Procrastination: from an animal perspective
Why humans are similar to monkeys in procrastinating
Ever put off your work until tomorrow? Ever felt the comfort to leave your things in the middle of a time slot thinking the deadline is too far away? Ever find the impulse to do something laughable, experiential, experimental, or maybe imaginary (I mean sleep!) to get out of your monotonous schedule? That’s what is called procrastination. In my life, I have procrastinated a lot without knowing or understanding was it for the better or worse.
If you want to master the art of procrastination, look at a monkey. The monkey’s sole objective is to fetch, eat and sleep for himself. Not very separate from other beings though. From humans, we can say that it is different because we have some other work to do besides just fetching food for ourselves.
Our actions are all guided by our brain which in turn is guided by its structure and pattern of thinking. This pattern of thinking is different for every individual. Since we are talking about procrastination, it is important to understand how the brain is at work. We are all driven by rational thinkers inside our heads. This rational thinker is responsible for all our important decisions related to health, relationships, money, friends, and also survival. It can understand the overall influence of certain tasks in life and can divert the required attention towards them. It is also capable of prioritizing things to understand which tasks are most important and can certainly lead to a great loss when unattended. It uses the power of stress and fear to get things done before a deadline. The more delayed an important task gets, the more powerful it might become. But you certainly won’t recognize its effects every day. This is partly because you’re driven by your friend — The instant gratification MONKEY! For instant references, let us call him ‘Mikey’. Now, you would have always felt the need to check your email, WhatsApp or any social media handles before you sit to study, or to call a friend to discuss some issue that hardly matters, or to do some activity that distracts you a while from your work: reading news, Reddit or just listening to a short Spotify podcast. All these activities are driven by Mikey. Mikey already knows which task would give instant pleasure. And so, he diverts the attention towards that task. “Let’s watch memes for some fun before work”, “Let’s catch up first with some news feeds from my Instagram.”, “Is there any important conversation going on in the class group?”, “Here’s Cyrus’ new song. What is it about?”, and many more thoughts are generated by Mikey in the minds of procrastinators.
Procrastinators have all developed the skill for listening more to Mikey than the rational decision-maker inside the same brain. And by doing this, they reward themselves for all the fun and activity they were able to conduct in their time. But can we say they’ve enjoyed it? Well, not really. Science says these people can be accompanied by feelings of guilt and dissatisfaction for delaying the work. They may experience a fall in self-esteem after and while doing those leisurely activities. This feeling of anxiety is because of the absence of any hard work done to seek the reward. Or to say, there wasn’t any reward for you in the first place.
We still feel so content with ourselves all the time because of the proven fact in our heads that we can make it before the deadline. Well, that’s good for making it in time. But the stress someone has to go through in those last days for piled-up work is not good for mental health and can be avoidable, not to forget the struggle in maintaining the efficiency of the work.
So don’t let the monkey mess with your mind. A monkey’s sole objective is survival. Our sole objective was also survival in tribal times when we more or less shared the same lifestyles. Humans are the most advanced species because of mere consciousness in our thoughts. This consciousness lets us examine ourselves and guide ourselves to make important decisions — small or big which contribute enough to living a full-fledged life of happiness and rewards.
