Why shouldn't we procrastinate?

Answer 1

Procrastination gives people illusionary benefits. Let's say you were supposed to finish a report and submit on Friday morning. However, you procrastinated on it from Mon-Wed and only pulled an all-nighter on Thursday to finish it. In the end, you managed to finish the report in time.

So what has happened?

1. Leaving it to the last minute creates a high sense of urgency which appears to boost your productivity, giving you a higher value on time spent working.
2. You experience short-term gratification from not having to deal with the report on Mon-Wed.
3. Procrastinating didn't jeopardize anything in reality.

Yet, if you look at it holistically, procrastination has created downsides which may not be immediately noticeable:

1. Your time in Mon-Wed was not effectively spent. Ideally, you would want to spend your time in proportion to how important the task is. The more important a task, the more time you want to allocate to it to maximize the output on the task. Spending more time on less important work doesn't give you significantly increased value, compared to spending more time on more important work.
2. Unnecessary anguish and anxiety experienced (whether subconsciously or consciously) trying to avoid the task. The more you prolong the task, the more unnecessary anxiety you experience, compared to if you dealt with the task head-first. In addition, the continuous avoidance leads you to form a distorted mental image of how intimidating the task is vs. what it actually is. In the end you are left with an exaggerated but baseless fear of what you're supposed to do.
3. More often than not, the final output is short of what you are really capable of, as leaving it to the last minute left you with insufficient time to properly work on it.

The 3 downsides are actually corresponding counterpoints for the 3 illusionary benefits. If you compare the list and take a holistic view, the downsides far outweigh the supposed benefits of procrastination. Not only are you being less productive, you experience unnecessary anxiety, and you deliver an output that falls short of what you can really do. Procrastination leaves you in a worse position, compared to if you didn't procrastinate.