Stop Thinking You Are a Procrastinator.

Because you are probably pointing out the wrong problem

Published in

Science For Life

8 min readJul 3, 2021

Once in our life, we all felt like we could not accomplish as much as we should. Maybe you desired to write an article, studying for a close exam, go to the grocery store or perhaps clean up your room. Everyone is different, and the same applies to their personal needs. However, we all seem to relate to a universal concept when thinking about not having any intention of doing a specific task on a prefixed time: PROCRASTINATION.

This fancy term indicates the action of delaying or postponing something, and from at least my perspective, it has gained a lot of popularity during the last five years. Am I saying that this word did not exist before this period? No. I am stating that I started noticing it more and more when, at a specific time in my recent life, I began using it, and it ruined my life — let me explain.

My experience

Fun fact, I always weighed myself as the kind of person who does have limitless willpower. Growing up, I have frequently been considered the “clever guy” at school: decent grades, tons of different passions, a well-scheduled life, and very little time to spend in activities socially considered as wasteful, like social networks, videogames, TV, and parties.

Not that I didn’t have any time for myself, but I undoubtedly tended to privilege the productivity aspect of my life over the ludic one. This brought me into a sort of bubble filled with Pros and Cons.

Pros

Great focus capabilities
Excellent school results
A ton of auto-control
Some internal peace

Cons

Be excluded from a lot of day-to-day discussions with my Gen-Z peers

As you can see, from my perspective, more pros and just one con. However, at the time, even if I was the less distracted person, I felt detached from people around me. Somehow, I thought that I was missing many of the funny things my fellow friends were doing. E.g., I did not understand how messaging all day long in a WhatsApp group could be considered as funny, I did not perceive playing CoD of Clash of Royale as something entertaining, and I for sure did not get why Bottle Flip was that huge of a thing (still actually, I mean, you serious guys? 😐).

I was just the kind of introverted guy who preferred not to follow all trends, not because I thought that was a countertrend behavior, but because it was the best thing for me at the time, and I preferred to search for natural, concrete connections with people.

I believe it was with puberty that things started to change a little bit. I just was sick of living on a “different planet,” apparently, so I convinced my parents to buy me a new smartphone, and I started to increasingly enhance the amount of time I was spending on things like YouTube, Instagram, Amazon, WhatsApp. I had something like 4 to 7 hours of daily phone usage in no time, and my quality time dropped consequentially.

A social misfit (or a ne’er-do-well)

This is what I became during the following two years. I was not in control of myself. The phone was. It’s always tricky figuring out that you have a dependency problem. I think it is incredibly thoughtful with drugs, alcohol, and gambling. Still, even if I am lucky enough not to have experienced any of the previous, I believe that phone dependency is one of the most devious addictions cause it is kind of socially accepted, or better, almost totally ignored from my point of view.

If you do drugs, you became drug-addicted, ‘you have a problem, but you can find help.’ If you drink too much alcohol, you become an alcoholic, ‘you have a problem; communities will help you.’ However, are you a victim of a socially accepted excessive phone usage induced by giant tech companies that make a living on how much lower your attention threshold becomes? You are a lazy person, a procrastinator; you will not achieve anything in your life, and it’s just your responsibility.

More than this, the majority of people around you are in the same conditions.

A faulty lifetime definition for a new, worldwide, inducted problem.

From my point of view, smartphone overuse is a serious global threat, period. You certainly experienced the feeling of looking around you in a public spot. You noticed that nearly everybody was starring at their smartphone. Or having lunch with your relatives and observed them laying their smartphones on the table, even before having the first cup of water.

This was a problem way before COVID; however, the pandemic situation did not help for sure.

It's ok to embrace technology. As a tech enthusiast first and as a Computer Science student, I've always been its biggest supporter. Having mixed free communication, entertainment, and information, all in a pocketable device is one of our time's greatest achievements that brings immeasurable benefits. Still, we are not embracing just the positive, valuable aspects of keeping a ‘super’ computer always with us.

We have become more stressed, more susceptible to boredom, we socialize less, and our attention span is increasingly reducing.

And yes, you procrastinate eventually. You delay your homework because scrolling Instagram or watching Netflix is an easier choice. You say to yourself that this will be the last time you will get your work done tomorrow. But ‘tomorrow’ occurs to arrive faster than expected, and for your brain, there is absolutely no reason not to repeat the same yesterday’s pattern. Things are not changed. You have a day less.

If you can relate to these words, this path brought you to a failure sooner or later. Maybe you have not passed an exam, or you have not delivered your work project in time. Affliction, frustration has occurred. ‘Why I was not able to accomplish that?’, ‘Why I lost so much time?’, and you have accepted the label of ‘chronic procrastinator,’ someone who does not own their time.

Not (totally) your fault

All this, it’s not your sole responsibility. STOP thinking you are a procrastinator. You are not lazy or unable to control your feelings. It’s just that your brain has been kind of ‘hacked,’ with the insertion of some very wasteful habits.

Companies try to do this every time, in the most subtle way possible, rewarding you day by day, notification by notification, so that after using what you thought was just a funny or even helpful product, you eventually became the product yourself (there is a very well written book about this topic: Hooked — Author: Nir Eyal)

Here an example of how this is done:

7:00 A.M., you wake up (tired, of course, you just slept 6 hours), and you turn off the alarm. SOMENEWS company has just sent you a notification with the five most unmissable news of the day. You must read them. Awesome, you got your first daily news dose.
7:25 A.M., still lying in bed, you just noticed that somebody direct you on WASTEGRAM, ‘what if…no, another spamming sexbot’. WASTEGRAM also has a catchy infinite scrolling feedback page, so you get lost in reading some business, mindful geek kind posts. You do agree so much with those posts’ content. Today will be a different day (spoiler, it’s not).
12:00 A.M., You just finished your morning work, watch some EYEFLIX, you have 40 empty minutes to fill, you cannot just relax and enjoy your meal, ’cause everybody at work was talking about that series. You tremendously want to finish that series, so nobody will ever going to spoil it to you.
03:15 P.M., You are kind of hungry again, and you just saw in your mail that POLYOLSPRING just sent you a newsletter with a 20% discount on your next 24h order. You saw a zero sugar, 20gr of proteins chocolate bar, you are tired of eating apples as a break, the shipment is free, you got to try it—new ‘healthy food.’
06:00 P.M., work’s finished for today. READABLE wants to remember you still have to finish the last audiobook you picked up. Let’s finish it while driving. You have no time to read, and audiobooks are a great compromise.
08:15 P.M., you got your dinner, and you really would like to follow a new speed typing tutorial on OTHERSTUBE. However, on the feed, there are so many exciting videos. What about this one on “How to stop procrastinating.” The Pomodoro technique is great, and it could be the missing piece of the puzzle. You will try it today.
08:30 P.M. Have you checked your investments on BEARTORO?
08:35 P.M. What about the emails?
08:40 P.M. Some more news?
08:55 P.M. Tanya just sent you a cat sticker on PIGEONGER
10:05 P.M. You really need to sleep, is there any book on the topic to buy on DANGERZON?
10:40 P.M. Like, really need to sleep. Pop-up. The calendar is remembering that the day after tomorrow is mom birthday.
11:15 P.M. Found a gift. It will be delivered on time.

Very overwhelming, but what’s the point so

I don’t know who you are or where do you come from, but as a 21 years old Italian guy, not having complete control over my routine is something that truly scares me. I cannot accept having an actual dependency on something, which is considered normal if not encouraged. I cannot accept giving away so many hours a day, every day, to fulfill some big companies’ business. Honestly, I don’t care about them. They simply have to provide me with their services whenever I need them to fulfill my ambitions. That’s it.

Life is one, and I would like to spend more of that time growing my own persona, learning new things, spending quality time with my family and friends without having to see them attached all day through their 5-inches displays. I need to do something, and if you agree with this, you should do something in your life too.

Challenge yourself

As a small challenge, I want to propose you this: for the next week, every time you feel the urgency to pick up your smartphone, close your eyes for a second, and ask yourself the real reason behind this urgency. If the answer is boredom or need for social approval, put down your phone. If you have a real need, imagine yourself doing just that thing (e.g., check the Work/University mailbox) and nothing else. Just do it, then lock your smartphone. It’s that simple.