Procrastination. Unfortunately a behaviour which plagues us all. But we do need to learn how do deal with it because as Charles Dickens once said:
"Procrastination is the thief of time, collar him."
So today I'm going to explore how procrastination happens and how we should deal with it.
How do we procrastinate?
The scenario goes something like this (see if you recognise this):
A) You want to do a particular task, which is important for working towards your life goal.
B) You put it off, in favour of some short term fun activity such as watching your favourite series on Netflix.
C) You hope to complete your actual task in the future, but you never quite get around to it.
When I am faced with such a situation, I like to firstly think about how my mind is working. I found the blogger Tim Urban from "Wait but Why” excellently explain what is going on in our brain. Blog here or video here.
There is a controversial phenomenon known as Zeigarnik effect which states you are more likely to recall incomplete tasks than completed tasks. The reason often suggested for this effect is that our brain has a tendency to want to finish incomplete tasks. Thus we can use this effect to our advantage as it will potentially influence us to complete the task. [Zeigarnik effect is controversial because some dispute the effect’s credibility].
I also previously talked about discipline and how it can help overcome the instant gratification monkey (as explained in Tim Urban’s article). In truth however there isn’t really a better cure to procrastination then just getting started. So that housework you have been putting off for a while, the exam practice you want to start, or whatever project you want to work on, get started on it today!
"Never leave that till tomorrow which you can do today.” - said by many great people including my dear mother :)
Further Reading
1. Procrastinator’s mind [A really cool blog post on procrastination]
As always, your comments and thoughts are welcome on the topic.
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