Your Brain was Built to Procrastinate

But here’s the good news: you can redesign it to get things done.

Very basically, we procrastinate because we have two brains. Our old brain, in the limbic system, does everything automatic, and drives us to take care of the basics. You rarely forget to eat, for example, because your limbic system will remind you. Or newer brain, with parts like the frontal cortex, deal with higher concepts, like all the steps needed for going to the grocery store. If the frontal cortex doesn’t keep the idea of going to the store fresh in our minds, and we’re not hungry, there’s no motivation to go. So we put it off. Until we’re too hungry to wait any longer. And since our limbic system doesn’t bother with grocery lists and recipes, it goes for the shortcut, (often the fast food option).

It’s like the limbic system and the frontal cortex speak a different language. But the frontal cortex can take foreign language classes, so to speak, and develop heuristics—little sub-routines that automate certain processes (like driving a car—after a while, it’s not something you have to think about doing, it’s just something you do). This is similar to how we develop habits, like your weekly-whether-you-need-to-or-not trip to the grocery store.

So far so good. But what about non-routine things that we don’t want to do? Like paying taxes? It’s February 22nd, still plenty of time to get the paperwork done. Your frontal cortex won’t motivate you unless it can think of a reason, a reward or a consequence, so doing taxes leaves your mind until something reminds you of it later. April 15th is too far away for your frontal cortex to find very compelling.

They key is to give yourself a more imminent reward (or consequence). And not something arbitrary. If you say to yourself “I’ll eat a piece of cake as a reward for doing my taxes,” your limbic system might pipe in with “I want that cake now.” Or, it might even say “cake? We don’t want cake at all.” In fact, if you have control of the reward, it’s harder to force yourself through the task when you always know you can have it anyway.

So, you’ll need to give yourself a different kind of reward. The reward of getting the thing done itself. Actually, this can be very motivating, once you’ve started the task. But you’ve got to start the task! This is why “just do it” works when you “just do it.”

Here’s how you trick yourself into starting something you don’t want to do but will be glad you did: allow yourself to not finish. Set a timer for 25 minutes, and promise yourself you can stop when the timer is done, whether you’re finished or not. And then, when the timer goes off, stop. Take a break. Then set the timer again.

This is called “the pomodoro technique” and its effectiveness is based on how your brain responds to rest, in terms of memory and learning. With this technique, you can actually “learn” how getting something done is its own reward.