Imagine you are given a long-term piece of homework. It is due in six months. You plan to complete some every day, where you finish right before the deadline.
2 months went by, and you haven’t even started working on it. You change everything where you complete everything in 4 months.
Another 2 months went by. You start to panic, but don’t start working.
Suddenly, it is the day before the deadline! What is going on? You struggle to complete it, and don’t sleep throughout the night. You finish at dawn, and run over to hand it in. When you get back home, you receive a phone call. It says that you absolutely failed the project.
Now, why does this happen? People who don’t procastinate have a Rational Desicion Maker. However, procastinaters have an “Instant Gratification Monkey”. The Rational Desicion Maker is the part that actually works, but the monkey is dumb, and wants to play all day.
There is an angel that is called the Panic Monster. This angel is asleep most of the time. However, whevner a deadline is near, it suddenly wakes up. The Panic Monster is the only thing that scares the Instant Gratification Monkey. When the monkey runs away, the Rational Desicion Maker takes over, trying to complete everything in time.
There are two types of procastination. There is the type that has a deadline. This may seem really bad, but there are in fact worse scenarios. For instance, there may be something in real life that has no deadline. The Panic Monster is asleep the entire time, without a deadline to wake up for. The Monkey takes over for a very long time.
How do you stop Procrastination? Try to think, “work or do nothing.” Don’t give the option to watch dogs chasing their own tail, or something else like that. This choice will probably make the monkey chose to work.
