BizSugar.com › Self-Development › Improving Employee Procrastination: Can Science Help?

Scientific studies have indicated that procrastination seems to be a conflict between two parts of the brain: the fun loving limbic system and the sensible prefrontal cortex. In a choice of after work activities, kicking back with a beer and TV usually wins out over going to the gym. Or you get on the computer to work on the budget, but think, “Hmm, I’ll just check my twitter account.”
“We all do it; it’s part of our nature,” Piers Steel, a psychologist at the University of Calgary and a leading researcher in procrastination, says in an article in Discover Magazine. “You never want the same cues for play and for work,” because when it comes to a choice, work will lose almost every time. Steel also adds, “Sometimes just a minute or two delay of the temptation makes you far more likely to make a rational choice.” He’s designing programs that put in a delay of 20 seconds before accessing such distractions as email or Twitter.