Procrastination: A Biological or Psychological Phenomenon?

Procrastination: Biological or Psychological Procrastination: “to put off intentionally the doing of something that should be done” (Webster, 2017). Tim Urban gave a TedTalk in February 2016 entitled “Inside the Mind of a Master Procrastinator”. In this TedTalk Urban described what about him makes him a master procrastinator, and came to the conclusion that procrastinators must have different brains than non-procrastinators. Urban supported this conclusion by talking about the two different types of brains. In the non-procrastinator’s brain there is a rational decision maker, and in the procrastinator’s brain there is a rational decision maker and an instant gratification monkey that can only be controlled by the panic monster. Now to most,

As a chronic procrastinator myself I would have to say from experience that I do more often than not make a decision to procrastinate. When I procrastinate it is most times because I believe that I don’t need the time that I am given to get my work done, or simply that I don’t want to work on the project that day. In a paper written by a Serendip Student entitled “Procrastination: Habit or Disorder,” the author sheds light on the psychological view point of procrastination. The author breaks it up into two categories, behavioral procrastination and decisional procrastination. The author relates behavioral procrastination to self-handicap, meaning that those people use procrastination as an excuse to blame something for the reason that they did not pass that test. In this article, the author uses an experiment conducted by Ferrari and Tic, “participants (men and women) perform an identical task twice. In the first study, participants were notified that they would be evaluated on their performance of the task. Time was allotted for practice or engaging in fun activities. Results found that participants procrastinated for 60% of the time. The second study described the identical task as a fun game. Results of activity during the time allotted showed that procrastinators, in comparison

Like I said before, I am a chronic procrastinator and I wanted to explain myself a little more. I don’t procrastinate because I believe that I work better under stressful circumstances. The opposite if that is actually true. You can tell when I have procrastinated on a project through the quality of the work. The work that I have procrastinated on is never as good as the work that I have taken my time on. But for some reason I just can’t seem to stop myself from procrastinating and the reason for this might have something to do with my brain. In the same article mentioned before, “Procrastination: Habit or Disorder,” the author talks about how “Research done by R.L. Strub links procrastination to physical disorders and lesions in the brain, particularly in the frontal lobe - specifically the bilateral hemisphere in globus pallidus. The prefrontal cortex (PFC) of the frontal lobe controls cognitive processes.” (2013, paragraph 6) The author goes on to talk about how the PFC is the part of the brain that controls human’s ability to make and reach goals so if the PFC is not working right there are problems. “The PFC sends signals to the limbic and sensory parts of the brain. When a person needs to focus, the PFC decreases the distracting input from the other brain areas. Therefore, if there is a problem with the PFC, there is no filter mechanism at work” (2013, paragraph 6). Now I can tell my