5 More Minutes: What Procrastination Is And How To Stop It

No matter how much self control we like to pretend we have, we’ve all felt the deathly grip of procrastination at one point or another in our lives. We’ve all watched the minutes on the clock tick by, yet been physically unable to start working on that essay or email or whatever it is we’re putting off by watching cat videos on Youtube. It’s not a fun feeling, and yet we seem so powerless to stop it. But is there more to procrastination than just bad time management and self-loathing?

There are a couple reasons why we tend to procrastinate. One major reason is feelings of inadequacy. Many times we’re struck with a feeling of impostor syndrome. We may feel like we aren’t good enough or don’t have the intelligence to complete the task at hand. When we feel like we can’t possibly live up to the expectation of how we want that project to be, we tend to put aside that project completely. We may also feel overwhelmed - when we have no idea where to start on a task, it may seem enticing to just put it aside rather than work on a solution.

In any case, procrastination is a matter of worrying about instant gratification rather than long term fulfillment. When we have negative emotions associated with a task, our brain works to get rid of these emotions by procrastinating. According to The New York Times, our brains have a “hard-wired tendency to prioritize short-term needs ahead of long-term ones” In the past, this might have worked out well. In primitive times, there wasn’t much reason to plan ahead when you had more pressing things to worry about in your day to day life. In modern society however, every aspect of our lives is dominated by the need to plan ahead for the future, so procrastinating usually doesn’t end up working out too well.

The key thing to understand is that there’s a difference between procrastination and laziness.

Laziness is marked by a feeling of apathy towards the task at hand. Most of the time the task is done poorly or not done at all because of a lack of interest or motivation. Procrastination on the other hand is usually accompanied by a feeling of guilt. Similarly, there’s also a difference between procrastination and executive dysfunction. Executive dysfunction is a psychological disorder when someone has trouble transitioning between tasks. While executive dysfunction is also characterized by a feeling of guilt, it has more to do with being unable to transition between tasks than actually being unable to work on the task itself. Furthermore, executive dysfunction is also commonly found with other mental health disorders, like depression, anxiety, or OCD. If you think that you might have executive dysfunction, talk to a doctor or psychologist.

As we procrastinate more and more, those feelings of anxiety and self-blaming only seem to multiply, and because we have these negative feelings associated with the task, we decide to procrastinate even more. Those feelings of anxiety and self-blaming lead to stress, and as we’re placed under more and more stress, we become more incapable of thinking about the future. Our amygdala (the danger detector of our brain) activates and perceives the task at hand as a “threat” to our well-being, which of course leads to even more procrastination. In addition, because of the brief relief we get from putting off a task, our brain tends to procrastinate more and more because of those feelings of being rewarded in the first place. It’s a vicious cycle, and while it may seem like one impossible to break, there are ways out.

First, identify the reason behind your procrastination. If you’re procrastinating because of perceived incompetence, then take a moment to lower your expectations. It may seem counterintuitive, but putting that much pressure on a project to be perfect, just makes it less likely for you to start in the first place. Remind yourself that it’s better to have done an imperfect job than to not have done one at all and keep working.

On the other hand, if your reason is feeling overwhelmed then it can help to break down the task to make it seem less daunting. For example, when I write my articles, I first break down my task into three steps: researching, drafting, and editing. Then I break down those tasks into even smaller steps. Instead of just “editing an article”, I now have to fix grammar mistakes, analyze article structure, and vary word choice and sentence flow. Now, the task of writing an article seems much less scary and it tricks your brain into thinking you’re doing less work by working on multiple smaller tasks.

One thing to keep in mind when fighting procrastination is that motivation follows action. Once you force yourself to start working on something, it’s a lot easier to keep working on that thing. However, if you keep waiting for this non-existent burst of motivation to show up, it’s likely you aren’t ever going to finish your task. One trick is to tell yourself you’re going to work on something for just two minutes. Two minutes seems like such a small amount of time to work on something, but after those two minutes of productivity, we often feel more motivated to keep working on that thing.

My final tip is to make your procrastinating urges as inconvenient as possible. If you find yourself resisting the urge to look at your phone, keep it in another room when you’re studying or delete social media apps from your phone. We procrastinate because it’s easier, faster, or more convenient than the task at hand. But by adding that extra step of getting up, walking to another room, and picking up your phone, it makes us more likely to reconsider and stop procrastinating.