I ran out of "procrastination time" to finish my diagrams about some of my thoughts about the reasons we may procrastinate and how it impacts our ability to retain information, our sense of time, and our inclination to learn.
So I came here to procrastinate for a slightly longer period of time by posting these diagrams to see if anyone has any thoughts on the matter?
Essentially, I'm thinking that our perspective of how "long" a set amount of time is (like two hours) is affected by our assessment of how much risk of discomfort the activity represents...I believe we develop this risk assessment based on a neurological circuit that responds to lack of stimuli by engaging the same systems in the brain that are responsible for committing experiential memories, such as incidences of danger. By looking at some common traits that everyday experiences share in the sensory, physical, and intellectual areas, we can identify a theme whereby there are essentially two categories of "basic needs" that we have, and activities which satisfy those needs are most likely to be deemed satisfying and interesting, and the least likely to generate a sense of avoidance. The basic needs would be our need for psychoactive stimuli, and our need for physical freedom, essentially. When these needs are violated, our brain commits the violation to memory and we develop a sense of avoidance.
I hope I'm making sense here!
Anyways...all of this, I think, is somewhat straight-forward - but here, I'll take a bit of a leap. The circuitry responsible for handling emotions and committing to memory emotion-based experiences is fairly primitive, right? It involves structures such as the hippocampus, the amygdala, etc. The reptilian brain.
Well...boredom is a complex human emotion. Animals get bored, in a fashion, but they do not seem to establish the same sense of dread that humans establish when considering an activity associated with boredom. (I might be mistaken about that, though)...Either way, I think that the root emotion associated with boredom is actually fear.
We're afraid of taking a risk to commit our time to a task that violates our two basic needs of psycho stimulation, and physical freedom (to maintain homeostasis). We're afraid to go to work, because we're afraid we might not like it. Or else, we're afraid to sit through class, because we're afraid we may be bored. Although it is not a degree of fear that should trigger a physiological response in the way that a dangerous trigger would, it is enough fear to stimulate avoidance.
Here's another great example - the fear of getting up in the morning. Fearing that you will be tired. Fearing that the state of tiredness will violate your homeostasis.
Anyways, I thought that this fear-based task avoidance distorts our perception of time. Two hours sitting in church (or in a college class) seems immeasurably longer than two hours playing a video game.
When we DO trigger the "boredom state" in the brain, whereby the brain uses additional energy to stimulate other brain areas to compensate for the deficit - we decrease our ability to retain information. With each iteration of the boredom brain state, we have a tendency to revert to this state faster and faster when we subsequently revisit the task/obligation, which has a negative impact on our ability to learn.
I'm sorry - I need to spend more time fleshing out this idea...but for now, I must get back to work! I'm just going to post these drawings now...and see if anyone has any thoughts on the subject.
Any ideas on how we can reprogram the mind to have a more realistic appreciation for time durations in the face of fear-based procrastination?
