Why do we procrastinate?

Question

As the title says. What is the cognitive reason for procrastination? I feel there is a component of uncertainty about the path to be taken. I feel like if I know exactly how to reach my goal and I want to reach it, I take the path and follow through until the end. On the other hand, if I have the feeling I don't know how to solve my problem, I get uninterested, lose track and never deliver.

Our brain is somehow always curious but also very lazy: if knowledge is at hand, it works. If not, it watches TV ;)

Answer 1

Procrastination is deep and complex subject and its not "Hey you are just lazy man" thing.

People procrastinate for wide variety of reasons here are few ideas:

• Procrastination can be a symptom of deeper inner meaning problems or mindset problems.
• Procrastination can be due to fear of failure, fear of success (!)
• Procrastination can be due to be overwhelmed by size and nature of task.
• Procrastination can be due to uncertainty and analysis paralysis.
• ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder) creates brain that is myopic to time perception, which in turn creates procrastination behavior. People with ADD/ADHD often heavily discount the importance of an event if it's sufficiently far away from the current time. Only thing that gets done is events screaming "Your house is on fire, do it NOW". They live in perpetual now discounting the future, everything far away in time is simply a blur until it comes too close within their range of time perception which is 'now'.
• Procrastination can be due to inability to focus and distraction issues.

The list is only partial, you can google out following terms to learn more:

Growth verses fixed mindset, Distraction and Continuous Partial Attention, ADHD Russell Barkley