Quick quiz: what is one of the most common responses people have to feeling worried, anxious or stressed?
If you answered, “avoid the thing that’s stressing you out,” you score two points—and likely can relate to the idea that procrastination, the habit of putting off tasks into an undefined future, flares when you are in a state of consistent stress.
Alicia Walf, a neuroscientist and senior lecturer at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI), explains the brain science behind this connection in an article for RPI’s news site.
Our brains love to feel safe and relaxed in the present moment, she explains. In a state of stress, that means avoidance. Just forget about it, deal with it later! Whew, says the brain, that was close. For choosing to step away from the stressor, our brains reward us with a burst of dopamine, a “feel-good” neurochemical.
The trouble is, as anyone who’s ever experienced stress (hi, nice to meet you) will attest, that short-term reward of feeling freed of a momentary stressor doesn’t address the root causes of the stress. It doesn’t take anything off our to-do lists, which might as well be known as our “daily stressor” lists.
Walf explains that in states of sustained stress, sections of our brains, including our danger-sensing amygdala, our “limbic brain” (the oldest part of our brain where fight-flight-freeze reflexes live), and our memory-storing hippocampus, slow down and weaken their communication with our higher-level thought areas of our brains, like our prefrontal cortex.
Which….you guessed it…leaves us more vulnerable to procrastination because we just can’t focus or think clearly enough to charge ahead with tasks we might not be thrilled about doing.
So how can we get off the circular stress/procrastination train tracks? Walf suggests that we focus on the stress side of the equation, giving our brains incentives to quiet, calm and be prepared to step into the task the day calls for.
Techniques like deep, calming breathing, quiet visualizations, or taking a time-bound break to give yourself space to calm down are all ways to put a dent in what can feel like a mountain of stress.
Once you’re back at your positive, calm baseline, you’ll be that much better prepared to face that to-do list—and get it done.
