Procrastination is the act of postponing the work on a task because of its unpleasant and/or boring aspects despite it being essential to personal goals and despite knowing that you will feel terrible if you do not perform that task.
It can have major effects on a person’s productivity and has become a real issue in the last few decades with an insane prevalence in the general population. Here’s some crazy numbers:
- Most surveys suggest that approximately 80-95% of people procrastinate on a regular basis.
- 50% of people report that they procrastinate consistently and problematically.
- College students report that they spend 30% of their time procrastinating. That means that 1/3 of the things they do in one day are done while thinking about something else that they should be doing.
- H&R Block did a survey revealing that procrastination-related errors caused tax payers about 400 dollars each year, which piles up to be hundreds of millions of dollars in overpayments.
- It is also reported that procrastination is associated with feelings of distress and anxiety, engaging deliberately in ‘enjoyable’ fun activities to avoid doing the task in hand. However, these fun activities end up being as unpleasant as the task itself because of the constant thinking and worrying.
As you can see, this is a real problem. There are a lot of people out there suffering from it. Fortunately, there are things you can do to overcome this, to reduce the frequency and the severity of procrastination.
The strategies in play here have been empirically tested and found to be helpful. The research that supports these strategies connects directly to our understanding of how the brain functions.
I won’t give the bold statement that these techniques will end your procrastination all for once, but one thing I’m sure of is that they will definitely reduce it, and make you more effective in achieving long-term goals.
Strategies to stop procrastination:
Strategy № 1:
- Sit quietly and think for 15-20 minutes about what you’re going to do.
This might seem counterintuitive, if you wanted to start something, the last thing that you would want to do is nothing, right? Well, not quite.
Usually, procrastination doesn’t involve doing nothing. When you don’t want to start studying for that important test, you don’t just sit there and do nothing. On the contrary, you engage in something in an attempt to stop thinking about the thing you’re avoiding. You cook 10 meals even though you live alone, you clean the kitchen, you organize your closet, you walk the dog, etc.
Add up all of these, and now a few hours have passed and you’re finally tired, the day is almost over. A fresh start tomorrow, maybe? Et voila, another day is spent without working on the one thing that is ironically most important to you.
Hopefully, you’ve realized by now that doing nothing doesn’t sound all that crazy anymore. It can break the cycle of delay, distraction, and time wasting. Several studies that include an explicit relaxation period have obtained evidence that this practice reduces the frequency of procrastination.
Still not convinced yet? Let’s dig in deeper then.
Neuroscience of procrastination:
There’s a lot of evidence that our behavior is not under our conscious control, at least not in the way we think it is. Experiments around this involve using electrodes to study brain activity, neuroimaging, brain stimulation, etc. The discussion of these experiments is out of the scope of this topic but the evidence provided is nonetheless compelling. However, we can add another source of evidence ourselves.
We decide to do something, but that doesn’t actually mean we will. There’s something else in control in a lot of our moment to moment choices and behaviors. An unconscious mind.
The prefrontal cortex role in executive functions:
Brain areas in the prefrontal cortex (PFC) seem to be in control of our intentional planned behavior. Let’s consider what happens if the PFC gets damaged. In order to do that we need to grab a human being, get in the operating room (if we’re decent enough) and remove the PFC surgically. But that would be slightly arbitrary, don’t you think?
A simpler option would be to look at the case of Phineas Gage (1823-1860), he worked as a rail road constructor. When he was 25 years old, an accident happened while he was working with dynamites to clear out some rocks.
A long medal rod penetrated his head at high speed going in and out through his skull severely damaging his PFC and landed aside him.
Amazingly, Gage survived this and after a few weeks he got back to his normal life. However, his personality changed drastically; he seemed very bad at controlling himself. For instance, he seemed to behave very compulsively in social situations.
Another thing that was noticed in Gage’s behavior is that he became lazy. His long term strategic planning was just blasted along those rocks. Gage would be one of the worst procrastinator if he were still alive today.
Role of PFC in procrastination
The moral of the story is that making long-term plans and sticking to them is possible because of the PFC.
It is important to note that the PFC is not the only system that regulates this process. There is also the unconscious habit system as it’s referred to by some researchers that functions as an autopilot.
Think about your morning routine, you get up, maybe walk to the kitchen and make some coffee, head to the bathroom for a shower and so on. A certain thing you don’t do is think about whether to do these things or not, they’re just habits.
The primary structure that controls this type of action seems to be the circuits located in the sub-cortical (under the cortex) regions of the brain. This autopilot system is particularly sensitive to immediate needs and short-term goals. If you’re hungry, this is the system that will get you going to the refrigerator. When you wake up and crave some caffeine, it’s this part of your brain that will get you to the kitchen.
Although, this system seems to be doing a great job at achieving short-term goals. It is particularly bad when it comes to long-term plans where the associated rewards are delayed.
Anxiety-induced procrastination:
Procrastination is often associated with anxiety, a number of studies have shown that people who tend to be more anxious in general are more susceptible to struggle from procrastination. When procrastinators are interviewed, they often mention that there is a fear of failure in regards to the task in hand.
If there’s something that makes you anxious like: fear of crowded place and tight places (agoraphobia), fear of snakes (ophiophobia), etc. Then, when you’re confronted with that source of anxiety, you can make yourself feel a lot better by simply moving away from it. This is also applicable to your big project or final test.
Now, when you’re facing a situation that induces your anxiety, there are a lot of things you could do to reduce its severity. Things like: running out of the room, taking a nap, or maybe finding something to distract yourself, which is what procrastinators do. But doing nothing probably won’t be on the list.
Keep in mind that the drive to reduce anxiety is high on the list of priorities to your brain. It’s right up there with the drives for food and water.
Anxiety-avoidance behavior
Typically, people who procrastinate are somewhat hyperactive; only their hyperactivity is directed to less important, immediately rewarding tasks.
The unconscious processes going on in your brain are subject to the basic principles of positive reinforcement (rewards) and negative reinforcement (punishments).
Anxiety-avoidance is a standard example of negative reinforcement. You feel a negative stimulus-the anxiety-when you practice some behavior-the procrastination-and the anxiety is reduced.
When procrastinators are asked to report their activity during the day, many will say that they were very busy and that they know they were active all day long. However, when asked about the details of those activities, many will suffer to figure out just what they did that day.
On the other hand, they can provide great details about the things that they didn’t do. This makes sense, most of those time-filling activities were chosen without any conscious thought.
Now, let’s get back to our strategy. Here’s why it works:
- By sitting there intentionally for 20 minutes and doing nothing, you will avoid engaging in those avoidance behaviors.
- As you sit there and relax, and think about the work you might do. The anxiety will likely wear off, partially at least. And hopefully, this will make you get to the task in hand.
Strategy № 2:
- Avoid feeling too much motivation to complete a task.
This tip works to achieve the same goal as the first one which is to reduce anxiety. When we talk about motivation, we’re also talking about more pressure, and we all know pressure is no good for achieving goals.
Usually, we think of motivation as a good thing, and it is. Except, too much of a good thing is as bad as too little. This notion shows up very directly in the domain of procrastination, if your boss gives you a project and tells you that it’s crucial for the survival of the company and for your continued employment.
That would be considered quite the motivation, maybe even too much motivation that will result in higher levels of anxiety and eventually, procrastination.
Cognitive scientists refer to this as the Yerkes-Dodson law.
Take it easy
It’s hard to quantify the right amount of motivation for any given person, and any given task. In general, giving too motivation is always possible and you should find the right window to keep it under control when you’re working with someone. Sometimes, telling someone to relax and take it easy will ironically result in a whole lot of work if said to the right person.
In the situation where you’re the one who’s subject to motivation. It’s really hard to dictate the amount received. And in some cases, a project or a goal is just important because it is, not because someone said it should be. So, what can you do reduce your own procrastination?
Well, it’s good to try and keep your work in perspective. The project might be super important to you, but no matter how badly it goes, life will go on and the sun will rise tomorrow morning. This might seem like it could reduce your motivation. Thus, your tendency to work on the project. But, with a procrastinator where too much motivation is the problem, this could have the opposite effect.
This could be done along while following the first strategy, while you sit and do nothing for 20 minutes. Think about the important things in your life that are not related to the task in question, take a look at family photos, think about the things you’ll be doing later that day that will make you happy. With that said, don’t start sending emails and text messages to friends and family, which could be the worst of all procrastination strategies.
Strategy № 3:
- Break large projects into smaller tasks.
This strategy targets directly those unconscious processes going on in the sub-cortical regions. When you complete the small parts, keep track of your progress, and when you’re done with all the parts, the project is complete.
Even if the project itself isn’t a pleasurable one, simply seeing yourself making progress and moving closer to the finish line will induce great pleasure and help you go on.
Procrastination and the pleasure center
As discussed earlier, not all our decisions are made consciously. Many things we do are driven unconsciously by some parts in our brains. One of the main structures in this circuit is called the Nucleus accumbens which is the pleasure center, its neurons respond to many neurotransmitters but particularly sensitive to Dopamine and Serotonin.
Cocaine, for example produces lasting activation in Dopamine-sensitive neurons in the nucleus accumbens which induces a great sensation of pleasure. Serotonin, however, will induce a sensation of great satiation.
Aside from drugs, neurons in the nucleus accumbens can also be activated by eating when you’re hungry, drinking when you’re thirsty. Of course, the activation is less intense compared to recreational drug use but still enough to motivate behavior.
The drive to activate the circuit of the nucleus accumbens is so unbelievably strong. In some studies done in a laboratory, electrodes were placed inside the brains of rats directly stimulating the nucleus accumbens when the rat presses on a lever. They were provided with food, water, toys, etc. In this experiment the rats kept pressing on that level until they died avoiding all other stimuli.
How to trick your brain
When you decide to take on some challenge and then succeed and accomplish it, you feel pleasure, a shot of dopamine-related activity in your nucleus accumbens. However, you don’t actually get that shot while you’re pursuing the goal, you feel it only when you cross the finish line.
The problem is that if you’re not motivated enough, you’ll never cross that finish line, especially if the project is big and takes some time to be completed. This means that with time, it will get harder and harder to continue doing the non-dopamine releasing tasks, and the more mental resources you recruit to keep you focused on that goal, the less resources you have to work on the actual project.
This is why dividing the big project into smaller doable tasks works. Each time you finish a subtask, you’ll feel some pleasure, and even if you don’t, it doesn’t matter. The point is feeding your pleasure center enough motivation to keep you going on that racing track.
When should you start applying these strategies?
The right time to employ a strategy to reduce your procrastination is when it starts to impact you and your life negatively, if you’re anxious and irritated because of a lack of progress, when you can’t function anymore because of the constant worrying about the project in hand. Then, it’s time to cut off at least some of that procrastination.
If you learn how to overcome it, you’ll be able to handle almost anything. Here’s the strategies again without the details:
- Sit quietly and think for 15-20 minutes about what you’re going to do.
- Avoid feeling too much motivation to complete a task.
- Break large projects into smaller tasks.