| Title | The Science of Procrastination: A Neuroscientist's Guide to Getting Things Done | |
| Date | Tuesday July 02 2024, @10:22PM | |
| Author | hubie | |
| Topic | ||
| from the I'll-come-up-with-a-snappy-Department-later dept. | ||
Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:
Understanding the reasons behind our procrastination can help us regain productivity.
Procrastination, the intentional yet harmful delay of tasks, manifests in various forms. Sahiti Chebolu from the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics employs a precise mathematical framework to analyze its different patterns and underlying causes. Her insights could assist in creating personalized strategies to address this issue.
"Why did I not do this when I still had the time?" – Whether it is filing taxes, meeting a deadline at work, or cleaning the apartment before a family visit, most of us have already wondered why we tend to put off certain tasks, even in the face of unpleasant consequences. Why do we make decisions that are harmful to us – against our better knowledge? This is precisely the conundrum of procrastination. Procrastination, the deliberate but ultimately detrimental delaying of tasks, is not only hampering productivity but has also been linked to a host of mental health issues. So it is certainly worth asking why this much talked-about phenomenon has such a grip on us – and what it actually is.
"Procrastination is an umbrella term for different behaviors," says computational neuroscientist Sahiti Chebolu from the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics. "If we want to understand it, we need to differentiate between its various types." One common pattern is that we defect on our own decisions: we might, for example, set aside an evening for the tax return, but when the time has come we watch a movie instead. Something else is going on when we do not commit to a time in the first place: we might be waiting for the right conditions. The possible patterns of procrastination are myriad: from starting late to abandoning a task halfway through, Chebolu classified them all and identified possible explanations for each: misjudging the time needed or protecting the ego from prospective failure are just two of them.
Can such a classification really help you get stuff done? Chebolu is convinced that a mathematically precise understanding of the mechanism at play is the first step to tackling it. She frames procrastination as a series of temporal decisions. What exactly happens, for example, when we schedule our tax declaration for Friday night but then succumb to the temptations of a streaming service? One way to think of decision-making is that our brain adds up all the rewards and penalties we expect to gain from the alternative behaviors: watching a movie or doing annoying paperwork. Quite naturally, it then picks the course of action that promises to be most pleasant overall.
[...] Chebolu is confident that understanding procrastination as a series of temporal decisions and detecting where and why we usually take a wrong turn can inform interventions: If you discover, for instance, that your brain is a bit too biased towards instant gratification, giving yourself short-term rewards might help. Those who tend to underestimate the time needed for their grunt work could try setting themselves time-bound goals. And if you find yourself abandoning your chores quickly, you might want to avoid distracting environments.
No matter in which category of procrastination you fall (and you almost certainly fall into some of them sometimes): no, you are not just lazy. Recognizing this and forgiving yourself for procrastinating in the past is a good first step towards more productivity.
Reference: "Optimal and sub-optimal temporal decisions can explain procrastination in a real-world task" by Sahiti Chebolu and Peter Dayan, 22 May 2024. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/69zhd
How do you deal with procrastination?
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printed from SoylentNews, The Science of Procrastination: A Neuroscientist's Guide to Getting Things Done on 2025-07-16 02:25:40