Procrastination Speech

Five more minutes.

Said everyone, ever.

Admit it. You’re probably guilty of putting off a task until later, whether it’s responding to an email, taking out the trash, or submitting your deliverables at work. And probably quite more universal: you’ve hit the snooze button in your alarm a couple of times before getting up. While you are aware that procrastination could be bad for you, here you are, trying to buy yourself a few more minutes or hours or even days, to have an excuse to delay.

There’s a wealth of adage about how important time is – from “Don’t put off until tomorrow what you can do today,” to “the early bird catches the worm,” and “tomorrow is the busiest time of the week.” We often find these sayings in beautiful calligraphy or typeface framed and hung on an office wall or a classroom, reminding ourselves that we should not – no, actually, never – procrastinate. But we’re probably too cool to even pay attention. Also, no, it’s not JUST a millennial thing.

American founding father Alexander Hamilton (or at least his character in the Tony and Pulitzer Prize-winning musical) said, “There’s a million things I haven’t done, just you wait, just you wait.” He probably wasn’t exactly talking about procrastination (sorry,

Procrastination is often linked to failure to self-regulate rather than poor time management. Dr. Timothy Pychyl, faculty member at Carleton University in Canada has studies procrastination extensively. One of the theories he suggests is that two parts of the human brain are in constant battle during procrastination, the limbic system and the prefrontal cortex. The limbic system supports emotions, behavior, long-term memory and motivation. In a sense, this is where the “pleasure center” is. Meanwhile, the planning, decision-making and other more rational functions happen in the prefrontal cortex. When the limbic system wins over the prefrontal cortex, menace happens. In other words,