Wednesday, January 27, 2010

The Procrastinator

Do you tend to leave things to the last minute? Wasting loads of excess time idling and then blazing through a task at the last possible second? Well it turns out there is a reason for this and the answer is in your brain.

According to a research conducted by a US research group using video games, it was found that certain players took to playing better. The reason it was found was that certain parts of their brain were larger, namely a part connected with rewards.

A long story short, people who have a larger part of their brain connected with the reward mechanism are prone to wanting immediate gratification rather than long term rewards. So tasks such as studying or exercising where the benefit is not immediate tend to be forgone in exchange for those that bring immediate rewards.

So it's not your fault really that you wait till the last second, it's just that when the deadline is near you know the end goal and work accordingly. However the same research goes on to say that you can overcome this though. No excuse for an easy way out sadly.

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