To procrastinate is a fashionable word nowadays. We procrastinate for invoices to be payed, for the dentist, for the rubbish to bring down…

Waiting too much can have serious consequences. Think at the climate change, for instance. Or at illnesses. If you don’t’ try to find out what you have as soon as you noticed the first symptoms, it may become too late. The doctor may say: “You would have come at the beginning, it would have been different. We would have been able to deal with it, the chances would have been better… ”

Cras in Latin means tomorrow, pro means for. Therefore, pro-cras means: it is for tomorrow.

Statistics show that in the United States about 20% of the population, post-pone the boring tasks to the next day, as if the tasks in question had then the virtue of disappearing or becoming less boring (in reality, isn’t it rather the opposite)?

A study carried out by Chinese researchers shows very interesting results: procrastinators have certain hyperactive intellectual regions, that are a part of a network of mental wandering: when it is time to take an appointment with the dentist, to pay the invoice or to bring down the rubbish, these centres make the person think at something else. And, let’s say it, to try to find out excuses on how unpleasant would be carrying out these tasks.

Besides, in procrastinators’ brain, another zone is weak. It is the zone that blocks the activity of wandering and that allows to remain focused.

People who work in advance according to a planning, in order not to be taken by surprise at the time of an examination, or of the fiscal term, they have a high activity of this area, so that the wandering zone is blocked.

When the mind gets loose from the planned purpose and begins to wander, the brain gets vulnerable in that area, which is very sensitive to all that is uncomfortable or disagreeable.

What to do?

The brain is a muscle, let’s train it and exploit its plasticity!