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Procrastination Is More About Managing Emotions Than Time, Says Study (bbc.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: [A new study] identified two areas of the brain that determine whether we are more likely to get on with a task or continually put it off. Researchers used a survey and scans of 264 people's brains to measure how proactive they were. Experts say the study, in Psychological Science, underlines procrastination is more about managing emotions than time. It found that the amygdala -- an almond-shaped structure in the temporal (side) lobe which processes our emotions and controls our motivation -- was larger in procrastinators. In these individuals, there were also poorer connections between the amygdala and a part of the brain called the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (DACC). The DACC uses information from the amygdala and decides what action the body will take. It helps keep the person on track by blocking out competing emotions and distractions. The researchers suggest that procrastinators are less able to filter out interfering emotions and distractions because the connections between the amygdala and the DACC in their brains are not as good as in proactive individuals.
I'm just operating according to design specifications.
Been there, done that. The Stoics exactly figured this out 2,000 years ago. Go read Marcus Aurelius or Epictetus or Seneca on procrastination. It is all about emotion. This is not news... to me.
"If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid." - Epictetus
This was an interesting article on how most discussions of procrastination stigmatize the action of putting tasks off, even in cases where doing so causes no harm. Studies seem to indicate that a large fraction of the population "procrastinates" while still successfully completing tasks. These people may have no problems with their lives beyond the stress of people who want them to do things sooner because those people can't stand to see people work at the last minute. Treating all procrastinators as if they "have a problem" probably causes more harm than it prevents.
https://www.psychologytoday.co...
Actually, it is my preferred approach to anything difficult that needs insight. The thing that happens is that some limited initial look at the problem subconscious keeps working on the problem and throws me ideas at a low rate. At some time I have everything needed for a good solution and can get to work very efficiently. I can start working on such things immediately, but it takes more work and the results are worse. Would not surprise me one bit if there were quite a few other people out there that use this approach as well.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
I’ll have to take a look at that article later
L'Idiot
You know, I've thought for a while that procrastination has a little bit of an unfairly negative reputation. People treat procrastination as laziness, but in my experience, it's much more complicated than that.
I do agree that procrastination is often more about managing emotions than time. I don't know about the science from the article, but in my experience of my own procrastination and others', it tends to happen when there's some feeling of being overwhelmed. There's too much to do, there are two many things to think about, and so the procrastinator avoids dealing with it until they're forced to.
I also agree with you that it's not necessarily a bad thing, as long as the procrastinator still completes their work on time. It can even be a good thing if, when confronted with a complex, difficult, or overwhelming problem, there's some level of procrastination. Stop, take a break, maybe focus on something else first. Not only can it be a coping mechanism, but it can be a good strategy. If you have a long-term problem without only bad options, and you let it sit for a while, a the situation may change and better solution might present itself. Or, even if nothing changes, it may be that giving yourself some time will allow your unconscious mind to turn the situation over a few times and think of a better solution. It may even just be that you're not in the right frame of mind to consider the issue right now, and considering it at a different time can let you deal with it in a better way.
So I don't think procrastinators are lazy or that they necessarily have a problem, but clearly it can turn into a problem. For one, procrastinators sometimes put things off too long, and the avoidance turns into hopelessness. They think, "I had 2 months to do this, and I've made no progress. Now the deadline is only a week away. If I couldn't make any progress in a month and a half, then what makes me think I could complete it in 1 week?" They give up and don't get things done.
That's an extreme case, but even in less extreme cases it can be a problem. You said, "Studies seem to indicate that a large fraction of the population 'procrastinates' while still successfully completing tasks." However, "completing the task" may not be the only measure worth considering. People are terrible at estimating how long tasks will take. If you get in the habit of putting things off until the last minute, and giving yourself just enough time to meet the deadline, you'll find you sometimes miss the deadline because you underestimated the amount of time that'd be needed. Or if you don't miss the deadline, you might cut corners to make the deadline on time. Or even if you don't explicitly "cut corners", very often having spare time at the end of a task allows you to be more careful, take your time, and refine your performance.
To give a more concrete example, if you have 2 months to write a paper, and you don't start it until the night before, you might not finish it in time because you needed a week to write it. If you start writing a week in advance, you might finish it, and it's fine. However, if you start writing immediately and finish it in a week, then you have an additional 7 weeks to proofread, edit, and revise the paper. So in that case, procrastination isn't exactly a problem, but it is still detrimental.
Still, not everything needs to be done perfectly, and sometimes the paper you wrote at the end of 1 week is good enough. Sometimes giving yourself a break is more important than making the paper as good as it could possibly be. And it's possible that letting the ideas roll around in the back of your mind for 7 weeks actually allowed you to write a better paper than you would have if you started work immediately.
I don't think there's a simple one-size-fits-all answer. Procrastination is often a problem, but often it's not, and I'm sure sometimes it's beneficial.
That's just good business sense. It's straight out of Lean Manufacturing / Software Development. Put off decisions that are irreversible or difficult to change until the last possible moment in order to ensure that you have the best information.
At the same time, treating everything that way is foolhardy. There are some things you should spend a good deal of time thinking about or mulling over, but there's plenty of rote tasks that benefit in no way from being delayed. You're never going to really want to do the dishes, so you may as well get it done with. Getting those simple tasks out of the way ensures that you'll have plenty of time later to tackle the problems that need to be put off for a time in order to be given their due amount of thought.