How can people get rid of procrastinating?
Inside the mind of a master procrastinator
At the beginning of the project, I tried to continue my topic in project 4 which is related to my former career—-media and advertising. I wanted to see the change in the advertising on social media: How can cosmetic consumers trust the products in the ‘Interest-Based E-commerce’ environment?
However, after brainstorming, I felt that the topic was too narrow. And there is also another problem: I am a content creator, and doing this theme is conflicting with my interests. On the one hand, I hope consumers can tell the differences between advertorial and real recommendations. On the other hand, I still want to make product placement in my videos. Therefore, If I continued to do this topic, I would feel dishonest to myself. Because in the deep side of my heart, I don’t want this thing to happen.
In the coming days, I reconsidered my topic. I asked myself what is bothering me and what change I really want to see. As the summer term got closer and closer, I felt extremely stressed and tense. I knew I have to start doing the project but I cannot help myself postponing. I know I was procrastinating again. I realized that procrastination is a significant problem for me. When I scheduled my tasks, I always postpone them until the deadline is coming. When I finally do the task I have to lower my standard due to the lack of time. I surveyed 108 respondents and I found that everyone had the same troubles, so I decided to choose the topic of procrastination.
Firstly, I watched several Ted talks about procrastination, In the lecture, the speakers explained the causes of procrastination in vivid language, which aroused my interest in further research. Immediately, I googled whether procrastination is a disease. Surprisingly, the website shows procrastination is not a mental health diagnosis; in another word, it’s just a habit. After that, I researched some articles in the psychology area. In the article called Modeling Procrastination: Asymmetric Decisions to Act Between The result section of Present and the Future, the author makes a result that reluctance to act occurred only when task aversiveness has stronger effects than outcome utility. This result shows that if the task is not so difficult to complete, we are still willing to continue.
I also did some research on the cause we are doing trivia things other than tasks. Dopamine can be an important cause. Today, because of high dopamine secretion activities such as playing video games or scrolling social media, our brains get used to a high level. Therefore, people are more inclined to do simple things rather than make efforts. This assumption gave me a lot of inspiration. This reminds me of Alcoholism Anonymous in the US, an international mutual aid fellowship dedicated to abstinence-based recovery from alcoholism.
At the same time, the conclusion of the article Social Factors of Procrastination: Group Work Can Reduce Procrastination among Students states that group work with interdependence between group members can reduce state procrastination, especially for individuals with high trait procrastination and when accompanied by commitment. So I think that we have an opportunity to minimize procrastination symptoms through some group activities. And the change I want to see is people getting rid of procrastination.
References
Breuninger, Matthew M., Justine A. Grosso, William Hunter, and Sara L. Dolan. 2020. “Treatment of Alcohol Use Disorder: Integration of Alcoholics Anonymous and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy.” Training and Education in Professional Psychology 14(1): 19–26.
Hughes, Sara, and Joanna Adhikari. 2022. “Time Wasters?: Active Procrastination and the Dark Tetrad.” Journal of Individual Differences 43(2): 89–94.
Koppenborg, Markus, and Katrin B. Klingsieck. 2022. “Social Factors of Procrastination: Group Work Can Reduce Procrastination among Students.” Social Psychology of Education 25(1): 249–74.
Margherita, Emanuele Gabriel, and Alessio Maria Braccini. 2021. “Managing Industry 4.0 Automation for Fair Ethical Business Development: A Single Case Study.” Technological Forecasting and Social Change 172: 121048.
McKellar, John, Eric Stewart, and Keith Humphreys. 2003. “Alcoholics Anonymous Involvement and Positive Alcohol-Related Outcomes: Cause, Consequence, or Just a Correlate? A Prospective 2-Year Study of 2,319 Alcohol-Dependent Men.” Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology 71(2): 302–8.
Zhang, Shunmin, and Tingyong Feng. 2020. “Modeling Procrastination: Asymmetric Decisions to Act between the Present and the Future.” Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 149(2): 311–22.