Thursday 19 May 2011

Procrastination...

Procrastination is the biggest bugger of school and further education study. In lamens terms, its the act of putting something off that you should do but don't enjoy.

For example an everyday situation would be the battle to get out of bed. It is essentially two parts of you brain battling it out for control of your actions.

In the red corner is your prefrontal cortex which is the part thinking:

"I really need to get out of bed now my alarms gone off, I have a lot of work to do and if I don't do it my boss is gonna go sick on my ass"

And in the blue corner is the part of your brain called the limbic system, located in the more primitive part of the brain near the spinal cord that is thinking:

"Nah, go on, you can sleep for as long as you like you can get the work done before you go to bed don't worry about it"

Now to break this  down, the prefrontal lobe, basically acts as a form of good conscience, that focuses more on long term goals, and future preservation.The chances are, if this part of you brain always dominated; your life would be incredibly boring, as everything you would do, would not be for pleasure, but for future pleasure.
but of course when you get to that "future pleasure" you won't indulge in it as that would find yourself working for even more long term goals etc etc etc..

The Limbic system on the other hand, is a a part of your brain focused on gaining immediate satisfaction and pleasure. so effectively, short term goals. Another example being:

"The deadline for this work is due in tomorrow i better crank it up and get it done". This is the prefrontal cortex.

"but I'll check my E-mail only once, just so it doesn't bug me, and then I'll have a fag and make a coffee and watch that show i recorded last night...Then I'll do my homework"

This is the Limbic system, you can tell by the immediate satisfaction gained by checking social sites and getting something to eat/drink.

The problem we have here is that the prefrontal Lobe gets tired much easier than the Limbic system, which is incredibly strong, always focused on making us happy. This is the main reason things don't get done, and maybe why the Human race hasn't advanced to a much higher technological level...Too many scientists playing CoD4 instead of researching that "super vaccine" their working on.

Now, you may be sitting at your despair thinking so how can I solve this procrastination troubling the natio? Well, to get all sciency on your ass, the Limbic system becomes MUCH more powerful , when any temptations you want become more tangible, so when you can see it, hear it or smell it. A Good example of this would be the notification sound when you receive an E-mail. When this sound goes off your brain finds it much more irresistible to ignore the E-mail as it become smore tangible though the sound you hear.

Taking this into account, a suitable way of negating the temptation would be to turn your sound off, just like being distracted by the T.V is resolved by moving away from the T.V, I hope it makes sense.

I wouldn't be surprised if you are procrastinating yourself, by reading this articale on procrastination.

Much love =)

11 comments:

  1. I didn't know that it related to our biological body. Thanks for the info.

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  2. I just watched a video on this 3days ago, before my exams haha.

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  3. sadly i fall to procrastination more than i should...

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  4. Procrastinators unite!!!
    ...tomorrow.

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  5. i know that feeling, platana....;/

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  6. interesting article, I suffer greatly from procrastination

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