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What's up dudes and dudettes. It's Pavel from the Prosocial Collective.
In part 1 of this video series on procrastination I spoke about how every single human being
is bound to procrastinate at some point in their lives, and that's perfectly normal.
That's the way we're hardwired, in a sense we're programmed to procrastinate. Our impulsive
brain (limbic system) wants instant gratification. We want that chocolate bar, we want to check
our email for the 10th time in the past half hour, we'll go on Facebook and like a few
pics, maybe throw in a selfie and put it through sepia and up it goes on instagram. But not
condemning any of this, there's nothing wrong with that -- We want that quick dopamine hit
that sizzles through to our reward system and makes us feel good. So if you haven't
checked out my first procrastination video on how we're biologically and evolutionarily
programmed to procrastinate have a look by just clicking below.
Anyway. Every single human being is susceptible to procrastination. We just weren't designed
to resist temptations for long periods of time. We want that hit and if we can get it
with no delay, then oh yeah. We will settle for quick and smaller rewards instead of working
towards huge rewards that take time to build up. We'll sit on the couch and eat ice cream
and watch a movie instead of going out for a jog that would help us in our long term
goal of getting fit or exercising more. Throughout the day, we're constantly tempted by these
delicious rewards. And by no means whatsoever is the environment helping. The environment
is changing, and it has changed to the point where it preys upon our temptations. Temptations
are everywhere, they're readily available, they're awesome, and there's no delay, there's
no delay whatsoever to get a quick fix -- that lovely surge of dopamine to the brain.
So reason 1 for procrastination is that we as humans have a perfectly natural tendency
to overvalue instant gratification but undervalue future long term goals or events like an assignment,
an exam, a certain level of fitness, a healthier lifestyle, whatever. These long term goals
we have are valuable, they really are, they really are valuable but we don't see their
value if they're that far away in the distance, days or weeks away. But once deadline day
is fast approaching, it's just around the corner, we see the value of that long term
goal we once upon a time had and it's much clearer, the value of it is much clearer and
we suddenly want to work towards it. We suddenly want to drop everything we've been doing up
to this point, we will drop everything, put our lives on pause, put those parties on pause
and we will experience great, profound regret to succeed in that goal. To do the assignment
well, to revise for an exam well so that we could get a good grade
Now reason number two for why we procrastinate is why not procrastinate man? Everybody's
talking about procrastination like it's such a bad thing, such a negative thing. Let me
take a different view for a minute, there's been some academic papers about something
called 'active procrastination'. Some people just love working under pressure, they feel
alive, they feel challenged when they do that, and motivated while working. And researchers
say that procrastination occurs because people have poor control over their lives, they're
not able to organize themselves, have poor self-regulation, or something like that. Well
research shows that there are people that constantly make the decision to postpone,
they're intentionally postponing whatever they have to do, because they want to do more
important things. Prepare themselves and gather their resources etc etc and that sort of stuff.
And they've got stuff under control, they've got good control. They know what they're doing.
Active procrastinators still know how to meet deadlines, and they can still get work done,
and they can be happy with the fruit of their work. So it works, I mean you can procrastinate,
if you know how to. Active procrastinators have a different way of doing things.
Reason number three? You are being negative my friend. If you have a negative emotional
reaction to a task - revising for an exam, or filing for a passport renewal -- you will
want to avoid it as much as only possible. The stronger this emotional reaction, this
negativity to the task, the more you're going to avoid it. And you may have some personal
reasons why you're doing all this avoiding, why you're being avoidant. It might be boring
as hell; you might be dreading the process of it because it might be painstakingly awful,
trivial, you might think it's pointless.