The Procrastination Equation (5 page)

LOOKING FORWARD

To some, a mathematical model of procrastination is threatening; it reduces humankind to a robotic formula. I am sympathetic. We are all more complicated and nuanced than any equation could capture, and the subtle details of each person’s procrastination are personal. Exactly when your self-confidence peaks, what you find deathly dull, and where your vices lie all combine to determine your individual procrastination profile. The Procrastination Equation isn’t seeking to form a comprehensive depiction of who you are but to create a succinct snapshot that can explain a lot with a little.

The Procrastination Equation attempts economically to describe the underlying neurobiology that creates procrastination. I will tell you right now: the biology and the math won’t match exactly. A road map of a city, for example, no matter how recent or detailed, can’t represent every corner and crevasse of reality; it skips over details like architectural styles or fire hydrant placement. Judiciously focusing on streets and highways allows the map to emphasize navigation. If this big picture doesn’t satisfy you and you want all the details, don’t fret. The next chapter will give you what you are looking for.

Chapter Three
Wired for Procrastination

PUTTING OFF IS HUMAN NATURE

Think of all the years passed by in which you said to yourself “I'll do it tomorrow,” and how the gods have again and again granted you periods of grace of which you have not availed yourself. It is time to realize that you are a member of the Universe, that you are born of Nature itself, and to know that a limit has been set to your time.

MARCUS AURELIUS

E
very day, we experience our souls as being split.
¹
Who hasn’t struggled between a reasonable intention and an opposing pleasurable impulse? As the dessert cart pulls into view, commitment starts to crumble in the heat of the internal battle of “I want to eat that cake, but I don’t
want
to want to eat cake.” Have you ever skipped exercising, knowing that you would later regret it? Have you ever scratched an itch, knowing that you just made it worse? You are not alone; it’s a permanent part of the human condition. Thousands of years ago, Plato described this internal clash as a chariot being pulled by two horses, one of reason, well-bred and behaved, and the other of brute passion, ill-bred and reckless. At times, the horses pull together and at other times they pull apart. Thousands of years later, Sigmund Freud continued Plato’s equestrian analogy by comparing us to a horse and rider. The horse is desire and drive personified; the rider represents reason and common sense. This division has been rediscovered by dozens of other investigators, each with their own angle, emphasis, and terminology for the same divided self: emotions versus reason, automatic versus controlled, doer versus planner, experiential versus rational, hot versus cold, impulsive versus reflective, intuitive versus reasoned, or visceral versus cognitive.
²
Understanding how the architecture of the brain enables this division is the secret to understanding the biological basis of procrastination.

The brain has been considered the last frontier of human science because its workings have been so difficult to investigate. Emerson Pugh, a Carnegie Mellon University physics professor, concluded that, “If the human mind was simple enough to understand, we'd be too simple to understand it.” He is right. And the Procrastination Equation is only a model of how you might behave. Though I like to think of it as a supermodel, it is still merely an approximation of how motivation works. Our brains aren’t actually doing these calculations any more than a falling stone is calculating its mass times its acceleration to determine with what force it will hit the ground.
³
Rather, the equation summarizes a more complex underlying process, the interplay between the limbic system and the prefrontal cortex. This is where we must turn for a more fundamental understanding of procrastination.

Recent advances in brain science have allowed us to pull the curtain aside and see our own minds in operation. The basic methodology isn’t that hard to describe. You place participants in your choice of brain scanner, likely a functional magnetic resonance imager (fMRI), which detects subtle changes in magnetic signals associated with blood flow and neural processing (i.e., thinking). Once the participant is strapped in, you then ask questions carefully designed to engage aspects of decision making and observe which parts of the brain light up. For example, if we had J. Wellington Wimpy as a subject, we could ask him, “If I gave you a hamburger today, how much would you pay me on Tuesday?” Sure enough, what then comes up on the electronic monitors are not one but two internal messages, which science has blandly come to call System 1 and System 2.
⁴

Asking a thirsty person a question such as what drink she would like
now
primarily activates System 1, the limbic system. This is the beast of the brain (“the horse”), the origin of pleasure and of fear, of reward and of arousal. Questions about future benefits, however, activate System 2, the prefrontal cortex (“the rider”). Though studies are still refining the exact subsection of the prefrontal cortex that is involved, the consensus is that this is willpower’s throne. The prefrontal cortex is often described as the
executive
function, appropriately evocative of CEOs making strategic company plans. Without it, long-term pursuits or considerations become almost impossible, as it is—literally—what keeps our goals in mind.
⁵
This prefrontal cortex is the place from which planning arises. The more active it becomes, the more patient we can be. It allows us to imagine different outcomes and, with help from our speedy and definitive limbic system, helps us to choose what to do. This interplay of instinct and reason has enabled the human race to create the world in which we live. But it also has created procrastination.
⁶

You see, this decision-making arrangement is not the most elegant. It’s often described as a haphazard
kluge,
the clumsy outcome of an evolutionary process.
⁷
Because the limbic system evolved first, it is very similar across species. It makes decisions effortlessly, spurring action through instinct. Its purview is the here and now, the immediate and the concrete. Our more recently evolved prefrontal cortex is more flexible in its decision making, but also slower and more effortful. It is best at big-picture thinking, abstract concepts, and distant goals. When the limbic system is aroused by immediate sensations of sight, smell, sound, or touch, an increase in impulsive behavior results, and the “now” dominates. Future goals espoused by the prefrontal cortex are cast aside and we find ourselves seduced into diversions—despite knowing what we should be doing, we simply don’t want to do it. Also, because the limbic system runs automatically at an incredibly fast rate and is thus less accessible to consciousness, desires can often come over us inexplicably and unexpectedly.
⁸
People feel helpless to stop intense cravings and they display little insight into their ensuing actions other than, “I felt like it.”

In essence, procrastination occurs when the limbic system vetoes the long-term plans of the prefrontal cortex in favor of the more immediately realizable; and the limbic system, aside from being the quicker of the two and in charge of our first impulse, is often the stronger. When near events get this evaluative boost from our limbic system, their vividness increases and our attention shifts to their immediate and highly valued consumable aspects (what we can see, smell, hear, touch, and taste). Deadlines are often put off until they are close or concrete enough to get a hint of that limbic system zing, whereupon both parts of our brain are finally shouting in agreement, “Get to work! Time is running out!”

OF BABES AND BEASTS

Procrastination increases whenever our more recently acquired prefrontal cortex is compromised.
⁹
The less potent the prefrontal cortex, the less patient we become.
¹⁰
Those with brain damage can provide particularly vivid examples of this, Phineas Gage being the most famous.
¹¹
Gage was a shrewd, responsible, hardworking, methodical railway foreman who, in a workplace accident in 1848, had over three feet of iron rod blown through the top of his skull and the front of his brain. He recovered, incredibly, but he became a man of the moment: impatient, vacillating, profane, inconsiderate, uninhibited, and uncontrollable. The iron rod had severed the connection between Gage’s limbic system and his prefrontal cortex. The planning part of the brain needs the fast and accurate input from the limbic system to understand the world, and that’s what Gage lost. A more modern example is Mary J. who was completely transformed within a year by a brain tumor that debilitated her prefrontal cortex.
¹²
Before the tumor, she was a quiet teetotaling Baptist, on the dean’s list at an Ivy League university, and engaged to be married. Until the tumor was surgically removed, she was angry and extremely promiscuous, failing school, drinking hard, and using drugs. Her executive function was disabled and she became all impulse, ruled by whatever temptation was put before her.

There is a way people can experience Phineas' or Mary’s predicament, and happily it doesn’t involve a nail gun. We can temporarily lesion the prefrontal cortex with transcranial magnetic stimulation, which uses electromagnetic induction to briefly knock out focused sections of the brain.
¹³
Alternatively, taking alcohol, amphetamines, or cocaine either hypercharges the limbic system or hinders the prefrontal cortex’s ability to perform, creating actions that “seemed like a good idea at the time” but later prompt regrets.
¹⁴
Or, the prefrontal cortex can simply become exhausted through sleeplessness, stress, or resisting other temptations; by fighting one enticement, we often become more susceptible to another.
¹⁵
Finally, if you are a teenager, you might not need to go to any of these extremes, since your prefrontal lobes are still receiving their final touches.
¹⁶
Combining the effects of youth, stress, and alcohol together, the most impulsive and uninhibited place on this planet is a group of teenagers celebrating the finish of a willpower-depleting stretch of studying with a weeklong drink-fest. Indeed, Phineas Gage would fit right in during Spring Break in Cancún, with wet T-shirt contests, drinking games, and random hook-ups. If you don’t diminish the prefrontal cortex, you can’t have
Girls Gone Wild.

If you can’t make it to Spring Break to see the limbic system dominate action, there are good alternatives closer to home. In fact, they are likely in your home. Do you have a pet or a child? Both are heavy on the limbic system, making owning a pet the neurobiological equivalent of raising a child.
¹⁷
We are their external prefrontal cortices. We have to be the ones providing patience and doing our best to coax it out of those who don’t have much of it or who are still developing it.

THE NOW OF BABES

There is a rhyming biological heuristic that goes “ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny.” It means that the way we develop within our lives roughly reenacts the course that human evolution has taken over millions of years. When in the womb, more or less, we morph from fish to reptile before eventually emerging as a mammal. But the process isn’t done yet. The last aspect of us to evolve is the prefrontal cortex, which continues to develop after birth.
¹⁸
For those who have children, and as I write this, I have two still in diapers, we don’t need a biology degree to know that infants aren’t born with the ability to plan ahead and put their immediate needs on hold for the benefit of some future goal. Just try asking for patience from a hungry baby or a little one with a full diaper and my point will be made. They are merciless in their need.

As children develop, their prefrontal lobes grow too and eventually they achieve the ability to put things off just a bit. You can’t ask a baby to put off a feeding, but eventually you may ask a toddler to say “Please” before getting a treat. It takes the development of the prefrontal cortex for this modicum of control to appear—which happens all too slowly for my taste. Year-old children have almost no executive control, instantly batting down any pile of blocks or grabbing your eyeglasses, but just one year later, brief moments of patience become possible, say twenty seconds. By the age of three, children are routinely waiting a full minute and by four they are piling their blocks high, putting off the blast until they can enjoy the big burst of noise when their soaring towers tumble.

At the age of four, children can play “Simon Says.” This is a significant advance, because the game is all about self-control, about inhibiting the immediate impulse from the limbic system so that the prefrontal cortex can mull over whether Simon has actually said “Simon Says” before they respond. How well this acquired ability transfers into kindergarten is another matter, because kindergarten requires sitting when you want to run, listening when you want to shout, and taking turns when you want it all to yourself. Fortunately, between the ages of four and seven there is a burst of development in children’s executive function. They are progressively better able to make plans for tomorrow, to pay prolonged attention to more than the television set, and to shut out distracting events other than parents calling them to come in for dinner.

The normal maturation of the prefrontal cortex is assisted by endless hours of patient teaching by parents trying to get their little ones to put off their needs for just a moment without tears or the stomping of feet. Unwearyingly insisting that gifts can be unwrapped only at Christmas and then only your own, that dessert comes after dinner, or that toys must be shared with others coaxes a little more from the prefrontal cortex and a little less from the limbic system. Unfortunately for parents, their role as their children’s external prefrontal cortices is a long one. It can last until about the age of nineteen or twenty, when the biological basis of self-control is finally fully in place. Until then, parents can only herd their teenagers away from all the vices that impulsiveness ensures youth will find especially tempting: risky sex, excessive alcohol, petty crime, reckless driving, and, of course, procrastination.
¹⁹
The younger you are, the more you seek instant gratification, from socializing late into the night and then facing tomorrow’s exam half asleep to dillydallying so long you have to pack your bags in a flurry and almost miss your plane. Though the young act as if they will live forever, they really are living just for today.

The novelist Elizabeth Stone has written that having a child “is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body,” but our role as walking prefrontal lobes comes to an end at this point. As adults, our children no longer need us for guidance and any mental inequalities between us go into a long lull, perhaps broken briefly by the arrival of grandchildren if they are forthcoming. We can expect apologies from our kids as they try to raise a few of their own and learn firsthand the vigilance required to be a parent. And then, long later and hopefully not at all, our roles may change entirely. As we grow older so do our brains, losing the snap they had in earlier years, especially the prefrontal cortex—following the last in, first out rule.
²⁰
Though some avoid this fate, remaining razor sharp into their final years, others get it worse, assisted by the senility of frontotemporal dementia that affected my grandmother Eileen.
²¹
I am well aware that I too might encounter a second childhood and once again be as vulnerable as my two young sons are now. Indeed, we'd better raise our kids well, as their love might be the only thing that stands between us and a world that views us as prey made easy through old age and a compromised mind.