Procrastination: A Detour on the Odyssey of Life
I have a confession to make – I’m a procrastinator. I'll spend hours thinking about a task, tormenting myself over it until I finally decide it’s too late and I need to go to sleep. I tell myself “OK, you will make up for this. You will wake up at 5AM, and you will be super productive – you’re a morning bird after all”, only to snooze until 9AM the next morning. Sounds familiar? I know it does. It's a vicious cycle, one that many of us know all too well.
At its core, procrastination is the act of delaying or putting off tasks that we know we need to do. It can be a significant source of stress in our lives, but we all do it from time to time.
We all have our ways of procrastinating. For me, it's spending hours reorganizing my books or re-watching the Lord of the Rings trilogy – extended editions. For others, it may be scrolling through Tik Tok, scrubbing the floor, or baking a cake. The point is that we find ways to distract ourselves from the task at hand. And we are so darn good at it.
It goes a little bit like this:
You sit in front of your computer, feeling as unmotivated as a sloth on a rainy day. You know you have work to do but suddenly start feeling a familiar itch and realize that you're about to enter the danger zone. You try to ignore it, but it's no use. Your mind is already wandering to the bright yellow, limited-edition PEEPS® Crocs that you saw earlier in the week.
You can practically hear them calling out your name. "Buy me," they whisper. "I'm so cute! Buy me, buy me!” You know you shouldn't, but you can't help yourself. You click on the link and start browsing through the different styles. You're about to check out when you remember that you promised yourself you would be productive today. You couldn't just give up on your work and buy a pair of Crocs...or could you?
Feeling guilty but also strangely exhilarated, you decide to treat yourself to one more indulgence before getting back to work. You shuffle over to the kitchen and scrounge through the cupboards, hoping to find something to munch on. You settle on a half-empty bag of stale Cheetos and head back to your desk.
As you chomp on the cheesy crumbs, you suddenly realize that you've been scrolling through Instagram for the past hour. How has so much time passed? You decide to make a list of all the things you need to do today to stay on track. You reach for a pen and some paper, but as soon as you begin to write, you realize that your pen has run out of ink.
Frustrated but undeterred, you rifle through your desk drawers in search of a new pen. Instead, you find a forgotten stash of scratch 'n' sniff stickers and spend the next half-hour sorting through them, trying to decide which ones are still good enough to use.
As you place a pizza-scented sticker on your planner, you know that you have to put an end to your procrastination streak…but first, you decide to reward yourself with just one more thing - a quick episode of your favorite TV show. Hours later, you snap out of your daze, feeling guilty and overwhelmed by the amount of work still left to do on that PowerPoint presentation for tomorrow morning.
Sad but true, procrastination is something we are keenly aware of and yet continue to do. It’s a feedback loop of momentary distraction to avoid the pain and anxiety of doing your work. A risky tradeoff that allows the underlying dread to build and build and build until you just…have to do it.
Margaret Atwood, author of the The Handmaid's Tale, puts it this way: “It’s like going into a really cold lake and deciding if you’re really going to go in. You put your foot in, you take it out. You put it in again – no it’s too cold…and that goes on for a while. If you end up doing it, you run in screaming.”
Procrastination is so universal that it follows a common pattern among people in Western culture. It starts with anticipatory anxiety around the task at hand that grows as the deadline approaches. Then, that anxiety turns into dread, which in turn leads to stress. Like the skilled procrastinator you are, you find a way to temporarily ease that pain – and boy, does that feel good. But then, when you're done with your detour, you take a hesitant peek at the pile of work on your desk and realize that it has grown uglier and scarier.
So, procrastination isn’t about laziness or discipline; it’s about emotional regulation. (I mean, you cleaned your entire apartment in one night after all – that’s the opposite of lazy!)
Psychologists have a concept for this that I really like called "amygdala hijack" that helps us understand procrastination better. The concept of amygdala hijack is often used to describe a situation where the emotional response of the amygdala overwhelms the more rational and reflective cognitive processes in the brain, leading to impulsive or reactive behavior.
In the case of procrastination, an amygdala hijack may occur when negative emotions such as anxiety, fear, or stress associated with a particular task or deadline become so overwhelming that they override more rational and reflective thinking processes. This can lead to impulsive or reactive behavior, such as avoiding the task or engaging in distracting activities.
Similarly, if we are feeling bored or uninspired, we may put off a task that doesn't seem interesting or enjoyable. In these cases, procrastination can be seen as a coping mechanism, a way of avoiding uncomfortable feelings in the short term.
At the same time, procrastination can also be seen as a self-control problem. This leads me to one of my favorite observations: isn’t it weird that we have the phrase “self-control” at all? I mean, it says a lot about the human condition that we need a phrase to describe the ability (or inability) to control yourself. It's a bit of an ironic term that shouldn't exist but does. If you are you, and your thoughts and actions are yours, then why would you need to control yourself if you can just command yourself to do whatever you want to do?
I know that was a mouthful, but it turns out, the issue is that we do not have a self– but a pair of selves. There are many names for them: The “hot” self and the “cold” self; the “present” self and the “future” self; the “experiencing” self and the “remembering” self; or simply, the “planner” and the “doer” – which is what we’re going to go with.
The "planner" self is all about responsibility and foresight. This version of us takes into account the consequences of our actions and works to make decisions that are in line with our long-term objectives. It's the one who makes the to-do lists and sets the deadlines.
On the flip side, the "doer" self is all about living in the moment and enjoying immediate rewards. This version of us is the one who wants to hit snooze on the alarm or skip the workout to binge-watch the latest Netflix series. Who doesn't love indulging in a spontaneous shopping spree or overindulging on some comfort food? But if we're not careful, the "doer" can also lead us astray and distract us from the things that really matter to us in the long run.
Self-control, my friends, is all about finding a balance between these two selves. It's about resisting the impulses of the "doer" self and staying true to the goals and priorities of the "planner" self. It's like being your own personal referee, making sure that you're delaying gratification and prioritizing the long-term benefits over the short-term pleasures – which is easier said than done, as we’ve discussed.
And finally, procrastination can also be seen through the lens habit loops – bad ones! If we repeatedly put off tasks and rely on procrastination as a coping mechanism, it can become an ingrained pattern of behavior that is difficult to break. This can make it even harder to regulate our emotions and exercise self-control, perpetuating the cycle of procrastination. The procrastinating habit loop looks a little like this:
This means that the more you procrastinate, the more you will reinforce those behaviors that you use to cope with the stress associated with the task you don’t want to do. And here’s a fact for you, those with high standards are more susceptible to the allure of procrastination! That is, if you have high standards for yourself and your work, just imagining the long and winding road that you are about to put yourself through is enough to give you blisters. You know it’s not going to be a walk in the park, and so you turn on Master Chef instead!
Fortunately, there are strategies we can use to address each of these underlying issues. For emotional regulation, techniques like mindfulness meditation and cognitive behavioral therapy can help us learn to identify and manage our emotions more effectively. For self-control, strategies like setting clear goals, breaking tasks down into smaller steps, and using tools like time blocking and productivity apps can help us stay on track. And for breaking bad habits, techniques like habit reversal training and habit stacking can help us build new, healthier routines and gradually replace old habits with new ones.
But those might be hard to remember, so let me share a trick that might help. I call it Proper Noun – as in person, place, and thing – and it works as follows.
First, imagine the person you want to be for the task at hand. Remember the two selves? Well, we’re going to add a third. Perhaps it’s your alter ego or a nickname you once had. What kind of traits does this person have? What skills can they lend you? The idea is to do two things: one, create psychological distance between you and the “person” doing this hard or boring task – this reduces the stress associated with the task; and two, rewire that habit loop. Instead of panicking after seeing a task you dread, you transform into the type of person the “planner” would have wanted you to be. By leveraging this mindset shift, you become more aware of the situation and more in sync with your goals and aspirations. For added effect, try working in front of a mirror – it works wonders.
Have fun with this – the more real, the better. It’s like wearing different hats. I, for example, have different pairs of glasses that I wear for different activities: my work glasses, going-out glasses, and writer glasses (which I am wearing now).
Second, let's consider the place. Shifting your mindset isn’t enough if everything around you is designed to steal your attention. Have you ever tried working on your bed late at night? I bet you didn’t last 10 minutes. The idea here is also twofold: repel distractions and create focus. This is because at every moment, your brain is rapidly accessing associations from environmental cues. Your brain knows that you sleep in your room, that you eat in your kitchen, and that you don’t mess around in the library where everyone is watching. This is why the place you choose to work is essential for letting the person do the work.
Third, the things. What do you actually need to get your work done – and what do you not? Similar to places, the things you carry around can also cause your brain to wander. This means physical things like what you decide to bring to the coffee shop or digital ones like the number of apps or tabs you have open. The more stuff you carry in your backpack, the more chances you give your brain to make sticky notes entertaining.
And finally, the Proper in Proper Noun. This is to remind us that behind every procrastinator, there is a name - a person who has hopes and dreams waiting to be achieved. So, in the process of taming procrastination, it's important to have self-compassion to support motivation and personal growth. It's true! Not only does it decrease psychological distress, which we now know is a primary culprit for procrastination, it also actively boosts motivation, enhances feelings of self-worth, and fosters positive emotions like optimism, wisdom, curiosity, and personal initiative. Best of all, self-compassion doesn't require anything external — just a commitment to meeting your challenges with greater acceptance and kindness rather than rumination and regret.
So, as the painting of Ulysses and the Sirens shows us (pictured above), procrastination can be a dangerous trap that lures us away from our goals and ambitions. Just like the Sirens' enchanting song, procrastination can be seductive, drawing us away from what we need to do and leading us down a path of inaction and regret.
But by using different commitment techniques, we can outwit ourselves and overcome the siren’s call of procrastination with a bit of planning, to resist the urge to put off until tomorrow what needs to be done today. So let's hoist the sails of productivity and set our course towards success, and let the winds of progress carry us to new and exciting shores ahead!
Until next time,
Miguel Ortega
This post is the second in a mini-series exploring different topics around work life and the people who live it. See the other posts in the series below:
Very well written and all good points. I like the observation that procrastination is primarily an emotional phenomenon. I would be curious to hear your thoughts on the role of shame in procrastination (if any).
Me reading this as I’m procrastinating: 👁️👄👁️