Do you ever catch yourself putting off important tasks by watching TV, endlessly scrolling through your phone, or incessantly tidying up your room? Even though you know you should be working on that looming deadline or getting to that chore, it feels too daunting, boring, or overwhelming, so you push it aside. Procrastination often creeps up on us—when we’re faced with a challenging situation, we turn, instead, to comfort.
Procrastination is the brain’s way of seeking immediate pleasure or relief to escape from doing something that requires more effort than we’re willing to give in that moment. When you choose a distraction over a daunting task, your brain releases small dopamine hits, rewarding you with immediate pleasure. If this pattern starts to become a habit, distractions become more and more appealing, making it harder to focus on tasks that require more deliberate effort.
If we want to stop procrastinating and bending to instant gratification distractions, we have to first understand what’s happening in our brains to reinforce this behavior. Hint: it’s connected to the brain’s reward system—and there are science-backed ways to tap into that system to use it to your advantage the next time you're faced with the temptation to procrastinate. Let’s dive in.
How to Use Dopamine To Combat Procrastination
Dopamine is a key player in the brain’s reward system that helps to fuel our motivation, especially when we accomplish something that takes effort.¹⁻² Let’s use running as an example of how dopamine works in the brain’s reward system. When you finish a run, whether it’s your typical run or your longest one yet, your body releases dopamine, giving you a sense of reward and satisfaction. This feeling, often heightened by a release of endorphins and serotonin, can feel almost intoxicating. The sense of reward is tied to the effort put in—meaning the harder the run, the bigger the reward, and the more motivated you’ll feel to get back to that starting line again. This dopamine release strengthens the association between the action and the reward, making you more likely to repeat the behavior.
Aside from forming healthy habits around food, movement, and sleep, you can learn how to leverage your brain’s dopamine system and tap into its reward mechanisms to reduce the urge to procrastinate.³⁻⁴ How, you ask?
Try Reward Forecasting
Promising yourself a reward for completing a tedious report that you’ve been avoiding can make you feel more motivated to get it done. But keep in mind: studies show the reward should meet or exceed your expectations, or you might actually feel less motivated to complete a similar task the next time.⁵ Let’s say you’re planning on treating yourself by ordering from your favorite lunch spot—only to find out that the food is cold. Because the reward didn’t live up to your expectations, the amount of dopamine release may be lower, making it harder to stay motivated the next time you need to complete a similar task.
Set Micro-Goals
We’ve all been there. We set a big, lofty goal that actually leaves us feeling less motivated as the days pass by.⁶ Here’s why: the sheer size of the task is making you procrastinate. So, the next time you need to work on a big presentation, try breaking it down into many different micro-goals. With each small task accomplished you get another release of dopamine, increasing your motivation for the next step. Micro-goals help reduce the overwhelm that leads to procrastination, and by playing to your brain’s reward center, you can use it in your favor.
Create Positive Feedback Loop
Repetition strengthens brain pathways that make a behavior feel more natural over time. This process is referred to as a habit loop —cue, routine, and reward—which creates an automatic response in the brain, making tasks feel easier and more enjoyable. Here’s an example: Every morning, you make yourself a cup of coffee at 8 a.m. (cue), spend 10 minutes journaling (routine), and feel a sense of gratitude as you start the day (reward). Each time you repeat this habit loop, the brain strengthens the connection and creates a positive feedback loop, releasing dopamine as it associates the routine with the positive outcome of your morning ritual.⁷
The Big Takeaway?
Once you understand how dopamine works in your brain, you can use these tools to your advantage. By creating micro-goals, rewarding yourself for completing tasks and creating positive feedback loops, it’s possible to strengthen brain pathways to achieve more by procrastinating less. The more you understand, the more you will be equipped to feel a sense of agency over your actions.
Sources
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Bromberg-Martin, E. S., Matsumoto, M., & Hikosaka, O. (2010). Dopamine in motivational control: rewarding, aversive, and alerting. Neuron, 68(5), 815–834. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2010.11.022
Kühn, S., Düzel, S., Colzato, L., Norman, K., Gallinat, J., Brandmaier, A. M., Lindenberger, U., & Widaman, K. F. (2019). Food for thought: association between dietary tyrosine and cognitive performance in younger and older adults. Psychological research, 83(6), 1097–1106. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-017-0957-4
Marques, A., Marconcin, P., Werneck, A. O., Ferrari, G., Gouveia, É. R., Kliegel, M., Peralta, M., & Ihle, A. (2021). Bidirectional Association between Physical Activity and Dopamine Across Adulthood-A Systematic Review. Brain sciences, 11(7), 829. https://doi.org/10.3390/brainsci11070829
Schultz W. (2016). Dopamine reward prediction error coding. Dialogues in clinical neuroscience, 18(1), 23–32. https://doi.org/10.31887/DCNS.2016.18.1/wschultz
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Glimcher, P. W. (2011). Understanding dopamine and reinforcement learning: The dopamine reward prediction error hypothesis. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 108(Suppl. 3), 15647-15654. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1014269108
