Procrastination is the habit of voluntarily postponing action, decisions and activities to an indefinite time in the future, with the knowledge that this postponement could lead to negative consequences. It is not a disease, but it is a bad habit and a sabotage personal experience that we have all experienced, because postponing increases the stress load and risks compromising the final result of our tasks. We often put off what stresses us, choosing instead immediate pleasures and simpler activities. It’s not just the lack of time that makes us procrastinate, we actually do it when we have it both time and means to complete the activity, but the friction, i.e. that “mental heaviness” that carrying out the task entails ends up making us decide not to do it. When this behavior becomes habitual, it can become problematic, preventing us from meeting deadlines and causing further stress, emotional and work-related distress. The emotional and cognitive roots of procrastination stem from paura of failure, perfectionismpoor self-control e seeking quick gratification. To fight procrastination and regain control of our time, time management techniques, emotional self-regulation and concentration on objectives that are further away in time, but larger, can help us.
What are the causes of procrastination
The motivations that lead us to this form of self-sabotage have deep emotional and cognitive roots. Beyond rather obvious reasons such as lack of interest in the activities we are called to carry out, these concern the search for immediate gratification, or on the contrary the fear of failure and the tendency towards perfectionism. From a cognitive point of view, procrastination is based on poor self-control and negative emotion management skills.
The search for immediate gratification
There procrastination it is in fact one form of instant gratification: I put off an effort to replace it with an apparently more pleasant or less tiring activity. In fact, we suffer the temptation from immediate gratification much more than we suffer from long-term gratifications, even if these bring greater benefits. The great blame for this behavior is to be attributed to the triptych cortex-basal ganglia-thalamus in our brain, and to the neurotransmitter “dopamine“, which overall try to push us towards the fastest and least tiring pleasure to achieve.
The fear of failure
Other times we procrastinate for the opposite reason to the previous one, that is, to postpone what we perceive as a problem as long as possible bankruptcy announced. Rather than disappoint expectations (ours or others), better to postpone. This behavior is usually what leads to the classic “block“: it’s as if the brain pushes us to avoid the riskperceiving it as too big, instead of facing it. Those most prone to falling into this cognitive trap are people with a lot performance anxiety or those with low self-esteemsince, in their vision, every action brings with it the fear of a negative judgement.
Perfectionism
Many procrastinators are perfectionists. We know, “perfection is not of this world”, but it is easier said than truly accepted. In the perfectionist’s mind, a job cannot be delivered until it is perfect and, given that everything can be improved, we will find ourselves in the position of never finish. Perfectionism leads to high levels of cortisol in the bloodtherefore a stress And anxietyresulting in chronic sense of dissatisfaction. When the standards we set for ourselves become too high, reaching them becomes impossible, and they end up blocking us.
The cognitive roots of procrastination
The ability to focus on bigger and more distant goals while giving up immediate gratification requires considerable effort cognitive effort: in short, concentrating is tiring and requires a lot of self-control. On the contrary, the weakness ofself-control it is a sneaky ally of procrastination. It is necessary to keep the concentration on important objectives without deviating excessively from the path you have chosen to take. Concentration and decision-making and control skills are faculties directed by us executive functions managed at the level of prefrontal cortex. These functions are also fundamental in emotion regulation.
There management of negative emotions it is, in fact, another crucial element for the pursuit of a goal. Boring, difficult and stressful tasks generate unpleasant emotions that sometimes end up activating the pain circuits in our brain. Postponing means, in the short term, alleviating these emotions: procrastination, in this case, is a defense mechanism towards negative emotions.
How to fight procrastination
Let’s not despair: there are some techniques that allow us to recalibrate our sensations and experience the workflow with less anxiety, or with less perfectionism, thus breaking the vicious circle of procrastination.
Self-monitoring techniques and time organization
Strategies like the time blocking (divide the day into dedicated blocks of time) and the progress monitoring they help create a sense of control over our time and to perceive the results of our efforts, so as to reduce anxiety. Likewise, too divide tasks into smaller subtasks and more easily reachable can make us perceive thatself-efficacy which is the lifeblood of our motivation, as a 2007 meta-analysis published in suggests Psychological Bulletin. All this contributes to a clear lowering of that threshold of psychological resistance that prevented us from carrying out the task.
Reappraisal of emotions
Recognizing your fears, such as that of failure, is the first step to facing them. It is crucial to understand what these fears are projections of a future state that we are deliberately imagining, and do not arise from tangible causes in the present (the fear is that we will fail, not that we have already failed!). Decrease or suspend judgement about ourselves by looking only at reality data (what is really happening, and not what I think will happen) can give us back the oxygen we need to modulate our emotions and be less scared from the work that awaits us. All this is expressed in psychology under the name of self-regulation.
Delayed gratification techniques
Training yourself to seek long-term gratification, rather than immediate gratification, is askills that can be developed. In fact, we can even fuel long-term gratification with small immediate gratifications! I study for thirty minutes and then watch five minutes of Instagram; I work for an hour and then I take a nice hot shower; I’ll finish this article and then I’ll run out and get an ice cream! Thus, breaking down tasks into smaller tasks and rewarding us every time we complete these mini-tasks, we will find more satisfaction and more motivation.
