Pleased To Meet You

It’s actually Wednesday as I write. The thing is I’m not meant to be writing this week’s Top Tips right now. There are other pressing matters I should be attending to.

But I’m ignoring all of them and am instead writing a Top Tips. This Top Tips is being written at the cost of more important task. Quite a few actually.

Okay, I’ll admit it then, I’m procrastinating.

And it’s the actual thought of me procrastinating that means I’m going to write about it. 

Right Here Right Now

When I sit down at the keyboard I’ve normally got an idea of what I’ll be writing. I’ve got a central theme and a few thoughts on how I can link them together. 

Right now though I’m writing blind - just to get it out of my head. All I know right now is it’s got to be about procrastination because that’s what’s eating me up. So I might go off piste.

Procrastination doesn’t mean I’ve not being doing stuff. It just means I’m not doing the most important stuff. It’s a failure of prioritisation. And here’s me delivering expertise on Time Management. Ironic right?

Well, mostly but not completely. Procrastination is usually seen as a Time Management issue, and true it does seem to fit very well in there. But it’s often a more complicated picture than simply prioritising, pulling your finger out or setting off ten minutes earlier.

Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me

Whenever there’s a behaviour that is universal in every society, like greeting a new person or employing onomatopoeic words, it’s thought that there must be some sort of evolutionary benefit to doing it. 

For example having a recognised ritual to greet someone new gives us a chance to sniff the newbie. No really. That’s what the researchers say it is for. Honestly. 

You can see how that would work with the continental air kiss on both cheeks. Ditto with the Inuit ‘kunik’ or the Maori ritual of pressing foreheads. They all offer a good sniffing opportunity. We’re just one level above dogs sniffing each other’s rear ends.

Shake It Off

But now you’re thinking, “Not me, thanks. I’m not a weirdo. I just shake hands.”

Yeah, well, definitely is you as well. Thousands of observational hours studying handshakes shows this is what the practice is for. 

Apparently, when we shake hands we subconsciously have a surreptitious sniff shortly afterwards. Never noticed this happen myself but I’ll run with it. I heard it on Radio Four so it must be true.

Not got a clue why all societies use onomatopoeia mind you, or what the benefit would be, but I’m buzzing to know this is the case.

So because so many people procrastinate - at least in some areas of their lives - it’s thought that there must be an evolutionary benefit going on. So what could it be?

From One Day To The Next

Well, for most of history life has been nasty, brutish and short. It’s not been so much about living your best life - more about getting from Monday to Tuesday in one piece. 

Food, safety and warmth were not guaranteed so people didn’t focus on what was happening next week, month or year. They just did what worked today and hung on tightly. Sales figures for month to view diaries were terrible back then.

These days, however, life is much less nasty, much less brutish and in comparison really very long. The cost of living crisis could well reverse that but in general terms our lives can stand a spot of future planning. You can enter events into your Google calendar for next year and fully expect to reach them.

It’s A Genuine Problem

So here’s where the first spot of procrastination trouble begins. All those years being in the moment have conditioned us to to focus on the present. We’re so used to working in the now that it’s difficult to prepare properly for the future. It’s a genuine challenge to fight against our ingrained routine of just doing what we like in the moment. 

This challenge is emphasised even more so when you factor in our intellectual struggles between future benefits versus current pleasures. You might have to stop doing something fun right now and actually do something distinctly unpleasant instead, in order to benefit at a later unspecified date. 

- Not eating that cream cake and instead crunching on celery so that sometime in the future you can enjoy wearing those slim figure-hugging trousers.

- Not lounging on the sofa and instead sweating through repeated crunches so that sometime in the future you can show off your washboard stomach.

(Good grief. The first two examples that leapt into my head are both about having a slimmer waist. I wonder where my focus is right now :)

Choosing future over right now can be really hard because right now is here right now. Every cell in your body has learned through millennia of evolution to always focus on right now. We can see and feel the present but we can’t feel the future and it’s not always possible to imagine the future. And there’s no guarantee the future date might ever happen!

Be Here Now

There’s more. As well as all that, it’s actually a physical evolutionary battle between two parts of your brain. 

The limbic system is the part of the brain that tells us to act on impulse. It was there first and is really useful in getting us through the basic parts of survival.

It looks after all the Fs. Fight, flight, feeding, fear, freezing up, and the other f word. To keep things civil, we’ll say fornication. It’s sometimes referred to as the lizard brain and has been around since we were, well, lizards.

But as we evolved we developed new hardware. As we progressed to become modern homo sapiens our shiny new neo cortex emerged and then grew in size (or is it the pre frontal lobe? I’m writing from a place of general ignorance so biology people forgive me for pretty much everything I’m getting wrong. The gist is the point I think). 

The new stuff grew in order to help us with our latest hobbies of communication, building settlements, agriculture, belief systems and organised fighting. 

The organised fighting usually being required to nab other settlements, agriculture and to decide who had the best belief system. It’s so nice to know we’ve moved on.

Hideous Tricks On The Brain

Planning for future events had become all the rage. You’d think the limbic system might have been completely replaced by the pre-frontal stuff but the new bits are just an extension on top. Like that 1980s glass pyramid at the Louvre in Paris that everyone says works but really doesn’t.

When we evolved and grew (literally) a bit brainier the old system never stopped working. It’s still there underneath. It’s a bit like how Microsoft release new upgrades. Instead of uninstalling the previous version they just forever add a new version of Windows on top of the obsolete edition.

So now our two brain systems work together. Or rather they very often work against each other. So it really is like a tottering stack of Microsoft Windows updates.

It’s the Limbic system vs the Neocortex. This uneasy combination is sometimes referred to as the parliament of the mind. I really like that. It’s an appropriate term because we all know how random, fractured and poorly behaved our esteemed members of parliament can be. And what a lack of cohesion and unity they often display.

The new brain, capable of looking ahead and forward planning, says “Don’t eat the cake, eat the celery instead.” 

But too often it gets overruled by the more impulsive, and admittedly much funner, limbic system shouting “But look at that cake! It’s glorious! Eat it! Now!”

And that, as far as I understand and am able to explain it, is a good part of what causes procrastination.

Do The Right Thing

So my Top Tip today is very simply to be a bit kinder to yourself when you find yourself procrastinating. I’d recommend that instead of beating yourself up over it, to go a little easier on yourself. Recognise that you’re fighting against the whole history of human evolution in trying to prioritise effectively. It can be hard.

That’s the very convenient and self serving tip I’ve settled on having spent a good couple of hours not doing the thing I should have been and writing this instead.

When you do manage to do it and engage in something unpleasant for the current you in order to benefit your future self then give yourself a huge pat on the back. You’ve beaten the system, you’ve overcome thousands and thousands of years of conditioning. You deserve credit and praise. Well done you.

Now what was I meant to be doing?