What You Need to Know About Procrastination

Have you ever stayed up all night writing a paper? Did you wait until the last day to file your taxes? Ever looked back at your list of New Year’s Resolutions from the start of the year, at the end of the year, and thought, “Well, that was a bust”?

I am guessing at least one (if not all) of these examples is relatable. And it begs the question,

What the heck is wrong with you?

“I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by”—Douglas Adams

As someone who is just now dealing with their chronic procrastination (that’s right, I’ve procrastinated on dealing with my procrastination) I know that the answers we give ourselves to this question can be pretty harsh; you lack drive, you’re unfocused, you’re lazy.

These responses are, for the most part, untrue and they are always counterproductive.

You will not get far fighting your tendency to procrastinate by berating yourself. You need to understand why you have this tendency. You need to know your enemy.

Because, none of us actually wants to lose a night’s sleep to stress, tear the house apart in a panic looking for tax forms, or look back at a year and see only a list of good intentions with little to no follow through.

The What and Why of Procrastination

Procrastination is the practice of doing more pleasurable things in place of less pleasurable ones or carrying out less urgent tasks instead of more urgent ones. It is putting off impending tasks to a later time (Wikipedia).

If you battle chronic procrastination (as I do) the sentence “carrying out less urgent tasks instead of more urgent ones” is a highlighted in this definition.

You will create less urgent tasks if need be, avoiding the urgent tasks by looking for distractions (distractions being, conveniently enough, increasingly easy to find).

Procrastination is the more toxic relative of a tendency humans have called hyperbolic discounting. Hyperbolic discounting involves choosing a smaller-sooner reward over a larger-later reward.

Most studies of this involve monetary amounts. For example, many people prefer $100 now to $110 in a day. However, very few people prefer $100 in 30 days to $110 in 31 days. If humans were more logical the delay wouldn’t make such a difference in the results (the amounts are the same). But our evolutionary impulses don’t look too far into our future. Our ancestor’s preference for instant gratification was based on a much shorter lifespan where long-term planning was impractical (your “life goal” wouldn’t have extended far beyond species propagation). This preference isn’t of as much use now but, like our taste for sugar and salt, it’s still hanging around causing trouble.

In researching human motivations (and quirks in general) David McRaney’s You Are Not So Smart is a standout for being accessible and fun. His chapter on procrastination first introduced me to the tendency of hyperbolic discounting and contains an excellent summary on the studies of Walter Mischel known as the Marshmallow Test.

Mischel’s studies were carried out through the 60s and 70s. Children were sat at a table with treats. They were told they could eat a treat right away or wait a few minutes and get two treats. If they couldn’t wait they would ring a bell.

The study followed the children as they grew. The ones who rang the bell quickly showed a higher incidence of behavioral problems. The ones who could wait ended up with SAT scores that were, on average, more than two hundred points higher than scores for those that couldn’t.

It is in the summary of Mischel’s study that McRaney makes a key point in what really separates these groups. And it goes beyond standard answers like energy, grit, or willpower. It presents the real trick in understanding (and beating) the urge to procrastinate.

How to Prevent Procrastination

“In the struggle between should versus want, some people have figured out something crucial: want never goes away”.

Planning for the temptation to slide (and acknowledging its inevitability) should be central in any plan you devise to reach your goals.

Tricking your brain with a rewards system is a great way to fight procrastination. Your brain wants that “instant result”. Your best plan should give it that.

If for every task that pushes you toward a long-term goal you give yourself some sort of a reward upon completion you will find yourself steadily working through that “to do” list.

Knowing the causes of a negative behavior is an important component of eliminating it. Plan for temptation, reward your brain and keep moving forward.

Featured photo by Aron Visuals on Unsplash

Sources for Further Study

https://medium.com/behavior-design/hyperbolic-discounting-aefb7acec46e

The Marshmallow Test, by Walter Mischel

You Are Not so Smart, by David McRaney

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