Hedonistic delay. When procrastination is a form of pleasure
By: Alexandra Martin
Tags: Productivity, Hedonism, Personal Narrative, Procrastination, Self Change

Oftentimes our procrastinating habits are a blend of situational and emotional factors. You’re never just one type of procrastinator. If you take a look at the 5 stages described in this series, it might look like I’m both a sloth and a busy bee — a shameless slacker and an overachiever with perfectionistic tendencies.

Surely there are deeper psychological underpinnings, but I try my best to articulate what I’ve experienced along with strategies or “aha” moments that helped me become slightly more functional.

HEDONISTIC DELAY

My mental picture for this 1st stage of procrastination: an unwilling toddler who won’t eat its veggies, yet demands candies.

Boredom, task difficulty, or lack of know-how lead to task aversion.

As is always the case, I had been a procrastinator long before I even knew the word. But with its discovery, I proudly appropriated it. My personal revelation was that I was a procrastinator.

True in the literal sense of the word, “towards-tomorrow” (Latin, ‘procrastinus’), I jokingly altered the well-known quote “Why put off tomorrow what you can do today?” into “Why NOT put off tomorrow what you can do today?”.

My cheeky rationale was that “Tomorrow you might not need to put in the work anyway” just because once or twice a task had sorted itself out and I didn’t have to do it. For sure, that could happen 1% of the time. Obviously, I now know that the other 99% of the time you have to deliver on your promises. Otherwise, people will give up on you and find other collaborators.

Looking back on that rationale, it was probably a distorted view of the cost-sunk fallacy: “If I start working on it, it has to be perfect otherwise it would have been for nothing”. My explanation for this “all-or-nothing” mindset was that I didn’t want to be a modern-day Sisyphus. This thinking process is obviously way overboard. I had to fix this cognitive distortion (unhelpful thinking habit) later on in life.

I was pretty spontaneous and flexible back in high school. Kidding — I was just unorganized and my daily routine was a joke. It had little structure and no order. I had a lot going on but an inexistent calendar. I was constantly at the mercy of my poor memory. The only structure I had was my school routine and my twin who had to be both my savior and personal calendar.

Back when I was a teenager I had this naïve outlook on life that work magically gets done. That assignments and exams shall pass — you just have to give them time. Till then, indulge in what makes you happy.

Instant gratification

This thinking process reflects the prioritization of short-term mood. It’s called instant gratification, or the “pleasure principle”. Its opposite, delayed gratification, promotes abstaining from giving in to immediate pleasurable experiences in exchange for valuable and meaningful rewards in the long run.

Essentially, I would prioritize my feelings in the present — whatever I wanted to do and made me happy at that specific moment (#yolo, carpe diem) — at the expense of my long-term development.

It’s a natural tendency to engage in enjoyable activities and avoid unpleasant ones, but it becomes a serious problem when you can’t control the urge to self-gratify. Too much instant gratification turns individuals into dopamine junkies, constantly seeking out fun activities and quick fixes. And when they don’t get their dopamine rush, their psychological response is tension and anxiety.

Thankfully, back in high school, my idea of instant gratification mostly involved reading books and encyclopedias, learning languages, playing guitar, and volunteering in the local community. Plus, I started freelancing, tutoring, and working on personal projects. These don’t sound too hedonistic, do they? Still, the pleasure principle works the same.

Bartering for the dopamine rush

But I wasn’t always artistically and socially productive. I was guilty of binge-gaming MMORPGs and binge-watching one too many TV series and anime. “It’s OK to watch another episode. This TV series is so much fun — it’ll lift my mood and get me extra excited about that assignment/project. I’ll be able to finish it in no time”.

This phenomenon is called mood repair. I would take it a step further and make excuses for my binges. I even misappropriated the proverb to soothe my conscience, “All work and no play makes Jack a dull (uninteresting) boy”. The problem is that Jack had been lazy the whole day. I kept prioritizing pleasure over progress. I kept wasting time bingeing.

Mood repair makes you feel much worse later when you have to deal with a super tight deadline, or worse, dealing with the aftermath of your failed efforts. Years later I had to imprint this on my mind, that

“No work all day makes Jack a dull (lazy) boy”.

Task aversion

Instant gratification usually piggybacks on task aversion. Task aversion refers to the unwillingness to do frustrating, boring, or tiresome tasks. In short, the more unappealing the task, the more likely you are to avoid it (by procrastinating, of course).

I wasn’t naturally inclined to STEM disciplines, especially Maths, yet I had to follow Maths & IT-focused curricula. You can imagine the dread and resistance I had put up. At the time, I didn’t know what structured procrastination was. It was a kind of childish rebellion against the fact that I was failing Maths. I just didn’t want to put in the effort because the task was too daunting.

I kept telling people that Maths was neither my forte nor my cup of tea. Why torture myself when I was acing all my other school subjects and pursuing (one too many) other interests? But task aversion occurred to almost all kinds of tasks. I would put off boring long assignments until the (mid)night before class. Worse yet, I used to finish easy assignments during the 10-minute break before class.

What worked?

Fixed deadlines . Fortunately, you can’t postpone midterms and exams.

. Fortunately, you can’t postpone midterms and exams. Structured procrastination coupled with a reward system . When toddlers avoid eating the food they dislike, parents give them a morsel and then leave them to play for a while. Soon after, they come for another bite. “Fine, watch that episode, but finish this one task first. You can then reward yourself with another episode”.

. When toddlers avoid eating the food they dislike, parents give them a morsel and then leave them to play for a while. Soon after, they come for another bite. “Fine, watch that episode, but finish this one task first. You can then reward yourself with another episode”. “Bite the bullet” . A simpler approach to Eat the Frog method, which at the time would have been like CrossFit for a couch potato. “Bite the bullet” was a quick mental trick. Like a mental race gun, I would tell myself “Ready-set-go!” and I’d start working on my assignment just as I would sprint at a race.

. A simpler approach to Eat the Frog method, which at the time would have been like CrossFit for a couch potato. “Bite the bullet” was a quick mental trick. Like a mental race gun, I would tell myself “Ready-set-go!” and I’d start working on my assignment just as I would sprint at a race. Exercising self-control . Saying no to hitting “next episode”. Thankfully, Netflix wasn’t accessible to me back then, so bingeing took an effort.

. Saying no to hitting “next episode”. Thankfully, Netflix wasn’t accessible to me back then, so bingeing took an effort. Change of perspective: I tried to make the hedonistic lifestyle look childish and meaningless. I told myself I was better than that. Eventually, I would have to value progress over pleasure, right?

Value progress over pleasure. You can’t live on junk food forever.

What didn’t work?

The GTD method. This might have been the first productivity system I heard about. It was overkill, though. My messiness could not be contained by this productivity system because I was too inconsistent at the time. Plus, I was not aware I could change or grow. So, failing to implement GTD entrenched my belief that my lack of organization was indeed a natural trait.

My advice is to give GTD a try when you have a few productivity habits going strong or when you have a good routine.