Procrastination is not a sign of laziness but a neurological response to negative emotions triggered by daunting tasks, leading to an "avoidance loop" that strengthens with repetition.
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If you've ever planned something big and
then done absolutely nothing about it,
it is not because you're lazy. There's
literally a neurological cycle happening
in your brain that prevents you from
pursuing your dreams. And in this video,
I'll explain how it works and how
[music] to fix it. My name is Olga. I
study cognitive science and computation
at the University of Pennsylvania. And
after the last [music] four years of
studying how the human mind works, I
think this is probably the most
fascinating and most useful thing I
learned about.
So, procrastination researcher Tim
Pychyl has spent decades studying why
people don't do the things that they
promised [music] themselves to do. And
he found that procrastination is not a
time management problem. Procrastination
is an emotion regulation problem. And
here's what it means. When you have
something important to do, like starting
a creative project or submitting an
application or doing a workout or an assignment,
assignment, >> [music]
>> [music]
>> and you think about actually doing it,
that's when your brain generates a
negative emotion. It can be self-doubt, overwhelm,
overwhelm, >> [music]
>> [music]
>> anxiety. You might have fear that the
result is not going to be good enough.
And your brain does not like negative
emotions. So, it escapes. You start
cleaning your room. You reorganize your
desk. You pick up your phone. You start
scrolling. And suddenly, that negative
feeling of dread goes away. And you feel
relief. And here's an interesting part.
That relief in itself is a reward. And
in psychology, behaviors that get
rewarded get repeated. [music]
So, your brain learns, if I avoid a
difficult task, that's when I'm going to
get that short-term feeling of relief,
which is something positive. And it
starts doing it automatically every time
you're faced with something difficult.
And your brain creates something called
an avoidance loop, where you're faced
with a difficult task, it triggers a
negative emotion, then you don't do that
task, so you feel relief. And next time
you're faced with something difficult,
you again default to avoidance because
that's what triggers relief. And here's
what's happening in your brain. Every
time you're faced with a hard task,
there are two systems that are competing
for control. And the first is your
amygdala, which is your brain's alarm
system. It is essentially responsible
for detecting threats in the
environment. And if a task is seeming
overwhelming or scary to you, it
essentially treats that task as a
threat. So, it tells you, don't do this. Run.
Run. >> [music]
>> [music]
>> This is dangerous. You have to avoid
this. And the second is the part of your
brain that actually makes you act. And
neuroscientists call it the dorsal
anterior cingulate cortex. Essentially,
it takes the fear [music] signal from
the amygdala. If needed, it shuts it
down. And then it actually pushes you to
do the things that you're supposed to be
doing. [music] And when you
procrastinate, your amygdala is winning,
which is called an amygdala hijack,
where essentially your emotional brain
overrides your irrational brain, and you
flee from the task. And here's why it
gets worse if you don't address it.
Every time you're going through the
avoidance loop, if you feel dread
towards the task, you avoid it, you feel
relief. [music]
Every time you go through this avoidance
loop, you are physically strengthening
the neural pathway for procrastination.
Because, [music] as we all know, what
you repeat, you become. So, the
procrastination circuit gets faster. It
becomes more of a default behavior for
you. And your discipline circuit weakens
like [music] a muscle that you stopped
using. So, if your brain is training
itself to avoid and procrastinate, could
you theoretically train it to do the
complete opposite? Well, Tim Pychyl
spent 20 years of his career trying to
answer that question. Well, the answer
is embarrassingly simple.
And the answer is, you have to just start.
start.
Just start. That's it.
No need to finish it. No need to perform
well. You just have to start the task
for 5 to 10 minutes [music]
and not think about the outcome.
Essentially, you have to learn to
interrupt the avoidance loop. [music]
And here's how you do it. Step number
one is to catch it and name it. When you
notice yourself procrastinating, when
you notice yourself avoiding something, [music]
[music]
think about the emotion you're
experiencing. Are you feeling
overwhelmed? Are you feeling anxious?
Are you afraid that the result is not
going to be good enough? Just naming
that emotion is enough for you to switch
from your emotional mind back into your
rational mind. And second step is to
make [music] your task stupidly small.
Essentially, think about what is the
tiniest possible action you can set for
yourself as the goal, just to make at
least a little bit of progress. >> [music]
>> [music]
>> For example, don't think that you have
to write a whole essay tonight. Think,
oh, my task is to open the document in
Google Doc and write for just 10
minutes. And don't think, oh, I have to
do this hour-long workout. I'm really
dreading it.
Think of your task [music] as just
putting on your shoes and going outside.
And the reason why simply starting
something for 10 minutes is so powerful
is because the actual process of
completing a task, it's almost always
much easier than the extreme dread you
feel before doing it. And [music] Pychyl
showed this beautifully in the study
where he gave 45 students pagers, and
that [music] was before smartphones
existed. So, he gave them pagers. He
would page them eight times a day for
five days leading up to their academic
deadline on some in some class. And when
the pager went off, the student was
supposed to report how they were
feeling, what they were doing, how they
were feeling about the academic
assignment that they had to do. The data
showed that the students consistently
procrastinated on the tasks that they
found difficult or unpleasant or
stressful. And they consistently
replaced them with activities that were
more interesting and more exciting. And
of course, we all would do that, right?
But here's what Pychyl found most
interesting. When students
procrastinated early in the week, they
would constantly justify. They would
constantly say that, oh, I work better
under pressure. I work better close to
the deadline.
I will feel like it tomorrow. And they
would say things like these to explain
why they're not doing the task they're
supposed to be [music] doing. But when
the deadline actually forced them to
start, not one of them said that they
were glad that they waited. [music] They
were all saying that they wish they had
more time. They wish they started
earlier. And that the task wasn't
actually as bad as they thought. So,
you're not actually avoiding the task.
You're avoiding the way that you think
the task is going to make you feel. And
[music] your brain is wrong about it
almost all of the time. And now you
might be thinking, well, I don't just
sit on the couch doing nothing. I'm
actually busy all the time. So, why can
I not finally start this project that
I've been putting off for months?
Well, there's an answer to that. Your
brain does not just let you sit there
doing nothing because that triggers
guilt. And guilt is another negative
emotion that amygdala is trying to escape.
escape. >> [music]
>> [music]
>> So, it disguises that avoidance as
productivity. And there's actually two
specific disguises that I want to
discuss [music] with you. And the first
disguise is perfectionism. And research
has consistently shown that people who
score higher on perfectionism are bigger
procrastinators because perfectionism
essentially makes you afraid that your
result is not going to be good enough,
which makes you not even start in the
first place. And researchers found that
more perfectionist professors actually
publish less papers than their less
perfectionist colleagues, even if you
control for how hard-working they are.
Essentially, perfectionism makes you
never start, so you never fall short.
And disguise number two is productive
procrastination. And this one gets
everyone. It's the sneakiest one because
you're not actually sitting on the
couch. You are doing something. You're
researching. You're reorganizing your
desk. You're planning something. You're
watching videos on YouTube about how to
be more productive instead of actually
doing the thing. Maybe you're even
watching this video right now instead of
working on your assignment or working on
your new project. I don't know. And
Pychyl's research calls this short-term
mood repair. When a real task triggers
anxiety or overwhelm or some negative
emotion, your brain essentially decides
to swap it for a safer and less risky
task that is still going to give you
some sense of accomplishment when you
finish it,
but it's going to be without any risk of
failure or judgment because that task is
going to be less high stakes. Like
instead of writing an essay, you spent
an hour color-coding your notes. Or
instead of applying to jobs, you spent
hours perfecting your resume for the
fifth time. And instead of starting a
business that you've dreamt of starting
for years, you read 10 books on how to
start a business. So, you feel like
you're making some progress, but the
actual scary task that you actually have
to do hasn't moved an inch. And again,
remember, you're not actually avoiding
the task. You're avoiding how you think
the task is going to make you feel. But
when you actually start doing it, you
realize that the dread of starting is
much worse than the doing most of the
time. So, now you know what the
avoidance loop looks like, how your
brain disguises it, >> [music]
>> [music]
>> and how to break it. So, subscribe if
this helped. And please let me know in
the comments what other topics or videos
or ideas you would like to see in my
YouTube channel. And I'm currently
building out my YouTube channel, so any
sort of support or likes or comments
would be greatly [music] appreciated.
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