On Procrastination

What is procrastination? If you’ve never experienced it, you are lucky! Unfortunately,  doubt that’s the case, as most people are procrastinators to a certain degree.

The definition found in the Oxford dictionary is “The action of delaying or postponing something”.

Here is a very interesting TED Talk on the subject:

According to Tim Urban, there are 2 decision makers in our brain: the Instant Gratification Monkey (who is all for fun and easy, which we human beings crave), and the Rational Decision Maker, who is in charge of long term plans, things that we find hard and more generally “whatever makes sense”.

Those two are in conflict whenever something important needs to be done. Whenever there is a deadline, we enter what Tim Urban calls “the dark playground”, a place where we have fun but is filled with guilt, dread, and more generally self-hatred. We know we should be working on that project but instead…. we check our social medias constantly, our fridge every 10 minutes, etc. We would much rather do something that feels good right now, than something that will be good for us in the long term.

My house has never been as clean as since I went back to school: when I should be studying, I find myself scrubbing the bathroom, cleaning the fridge, reorganising my kitchen cupboards, checking my facebook and emails, watching YouTube videos and old photos, tidying up my desk, and “procrastibaking” (there is a very interesting article in the New York Times about it which is definitely worth the read).

Thankfully, our Gratification Monkey has a “Guardian Angel”: the Panic Monster! He’s the only one capable of scaring away the monkey, and arrives to save us every time we get too close to a deadline.

This is great, we get to finish our work on time, but here’s the thing… What if there is no deadline? There are many things we would like to be doing in our lives or careers, but without a deadline, there is no Panic Monster to scare our Gratification Monkey away which means… Those dreams of ours are slipping away as we watch yet another YouTube video, or start a new series on Netflix, instead of working towards what we really want.

The most important thing you can do to fight procrastination is to realise that you’re doing it, and try to figure out why. When it comes to school assignment, I think my problem lies in the fact that I’m a perfectionist and find the task too overwhelming: I think I’m never fully prepared to start and am afraid I’ll fail, or won’t be good enough. But if I don’t start, how can I make it perfect??

I have started making to-do lists to help me visualise what I need to do, and crossing an item off the list supposedly offers instant gratification. I have deleted the Instagram app off my phone and will deleted my Facebook account (I will!).

The important take here is that nothing is stopping you, but yourself. So go do what you’ve been wanting to do for a while but are always pushing back for some reason, and go do it now!

And I’ll go back to doing my assignment, I promise.

Another video to help you get rid of your Monkey: Procrastination | How To Stop Procrastinating