The Psychology of Everyday Life

You know you have an assignment due tomorrow. You know it will take you three hours. And you know that you have that time now to complete it.

And yet suddenly you find yourself re organising your files, checking instagram and making coffee and watching one quick YouTube video or cleaning a room that you hadn't cared about for weeks.

Then midnight arraives. You panic. You finally start working, finish under pressure and promise yourself that next time will be different.

Then it happens again.

This is procrastination. Unnecessarily delaying an intended taks despite expecting that the delay will probably make things work. It is not simply laziness. Psychologist increasingly understand it as a problem involving emotional regulation, self control, motivation and how we perceive future consequences.

One important explanation is temperal discounting. Our brains tend to value immediate rewards more strongly then future rewards. Finishing an assignment gives you benefit tomorrow while scrolling through you phones gives you pleasure right now.

Your brain doesn't necessarily choose what is best for your future self. It often chooses what feels better right now in the present. This becomes even strong when the task feels unpleasant.

Researchers developed models of procrastination showing that motivation is influenced by factors such as expectancy, value, impulsiveness and delay. In simple terms of something feels difficult or boring or unpleasant or far away then your motivation to do it collapses.

This explains why someone can spend two hours scrolling but struggle to spend twenty minutes starting a difficult assignment.

The problem is not that they task require more energy. It may be that the task creates more emotional resistance.

An intresting real life example is studying for exam. Opening a textbook can immediately remind you that you didn't understand the chapter. That created discomfort and demotivation. You phone offers an escape from that feeling almost immediately.

So you go and check one notification and then another. Soon the discomfort has disappeared but the exams hasn't.

Research by other people has linked prorastration with short term mood repair. In other words, sometimes we procrastinate not because we don't care about the risk but because avoiding it makes us feel better right now.

And modern technology makes this incredibly easy. The phone in your hands contains thousand of immediate rewards. Your brain is being asked to choose between an uncertain future benefit and an instant dtram if entertainment. That is an unfair competition.

And the solution as far as I think is not simply preaching being disciplined. It is to make the task smaller. Remove immediate distractions. And most importantly feel motivated before beginning. Soemtimes starting is where the motivation is being created.

You send someone a message. They see it. No reply. Five minutes. You are fine. Ten minutes pass. You are still fine. Thirty minutes pass. Congratulations. You brain has now opened a full investigation.

Did I say something wrong? Was that "okay" too okay? Should I have used an emoji? Should I give delete for everyone? But there would be a message that says that they have deleted this message. Should I tell them that I have accidentally sent a wrong message? Was the period at the end of the sentence aggressive?

They would have been having their notifications on and they should I have seen my message and would have thought "Ohh this girl...eww I don't even remember her name she is so annoying and childish"…? Are they angry? I am sure that they secretly hate me no matter how sweet they sound to my face...

Did I make them uncomfortable? Did I give them reasons to hate me?
Shit...It has been 40 mins since I texted...I have to delete my existence and move to another country

The person might simply be taking a shower. Or someone else might have opened the message. Meanwhile your brain has already came up with the worst possible scenario. That is overthinking.

Psychologically overthinking involves repetitive, difficult to control thinking often in the form of ruminantion about the past it worry about the future. The strange thing is that sometimes that feels productive.

Your brain convinced that if you think about something for a long time then you will eventually find an answer. Except that for the list times there are no answers for our brain.

Now why do we do this? One explanation involves threat detection. Our brains are highly sensitive to potential danger and uncertainty. Historically noticing possible threats could be usefull for survival. Unfortunately your brain does not always understand that an unread message is not a tiger.

Basically your brain hates saying I don't know. So it starts generating responses. What if this happens? But...what if THAT happens? Okay ..but maybe the tone was wrong and what if someone told you THIS?

Congratulations...you have gone from "My friend has not replied yet" will be changed to "No one likes me and the only tolerate me...I am going to die alone and cold".

There is a difference between What can I do about this and Let me think about the same thing 73 time just in case.

If there is something you can fix it then go and fix it. If you need information then get it. If you need to apologise then go and say sorry.