Transcriber: Marco Fleichacher Reviewer: 新 陈
Monday 7:30 a.m.
Your teacher just uploaded an assignment due Friday 11:59 p.m.
And the first thing that comes to your mind is
“Ah, a new assignment? Can’t they give us a break?”
Although you feel annoyed by the new work you have to do,
You’re also relieved
because it’s not due until Friday,
which means you have all week to complete it,
except, you’re not going to start, or even open the assignment
until Friday 11:00 p.m.
Because during your free time,
you decide to finally finish that book you’re reading.
You finally took your Golden Retriever out for a walk,
and you finally reorganized your room.
By this point, you’re tired, frustrated, angry, overwhelmed,
and all you want to do is get this homework over with.
By 11:55 (p.m.), you managed to finish and upload your work.
You’re so exhausted that you promise you’ll never do it again.
Because you know that
A, you could have done a better job,
and B, you could have avoided feeling so exhausted
if you had just started working earlier.
But hey, you did read.
You exercised, organized and finished your homework. So that’s something.
Now, let me confess something to you.
The majority of the time, that is my role and my thought process
every time I get assigned more work.
And I’m pretty sure that’s your role too, because I’ve been there,
you’ve been there,
we have all been there.
You probably have an idea now of
how the issue I’ll be talking about will specifically look like.
But before starting, let’s clear things up.
Procrastination.
What is it with that word that seems to be present all the time?
Three words:
delayiing, avoiding, distracting.
Those are the three most common words associated with procrastination.
And that's exactly it.
So postponing on purpose
a chore and an assignment,
and even the slight less responsability, like responding to an e-mail,
is procrastination.
But what if I told you that you can find productiveness in procrastination?
To understand the very nature of procrastination,
we need to learn about its roots.
And for that, let’s go back in time to Ancient Greece.
Plato was a remarkable philosopher,
who sees life based on the values of beauty, justice, and equality.
And although there were were no X-rays back then,
he came up with an analogy to understand how the human brain works.
Plato described the brain tends to be in a constant internal clash,
like a carriage being pulled by two horses
that sometimes work together, but sometimes don’t.
Now enough of ancient Greece.
Fast forward to the 19th and 20th century.
Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freud continued this analogy
by comparing the brain to a horse and a rider.
The horse being the driving desire and the rider being the common sense.
In his analogy, the horse corresponds to the limbic system
and the rider to the prefrontal cortex.
The limbic system is a part of the brain
responsible for behavioral and emotional responses,
such as pleasure seeking.
Meanwhile, the prefrontal cortex is needed during more complex behaviors,
like decision-making and planning.
This right here is important,
because it turns out, procrastination is pretty much in our nature.
The prefrontal cortex is less developed,
so the limbic system tends to gain control,
and you start to practice activities that make you happy,
instead of those you need to do.
And what does it all result in?
Yep. You guessed it. Procrastination.
Now that we know that our brains are designed to postpone tasks.
Let’s look at another factor that influences procrastination.
Motivation.
It is one of the most important human driving forces,
which makes it have a major impact on procrastination.
To understand this more, let’s look at expectancy, value and time,
the three key particularities of motivation,
according to industrial psychologist, Dr. Piers Steel.
If I were to ask you, would you rather complete an assignment
in which you know you’re going to get an excellent grade,
or, complete an assignment
in which you know you’re going to get the minimum passing grade?
You’re probably going to answer You’ll do the first assignment.
Why is this?
Well, when expecting a rewarding outcome from an activity,
you'll be filled with self-confidence and you'll be eager to do it.
Whereas when you know things aren’t going to go so great, you’ll try to avoid it.
This expectancy connects to how valuable an activity is to us.
I mean, who would want to do an irritating and unpleasant task?
I certainly would not.
And this is why the value we give to an activity is crucial
when deciding whether to do it or not.
Lastly, we’ve got time.
When talking about how humans interpret time,
it can be broadly separated into past, present, and future.
To understand the relationship between time and procrastination,
Dr. Steel presents an idea of
how the human interpret the present, and the future.
He states that we see tomorrow’s goals (unadible)
but days are seen as immediate.
This means that the future is rather seen as generalized and less specific.
But the now is particularized and detailed.
This has an important impact on due dates,
because a distant deadline increases delay,
and makes us believe we’ve got plenty of time to complete it.
But at the end of the day, this activity is done
a day or even hours before it’s due.
I can’t even begin to tell you the amount of times
this has happened to me.
And the worst part is that I know that I have to work
and if I don’t work, I’ll regret it later.
There are many ways of approaching procrastination.
But for now, I’ll be focusing on what I like to call,
“Productive Procrastination”,
which is basically, being productive while still procrastinating.
Pretty ironic, huh? Yeah, I know.
But I’m living proof of it.
And you’re probably living proof of it too.
Although I am no expert whatsoever in the study of procrastination,
I am an expert at procrastinating
and it turns out I am not the only one
who has ever thought about productive procrastination.
In fact, Dr. John Perry, a philosophy professor in Stanford University,
described the strategy used by procrastinators
to take advantage of this unfavorable trade
to be structured procrastination.
What is structured procrastination and how does it work?
Well, when compiling a list of tasks from most to least important.
The procrastinator will do the ones at the bottom
to avoid doing the ones at the top,
which means that to an extent, the procrastinator is being productive.
Just as in structured procrastination,
the basis for productive procrastination, is doing some activities to avoid others.
But it is mainly focused on academics.
Because I, as a 17-year-old high schooler,
procrastinate the most in school.
Let me give you an example.
If I have work A due Tuesday and work B due Friday,
I’ll start doing work A.
Get tired of it.
And then end up finishing work B,
although A is more important because it’s due before.
Of course, I ended up finishing work A Tuesday 11:00 p.m.
But now I have completed not one but two assignments
out of the countless amount of homework I have to do.
Productive or structured procrastination is a little mind trick
you can play on your brain
in order to be productive, and at the same time procrastinate.
Another good way of dealing with procrastination
is by making each task more approachable.
This is achieved by separating the whole activity
into small subtasks, instead of a big one.
For example, if you have to write an essay,
instead of approaching the whole thing at the same time,
approach it by paragraphs, and those paragraphs by sentences,
and those sentences by words.
The key here is to understand that
the completion of what appears to be a small task,
is actually a big win.
We have now broken down the concept of procrastination.
We’ve been able to see how our brains are programmed to procrastinate,
how motivation and its derivatives affect our willingness to complete a task,
and how you can take advantage of this so-called unfavourable trade.
You can trick your mind into believing that you’re procrastinating,
when in reality you’re being productive.
This is why I want to invite you to try productive procrastination,
and deceive your brain into believing that
by completing other assignments,
you’re procrastinating the completion of the “most important one”.
This way each task will be more approachable,
and it’ll be easier for you to do,
which can help you avoid
feeling so exhausted, tired, frustrated, angry, overwhelmed.
Isn't that something that sounds so relieving?
Now that I have presented all these ideais to you,
I want you to understand that
the small activities you might complete in a day are,
in fact not small nor insignificant.
But on the contrary,
they have a big impact when trying to overcome procrastination.
By making minor changes to your daily routine,
you too, can take advantage of procrastination.
And no matter how big or small these changes might apper to be,
be proud of yourself,
and keep going.
Remember, I’ve been there.
You’ve been there.
We have all been there.
Thank you.