The Neuromythography of Procrastination

I finally got around to posting about a study in Nature about procrastination:

A neuro-computational account of procrastination behavior - Nature Communications

Most humans procrastinate to some extent, despite adverse consequences. Here, the authors show that how much an individual procrastinates, both in the lab and at home, relates to brain signals that reflect temporal discounting of effort cost.

NatureRaphaël Le Bouc

The study yielded a set of activations related to discounted reward, discounted effort, discounted punishment, and a conjunction of reward and effort in 8BM.

Dharma, beliefs) and 23c (Ananke, the Greek goddess of necessity). This suggests the need to subdivide of the concept of reward "utility" into value and necessity.

Discounted effort engaged AVI (Manisikara, the Buddhist concept of concentration upon an internal or external object) and 8BM ((right) Diogenes, the Greek warrior who went his own way / ( left) Aedos, the Greek goddess of modesty and respect).

The conjunction of reward and effort was found in 8BM. 8BM more generally is associated with individuality and free will, which is why we placed Diogenes here to symbolize it. The finding here suggests that procrastination is the self rebelling against doing something being imposed upon it from the outside. 8BM has a stubborn side.

The debate over the existence of free will is one of the least interesting arguments in philosophy. Most neuroscience investigations of free will result in either 8BM (Diomedes) or 23c (Ananke) being fingered as the center of conscious volition.

It is therefore instructive to interpret procrastination as the center of one's free will rebelling against an external imposition or demand. Might want to question why you are in this position, and whether you should explain to yourself why you should be doing it or decide not to do it at all.