Life hack: this five-minute rule against procrastination
As long as I can remember, I do everything at the very last moment. This started in elementary school, where I always submitted my ‘weekly assignment’ last on Friday afternoon. Later in high school, this turned into starting to study way too late, usually only the night before the test. Now it involves things like tax returns, answering emails, and returning clothes: everything still has to happen at the last moment, when it’s almost too late. If there’s no hard deadline? Then, in my opinion, it can always wait a little longer. A bad trait if you ask me, because this makes my to-do list longer by the day and I only dread the things I still have to do even more. In the end, this doesn’t make me particularly happy.
Recognizable? Neuropsychologist Nawal Mustafa (also known as The Brain Coach on Instagram) has a handy trick for this, but more on that later. Let’s start at the beginning: the things we procrastinate on are clearly things we don’t want to do. But often these are the things that really need to happen, which means we simply can’t avoid them. So why don’t we just do them? According to Nawal Mustafa, we like to procrastinate because we want to avoid negative feelings surrounding a task, such as boredom, anxiety, uncertainty, frustration, or doubting ourselves.
Moreover, our brain tries to counter these negative feelings to protect our mental health. When we experience stress, the rational part of the brain (the prefrontal cortex) is shut down. The amygdala (the part of the brain that moderates our fear response) perceives the ‘task’ as a threat to our self-confidence and mental health. Therefore, your brain wants to shut down the ‘threat,’ and thus procrastination arises.
Okay, unfortunately, there’s no magical Harry Potter spell for procrastination, but Nawal Mustafa does have a handy trick: the five-minute rule. If you don’t want to complete a task, make a deal with yourself that you’ll at least do it for five minutes. The chances are high that by that time, you’ll have completed the whole task. Often, the tasks don’t actually take that much time, but it’s the procrastination that takes up a lot of time. So do you have a gigantic to-do list? Set that timer for five minutes, and you’ll be done in no time.
