Why we procrastinate?
The word procrastination originates from two Latin words: “pro-means forward” & “crastinus-means tomorrow.” This word is very close to me because, just like anyone, I was a procrastinator, always finding excuses to postpone the things that I deep down knew were very important for me to do. At that time, I felt I am just lazy. When you live your life knowing that there is something that you should be doing and you are not doing, it has a significant impact on your mental health. You lose trust & respect in yourself because you see yourself promising doing something, but in the end, you are not. The state of procrastination is unintentional. People procrastinate even when they know its bad for them and even when they want to stop. This is the point where our brain comes up with another excuse; like maybe that specific work or task is not exciting; that’s why our mind is not allowing us to do it?
I realized this problem of procrastination is more severe when I got my first job. In the beginning, I was excited, thrilled, happy, enjoying this new change of life. For a brief period, I started to think myself as not a procrastinator, looking at myself loving the job, going to work every day, doing everything that I was supposed to do, till my dopamine started to drop. Yes, dopamine, the feel-good hormone.
Dopamine is a neurotransmitter — a chemical released by neurons (nerve cells) to send signals to other nerve cells, creating a pathway. The pathway gets stronger when you keep performing the same routine that releases dopamine; however, doing it more often in more quantity would release more dopamine making the path stronger in your brain. Yes, this all sounds amazing, then what’s the problem? The problem is the environment in which dopamine gets released. You can also look at it terms and condition clause for dopamine.
Dopamine is a happy hormone reaction in your brain, a reward system design for you to feel satisfied to finish the activity. Because of this dopamine, biologically, one would go back and complete more activities/tasks to get that hit of dopamine, that happy hormone. It makes you feel indulging in more activity that gives you more amount of dopamine in your brain. It is released during pleasurable situations and stimulates one to seek out the pleasurable activity or occupation. This means food, sex, and several abuse drugs are also stimulants of dopamine release in the brain. Dopamine feeds on novelty. Hence your brain constantly seeks novelty in everything.
After the initial few weeks of the new job, my brain’s dopamine level has started to take a dip. I realized I was getting back again to my old, the self who postpones things to the last minute. I began to feel like this job is not for me; it’s not challenging enough, that’s why I am not feeling to do that report, attend that call or the meeting, not caring when my project due date is; sounds familiar?
Our brain is very mysterious, that’s why still with so much advancement in technology, we have just started to scratch the surface when it comes to how our brain works. From an evolutionary perspective, our brain is wired to survive, not thrive; This causes procrastination. Our brain thinks that when you get your basic things figured out in your life like you are well-fed, you have shelter. Our brain thinks there is no extra point going above and beyond; the brain thinks you are comfortable. Your brain wants you to survive, which is the best thing for evolution. Our brain wants you to preserve energy whenever possible and carry on the species.
On top of that, our brain is wired to avoid negative emotions; it thinks if you have negative emotions, it means you are in jeopardy of survival, maybe worried about an attack from the preditors. However, in modern times these negative emotions are often the things we need to do to better ourselves. Whenever our brain experiences these negative emotions, it either creates an excuse for us not to do that task or detract us from that negative emotions from leaning toward instant gratification activities like watching porn, scrolling Instagram or Facebook, Videogame, Netflix, Youtube, all those activities which give us instant gratification. Due to the dopamine urge in our brain, we reassure the brain that we don’t need to perform any tasks that entail negative energy since we are well-fed, have shelter, and have access to constant pleasure ( dopamine).
So, the moral is you procrastinate due to negative psychological emotions associated with that event/task. Once we understand the science behind the procrastination, the same can be reversed to perform the activity/task that our brain finds difficult.
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