To procrastinate is a fashionable word nowadays that you may have heard. We procrastinate for invoices to be paid, for the dentist, to take the trash out to the bin…

Procrastination is the act of delaying or putting off tasks until the last minute, or even past the deadline. 

Waiting too much can have serious consequences. Think of climate change, for instance. Or illnesses. If you don’t try to find out what you have as soon as you notice the first symptoms, it might become too late. The doctor could 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, postpone the boring tasks to the next day, as if the tasks in question had then the virtue of disappearing or becoming less boring (seriously, 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 take the trash out to the bin, these centers make the person think at something else. And, let’s say it, to try to find excuses on how unpleasant it would be carrying out these tasks.

Besides, in procrastinators’ brains, another zone is weak. It is the zone that blocks the activity of wandering and that allows one 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, have a high activity in 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!

Are you a procrastinator? Let me know!