Why Do People Procrastinate?

It is a common tendency for people to procrastinate, whether it may be in their workplace or at school. Procrastination is where people push off their work to the last minute in order to meet deadlines, even when they dread the work. This is a usual act done by most people and this is usually because they do not want to do it. It may be time consuming, long, difficult, or they may just be lazy and do not have the time and energy to get it done. Most teachers always remind their students to get their work done on time and to have good time management, but for most, this is not the case.

There may be many reasons for why one may actually procrastinate, but scientists have found one of the main ones which may be due to the pleasure people get from avoiding things that may cause them distress. In the brain, there is a part called the limbic system which is an older part of the brain and it seeks pleasure to avoid difficult things. But, the prefrontal cortex is actually a newer part of the brain which aids in decision making, planning, and creating long term goals. Since it is newer, sometimes people have trouble differentiating when to actually do their work and how to plan. Their decision making skills are relatively poor and do not understand realistic times of how they actually do their work properly without any stress to follow later. Rather than thinking with a long term perspective, they are very in the moment and whatever is easiest at that time, they tend to follow those paths.

Procrastinating does not have any direct effects, except for the fact that at the last minute you may feel anxiety or stress. This may cause your work to be worse than you would expect and may not be as formal and expectation setting as you may want. When facing these anxious pressures, does not necessarily mean that the individual suffers from anxiety rather the amount of work they have is overwhelming and gets them stressed out. The person ends up getting these emotions due to their own actions and have trouble avoiding them later on. This can be very detrimental to the person’s mental health if they continue doing this over and over again. Due to this, it is vital to make long term goals and set priorities.

As previously mentioned, procrastination may seem like the best solution when something is just presented, but it is vital to think about things with a realistic mindset. Will you actually get it done? How will it affect your schedule? Will your work have good quality? These are all questions that you should ask yourself to activate your prefrontal cortex a little more in order to take the proper steps and exceed your own expectations.