What are you waiting for?

That's not rhetorical...

Happy Friday…

Lisa Fournier is a professor of psychology at Washington State University. Couple of years ago, she did an interesting study.

The test was simple. Subjects stood in front of a line on the floor. Six feet away was a bucket of golf balls. A second bucket sat 12 feet away. They were told to go get the buckets and bring them back.

Over 80% of people hurried to the first bucket and picked it up. Then they went and got the second bucket. Finally, they turned around and carried both buckets back.

Less than 20% headed straight to the farthest bucket first. They picked up the farthest bucket and grabbed the closer one on the way back. Less than 20%.

There’s a name for what the 80% did. Precrastination.

Otherwise known as “getting sh*t done.” Basically, it means we do the first thing we can do without thinking too much about it. The opposite of putting things off. Mostly, we see precrastination play out in our to-do lists. We look at the list and do the stuff that’s quick, easy and we know how to do. The quick wins. Stroke them off the list.

There’s a couple of reasons we do that. Psychologically, we precrastinate to free up working memory. Not that you have to “remember” to pick up a bucket of balls you’re going to walk right past. But our brains tend to work on autopilot.

The second reason we do the easy stuff first was discovered by Princeton neuroscientists, who found that the reward center in your brain, the nucleus accumbens, is activated more strongly by quick wins.

We get a bigger mental buzz by getting a bunch of small things done than by finally getting that big project done. Can you see how that might feed procrastination?

Why we procrastinate…

The opposite is procrastinating. A lot of self growth folks would like you to think procrastination is a time management problem. Or laziness, or lack of willpower or some other personal failing on your part. It’s not any of those.

According to Dr. Tim Pychyl, psychologist and researcher at the Procrastination Research Group, “procrastination is an emotion regulation problem, not a time management problem.”

We procrastinate because of unpleasant emotions associated with the thing we’re putting off. Sometimes, literally. Like if you put off cleaning the toilet or other dirty jobs that aren’t fun to do.

But sometimes, procrastination comes from deeper feelings related to the thing we’re putting off, like when doing those things trigger a bunch of self-doubt, low self-esteem, anxiety or insecurity.

We’re afraid it will suck, or we’ll be rejected. That thought loop becomes like a snake eating it’s tail. It fuels more bad feelings.

We procrastinate because of negative emotions associated with a task, and then the procrastinating, self-blame and rumination creates even more negative emotions. It’s an entire field of study, called procrastinitory cognitions. Who knew, right?

Which explains why 81% of adults believe they have a story to tell and dream of writing a book, but only 3% will ever actually finish that book. They’re stuck in a procrastinitory cognition loop.

You know where that ends, right? Dreams die hard.

What are you waiting for?

When you’re procrastinating on a project, berating yourself isn’t the solution. Calling yourself lazy is unfair and untrue, and time management isn’t the solution, either. The solution is to figure out what the hurdle is.

I’m working on a series of articles about how progress and self growth really happens, and it’s seldom the way self growth people say it does. If you’re interested, click the little heart on this post so I know you want to hear more about it.

And also? What are you struggling with? That’s not a rhetorical question. There’s always someone who has figured out what you’re still struggling with. Maybe we can have some interesting conversations in the comments. :)

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“Every blade of grass has its angel that bends over and whispers, "Grow, grow." —The Talmud

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You might like…

I didn’t write much this week, but here’s a couple you may have missed…

• A Special FX Artist Created A Hyper-Realistic Sculpture of Lincoln (new)

• Medium Revealed the Top 5 Stories of 2020 So I Put Them In the Wayback

• There Are Only 2 Reasons Writers Struggle to Build an Audience

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If you enjoyed, please click the heart to let me know. Thanks for reading and have a great weekend.

xo,
Linda