Why procrastination seems fun?

“Just 5 more minutes, and back to work.” have you ever-elongated those 5 minutes into five hours? Why? Why do we procrastinate? And why most of the people find it hard not to procrastinate? Well, there is an obvious answer when there are the internet and so many sources of entertainment embedded within and around. But is that it, or there is something more?

Human motivation is highly influenced by how imminent the rewards are; So being on Facebook, Instagram, watching a TV series or even playing with your pet for hours seem to be more valuable to our instinct reward system rather than doing assignments and homework piled up on the desk unless we get a bad score on the test, just because the rewards of most of the hard works is not instantaneous. This is often referred as present bias or hyperbolic discounting, which means the further away the reward is, further away is its value.

Let’s look how our brain perceives this utterly subtle phenomenon of not doing the work that we are supposed to do. Every time while we do something enjoyable the pituitary gland releases a dose of dopamine (the feel-good harmony) that makes us feel happy. Dopamine modifies the neural network in the brain making us more likely to repeat those enjoyable actions and every time we perform such actions the neural network gets stronger and stronger creating a neural loop for performing those tasks efficiently. This explains why we subconsciously slide the notification bar every time we unlock our phone, why a person finds hard to stop playing a video game once they get started or why an addict has an intense urge to take more drugs like cocaine and LSD that triggers dopamine receptors and provide pseudo-happiness. These things reward human brain by providing a small amount of dopamine instantly, unlike term paper project or assignments that do not give small rewards but is a one-time future reward. Our instant gratification ignores such important task all the time.

So how can we overcome the intrinsic urge to put off so many small and not so important tasks aside and build our focus on the important ones? Unfortunately, there is no single solution, but cutting off your distraction could be one of many.

Ps: -  If you are looking forward to giving up procrastination keep in touch with this page. Next week there will be a post about a wonderful technique for efficient time management(Pomodoro technique) that I use to avoid the trap created by the instant gratification monkey within me.