Let us all be honest with ourselves here for once and accept that we all have, at least once in our lives, engaged into the socially frowned upon word ‘PROCRASTINATION’. And how can we forget the super-heavy (literally hulk-like heavy) guilt that eats us inside out for days! Yes I said ‘days’… Now that’s the problem with us. We indulge in procrastination, feel bad about it, but forget and go back to stage one in a few days – feeling confident of taking up challenges but stepping straight into the lure of procrastination once again!
This is not a problem associated only with those who are deemed to live in VR era but has been clinging to Homo Sapiens since ages. Even the ancient Greeks have been facing this issue. But there has to be a way to escape this vicious cycle. After a thorough research about the topic and practically trying out various methods to set myself free from this demon, I’m writing this article and hope this finds you well.
But before looking at solutions, it’s of paramount importance that we focus on the reasons for why we procrastinate in the first place.
Most people feel that procrastination is a time management problem and simply scheduling effectively would be the way out. I’m sorry to pour water all over your dreams of a free meal but according to Tim Pychyl, who refers to himself as Professor Procrastination on his twitter handle, procrastination is an emotion-management problem and not scheduling. We avoid a task to save ourselves from feeling the negative emotions (like pain and tiredness) associated with the task. He says, “avoidance acts as a short term mood repair.” This means that only our present-self benefits from this but our future-self is exposed to extremely negative emotions of guilt, shame, low self conscientiousness, along with high levels of worry, stress, and impulsivity. Joel Anderson, Associate Professor of Philosophy at Utrecht University, has therefore defined procrastination as “culpably unwarranted delay.” Modern research has also portrayed strong correlation between procrastination and significant health issues like heart diseases and hypertension.
Secondly, the way our mind perceives things is important when discussing the science of procrastination. For you, you are one single person and – now or later – the work has to be done by you and you only. But your mind has this weird kind of split-personality disorder where it differentiates between your present-self and future-self. It is proved in a research by Hal Hershfield, a social psychologist and assistant professor of marketing at UCLA’s Anderson School of Business, that when we process information related to our future-self, the brain regions actively involved are the same as those used to process information about a stranger. As a result, we are more likely to not make the present self go through the torture of doing a task and we’d rather let our future self, which is a stranger to us, lift the weight.
Two Professors from Harvard University also shed some light on our understanding of procrastination. Dan Gilbert, Professor of Psychology, has conducted research which proves that we rely on our present self to predict how we are going to feel in the future. This is called “INERTIA OF EMOTIONS,” because the brain feels that the current state will carry on. If we are not in pain right now, this state will most likely continue in the time to come. An amazing example of this is the difference in your bill amount when you go grocery shopping on an empty stomach versus when you go on a full stomach!
Harvard economics professor, David Laibson, says that “there’s a perceived gap between immediate cost and delayed benefits.” In simple words, something that seems like demanding work seems more expensive today than tomorrow. I personally like to call this “Inflation of Time.” You are going to spend the same 8 hours on preparing your college thesis, whether you do it today or sometime later. But that 8 hours today seems costlier than the same 8 hours later. I was taken aback when I realised this because the truth is that the value of your time increases exponentially as you age until the time you retire. This illusionary inflation of time, which leads to procrastination, has infact cost us not only our precious time but also our much needed emotional peace.
Dan Lok categorises procrastinators into 6 broad categories. You can listen to his podcast on the link here. 2 June: How To Stop Procrastinating and Win At Life.
Now that we’ve covered some of the major reasons for procrastinating, let’s delve straight into ways to prevent it. Joseph Ferrari of DePaul University says, “Merely telling a procrastinator to ‘just do it’ is like telling a clinically depressed person to cheer up. It won’t work.”
Continue reading about ways to beat procrastination on my other post:
Kashvi Gandhi 
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