Soul-searching question at the end of the year: Have you cured your procrastination?

The New Year is coming.

To those of you who are doing your year-end summary,

Please accept the following soul-searching triple link:

Have you achieved early to bed and early to rise?

Did you lose weight successfully?

Have you finished reading all 50 books?

Those goals set at the beginning of the year have been broken down in the countless days and nights of browsing phones, playing games, and watching TV series. Tomorrow after tomorrow, there are so many tomorrows. Since there are so many, why not put it off? Procrastination wastes our years and ruins our youth. How can we break the vicious circle of procrastination?

Is procrastination a disease?

Procrastination is not a disease. Its correct name should be procrastination behavior, that is, people voluntarily postpone starting or completing a planned behavior despite foreseeing that the behavior will bring adverse consequences.

Psychologists have pointed out in a research report that 20% of adults report procrastination. Since most people think procrastination is not a good thing, the actual number will only be higher than 20%.

How does procrastination develop?

Regarding the formation of procrastination, Pierce Steele, a psychologist at the University of Calgary in Canada, gave an explanation: the human brain has two systems, one is the limbic system, which evolved earlier and is responsible for responding to immediate signals in the environment, such as what is seen, heard and touched; the other is the prefrontal cortex, which evolved later and is responsible for abstract thinking, such as making plans. However, because the limbic system plays a leading role, people tend to do things that make them feel easy and resist doing things that they think are difficult.

Of course, there are some complex individual psychological motivations for procrastination. For example, some people are afraid of being blamed, so they must ensure that everything is correct and not make a fool of themselves. Some people's procrastination is caused by their inner perfectionism, and they believe that they must be fully prepared before they can start. Some people feel that others don't care about them at all, and no one will notice whether they will finish on time.

Your Anxiety Might Come From Procrastination

Procrastination feels good for a while, but constant procrastination often leads to anxiety.

Imagine that you have an exam tomorrow, but you haven't reviewed yet. Looking at the thick stack of review materials in front of you, how can you stay calm? Therefore, when facing the arrival of the deadline, individuals often become anxious and at a loss.

What’s more serious is that such emotional experiences can also bring about physiological reactions. In a psychological study, researchers found that the stress caused by procrastination can cause an individual’s blood pressure to rise and heart rate to accelerate. It can be seen that procrastination is both sad and harmful to the body.

Additionally, procrastination can give the illusion of “productive” work.

We all have this experience: the closer we get to the deadline, the faster we complete tasks. This forced efficiency will lead us to overconfident cognitive bias, thinking that we are capable of handling urgent matters. In turn, it is precisely this wrong cognition that exacerbates our dependence on procrastination - since I can finish it within the specified time, why bother to seize every minute and every second. However, occasional "rushing" does not reflect real ability. As the saying goes, if you often walk by the river, you will get your shoes wet. Once procrastination deteriorates into "procrastination cancer", sooner or later the task will be delayed and you will be dragged down.

Get rid of procrastination

In the new year, don’t procrastinate, or you will miss out on the better version of yourself.

Comprehensive sources: People's Daily Online, Xinhua News Agency, Healthy China, etc.