Yasmina Kattou
“It can wait until tomorrow”. It’s a phrase we’ve all said to ourselves at least once in our lives. Procrastination affects nearly one in five French people! To understand this mechanism, a team of researchers from INSERM, APHP and CNRS, within the Brain Institute, conducted a study on 51 participants. The study identified the area where the decision to procrastinate or not is played out: the anterior cingulate cortex.
Should you put off your dishes until tomorrow, or wash your car next week? If you ask this kind of question, you are procrastinating! A very widespread behavior, which concerns nearly one in five French people. To understand this phenomenon, researchers from INSERM, APHP and CNRS, within the brain institute, conducted a study on 51 attendees.
Thanks to this study, scientists managed to understand how our brain works. And this decision to push back our actions comes from behind our front. Within seconds, the anterior cingulate cortex, a small area of the brain, does a cost-benefit calculation to weigh the effort demanded against the reward that will be obtained.
Will we ever be able to cure procrastination?
In procrastinators this calculation is made in a particular way. “Procrastinators tend to count the efforts faster than they demonstrate the rewards”, explains to the microphone of Europe 1 Raphaël Le Bouc neurologist and co-author of the study. “When they imagine putting off a task, the task feels a lot less painful to contemplate, but it’s not that much less rewarding.”
“Whereas a person who will procrastinate little or not at all counts the rewards faster than the efforts. Imagining pushing the task back in time will seem just as painful to him. And therefore, he will tend to do it much faster. ” More studies need to be done to find out if you are born a procrastinator, or if you become one. This discovery on the mechanism of procrastination could help to develop strategies to no longer postpone chores until the next day.