“Just 5 More Minutes”: The Procrastination Doom Loop
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“Just 5 More Minutes”: The Procrastination Doom Loop
Bhakti Rupika Anand
We’ve all been there – the constant struggle to pry yourself away from the warm embrace of your bed, or to pull your attention away from an engaging activity with the timeless phrase:” Just five more minutes!” But what is it about those precious five minutes that makes them so hard to give up? Let’s dive into the phenomenon of procrastination and explore why we long for those extra moments.
The allure of the snooze button is all but resistible. Whether it be the quite literal one or the metaphorical one, where you look at your nearest watch and decide you’ve got some more time, it is rather difficult to not give in and squeeze in some extra minutes. This urge is an in-built feature of humans: even our brains trick us into believing we have more time than we actually do. The “Instant Gratification Monkey”(coined by Tim Urban in his Ted Talk) craves comfort over long-term goals and as soon as it takes over the steering wheel of our brains, the balance leans towards the more easy and fun activities.
While five minutes seem inconsequential, it kickstarts the domino effect of delays. These small delays accumulate overtime, cascading into larger consequences, affecting work, relationships and personal goals. This initiates a doom loop:
Delays → Stress and Anxiety → Panic → Sub-par Completion of Tasks → Rest → Repeat
We all procrastinate, some of us more frequently than others. Whether it be the fear of the result, lack of motivation, perfectionism or if you just want to scroll insta for a little longer, a little panic sets us off this yellow-brick road leading to doom. Us pro- procrastinators are familiar with the panic that settles in when a deadline comes too close: the one that sends us into overdrive making us do our work in record time. What if there isn’t a deadline? The cycle remains the same. Regret takes the place of panic, the regret of never even starting a project, relationship or setting a goal. This “just 5 more minutes” syndrome not only stresses you out short-term but makes you sabotage yourself long-term. The simple choice of staying in bed for five minutes is an opportunity that could’ve been chased. Thus, to snooze or not to snooze, that is the question.
However much these few extra minutes make our inner “Instant Gratification Monkey” happy, it’s quite obvious that it doesn’t make us feel comfortable later. Though scrolling with anxiety is a mood during finals week, the all-nighter only ends up getting your marks deducted for the silliest of mistakes. The 5 minutes can be better spent doing than snoozing, but how do we get out of this cycle? Being a certified procrastinator myself, it is not easy. Maybe you’re not feeling it. Maybe the drama in the group chat is more interesting than solving the statistics assignment in front of you. The excuses are endless when you just see hours of boredom ahead. The solution is 5 minutes: just give it 5 minutes. Start working on that essay that’s been cached away somewhere in your laptop. If it still feels like you’ll die of boredom, leave it. More often than not, you’ll find it doable.
We create our own hurdles and also create diversions to not have to cross them. Pushing all problems to the side doesn’t make them go away but makes them grow. Set small goals, treat yourself when you achieve them. Set your own deadlines and hold yourself accountable, if you can’t get someone to hold you to it. Identify your reasons to procrastinate and eliminate the distractions. Last but not the least, Nike has said it best: Just Do It.
That being said, the plea for “5 more minutes” should not always be classified as an act of procrastination. Rather than viewing it as a character flaw, we should be able to recognize when our bodies and minds genuinely need a break. Striking a balance between self-care and responsibilities is key. This will allow us to make the most of our time, fostering a sense of fulfillment and accomplishment in our daily lives.
At the end of the day, each of us has the same 24 hours. Although avoidance might give us some temporary relief, procrastination has the potential to derail many aspects of our lives. And since we’ve all got limited time to achieve our dreams, why not start now? Well not now now of course 😉