating toward easy tasks. That urge to reorganize your desk when you should be making tough decisions? That's Laborit's Law in action.
Step 2: Flip the Script The solution is counterintuitive but powerful: start your workday with the most difficult task first. Do the thing that seems most complicated to you before anything else.
Step 3: Reward Yourself After completing the difficult task, reward yourself to teach your brain that it was worth the effort. This rewires your brain's reward system over time.
☕ Laborit's Law Framework
Your Brain Seeks
While Avoiding
Value-Difficulty Priority Matrix
Do First (Eat the Frog!)
Do Second (Quick Wins)
Delegate or Eliminate
Do Last (or Never)
3 Practical Ways to Implement Laborit's Law in Your Business Today
1. The "Eat the Frog" Morning Routine
Every morning, before checking emails, social media, or having that casual chat with your team, identify your ONE most important and difficult task for the day. Do it first. Period.
Coffee Shop Example: Instead of checking yesterday's sales numbers (easy and satisfying), start by calling that difficult supplier about the pricing dispute. Once that's done, everything else feels easier.
Implementation Tip: Write your "frog" on a sticky note the night before and put it on your computer screen. No excuses, no exceptions.
2. The Value-Difficulty Matrix
Create a simple 2x2 matrix for your tasks:
High Value + High Difficulty = Do First (Your Frogs)
High Value + Low Difficulty = Do Second
Low Value + High Difficulty = Delegate or Eliminate
Low Value + Low Difficulty = Do Last (or Never)
Coffee Shop Example:
High Value + High Difficulty: Renegotiate supplier contracts
High Value + Low Difficulty: Post today's special on social media
Low Value + High Difficulty: Manually reorganize the entire inventory system
Low Value + Low Difficulty: Alphabetize the coffee bag display
3. The "Stress Signal" System
Train yourself and your team to recognize when you're avoiding a task because it's stressful or challenging. Use that stress as a signal that this task probably deserves priority, not avoidance.
Coffee Shop Example: If the thought of reviewing last month's profit margins makes your stomach tighten, that's probably exactly what you should be doing right now.
Implementation Tip: Create a team culture where saying "This makes me uncomfortable, so it's probably important" becomes a badge of honor, not something to hide.
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The Brandon Ivan Peña Framework: Coffee Shop to Empire
As someone who's built multiple businesses and coached hundreds of entrepreneurs, I've seen this pattern everywhere. The businesses that scale are the ones where leaders consistently tackle the hard stuff first. They don't wait for motivation – they use Laborit's Law as their competitive advantage. ACTION!
Here's the truth: every major breakthrough in your business is probably hiding behind a task you've been avoiding. That difficult conversation with your biggest client. That strategic pivot you know you need to make. That system you need to implement but keeps getting pushed to "next quarter."
By identifying high-impact tasks and prioritizing them, you can greatly increase your productivity. Laborit's Law takes this one step further by helping you resist the temptation to first complete the 80% of tasks that only yield 20% of your productivity.
📊 Laborit's Law: By the Numbers
Spending 30 minutes organizing mugs vs. 30 minutes negotiating with suppliers
Same time investment, completely different business impact!
The Laborit Formula for Success
Your Action Plan Starting Tomorrow
Tonight: Make a list of your three most avoided business tasks
Tomorrow Morning: Pick the most important one and do it first thing
This Week: Implement the Value-Difficulty Matrix for all your tasks
This Month: Train your team to recognize and tackle their "frogs" first
Remember, understanding Laborit's Law isn't about becoming a productivity robot. It's about aligning your natural human tendencies with your business goals. When you stop fighting your brain and start working with it, everything changes.
Your business doesn't grow in your comfort zone. It grows when you consistently choose the important over the easy, the valuable over the comfortable, the strategic over the satisfying.
Now stop organizing your desk and go tackle that thing you've been avoiding. Your future self (and your bank account) will thank you.
Ready to transform your business with frameworks that actually work? I'm Brandon Ivan Peña, and I help entrepreneurs and business leaders cut through the noise and build systems that scale. Connect with me to learn more about turning insights like Laborit's Law into real business growth.