PROCRASTINATORS IN CORONALAND

By Andrea Guachalla

“Akrasia” is the word Socrates and Aristotle used as a synonym for “procrastination”. While we might define procrastination as simply delaying or postponing an unpleasant task or set of tasks, both philosophers thought of a more accurate definition: 

Akrasia:
Acting against your better judgment.

Why? Because you know that delaying something unpleasant will cause you more stress, and anxiety, and all those procrastinator feelings that you’re familiar with! We act against our better judgment. Frequently. 

Procrastinating shows some traits of ourselves: Lack of self-control, bad planning, focusing on instant gratification rather than on long-term reward, not recognizing the consequences, fear of success and/or failure and ultimately it shows that we are prideful sinners. 

Like Tim Urban explains in his hilarious TED talk, us procrastinators have a key actor in our brains called “the instant gratification monkey,” that prefers doing easy tasks for the sake of having fun, rather than difficult unpleasant tasks for the sake of long-term projects. And that, my friend, is the reason why even when we’re living in Coronaland and seem to have nothing but time and more time, we still invest it in procrastinating! 

Can you relate to that?

We‘ve been procrastinating for months or maybe even years with the excuse of not having time! And now that we have it we spend it on our phones, watching TV, even doing household work instead of sitting down and embarking us in the endeavors we planned so long ago! And of course, the entertainment industry doesn’t help! Procrastination is a serious business when marketing can appeal to it!

Why?

The answer is: Instant gratification monkey! The part of our brain that uses all the energy in whatever will bring instantaneous happiness. 

That’s why you can get so easily distracted when you are actually trying (or thinking of trying) to do something you had planned long ago whether it has a deadline or not. You can go from thinking of practicing some chords on the guitar or continue writing a project to instead sitting on your couch and read Facebook posts you published ten years ago. The instant gratification monkey is the reason why you can go from planning to exercise, and even put on your exercise clothes and instead go on a Youtube spiral while eating the chocolate you left unfinished the day before!

And that is exactly the reason why I unconsciously delayed writing this article about procrastination (it was planned to be published two months ago) and still sit down to do some research about it and then suddenly decide that it would be more pleasant for my instant gratification monkey to listen to the whole soundtrack of La La Land before even starting to type a single word on this blank sheet!

Am I ashamed about it? Yes. But, you know what? “City of stars, there is so much that I can see.”

Humans… We are just unbelievable!

Now, let’s agree that not all procrastination can be dealt with right now. Some things will have to wait until after the lockdown and all the measurements are lifted. You can’t go right now to have that medical checkup you have been postponing since last year. You can’t go for coffee with that one friend that you hadn’t seen for months.  

BUT.

There are certainly many things you can do. You can find some ideas in the survival guide for Coronaland that I published some weeks ago for ideas. Among them, you can find insight on developing healthy habits, spending time with God more intentionally, continuing unfinished projects, learning something you had planned to learn, etc.

Now, before going to some practical tips for all my dear procrastinator friends, let’s understand the real source and implications of procrastinating.

Procrastinating reveals our shortages in three dimensions/relationships of our lives, although we often ignore that because, well… It’s fine! I’ll do it tomorrow! Not a big deal! But want it or not, your habit of procrastinating reveals more than you think:

It reveals a shade of our eagerness to serve God

You’re not gonna find the word procrastination in the bible, I can assure you that. But we do find general guidelines regarding how we ought to steward our time for God’s glory and by that, we know that using our time unwisely is not honoring God. In a sense, not making good use of our time is like stealing from the time God gave us to serve him.

The Word of God warns us that sometimes the work is unpleasant, but enduring that will bring fruitfulness and peace, it will bring joy and an appropriate response to our responsibilities, it will lead us to perseverance, patience, and growth. Let’s serve God with all our might!

“For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.”

Hebrews 12:11

It reveals our careless attitude towards others

It would be lovely if your procrastination would affect you only. But guess what: most often it affects others too!

So let’s imagine: when you do your assignments at the last minute when you organize a holiday trip too late, or when you postpone your medical checkup as much as possible, it is not only you who is affected. It’s your professor who has to invest time in reviewing a mediocre assignment, it’s your friends who end up with a not-so-fun time traveling due to poor planning, it’s your family who in some years will have to deal with you being sick with a chronic disease that could have been detected years ago. 

“The truth is that when we procrastinate, we are setting off a chain of events that can negatively impact others – not just ourselves.”

Which goes in conflict with one of the commandments God gives us: to love our neighbor as we love ourselves (Matthew 22:39).

It shows how (poorly) you take care of yourself

Procrastinating shows many character traits depending on the reasons you do it. You might be someone who procrastinates short-term, especially when you have deadlines to meet. But you might also be a long-term procrastinator, delaying tasks that don’t have a deadline but are equally important.

This might mean that you always end up doing your assignments at the last minute, or that you haven’t gone to the dentist for the past two years. In any case, it shows a lack of self-control and that perhaps you are not willing to note how great the negative consequences will be later on. Perhaps you don’t notice how procrastinating increases your levels of stress or anxiety, and how present-biased they turn you. Maybe it’s hard to link how procrastinating alters your eating and sleeping patterns.

But, believe me, and science when I say that it does!

What does the bible say about it? It says that part of honoring God is taking care of the body He gave us (1 Corinthians 6:19-20), and therefore stop habits that are harming us, such as procrastinating with no reason other than the instant gratification monkeys telling us what to do! The sin that dwells in us is not in lockdown, that’s certain! (Romans 19:20)

Now let me address some practical steps you can take.

Some examples of habits proven by science that can help you overcome procrastination are: self-imposed deadlines, planning in advance, voluntary exposure to social pressure, etc. I’m not an expert on this issue and I too struggle with procrastination often (daily I must confess, I’m struggling with it right now while I try to finish the last details of this article), so I can only give you the tips that work best for me.

However, I highly recommend reading James Clear articles about the topic (link in references). All his practical tips are founded on scientific research and he IS an expert. If you’re interested you can also find some of my own approach to productivity in my survival guide and this analogy.

Some tricks that I use daily in order to prioritize tasks and avoid procrastination on specific ones are: 

Write it down again and again

This is something that has been helping me to get things done throughout all my college years, working as a scientist and now working on several projects including this website: write down each day what you have to do during the day! At the end of it, you can cross all the things you did accomplish and all of those that you left undone you will have to copy again the next day.

I’ve done this for years and what I found is that copying what I left unfinished the day before sends an analogy to my brain: It is a burden. By writing down again and again what I left undone the day before helps me keep track of the things I procrastinate more on. Ashamedly I will admit that there are some things that I copy day after day for weeks until one day I finally decide to sit down and force myself to do it and stop waiting for the “perfect time” to do it. This is key for creative writers, and artists in general it’s easy to procrastinate on writing a piece or recording some music with the excuse of not being inspired enough!

Copying helps me see how much of a burden it is to leave things undone, and helps me assess why it is that I’m procrastinating on something specific. Is it because I don’t enjoy it? Because it’s unimportant for me? What things am I prioritizing over that task? Why am I procrastinating on that?

Get rid of the temptation

Something that has been helping me, especially because my cell phone just loves to interrupt my times of inspiration, is to just get rid of the things that tempt me to procrastinate instead of paying full attention to the task I’m trying to focus on. 

For me that looks like this: When I want to give my full attention to something important, like doing my quiet time, or studying, doing research, reading, etc., I leave my phone in another room. I would leave it in my room if I’m working in the kitchen, and I would leave it in the kitchen if I’m working in my room. That way the temptation disappears. An alternative is to turn it off.

James Clear gives some helpful tips for this. My cellphone is easy to hide or get rid of, but he advises the same thing for your TV or your computer! For instance, he recommends hiding your TV in a closet and just take it out for special occasions if you get easily distracted with TV shows, if you struggle with your computer and the internet, you can actually block some websites, that way you don’t have the chance to use them.

Naturally, the idea is not to go all the way to do extreme things like that, but rather work on your self-control enough to get over the temptations and to focus, be a good steward of your time, focus on the heavenly things by serving God even with the smallest tasks. But for starters, all those means work to get you on track.

You can create your own system to be productive and correct your procrastination habits! We’ll discuss productivity in a series of blogs from the Rubik’s Cube series in the coming weeks. But for now, let me end with this: 

Pro-crastinus means “belonging to tomorrow.” But let me tell you that, no! Whatever you have to do doesn’t belong to tomorrow, it belongs to today! And you will do it today not only because you’re aware of your procrastination habits, but because you know that putting some effort in correcting those habits honors God and his command of being good stewards of our time. You’ll do it because you know that it’s a better way of loving your neighbor as yourself, and you’ll do it because it’s better for your own well being and health.

For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love. For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.

2 Peter 1:5-7

Now, if you got here and you actually think you’re not a procrastinator, let me end with Tim Urban words and tell you:

EVERYONE IS PROCRASTINATING ON SOMETHING!

And that certainly includes you, my friend.

---

References:

• James Clear. Procrastination: A Scientific Guide on How to Stop Procrastinating.
• Cecily Dickey (2019). What does the Bible Say About Procrastination. Bloggers for the Kingdom.
• Tim Urban (2016). Inside the Mind of a Procrastinator. TED Talk.
• Alberto Bisin, Kyle Hyndman (2020). Present-bias, procrastination and deadlines in a field experiment. Games and Economic Behavior, 119, 339–357.
• Nuria Codina, et al. (2020). Preventing Procrastination Behaviours: Teaching Styles and Competence in University Students. Sustainability, 12, 2448.