Are you procrastinating more? Blame the pandemic.
We know putting things off is bad for us. But an evolutionary battle in our brains can drive us to procrastinate—and lockdowns are adding fuel to the fire.
Are you staying up too late to squeeze in some leisure activities after a long day, leaving you tired and behind the next day? Are you cleaning the bathroom instead of responding to work emails? Odds are you aren’t alone. COVID-19 has spawned a global mental health crisis, and that’s feeding one of our more harmful human tendencies: procrastination.
People don’t necessarily procrastinate because they are lazy. Procrastination has roots in our evolutionary development, with two key parts of the brain vying for control.
“Procrastination is an emotion-focused coping strategy,” says Tim Pychyl, a psychology professor at Carleton University in Ottawa, Ontario, and author of Solving the Procrastination Puzzle. “It is not a time-management
