Do you also always procrastinate?

This is how it comes and this is how you get rid of it

I wrote this article yesterday. You could call it a miracle of the best kind, because procrastination is not foreign to humans and let me be particularly human. You could also say that I am old, because there is indeed a physical explanation for our procrastination. Here's how it works. The prefrontal lobes where the prefrontal cortex resides, which influences how active we are, need maturation. So the older we get, the sooner we start on things.

For half a year now, I have been incredibly good at working ahead and organizing. I know it saves me time (try to reserve a restaurant at the last minute, it won't work and you'll be four times longer busy than if you just pick up the phone a few weeks in advance), it's nice for the people around me (my texts are now on time so I don't hold things up), and it gives me a calm feeling that I have already arranged the birthday outing for my youngest daughter two months in advance. So I thought it had to do with gaining insight over time, and with a schedule that is now so full that I can't keep up otherwise, but it can simply be traced back to my prefrontal brain lobe. Good.

Procrastination is something of recent times

TRUE - FALSE

We all procrastinate throughout the ages. Two fun examples. Writer Victor Hugo (you know, from Les Miserables) was such an incorrigible procrastinator that he asked his servant to hide his clothes. Naked, he couldn't leave the house, so he had to write. American author Douglas Adams even had himself locked up by his publisher to meet his deadline.

We can't help that we procrastinate

TRUE - FALSE

According to scientists, we can't do anything about our procrastination. In the past, we ate when we were hungry, drank when we were thirsty, and lived very primitively. Arranging things in advance is something of the last few centuries. Especially students are very good at procrastinating (that sounds a lot more pleasant than saying they are bad at working ahead). They are used to the idea that if you just push a little, everything will turn out fine, but at university, you simply can't get away with that.

You can do something about procrastination

TRUE - FALSE

First of all, you need to let those prefrontal lobes mature nicely. That will happen naturally. Furthermore, over the years, you will see the benefits of finishing things on time. That gnawing feeling of ‘I should have...’ gives way to the satisfaction of a checked-off list, and things simply go faster when you tackle them in a timely manner, and you can adjust and intervene. But you can also reduce your procrastination by applying the following things:

• Ensure a low-stimulus environment
• Don't let your email pop up on your screen
• Make sure you don't receive push notifications for a new message
• Put your phone on airplane mode during ‘a task’
• Protect yourself from getting distracted online and block your favorite and life-threatening sites via cold turkey (Net-A-Porter will still be there)

And if you are still very late with your task; at least say that you had a lot of trouble with procrastination (the scientific term for procrastination), then it at least sounds like something you can be proud of.