Masahiro Suzuki
Sep 3, 2018 · 2 min read

I often procrastinate because of this reason:"Two, my procrastination-instinct knows something that my conscious thoughts haven’t figured out yet." but I don't necessarily agree with your opinion on that this is because it is not important to me and I should work on something else.

I am saying this because I am starting to realize that when I procrastinate on my PhD work, yes, my conscious thoughts haven't figured out what exactly to do yet but some great part of my brain is still working unconsciously to figure that out.

Let me explain what I mean. Have you ever experienced a moment where you feel so sharp right after you wake up in the morning, having full of ideas, so that before doing anything else you just rush to your laptop to immediately write down those ideas? This kind of "aha" moments often comes to me, I think as the outcome/reward of my thinking that I do unconsciously when sleeping. This also happens to me often, as I recently figured out, when I eat (I don't know why though). I am not actively thinking about my research and rather being relaxed enjoying the food in front of me, but suddenly I experience this moment of having breaking-through ideas.

So I now sometimes procrastinate on my PhD work, believing that the time will come to get rewarded for this unconscious work that my brain does. I do this also because I know for sure my PhD work is important to me, although challenging and sometimes not very exciting, and I know that I am pretty responsible for what is important to me.

I hope you find this as another aspect of why people procrastinate :)

    Masahiro Suzuki

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