But getting a better understanding of why our brains are so prone to procrastination might let us find new strategies to avoid it. For example, psychologist Tim Pychyl has co-authored a <a href="http://postcog.ucd.ie/files/2010%20I%20forgive%20myself,%20now%20I%20can%20study%20How%20self-forgiveness%20for%20procrastinating%20can%20reduce%20future%20procrastination.pdf">paper </a>showing that students who forgave themselves for procrastinating on a previous exam were actually less likely to procrastinate on their next test. He and others have also found that people prone to procrastination are, overall, less compassionate toward themselves - an insight that points to ways to help.

<a href="http://http-server.carleton.ca/~tpychyl/prg/about/about_director.html">Pychyl </a>, a professor at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada, has been studying procrastinators for some 19 years. I talked to him about why people procrastinate and how they can learn to stop. Susannah Locke: What are the biggest misconceptions about procrastination? Tim Pychyl: When a procrastinator thinks about themselves, they'll think, "Oh, I have a time management problem," or, "I just can't make myself do it. There's a problem with my willpower." And when other people think about procrastinators, they use that pejorative term: "They're lazy."

I can simplify that and say that psychologists recognize we all have a 6-year-old running the ship. And the 6-year-old is saying, "I don't want to! I don't feel like it!" SL: What are you discovering about how procrastinators' brains work? TP: Recently we've been doing research that relates to the work on "present self"/"future self" because what's happening with procrastination is that "present self" is always trumping "future self." <a href="http://www.anderson.ucla.edu/faculty/marketing/faculty/hershfield">Hal Hershfield </a>has done some really great research on looking at how we think about <a href="http://nautil.us/issue/9/time/why-we-procrastinate">"future self." </a>He's shown that in experimental settings if someone sees their own picture digitally aged, they're more likely to allocate funds to retirement. When [the researchers] did the fMRI studies, they found our brain processes present self and future self differently. We think of future self more like a stranger.

research on procastinators


Tax Day is a horror for many procrastinators. For many people, a little procrastination isn't harmful - like 15 minutes lost in Facebook or putting off doing the laundry for a few days. But then there are things like taxes. And all the people who keep meaning to start saving for retirement, but never do.

Why your brain loves procrastination

Nabiha Ali