How to gentle-parent your procrastination
What exactly is procrastination?
Procrastination occurs when we purposely delay a task despite the likelihood of negative consequences. Two key factors in subverting procrastination are understanding the biological reason we are acting this way and regaining control of our actions.
For many reasons, some related and others not, I made my own college. I despised the traditional schooling system and wanted to craft my path. This was wonderful, eye-opening, and challenging in all of the right ways, but it was also one of the most difficult things I have ever done. I struggled with procrastination growing up, with few exceptions. I did well with deadlines at the last minute, and nothing could stand in my way when I really cared about something. But I couldn't muster up the will to act for most things, like classes I wasn’t fond of and other administrative responsibilities.
Most of my self-consciousness issues related to this because I truly hinged my identity on my productivity and my ability to get things done. I wanted to act and complete tasks, but oftentimes, I struggled to get up off the ground. Tasks went undone or were done poorly, and this drove me to a place of self-hatred.
So, fast forward four years, and when I put myself in a position of making my own college, I practically face-planted. I organized my studies so that I only had to worry about what really mattered to me. Even then, I struggled. I would sleep through alarms, skip study sessions, and show up to classes and lessons without looking at the material all week… every time, it rang the self-conscious, self-hating bell inside my head, and my struggles worsened.
That’s when I decided enough was enough. I knew there was a reason for my actions. There was no way I was this broken, and there wasn’t a remedy to fix all of it. So, for the entire next year, I dedicated myself to uncovering what was going on in my mind.
But first, let me touch on the biological side of things. We know that we are made up of a thousand different components–generations of survival instincts, our parents’ childhoods, our own childhood, the social climate as we aged, et cetera. Not to mention the pre-dispositions of the human experience. So, while there is a solution out there for everyone, it is quite unique, and I can only point you down the path I found and share the answers with you–but you need to be the one to take charge and apply them to your life.
The amygdala in the brain’s limbic system governs our pleasure-seeking, while the prefrontal cortex governs self-control. The amygdala is one of the brain’s oldest mental systems and is ingrained in us from the beginning so that we have a fight or flight reflex. The prefrontal cortex, however, is much younger and less developed. The more developed amygdala has a certain power over the prefrontal cortex. So you can have a task that absolutely needs to get done–but if there isn’t some kind of pleasurable reward, it’s incredibly difficult to act on it. I’m sure you’re all familiar with the chemicals dopamine and serotonin. Dopamine is often mistaken as a feel-good molecule, but that’s not true. Rather, it’s that of motivation. When we anticipate something feeling good, we crave it, versus serotonin, which is actually the good feeling we experience upon completion.
If you crave a more refined explanation, it’ll be included in my future course about procrastination. But this simple amount of information is enough to handle the next step in the path, which requires great patience and empathy. Procrastination occurs because our desire to delay exceeds our desire to act. Even if the act is rewarding and we will feel good afterward, it is too far in the future to consider it important to our amygdala. And, oftentimes, when it comes to chores, the task isn’t pleasurable in the slightest.
You need to learn these things about yourself to hijack your mind. Let’s say you have to do the dishes. You’ve been at work all day and know that you have a big sink full of dishes to clean as soon as you get home. In one scenario, you’re absolutely dreading it. You tell yourself, “I’m going to sit down and stay down until I’m ready to finish it.” The idea is eating away space in your mind, and you can’t even relax on your commute home or when you get home. Before you know it, you’re exhausted and ready for bed, pushing it off till morning.
In a second scenario, you acknowledge that you must do the dishes without emotion. You recognize that it’s not something you enjoy, and have compassion for yourself–like you’re speaking to a toddler. But you say, “This is what we do. We are the kind of person that does the dishes even if we don’t like it.” You remind yourself of why you want to do them: you’ll wake up to a clean kitchen, dirty dishes means you have food to eat, and you’re taking care of your home. And you even offer yourself a choice; “You can either sit down for five minutes and get up as soon as the timer goes off, or knock them out as soon as you get home. Either way, we’ll turn on some music, put on some comfy pajamas, and do what we promised we’d do.”
That being said, there is a time when the mental self-talk is too much and actually distracts you, giving your amygdala time to create more friction between your desire to act and your ability to act. Sometimes, you should just shut your brain up and get up before you can overthink it. But, for me at least, I needed to sit down with myself and acknowledge what was going on.
The problem won’t be fixed entirely with these kinds of self-therapy sessions. In fact, at some point, they will stop working. But it’s a gentle salve to get you started. That’s why it’s important to keep digging until you find the root cause for these issues. I promise you, there is a reason that you procrastinate. I know that mine surrounds how I was raised at home and in the school system, and the way I was treated as a child. That’s for me to carry and me alone–but only by accepting that can I start to gently reshape my behavior so I’m acting out of a place of autonomy, not self-defense. You can, too.
