In this last few days while writing this post on why we procrastinate, I have realized one thing.

Procrastination is a bitch.

Hell, it’s taken me almost a month to post anything new here at The Evening Project. 

Even when I know it’s important that I stick to my schedule. Even when I promised myself that I would post every week without fail. 

It’s even managed to ruin reading for me.

Reading is my go-to procrastination routine. However, I don’t it enjoy it as much, since the guilt of not doing what I am supposed to do is gnawing away at me.

While writing the intro, I wondered if I was going overboard with it. But then I thought about all the hours I had wasted, burning my time away doing absolutely useless shit.

Never mind. Procrastination is a bitch. 

Why We Procrastinate: Is it just me? Is it just you? What the heck is it?

I am going to go ahead and make this about you too because procrastination is a universal bitch that kicks all of us.

Why do we do this to ourselves? 

Why do we willingly delay and postpone important necessary tasks?

And why do we substitute them with unproductive and distracting tasks which serve no purpose other than just wasting our time?

My last month has been absolutely frustrating and unproductive. I didn’t achieve my monthly goals and wasted away my days on endless social media browsing. 

Something had to give. So, I started researching procrastination. 

As they say, the first step in defeating the enemy is knowing the enemy.

In this post, I will tell you about what I learned. For convenience and ease of reading, I have divided my findings into two parts.

In the first part,

I am going to tell you about what happens in our minds that triggers procrastination. 

Why do we give in so easily to it?

And then in the second part,

I will tell you about what concrete steps we can take to defeat procrastination. 

How can we beat it at it’s own game?

And as we will find out, all of it leads to one main culprit which has been the bane of our productivity.

It’s been quite the ironical journey to write a post about procrastination while at the same time trying to defeat it for a month.  

That being said, I am not an expert at this. I am just annoyed at the fact that Procrastination always gets the better of me. Hence, all I want is to find a way to defeat it.

The good news is that it can be done. But before that let’s have a peak behind the enemy lines.

The Ultimate Reason Behind What Triggers Procrastination?

Remember the time when you had to submit an important assignment in the evening.

The alarm rings and you wake up at 8 AM. 

You know it’s a good idea to finish this assignment right now when you are fresh. And then you get to enjoy the remaining day, without worrying. 

But, there is time. Let’s go for a run, have breakfast, take a bath and follow important morning rituals that we never tried before. 

Oh, it’s lunch time already. It’s not a good idea to start work without eating properly. Come on, everybody knows that. 

Feeling a bit drowsy, now. An hour of sleep din’t hurt nobody. As soon as I wake up, I am going to work on the assignment. God Promise. 

We all know how this ends. We have all been there before. 

For the scope of this discussion, I define Procrastination as: 

Time spent on doing a different, usually less important activity instead of the one that is important and that you are supposed to do right now. 

When this keeps on happening consistently, we can say that we have a bad habit of procrastinating. And when we see procrastination from the lens of a habit, it means that it’s subject to the same underlying framework as all other habits.

Charles Duhigg, in his book, The Power of Habit calls this underlying framework the Habit Loop.

A Habit Loop usually consists of three major parts:

1. Cue 
2. Routine 
3. Reward 

Let me give you an example. 

The habit of brushing your teeth. 

As soon as you wake up in the morning(the cue), you go to the washroom, apply toothpaste to your brush and start brushing your teeth(routine). After this, you feel fresh, your teeth are cleaned and you feel ready to start the day(reward). 

Understanding this habit loop is key to understanding what triggers procrastination. Now, let’s think about our habit of procrastinating. 

What’s the cue that triggers it?

As it turns out, all kinds of procrastinating habits have a singular root cause which is 

Discomfort. 

We procrastinate about the things that make us uncomfortable. Forget doing them. Quite often, just the mere act of thinking about uncomfortable tasks causes us pain.

Neuroscientist Dr. Barbara Oakley in her book A Mind for Numbers gives a research-backed example for this,

“Medical imaging studies have shown that mathphobes, for example, appear to avoid math because even just thinking about it seems to hurt. The pain centers of their brains light up when they contemplate working on math.”

You just have to think about your own experiences to know that this is true.

Ah man, I am not sure about that assignment. I don’t know what to do or where to begin with it. Just thinking about is getting me uncomfortable and annoyed.

How do we react to this cue of discomfort?

We substitute the uncomfortable and pain giving activity for an activity that gives us a feeling of pleasure and instant gratification.

And when that happens, we can say that we have started procrastinating. 

For instance, my go to routine when I feel uncomfortable about a task is to start browsing aimlessly on Instagram. 

This makes sense when we face a task which is genuinely unpleasant for us. 

But Why Do We Procrastinate on Tasks that We Actually Like?

If you have noticed, we happen to procrastinate on tasks that we like too.

For instance, I enjoy writing. But still I procrastinated for almost a month before writing a new post?

How do we explain that?

Tim Urban, the author of the Wait But Why blog, has perhaps had the best insight on the trigger for this kind of procrastination.

When we have a big list of icky, daunting tasks and undertakings, we fall prey to procrastination.

What does this mean?

For The Evening Project, I have a big list of topics I want to write about such as productivity, habits, learning, reading and so on. 

However, the problem is, I have trouble prioritizing a topic and getting started on it. I just keep thinking about this big list. 

Even if I pick a topic, it’s icky, which means that it’s totally vague and unclear. 

For instance,

What will I write about productivity? Where will I start? What research and examples I will quote? 

Even if I somehow managed to prioritize the topic of productivity and decide to write about procrastination, it was still daunting. 

Because I was thinking about writing a more than thousand word blog with proper sections, examples, quotes and so on. It overwhelmed me.

Hence, even though I enjoy the activity of writing, having no plan, process and priority made me uncomfortable. 

Consequently, leading me to procrastinate and put off the act of writing. 

Think about an example like this in your own life. 

You will notice that ultimately, we can trace any kind of procrastination all the way back to the feeling of discomfort. 

How do we beat procrastination at its own game?

You have made it till here. Pat yourself on the back. We now understand the enemy. Half the battle is already won.

We have understood why we procrastinate and the major trigger that causes procrastination. 

The other half is all about concrete, practical and systematic steps to help you defeat procrastination. 

Hence, the obvious next question is,

Can we overcome procrastination? How can we beat it at it’s own game?

To find out, read the part 2 of this discussion here.