I procrastinate on important things but I'm productive on busywork. What's actually going on there?

That's not laziness — busywork is low-risk and important work is high-stakes, and your brain is optimizing to avoid the stakes, not the effort. 1. Important tasks usually carry a risk of being judged or failing in a way visible to someone — busywork doesn't, so it feels safer even when it's less useful. 2. Shrink the important task into a version with no real stakes — not "write the proposal," but "write one bad paragraph I'll probably delete." That removes the thing you're actually avoiding, which is the fear of doing it badly in front of someone. 3. Notice if busywork is specifically being used as a shield — if you reach for email or tidying right when the hard task appears, that timing is the tell. 4. Set a timer for a short, defined block on the important thing before you're allowed to do anything else, even busywork. The goal isn't finishing, it's breaking the avoidance pattern for ten minutes. Once the important task feels less like a referendum on your competence and more like a rough draft, it usually stops losing to the inbox.