Why We Procrastinate

You know you have an assignment due tomorrow. You know it will take you three hours. And you know that you have that time now to complete it.

And yet suddenly you find yourself re organising your files, checking instagram and making coffee and watching one quick YouTube video or cleaning a room that you hadn't cared about for weeks.

Then midnight arraives. You panic. You finally start working, finish under pressure and promise yourself that next time will be different.

Then it happens again.

This is procrastination. Unnecessarily delaying an intended taks despite expecting that the delay will probably make things work. It is not simply laziness. Psychologist increasingly understand it as a problem involving emotional regulation, self control, motivation and how we perceive future consequences.

One important explanation is temperal discounting. Our brains tend to value immediate rewards more strongly then future rewards. Finishing an assignment gives you benefit tomorrow while scrolling through you phones gives you pleasure right now.

Your brain doesn't necessarily choose what is best for your future self. It often chooses what feels better right now in the present. This becomes even strong when the task feels unpleasant.

Researchers developed models of procrastination showing that motivation is influenced by factors such as expectancy, value, impulsiveness and delay. In simple terms of something feels difficult or boring or unpleasant or far away then your motivation to do it collapses.

This explains why someone can spend two hours scrolling but struggle to spend twenty minutes starting a difficult assignment.

The problem is not that they task require more energy. It may be that the task creates more emotional resistance.

An intresting real life example is studying for exam. Opening a textbook can immediately remind you that you didn't understand the chapter. That created discomfort and demotivation. You phone offers an escape from that feeling almost immediately.

So you go and check one notification and then another. Soon the discomfort has disappeared but the exams hasn't.

Research by other people has linked prorastration with short term mood repair. In other words, sometimes we procrastinate not because we don't care about the risk but because avoiding it makes us feel better right now.

And modern technology makes this incredibly easy. The phone in your hands contains thousand of immediate rewards. Your brain is being asked to choose between an uncertain future benefit and an instant dtram if entertainment. That is an unfair competition.

And the solution as far as I think is not simply preaching being disciplined. It is to make the task smaller. Remove immediate distractions. And most importantly feel motivated before beginning. Soemtimes starting is where the motivation is being created.