The real reason for procrastination and a surefire way to stop procrastinating

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

Procrastination can seriously ruin your career and life, and simple advice to “pull yourself together and get started” does not help to cope with it in the least. Why do we procrastinate and how do we break this terrible habit? Let's try to explain with science, comics and The Simpsons.

Have you ever sat down at your laptop to finish an important assignment, and then suddenly found yourself doing the dishes or reading an article about the Chernobyl disaster? Or you suddenly realized that you need to feed the dog, answer an email, clean the ceiling fan, have a snack, although it is 11 o'clock in the morning … And then it was evening, and your important task has not yet been completed.

For many people, procrastination is a powerful and incomprehensible force that keeps them from completing urgent and important tasks. It is a potentially dangerous force that brings bad grades in school, problems at work, and postpones needed treatment.

Case Western Reserve University, conducted in 1997, showed that student procrastination increases with increasing stress levels, health problems, and low grades towards the end of the semester.

But the reasons people procrastinate are still unclear. Some researchers associate procrastination with a lack of self-control and equate it with overeating, love of gambling or shopping.

Others believe that the urge to procrastinate is not due to laziness and inability to manage their time, as many smart and successful procrastinators can attest.

It is said that procrastination may be related to the way our brains work and our perception of time and ourselves.

Where does procrastination actually come from and how can you stop it? Let's try to explain this with the help of science, comics and The Simpsons.

The real origins of procrastination

Most psychologists view procrastination as evasion, a defense mechanism that is triggered by unpleasant actions. And the person gives up in order to feel good.

Timothy Pychyl Professor of Procrastination at Carleton University

This often happens when people are worried about important tasks that lie ahead. To get rid of negative emotions, people procrastinate: they turn on a video or open Pinterest. This makes them feel better, but, unfortunately, reality does not go anywhere, and in the end they face their problem again.

When deadlines start to run out, procrastinators feel intense guilt and shame. But for avid procrastinators, these feelings can become a new reason to postpone the task, and this creates a vicious circle of self-destruction.

Tim Urban, author of the Wait But Why blog, has created wonderful things going on in the procrastinator's brain. Urban calls himself a master of procrastination. For example, he once started writing a 90-page diploma with 72 hours left to pass.

Urban recently spoke at a conference about his experiences as a procrastinator. In the presentation, he used his own drawings to explain how the life of an avid procrastinator is different.

He first described the brain of a person who is not subject to procrastination. At the helm there is a rationalist who makes decisions.

The procrastinator's brain looks similar, but the rationalist has a little friend here. Urban called him a monkey of instant gratification.

The monkey thinks that it will be fun, but in the end there are many problems.

This continues until things get really bad: your career is crumbling or you are on the verge of dropping out of college. Then a panic monster appears and finally forces you to do something.

There are different types of procrastinators, Urban argues. Someone procrastinates, doing useless things, for example, looking for cool gifs with cats. Others do what seems to be the right thing - they clean the apartment, work at a boring job, but they never do what they really want.

To illustrate this, Urban used the Eisenhower Matrix, named after the most productive president of the United States.

Eisenhower believed that people should spend their time on what really matters to them: the problems in squares 1 and 2.

Unfortunately, most procrastinators spend a little time on these squares, says Urban. Instead, they focus on squares 3 and 4, doing things that may be urgent but not important. Sometimes, when the panic monster takes over, they quickly peer into square 1.

Urban argues that this habit is destructive, because the road to the procrastinator's dream - to realizing his potential, expanding his horizons and a job that he is truly proud of - runs through square 2. Squares 1 and 3 can come in handy when people survive, and square 2 for those who grow and prosper.

This is Urban's personal opinion on why we procrastinate, but these assumptions are quite consistent with the research of scientists.

Psychologists agree that the problem with procrastinators is that they succumb to the desire for instant gratification instead of focusing on long-term goals.

Important goals (in the first and second squares) take a lot of effort, but in the long run, it is their realization that makes you happy.

Real Homer vs Future Homer

Psychologists have other fascinating models for understanding the driving forces behind procrastination. Some believe that procrastination is invincible because it correlates with a deep perception of time and the difference between what they call "future and present selves."

Despite the fact that the person you will become in a month will be not much different from you today, you worry about him much less. People are focused on how they feel now, not on their future.

Pickle cites a video from The Simpsons as an example. In one episode, Marge scolds her husband for not having much contact with the children.

“One day the kids will leave the house and you’ll regret not spending more time with them,” she says.

- This is the problem of the future Homer. Oh, I don’t envy this guy,”Homer replies, pours vodka into a jar of mayonnaise, whips himself a creepy cocktail, drinks it and falls to the floor.

When making long-term decisions, people tend to feel little emotional connection with their future self. Even if I understand at a basic level that in a year I will be exactly the same myself, I see my future self as a completely different person and believe that he will not receive any benefits from my actions in the present. And I won't bring him any problems.

Hal Hershfield Los Angeles Business School Psychologist

Hershfield's research supports this idea. The scientist made subjects when they thought about themselves in the present, about celebrities such as Matt Damon and Natalie Portman, and then about themselves in the future. Hershfield found that different areas of the brain were involved in processing information about oneself in the present and about oneself in the future. The brain activity of the participants during the description of themselves ten years later coincided with the activity during the description of Natalie Portman.

Emily Pronin of Princeton University similar results in 2008. She made the participants a nasty soy sauce and ketchup mixture and asked them to decide how much they or other people could drink.

One group decided for themselves, another - for other people, and the third - for themselves two weeks later. Research has shown that people are willing to commit to drinking half a cup of nasty liquor in two weeks, but currently agree to drink no more than two teaspoons.

Pickla showed that people who are in closer contact with their future self - both after two months and after ten years - are less prone to procrastination.

It turns out that procrastinators need to relate more of themselves to the present and the future: this will help them to become happy in the long term.

In one, Hershfield used virtual reality technology to show subjects what they would look like in old age. All subjects were then asked how they would spend $ 1,000. People who saw their aged photos chose investing twice as often as participants who did not look at their “old self”.

Interestingly, American insurance companies are using this knowledge to make more money. American bank Merrill Lynch has launched a service where you can artificially age photos.

How to get back to productivity

What else can we do to avoid procrastination? Tim Urban thinks the typical advice “Just stop doing useless things and get to work” sounds ridiculous.

If we advise this, let's also advise obese people just not to overeat, people in depression just not be sad, and whales washed ashore just stay within the ocean. Avid procrastinators simply cannot control their distractions.

Tim Urban blog post Wait But Why

Yes, it won't be easy, but there are several ways that can help.

Scientists have found that one of the best ways to get rid of procrastination is to forgive yourself for it. In Pickle's study, students who said they had forgiven themselves for procrastinating during the first exam were significantly less distracted during the second.

Researchers believe this works because procrastination is associated with negative feelings. By forgiving yourself, you reduce guilt, which means there are fewer reasons to postpone everything.

But the best thing, Pickle says, is to realize that you don't need a certain mood to complete tasks: just ignore your feelings and get started.

“Most of us believe that the emotional state should be appropriate for the task, but it is not,” explains Pickle. "You can very rarely feel the working spirit, and this is not a reason to put things off."

Instead of focusing on your feelings, think about your next actions. Break the task down into many smaller pieces. For example, if you were going to write a letter of recommendation, the first thing you need to do is create a document, title it, and date it.

Even if these steps seem minor, they are quite important. When you start a task, you feel better, raise your self-esteem a little, and this helps to cope with procrastination.

Pickle believes that parents and teachers should teach children how to cope with procrastination at an early age: “When children start to procrastinate, many teachers think they have a problem with time management. They don't really have a problem organizing time, they have a problem organizing emotions. The child should realize that not all tasks will be interesting to him, and come to terms with it."

Nobody builds a house. People just lay bricks over and over and the result is a house. Procrastinators are big dreamers, they love to fantasize, to imagine a large mansion that will one day be built. But what they really need is to be regular laborers, stacking bricks one on top of the other, day after day, until the house is finally built.

Tim Urban blog post Wait But Why

How are you doing with procrastination? How do you fight her?