Let’s get past procrastination by addressing emotional and cognitive overload

Pro­cras­ti­na­tion is a com­mon strug­gle many lead­ers and work­ers face, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the con­text of mod­ern, men­tal­ly demand­ing jobs. But what is the under­ly­ing cause, and how can we bet­ter under­stand it and effec­tive­ly address it?

Pro­cras­ti­na­tion, defined as “the act of unnec­es­sar­i­ly and vol­un­tar­i­ly delay­ing or post­pon­ing some­thing despite know­ing that there could be neg­a­tive con­se­quences for doing so” (Wikipedia), often man­i­fests itself as a form of dread when faced with a task, lead­ing to the gen­er­a­tion of excus­es to delay fac­ing the chal­lenge in favor of some­thing seem­ing­ly more urgent. Con­trary to pop­u­lar belief, this behav­ior is not nec­es­sar­i­ly a fault of char­ac­ter or a lack of focus and pro­duc­tiv­i­ty. Instead, at times, it can be under­stood as an issue of emo­tion­al reg­u­la­tion. When faced with tasks that evoke feel­ings of stress, anx­i­ety, or cog­ni­tive over­whelm, we can strug­gle to man­age these emo­tions and inte­grate them into deci­sion-mak­ing and our behav­ior effec­tive­ly, result­ing in pro­cras­ti­na­tion and delays as a cop­ing mechanism.

But the problem–and relat­ed opportunity–really goes well beyond that.

Sim­i­lar as stress, which is not inher­ent­ly good or bad, post­pon­ing tasks can have both pos­i­tive and neg­a­tive aspects. A small amount of stress can be ben­e­fi­cial, pro­vid­ing focus and ener­gy to tack­le pri­or­i­ties. Delay­ing tasks can some­times be strate­gic, allow­ing time to gath­er nec­es­sary infor­ma­tion before mak­ing a deci­sion. How­ev­er, like stress, it can also become coun­ter­pro­duc­tive. Under­stand­ing the root caus­es of pro­cras­ti­na­tion is cru­cial. They often include:

• Emo­tion­al Over­load: When the emo­tion­al bur­den of a task is too high, it can lead to avoid­ance behav­iors; and/ or
• Cog­ni­tive Over­load: Com­plex orga­ni­za­tion­al struc­tures and con­flict­ing direc­tives, lead­ing to uncer­tain­ty and to “paral­y­sis by analysis”.

The cul­ture with­in our orga­ni­za­tions can play a sig­nif­i­cant role in under­stand­ing address­ing pro­cras­ti­na­tion. A cul­ture that val­ues trans­paren­cy, growth mind­sets, emo­tion­al reg­u­la­tion, and cog­ni­tive flex­i­bil­i­ty fos­ters high-and-high­er per­form­ing teams via more, bet­ter and faster deci­sions and low­er pro­cras­ti­na­tion. Such a cul­ture encour­ages indi­vid­u­als and teams to view tasks and chal­lenges not as sources of stress and con­fu­sion but as oppor­tu­ni­ties for empir­i­cal exper­i­men­ta­tion and there­fore learn­ing and growth.

Prac­ti­cal strate­gies to build such a cul­ture and to com­bat pro­cras­ti­na­tion include:

1. Refram­ing: A pow­er­ful tech­nique bor­rowed from cog­ni­tive behav­ioral ther­a­py, refram­ing involves chang­ing our per­spec­tive about any giv­en task. For instance, instead of aim­ing for per­fec­tion, we can choose to focus on mak­ing some progress on a dif­fi­cult task and there­fore learn­ing “on the job” from the process, with our col­leagues. This shift, this refram­ing from “per­fect out­come” to “shared exper­i­ment” can reduce pres­sure and emotional/ cog­ni­tive over­load and make it eas­i­er to just “get it done.”
2. Mind­ful­ness and Med­i­ta­tion: These prac­tices help improve focus and reduce emotional/ cog­ni­tive over­load, ensur­ing a clear­er men­tal state for approach­ing chal­leng­ing tasks and goals.
3. Phys­i­cal Exer­cise: Engag­ing in reg­u­lar aer­o­bic exer­cise can boost ener­gy lev­els and inter­est and learn­ing capa­bil­i­ty, mak­ing it eas­i­er to tack­le dif­fi­cult tasks.

One relat­ed aspect. Per­fec­tion­ism often con­tributes to pro­cras­ti­na­tion, as lead­ers and con­trib­u­tors at all lev­els fear not achiev­ing per­fect results. By refram­ing chal­lenges as oppor­tu­ni­ties to make progress and to learn, rather than to prove per­fec­tion, we can “break free” from coun­ter­pro­duc­tive thought pat­terns. We can and should encour­age a mind­set of con­tin­u­ous improve­ment and on-the-job learn­ing rather than one of stag­na­tion due to fear of imper­fec­tion. We can and should view each human brain as a crit­i­cal orga­ni­za­tion­al asset capa­ble of learn­ing and har­ness­ing its life­long neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty to improve itself via experience.

This leads to anoth­er cru­cial top­ic: Brain Health.

If the human brain is such as impor­tant and improv­able asset, boost­ing life­long brain health can and will sig­nif­i­cant­ly enhance over­all well-being, pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, inno­va­tion, and growth. When con­sid­er­ing ways to boost brain health, as we saw above, Phys­i­cal Exer­cise, Refram­ing, Mind­ful­ness and Med­i­ta­tion and Cor­po­rate Cul­ture are cru­cial ingre­di­ents to opti­mize per­for­mance and to mit­i­gate procrastination.

Per­haps the most cru­cial tal­ent of a leader is to allo­cate indi­vid­ual and col­lec­tive atten­tion to what mat­ters most. Per­haps the abil­i­ty to pri­or­i­tize and allo­cate atten­tion to brain health and to all our brains and emerg­ing (and rein­forc­ing) minds is the foun­da­tion of strong leadership.

Let’s encour­age our teams to engage in reg­u­lar phys­i­cal exer­cise, to adopt a growth mind­set towards chal­lenges, to prac­tice med­i­ta­tion, to adopt wis­er broad­er cul­tures, to try new things as best as we can and to learn from it.

The great Span­ish neu­ro­sci­en­tist San­ti­a­go Ramon y Cajal once said, “Every man can, if he so desires, become the sculp­tor of his own brain.”

Build­ing on that, we can say that “Every group of men and women can, if they so desire, become the sculp­tors of the cor­po­rate cul­ture and prac­tices that sculpt their own brains.”

– Oseas Ramirez is the CEO of Axi­a­lent, and Alvaro Fer­nan­dez is the CEO of Sharp­Brains. now part­ner­ing to offer inno­v­a­tive Brain Health At Work solutions.

To Learn More:

• • 5 Key Insights to Empow­er Minds and Opti­mize Cul­ture in the AI era