You Don’t Have a Procrastination Problem, You Have an Impulsivity Problem.
Procrastination is like bad signal or bad Wi-Fi. Everyone is faced with this, but most of us do not understand how it works. Here’s the key: It’s not that you’re having trouble saying yes to what you should be doing right now. The problem is that everything else cannot be denied.
Procrastination manifests itself in different ways, but they all have one thing in common: they occur due to an impulsive tendency to do what you think is easier, and not from what you know you should do. Some people get distracted by unimportant things like cleaning the bathroom or washing the dishes instead of focusing on the important thing that you have to do right now. Others spend hours reading meaningless things on Facebook instead of being productive. Some even postpone things for later because they have reasonable concerns about what they are postponing !
Whether it’s focusing on important work, closing a Facebook tab, or tackling a major looming problem, the procrastinator avoids what they think is best for them in the long run. The reason for this lies in the way your brain handles impulsivity.
How impulsivity works in your brain
Through television and movies, you probably think of an impulsive person as someone who is dangerous or takes a lot of risks . While risky behavior can be a sign of impulsivity, the truth is more subtle. In fact, impulsivity simply means that you immediately act on your impulses. When you feel like doing something, you do it. Your actions are largely dictated by your most immediate desire, regardless of the long-term consequences of this action.
As behavioral scientists Martial Van der Linden and Mathieu d’Aremon detail described in the 2005 study, published in The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, impulsivity is usually characterized byfour broad characteristics :
- Urgency: The person feels the need to complete the task right now .
- Lack of premeditation: the person acts without thinking or planning ahead.
- Lack of persistence: The person will quickly give up on a long-term task.
- Sensation Seeker: A person decides what tasks to perform based on how well it makes them feel.
Individually, we all experience these things to one degree or another. However, it is difficult for the impulsive mind to control these motives. You end up with someone who can quickly get out of the way of what he knows he should do with whatever he likes. The new impulse you have just gotten now seems as urgent as the task you have known about all week. Advance planning doesn’t matter. The only important thing is that you do what you want to do right now .
Impulsivity is a key feature of many neurological disorders, including ADHD andsubstance abuse . A person with ADHD can easily be distracted by a fleeting thought, because saying what’s on his mind or fiddling with some random toy seems more important than the job he does. For the substance abuse person, the desire to get more of their preferred drug outweighs the long-term consequences that they are aware of. Immediate impulse prevails over everything else.
How impulsivity affects your performance
Not all impulsive behavior is always bad. The problem arises when you cannot stop acting impulsively. For example, consider the following scenario:
You are sitting at your desk trying to work on these TPS reports. Your phone is buzzing with a new Facebook message, so you open a new tab and read it. While you’re there, you see something funny in your feed, so read this and keep scrolling. You find an interesting article and spend the next ten minutes reading it. You go to the comments and see that someone said something stupid, so obviously you should correct them. You look at your watch and realize that you have wasted half an hour on nothing.
On four different occasions in this story, some external stimulus distracted you, leading to immediate action at the expense of your common sense. The buzzing phone, the funny Facebook picture, the interesting article, and the silly commentary all seemed more important at the time than getting the job done. If you can’t slow down and say, “I don’t need to do this pointless thing right now,” your impulsiveness can undermine your productivity. Worse, the effect amplifies on its own. Since you couldn’t ignore the phone buzzing, you discovered three more distractions that you would never have experienced if you simply ignored (or turned off) that first phone buzz.
This ability to slow down when you start to get distracted is essential to curbing your impulsivity. You probably have the ability to sit down and focus on your work (and a tough deadline will prove that ). The skill you need to hone may not be focusing more on the job at hand, but rather ignoring or postponing immediate impulses that seem more important than they are.
What can you do about it
Impulsiveness affects many different aspects of your personality. “Fixing” impulsivity is a bit like “fixing” anger. Sometimes anger is absolutely necessary, but when it gets out of hand it can cause serious problems. Likewise, you can think of impulsivity as one aspect of your personality that needs to be managed rather than treated. However, here are a few things you can do to be less impulsive.
Do mindfulness exercises
Mindfulness is the practice of being fully aware of the moment . This means that you know what you are doing, what you are thinking and what you are going to do. Mindfulness involves paying attention to your thoughts and controlling them instead of letting them dictate your actions. Naturally, people who have an impulsivity problem struggle with this. They are easily distracted from the moment and may let a single thought lead them astray instead of recognizing it as a distracting thought. Fortunately, mindfulness is something you can practice.
If you do have an impulsivity problem, it will probably feel like torture, but it helps. Mindfulness is not just a ritual; it is teaching your brain how to focus. If you can’t focus on one task for a long time, practicing mindfulness will show your brain what it’s like. You can practice mindfulness through the app , doing housework, or simply exploring the difference between how you feel and who you are . Don’t worry if this isn’t natural. It doesn’t have to be that way, and that’s the point. Just keep practicing and over time your brain will learn to stop when you feel an impulse coming.
Study your risk factors and plan around
I know that I’m unlikely to distract myself from my work on a video about the mating habits of mosquitoes. However, next time a Marvel movie trailer comes out, I can expect wasted man-hours . We all have weaknesses that can easily distract us. Learning about triggers can help you anticipate your impulses before they happen. Going back to the previous example, if the buzzing of your phone might be distracting, put it on airplane mode, or at least change your notification settings so that you don’t receive notifications in the middle of the work day.
Give yourself room for productive distractions
Impulsiveness makes you feel like if you don’t do something now , you will never do it. You can combat this feeling by giving yourself some room to procrastinate . Instead of saying no, you can say not now when something starts to hide from your attention. Any good procrastinator knows that it is easier to put something off for a while than to ignore it entirely. Taking time out of your day to do all the distractions will make your mind feel better without doing it immediately. Then you can focus on the task at hand.
Talk to a therapist about your specific concerns
Yes seriously. If you find yourself critically behind at work or unable to concentrate on anything for more than a minute, you can talk to a therapist . While it may seem silly or embarrassing to go to a therapist for being too distracted, it is a common problem. ADHD in adults is a reality, and there is no shame in seeking help. A therapist may prescribe medication for severe cases, but they may also simply give you a set of exercises to work on for a week and hold you accountable. This act of structured practice alone can help teach your brain to control its impulses over time.
Understanding the hidden motives that lead to distraction and procrastination can help you find better long-term solutions. It would be nice if you could just sit down at your desk and shout, “Focus!” to force yourself to work harder, but it doesn’t get you rid of the random thoughts in your head. Instead of focusing all your efforts on pushing one line of thought through the station, first try to keep the paths clear of all other distractions.