Washington Post: A study shows that there are two ways that may help in tackling procrastination — setting reminders and envisioning your future self. Why do people procrastinate? A 2022 study in the journal Nature Communications suggests that a root of procrastination may lie in a cognitive bias — we believe that doing tasks will somehow be easier in the future. “You know it’s going to stink in the future just as much as it’s going to stink doing it now, but internally you just can’t help yourself,” said Samuel McClure, professor of psychology and cognitive neuroscientist at Arizona State University. “It’s a fascinating phenomenon — that myopia you can’t escape — even though if you just stop and think about it, it’s ludicrous.” There is individual variation, but “procrastination is a tendency that we all encounter in our life in different domains, or at different time points in our lives,” said Raphaël Le Bouc, a neurologist at the Paris Brain Institute and author of the study. “But the true cognitive mechanisms behind it are not really known. And this might be a reason why it’s difficult to overcome this tendency.”