Setting reminders and planning for the future is a good way to fight procrastination, a bad habit that leads to many health problems.
- 20% of adults are considered chronic procrastinators, according to Joseph Ferrari, professor of psychology at DePaul University in Chicago, who has studied the subject since the 1980s.
- Cognitive-behavioral therapy, which focuses on self-awareness and behavior, can help the chronic procrastinator get to the root of the problem.
The impact of procrastination on health is not insignificant. A recent study has in fact shown that followers of procrastination, that is to say people who postpone tasks until the next day, were more at risk of being depressed, sleeping poorly and being anxious.
Fortunately, there are ways to fight procrastination, according to Raphaël Le Bouc, a neurologist at the Paris Brain Institute.
A false belief is the cause of procrastination
According to his study published in 2022 in the journal NatureCommunications, the origin of procrastination could lie in a cognitive bias, a falsely logical thought pattern, which leads procrastinators to believe that completing tasks will be easier in the future.
Thanks to the study of the brain activity of 27 people, the team of researchers discovered that the brains prone to procrastination were particularly sensitive to this idea: “When they imagine making an effort in a month, for them, the cost of the effort decreases a lot“, said the neurologist.
To counter this misleading reasoning, he advises two things.
How to deal with procrastination?
First, to remember the task: “If you forget that at some point you have to make a decision, it is obvious that you will never execute it“. Listing the tasks to be done can be a good way to remember them.
Next, imagining your future self – the one who will be struggling with unpaid bills, looming deadlines, and unwashed dishes – is also a good way to remind yourself that procrastination doesn’t make it any easier, indicates the expert. This practice, known as episodic future thinking, has been used as a way to counter addiction or cravings. “Trying to make those endeavors in the future more vivid, more realistic, could increase the attention signal in your brain and help you realize that, in fact, the difficulty will be exactly the same as it is now.t”, said Raphaël Le Bouc.
