PROCRASTINATION: Why We Do It & How To Stop It
WHAT IS PROCRASTINATION?
I am sure that if you are reading this right now, you are familiar with procrastination and might be finding that it is creeping into your life a little too often than you would like. Don’t worry, we have all been there, including me. Procrastination is becoming more and more of a common waste of our time, alongside the rising levels of distractions that are found within our environment and our own minds. I am convinced that most of us would like to be procrastinating less - since procrastination leads to basically no productive output- so how can we take control of our procrastination and not let it control our lives instead?
Before we start out, lets just briefly go through what procrastination is actually formally defined as being.
Here is the definition for it:
⇒ Procrastination is the deliberate practice of postponing events, tasks, and activities for some later time, while occupation our present time with unnecessary work that keeps us busy.
Therefore we can see that procrastination by nature does nothing good for us, so why do so many people struggle with it today and how do we fix that?
WHY WE PROCRASTINATE?
The reasons why we procrastinate can firstly be explained from a biological/ psychological perspective, where we can see that procrastination is an issue that arises from incorrectly regulating our emotions, instead of it being the commonly though problem of time management. Secondly, we can try and explain procrastination through a more in-depth perspective, that deals with linking our emotions to our actions.
BIOLOGICAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL REASONS:
Our brains are wired for short term gratification
This means that biologically we are more likely to make a decision that will bring an immediate positive reward to us, instead of working on something more long term for a great reward down the line. Short term gratification means that we want results and rewards immediately after an action, but that is often not the case with doing any type of work.
Work usually follows the pattern of starting the work, completing it, and only after some time, seeing results that are due to our input of effort. Because of this delay in reward and results, it makes starting work that much harder.
Easy work → Shorter completion time: Reward is smaller but immediate
Hard work → Longer completion time: Reward is greater, but not immediate
You would naturally prefer to scroll through social media to get immediate hits of dopamine, instead of starting a difficult piece of work and getting the same hit of dopamine much later.
Short term gratification is not only one of the main reason to blame for procrastination, but it also negatively impacts our decision-making abilities in all other aspects of life, where we risk losing much more valuable opportunities and larger rewards in the future, for doing easier works that immediately satisfies us.
Our brains like to save energy whenever possible
It is also a fact that even though our brains are of not great size, they can take up to 20% of our daily energy expenditure, which is exactly why they want to be the most energy-efficient they can. Because they need a lot of energy to be powered, they want to make sure that energy is used the best it can be, so that the least amount is wasted. In other words, they are wired for efficiency.
This exactly explains why it is much more daunting and harder for us to get started on a task that requires more energy, focus, and though; because it requires more energy from our brain.
The trick as to how to combat this issue has to do with how to trick our brain into not being afraid or daunted by initiating hard work but instead wiring it to start liking to perform difficult tasks.
Our own personal qualities and external factors
Whether we procrastinate is also linked to our own personal qualities and in what amounts we have them, as well as external factors in our environment that will cause or influence those qualities.
Some of these qualities and external factors include:
Our self-control
Our motivation
Demotivating and hindering factors
Examples: Rewards being far way int he future, feeling overwhelmed, anxiety, perfectionism, fear of failure, perceived lack of control, depression, lethargy
With these three factors, we can sum up procrastination in the following equation:
If Demotivating + Hindering factors > Self control + Motivation ⇒ Procrastination will result
REASONS FOR RESISTANCE
Other than biological reasons we can also try and explain procrastination from the perspective of resistance, where anytime that we try and start or complete an extensive and difficult task, we have four main sources of resistance that determine how likely we are to procrastinate on something:
Difficulty: Task is too hard OR too easy
Interest: Task is very interesting OR boring
Ambiguity: Task is specific and clear OR undefined and ambiguous
Motivation: Task is meaningful (motivating) OR un-motivating
If we can correctly manage these four levels that determine the likeliness of us procrastinating, it will be much easier for us to get started on the task and as a result, get it done. However, if we do not manage these factors, we will be much more prone to succumbing to procrastination and falling into the trap hole of it that may of us find too familiar.
QUITTING PROCRASTINATION
PRACTICAL STEPS:
Become aware of when you are procrastinating
Identify why you procrastinate (Rationalization of actions)
Identify your sources of procrastination
Implement anti-procrastination strategies (Mentioned below)
ANTI PROCRASTINAITON STRATEGIES:
Get into a flow state:
As I mentioned before, flow is a state that is the optimal balance between a task not being too boring and not being too difficult, allowing us to function at peak performance. We can ease ourselves into a flow state by adopting the two-minute rule that says that if a task will take us less than two minutes to complete we should do it right away and get it off our minds. The second way we can enter flow is by splitting up larger tasks into smaller time chunks such as 5 or 15 minutes, which will make the overall task seem less daunting and will encourage us to keep doing the task even after the time mark we set for ourselves.
Task management
Specifying a task and splitting it into smaller manageable subtasks: This creates less resistance towards starting the task and makes us more likely to fully finish the task because we know exactly what has to be done.
Determining "next steps": Get into the habit of immediately after completing a task, to determine "next steps" or follow up tasks that are not necessarily supposed to be done immediately, but prevent us from procrastinating in the future whenever we are working on the same task.
Categorizing your tasks: This allows you to micromanage your tasks by grouping them into 3-5 generalized categories, such as "work", "school", "leisure" etc, which allows you to have a more simplified overview of your work and what categories take up the majority of your time.
Task Prioritization:
Urgency/ importance
Difficulty
Our focus/ energy levels
Our current situation (Resources and people on hand)
Environment design
Your environment plays a large role in terms of your work habits and works ethic, which is why it is really important to keep your environment clean and free from any unwanted distractions such as technology, irrelevant work, or loud notifications. By keeping our environment as much distraction-free as we can, we will be less tempted to procrastinate and it will tell our brains that this specific space is associated with work and not with scrolling on your phone, allowing you to get a task done sooner.
Energy management
You want to first ensure that you are recharging your energy levels well and frequently by getting adequate sleep every night, eating energizing foods, and staying active to keep your brain alert. Whenever you feel a burst of energy/ inspiration/ motivation to work, use it on your most difficult and time-consuming tasks as those require most mental/ physical energy, allowing you to finish that task with optimal performance and obtain great results from it.
Setting deadlines
Setting time limits for our projects and tasks is crucial because it creates a sense of urgency for the task to be done, which makes it more likely for us to put our mental capacity to use at that time and get the work done. This idea is based on "Parkinson’s law", which states that work fills the time allocated to it. This means that if you set aside one hour to do a certain piece of work, psychologically you are going to try your best to complete the task in the given time frame, while if you were to only say "I want to complete this task sometime today", it means you could spend an unnecessary amount of time on a single piece of work, leaving your schedule even busier and less time for leisure and relaxation.
Setting end rewards
Not only does setting rewards for completing work stimulate the development of a habit loop, as it rewards to encourage our brain to repeat an action, but it also gives us something to loop word to and as a result work faster, with more motivation and more efficiency - all ultimately allowing us to avoid procrastination in the future.
CONCLUSIVE ADVICE
While procrastination is a common practice today, due to both biological/ physiological factors as well as external factors in our environment, it is crucial that we take procrastination under our control and replace it with higher quality tasks that fill our life with meaning.
While at the moment, doing nothing and just mindlessly scrolling through never-ending content sources may be amusing, in the long terms it is getting us nowhere and is likely also negatively impacting both our mental and physical health as well. All in all, procrastination is never a long term solution, since with it we only miss valuable opportunities and unique life lessons that we would learn along with them.
I hope that with the above tips and advice on how to reduce/ stop your procrastination, you are able to find more balance between your work and your personal endeavors while maintaining a clear and focused state of mind.
