😅 Why You Don’t Do the Thing (Even When You Know You Should)

A Scientific Guide to Action When You’re Used to Procrastination

Hey Friends,

Something I am terrible at is procrastinating when I have to prepare a presentation. 

I honestly don’t know what it is. 

Maybe it’s a track record, knowing I can pull it off if I prepare the day before.

The thing is…I know how much BETTER my presentations are when I finish them a week or two in advance, and have a chance to practice and really nail it.

But I also know that I can equally pull off a decent presentation with very little prep.

Sooo…I naturally fall into procrastination.

It’s almost so bad, that I’ve told friends if I say “I have a presentation today, I feel really calm about it” that it’s is a big red flag 🚩. 

Calm = I haven’t prepared enough.

If I’m really prepared…oddly, I will feel nervous the day of.

Weird reverse psychology.

Nonetheless, I still wait until the last minute and I want to know WHY.

So today friends, we will explore why we don’t do the things we need to do, even when we know that we should.

P.S. I recorded this episode. Watch it here: https://youtu.be/DxrWVXGIXi8

💬 In this note:

• 😅 Why You Don’t Do the Thing (Even When You Know You Should)
• 📚 Famous Last Words
• ⚡️ Pocket Shark

😅 Why You Don’t Do the Thing (Even When You Know You Should)

I’m a huge fan of compounding effects.

It’s great when it’s a positive thing, like compounding interest in the stock market.

It’s an absolutely terrible thing when it’s compounding something negative, like credit card debt.

Somehow we understand this concept clearly when it comes to money.

But when it comes to our health, habits, work, hobbies or other projects, we can easily ignore the compound effect.

Each day that we spend delaying, affects our weeks.

Our weeks affect our months, and our monthly actions affect our years.

And that affects our life.

Procrastination is a negative compounding effect.

This voluntary delay of planned action may temporarily relieve the fear, anxiety or self-doubt of completing a task, but ultimately, this avoidance usually makes the situation worse.

Why Do We Keep Procrastinating Even When We Know It’s Bad For Us?

Understanding the neuroscience and psychology of procrastination can help.

Many people believe that procrastination is a time management issue, and I completely disagree.

It’s an emotional issue.

Procrastination is a conflict between two parts of our brain, our limbic system (the emotional hub), and our prefrontal cortex (the rational brain).

The Limbic System

Our limbic system processes pain, pleasure and reward.

When we are faced with something unpleasant, our limbic system protects us by telling us to avoid it.

Are you like me and avoid conflict? You can blame your limbic system.

The amygdala is part of the limbic system which processes fear and anxiety. 

When a task triggers fear (like presenting on stage in front of a group of people), the amygdala activates and steers the brain and body to something more pleasurable, like scrolling social media.

Procrastination is also fueled by dopamine. 

Scrolling through social media gives us a surge of dopamine, which makes us feel good, and reinforces procrastination.

It creates a feedback loop that compounds the procrastination. Ooof.

The Prefrontal Cortex

This part of your brain is responsible for decision-making, planning and impulse control. 

It helps you prioritize long-term goals over short-term gratification.

When you procrastinate, the prefrontal cortex has a hard time stopping the limbic system that follows emotions. 

This fight between avoiding feelings and making smart choices is the core of procrastination.

To further support this tug-of-war between your rational brain and your emotional brain, there is a concept which explains why people devalue rewards or consequences that are far in the future.

It’s called temporal discounting. 

Are You Born To Procrastinate?

If we devalue long-term reward, are we predestined to be procrastinators?

We can look at experiments in temporal discounting and willpower as a proxy for this.

A famous example of temporal discounting, and willpower was conducted in 1970 with the Stanford Marshmallow Experiment.

Psychologist Walter Mischel of Stanford University and his colleagues conducted an experiment with 600 four-year-old children and gave them a choice: (1) they can have one marshmallow right away or (2) get two marshmallows if they just wait. 

This experiment was asking “Can they resist sweet temptation for 15 agonizing minutes, or will they surrender to instant gratification?”

In follow-up studies of this experiment, researchers have said:

"Sometimes experimenters had not even finished talking about the experiment when the kids already ate the marshmallow or cookie," 

"Other 4-year-olds were able to wait by sitting on their hands and turning away, or creating imaginary friends to distract them."

The kids who gave in to the temptation of the marshmallow right away were then called “low-delayers” and the ones who could wait the 15 min and get rewarded with a second marshmallow are called “high-delayers.”

In 2011, 40 years later, scientists from Cornell and Stanford followed up with some of those four-year-old participants, now middle aged, to see how “low-delay” and “high-delay” translate into adult life.

They chose nearly 60 volunteers who scored in the extremes from the original group of children, ones that either gave in quickly or held out the entire time. 

The researchers had them perform a task where they were shown fearful or happy facial expressions and had to push the button when they saw one but not the other.

The happy faces essentially served as marshmallows, people generally prefer happy faces to others, and are more apt to push buttons for them even when they are not supposed to. 

"We found the same individuals who had trouble delaying gratification 40 years ago still had trouble doing it now," Casey told LiveScience. "It really blew me away that we saw a trait that seemed so stable, they couldn't stop themselves at 4, and still can't stop themselves at more than 40."

This difficulty in resisting temptation for the four-year-olds to when these adults are in their mid-40s, shows how difficult this tug-of-war between the rational brain and the emotional brain can be.

How Can We Train Ourselves to Resist Temptation and Conquer Procrastination?

Now that we know procrastination is an emotional regulation problem, we can create an environment which helps us to better regulate our emotions and do the things we know we need to do, even when we don’t want to.

1. One place to start is to focus on your decision, this MINUTE. Don’t worry about the future, just decide what you want to do right now, with this minute. 

Remembering the compounding effect of our decisions, it’s how you spend your minutes that matters because that is what is accumulating to create your entire life.

Now you can regain control and change the direction of your day, minute by minute.

1. If you go to social media instead of working on your presentation, you can make tempting sites and apps harder to access by blocking them or removing them from your devices. 

1. You can also change your environment by physically moving distractions (like gaming consoles) out of sight.

1. Adding reminders of your goals, like a post-it on your monitor, can help you keep your goal on the top of your mind.

1. You can delay indulgence. When you feel an impulse to procrastinate, try to wait a short period by counting to 10, before giving in.

Want more tips to fight procrastination and increase the value of delayed rewards? 

Read more about Brain Hacks for Habit Change in Nina’s Notes #122.

Is There a Sweet Spot of Procrastination?

Author and Psychologist, Adam Grant, reframes procrastination not as a flaw, but as a virtue for creativity.

He argues that mild procrastination fosters divergent thinking, incubation of ideas, and nonlinear connections, which can lead to more original work. 

However, he also recognizes that procrastination is an emotion management problem, not a time management issue, as people often delay tasks with negative emotional associations. 

His suggestion to use procrastination constructively, is to strategically delay tasks in order to allow for deeper consideration, rather than waiting until the last minute when quality may suffer. 

📚 Book of the Week

Famous Last Words by Gillian McAllister

Rating: ★★★★★

Gillian McAllister always serves a good quick thriller.

One summer morning, after Camilla drops her daughter off for the first day of daycare, she receives an earth-shattering call.

There is a hostage situation in London.

And her husband, Luke, is involved.

Only he is the shooter, not a hostage.

The story unfolds seven years later after Luke disappeared and is presumed dead.

Until Camilla receives an anonymous text message which brings back the ghosts of her past.

I highly recommend this one. 

It is super fast paced. Dropping you directly into Camilla and Luke’s marriage, secrets, and an unsolved crime.

⚡️ Check This Out

Hello cutie!

Scientists discovered a new species of pocket shark in the depths of the Gulf of Mexico in 2013, and it just recently went viral on the internet.

It’s just 14cm (5.5 inches) long.

When I first saw this headline, I thought it was called a pocket shark because it’s small enough to fit in your pocket.

Aww.

But I was wrong.

It’s called a pocket shark because it has pockets near its gills.

…To store shark snacks? Unfortunately, no.

The two small pockets produce a luminous fluid, “a feature that may aid in attracting prey or eluding predators.” 

What is even cooler about this particular species of shark is that it also has photophones (light-producing organs) distributed irregularly around its body.

Which means…he glows-in-the-dark!

This shark discovery is still fascinating scientists and shows how little we know about our own oceans and the creatures of the deep.

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Edited by Wright Time Publishing