Procrastination Isn’t As Bad As You Think. Here’s Why.

I would venture a guess that there are more people out there who deal with procrastination at least some of the time than people who say they never do – it’s human nature, right?

Research into the cognitive bias that enables it confirms that’s true, but also suggests there’s sometimes a positive reason we have to go through the process to get to an end result.

Procrastination is defined as delaying an assigned task even though we know not completing it on time will have negative consequences like fines, a low grade, being fired – or even just knowing that you’ll be stressed trying to complete it in a shorter amount of time.

It turns out the practice is related to a couple of cognitive biases.

First, present bias, or hyperbolic discounting.

It’s the tendency to give more importance to future events that happen sooner than other future events. This is the bias that makes dieting hard, because the instant gratification of eating that donut wins out over the long-term gratification of being healthier, or fitting into our clothes, etc.

Psychologically, we view the value of a reward as lesser the further away it is in the future. In the case of procrastinating, we’re choosing scrolling social media or streaming Netflix as better than the satisfaction of having our task done on time.

At least one study backs this up, with a significant majority of people choosing to receive less money now rather than wait for a larger paycheck six months or a year down the road.

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Then there’s the status quo bias, in which our brains inherently want to avoid cognitive load whenever possible. We’re hardwired to avoid tasks that will tempt us to change our minds about something or lead to more of a mental burden.

Basically, we’d rather chill than exhaust ourselves doing something new – and obviously we see this in many people’s resistance to change.

Human beings view losses around twice as harmful as we view gains beneficial. This also plays into our tendency to be risk-averse by nature.

Many believe, though, that procrastination can have positive results, like giving us time to consider all aspects of what we’re about to tackle as well as navigating difficult emotions as they come into play, both of which could help us produce a better end product.

We all know, however, that it can also be a barrier that could interfere with your life. if this is the case, you may need to do a check in with your mental health.

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Do you find that you thrive under a deadline or that your work suffers? Can you see an upside for procrastinating?

Might as well mull it over. It’s not like you have anything else more productive you should tackle instead.