Where Did The Time Go?

Procrastination: we’ve all done it. It’s when you purposefully avoid something you have to do without good reason.So, what happens when we procrastinate? Your amygdala is a set of neurons part of emotional processing and identifying threats in your brain. It releases hormones as well as adrenaline kicking off a fear response and causes stress. This overpowers your prefrontal cortex, which is for long term thinking and keeping your emotions under control. All of this leads to a fight, flight or freeze and your brain decides to put off the task in favour of something less stressful, like trading off writing an essay for checking your phone. The reason that we might put something off is to avoid the negative feelings that can cause insecurity, stress and low self esteem.

Studies of university student procrastination have shown that the students put off tasks they felt were stressful or challenging. The more you procrastinate, the more you feel stressed at the thought of starting which makes it more difficult to actually begin the task. Procrastination is sometimes confused with laziness but they are really very different. When you're lazy you are more likely to do nothing, but procrastination is distracting yourself with stress-free, easy and unimportant tasks.

Procrastination, though not good in the long run, can help reduce stress. You might think the answer is strict time management but being too strict with yourself can pile up into even more negative feelings towards getting a task done. The answer isn’t to add negative emotions but to reduce them. This can be done by breaking tasks into smaller parts and focusing on one part at a time to avoid becoming overwhelmed and removing any close distractions that can lead to you procrastinating.

Procrastinating is easy, but the more you do it the harder it gets to actually start. Once you start the task it will feel much less stressful and make your life easier in the long run instead of leaving everything to the last minute.