Pre-crastinators Don’t Mind Working Hard to Finish Off Tasks Before Time: Study

Those who pre-crastinate, go to any length to complete their work before time, according to a study.

Procrastination is a common phenomenon of deferring important tasks and decisions in humans. A past research suggests procrastination is an evolutionary trait that is genetically passed on to us. In a recent study, experts postulate people who pre-crastinate or do things before-hand readily undergo any amount of physical and mental exertion to get over the burden of unfinished tasks. They conducted experiments on college students by giving tasks that required more physical effort to complete.

The participants were required to undertake various similar tasks where they had to pick up buckets down an alley, the buckets were put at different positions along the alley. The participants were asked to pick up any one bucket and carry it till the end of the alley.

The participants were allowed to pick up the left-sided bucket with their left hand and the right side one with the right one. For the first three times, they carried the bucket closest to them even if it meant a longer trek

It was found that even though carrying a bucket placed at the beginning of the alley meant more distance to cover, the students mostly chose to do it  to "get the task done as soon as they could." The authors explained while the participants picked up the nearest bucket, they would mentally go through the list of things that were pending and feel relaxed for tasks they finished. In order to relieve themselves of the burden of unfinished work, the students did not mind putting in extra physical effort proving that they were all pre-crastinators.

"The desire to relieve the stress of maintaining that information in working memory can cause us to over-exert ourselves physically or take extra risks. Our findings indicate that while our participants did care about physical effort, they also cared a lot about mental effort," said David Rosenbaum, study author and researcher from the Pennsylvania State University in a news release.

 "They wanted to complete one of the subordinate tasks they had to do, picking up the bucket, in order to finish the entire task of getting the bucket to the drop-off site."

However, the authors believe physical abilities and memory skills also influence the decision to pre-crastinate.

"If it's a big deal for someone to carry a load a long distance, then he or she may be more judicious in their decision-making," Rosenbaum adds.

 "Elderly or frail people may therefore have better memory management abilities than more able-bodied individuals."

More information is available online in the journal Psychological Science.