Medium Article

Why We Still Procrastinate Even When It Feels Bad?

Explore what happens in the brain that triggers procrastination, & strategies you can use to break the cycle of this catastrophic practice.

“A Day Can Slip by When you’re deliberately avoiding What You’re Supposed to do”-Bill Watterson, There’s Teasure Every Where

Let’s Start With example:

You: It’s 5 p.m. and you’ve just realized that the work you’ve been putting off is due tomorrow. It’s time to buckle down, open your computer.

Your Brain: Check your phone. Maybe catch up on your favorite YouTube channel? You usually like cooking, though it’s hard to enjoy with this work hanging over your head.

You: Oh — it’s pretty late! Maybe you should just try again in the morning?

This is the cycle of procrastination, and I promise you, we have all been there.

But Why Do We procrastinate when we know it’s bad for us?

To be clear, putting something off isn’t always procrastinating. Responsible time management requires deciding which tasks are important and which ones can wait. Procrastination is when we avoid a task, we said we would do, for no good reason, despite expecting our behavior to bring negative consequences.

It’s irrational to do something you expect to harm you. But ironically, procrastination is the result of our bodies trying to protect us, specifically by avoiding a task we see as threatening. When you realize you need to write that report, your brain responds like it would to any incoming threat.

Your amygdala, a set of neurons involved in emotional processing and threat identification, releases hormones including adrenaline that kicks off a fear response. This stress-induced panic can overpower the impulses from your prefrontal cortex, which typically helps you think long-term and regulate your emotions.

And amid this fight, flight, or freeze response, you decide to evade the threat, choosing a less stressful task instead. This response might seem extreme — it’s just a deadline, not a bear attack. But we’re most likely to procrastinate tasks that evoke negative feelings, such as dread, incompetence, and insecurity.

Studies of procrastinating university students have found participants were more likely to put off tasks they perceived as stressful or challenging.

People who have difficulty regulating their emotions and those who struggle with low self-esteem are much more likely to procrastinate, regardless of how good they are at time management.

However, it’s a common misconception that all procrastinators are lazy. In the body and brain, laziness is marked by no energy and general apathy.

When you’re feeling lazy, you’re more likely to sit around doing nothing than distract yourself with unimportant tasks. In fact, many people procrastinate because they care too much.

Procrastinators often report a high fear of failure, putting things off because they’re afraid their work won’t live up to their high standards.

Whatever the reason for procrastination, the results are often the same.

So, how can we break the cycle of procrastination?

Traditionally, people thought procrastinators needed to cultivate discipline and practice strict time management.

But today, many researchers feel the exact opposite. Being too hard on yourself can layer additional bad emotions onto a task, making the threat even more intense.

To short-circuit this stress response, we need to address and reduce these negative emotions. Some simple strategies include breaking a task into smaller elements or journaling about why it’s stressing you out and addressing those underlying concerns.

Try removing nearby distractions that make it easy to impulsively procrastinate.

And more than anything, it helps to cultivate an attitude of self-compassion, forgiving yourself, and making a plan to do better next time. Because a culture that perpetuates this cycle of stress and procrastination hurts all of us in the long term.

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