So what is our brain flinching away from, if not the pain of doing the work?
I think it’s flinching away from the pain of the decision to do the work—the momentary, immediate pain of (1) disengaging yourself from the (probably very small) flow of reinforcement that you’re getting from reading a random unimportant Internet article, and (2) paying the energy cost for a prefrontal override to exert control of your own behavior and begin working.
I think our brains might also be flinching away from something else, at least in many cases.
Consider when you have a specific goal toward which to work. You usually have a fairly clear idea of the end product or result that you desire, whether the goal is about writing, weight loss, or anything in between. When you envision the end product, it’s in an idealized form, and further, it exists in your mind not associated with the actual amount of work that will go into achieving it.
I think that we grow attached to this mental conception of the end product, both because of its idealized nature and because the image itself requires very little work to maintain. Having the plan to do something might actually feel better than we anticipate doing the work will feel. We know that having the accomplishment will feel much better than just thinking about it, once we put in the work; we also know that doing the work itself is likely to be rewarding, and even if not, it won’t really be that bad. However, that shiny, work-free mental conception is a big enough immediate deterrent to make the twinge of starting seem much worse than it is.
Picture a particle in a potential well, with another much deeper well not too far over, but a large barrier in between. The particle will eventually tunnel over to the deeper well, and once it’s there, it’s much less likely to go back to the shallower well, but it still might take a long time to get there. In the scenario of procrastination, the height of the barrier is proportional to how good we’ve built up the shiny mental conception to be. We have to keep in mind that accomplishment really does feel better than the idea of accomplishment, even with the weight of work attached to the former and not to the latter.
I think our brains might also be flinching away from something else, at least in many cases.
Consider when you have a specific goal toward which to work. You usually have a fairly clear idea of the end product or result that you desire, whether the goal is about writing, weight loss, or anything in between. When you envision the end product, it’s in an idealized form, and further, it exists in your mind not associated with the actual amount of work that will go into achieving it.
I think that we grow attached to this mental conception of the end product, both because of its idealized nature and because the image itself requires very little work to maintain. Having the plan to do something might actually feel better than we anticipate doing the work will feel. We know that having the accomplishment will feel much better than just thinking about it, once we put in the work; we also know that doing the work itself is likely to be rewarding, and even if not, it won’t really be that bad. However, that shiny, work-free mental conception is a big enough immediate deterrent to make the twinge of starting seem much worse than it is.
Picture a particle in a potential well, with another much deeper well not too far over, but a large barrier in between. The particle will eventually tunnel over to the deeper well, and once it’s there, it’s much less likely to go back to the shallower well, but it still might take a long time to get there. In the scenario of procrastination, the height of the barrier is proportional to how good we’ve built up the shiny mental conception to be. We have to keep in mind that accomplishment really does feel better than the idea of accomplishment, even with the weight of work attached to the former and not to the latter.