this post was submitted on 10 Sep 2023
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There is some interesting research on procrastination as an emotional problem. It's important to note the difference between procrastinating and being lazy. Procrastination is typically productive (I am cleaning the house or being active and engaged in some way instead of writing that term paper) and laziness is not (I haven't eaten or bathed because I don't want to and my ass is glued to the couch while I passively watch TV).
The main hook into procrastination is that your subconscious percieves a low emotional return for the task to be performed. Instead it finds any other task it percieves to have a higher emotional reward and sets you about doing that instead.
It helps to intentionally focus on how good it will feel to complete the task you are putting off, and so you sort of hijack your own brain.
I would like to make a distinction between laziness and executive dysfunction, which can look like laziness at a surface level. It’s very common for people with undiagnosed ADHD to absolutely hate themselves for their inability to willpower themselves out of being lazy.
ADHD in particular doesn’t just perceive a low emotional return for work invested, it fails to produce the chemicals that give a higher emotional reward in the first place. People with executive dysfunction can’t just convince themselves that the task will feel good once it’s complete, because the brain almost never actually feels good after completing the task. Trying to focus on the good feeling doesn’t work, because there is no good feeling. This is why, for people with more severe ADHD, behavioral/attitude adjustments hardly ever help, and medication is necessary to make the behavioral/attitude adjustment stick.
Of course ADHD is a spectrum, so everyone’s mileage will vary, each person will have different “tricks” that work for them to hijack their brain. And people with ADHD aren’t the only people who experience executive dysfunction.