8 Reasons For Procrastination. Reason # 4

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

Coping with procrastination is not easy because we each have our own reasons for it. If you want to cope with procrastination, you need to understand what causes it most often. These reasons will be discussed in this and the next few articles.

Reason # 4 You prefer easy tasks

You may have already noticed that you often take on secondary tasks, because they do not take much time and are easy to complete: for example, checking email, talking with a colleague, or not difficult paperwork.

While these assignments can give the appearance of being "busy" and you think you are doing something useful, they are really just a creative form of procrastination. Intermediate tasks are easy and fill with a sense of reaching the goal, so when you complete them in the first place, you feel the instant pleasure of completing them.

The more time and effort it takes to complete a task, the more difficult it is to tackle it. Without an instant rush of dopamine from a successfully completed task, it is very easy to put it off for later because the reward seems too far away. Most people want to feel as soon as possible that they have achieved success and completed the task.

All this is connected with a concept called "the shift of values into the present." This definition refers to the tendency of a person contemplating a choice between two future opportunities to choose the benefit that comes faster.

One of the experiments conducted at Princeton University examined the work of the human brain when choosing between fast small rewards and large, but delayed rewards.

The researchers found that two parts of the brain compete for control over human behavior during the choice between instant gratification and a promising goal. Scientists have compared this to a popular economic dilemma where buyers are impulsive now but are going to be more patient in the future.

During the study, the brains of fourteen Princeton University students were scanned when they were asked to ponder delayed reward options. Options included a gift card to buy goods worth between five and forty dollars, which could be spent right away, or a card for a large, but unknown amount, which students could receive from two to six weeks.

The researchers saw that when students pondered options with instant gratification, they activated parts of the brain that were influenced by emotional neural systems. In addition, all decisions - both short-term and long-term - are made with the active participation of brain systems that are associated with abstract thinking.

Interestingly, when students, with the opportunity to receive instant gratification, settled on a more valuable, delayed option, the brain regions responsible for calculations were more active than those responsible for emotions. If the subjects chose instant gratification, the activity of the two zones was the same, well, maybe with a slight preponderance of the emotional zone.

The experiment concluded that the immediate reward option activates areas of the brain associated with emotions and inhibits areas associated with abstract thinking.

Researchers have found that the part of the brain responsible for emotions is difficult to imagine the future. In contrast, the part of the brain responsible for logical thinking is able to see the consequences of current actions.

While our emotional part of the brain strives for immediate pleasure, no matter what we may lose in the future, our logical part does not forget to think about the long-term consequences. More often than not, the embarrassing need to wait for reward today does not seem worth the indefinite reward tomorrow.

The article appeared thanks to the book "The Power of Productivity" by Steve Scott