A Taoist Approach to Procrastination

It’s 10 AM on the Sunday before my chemistry midterm. I collected my class notes and found a comfy spot at the campus library where I planned to spend the next ten straight hours studying. I had sat down for five minutes when… Buzz buzz, buzz buzz. My phone vibrated. I checked it and saw a text message from a friend whom I haven’t seen in a while. She wants to grab coffee off campus, and I’d hate to be rude. I collected my books and caught a bus to go meet her. Now it’s 1 PM. I returned to the library, found another spot, and reopened all of my books. Twenty minutes passed by. My mind began to wander away from studying. Has that TA emailed me back yet? I unlocked my phone and scrolled through my emails. Then I opened Facebook and scrolled through my news feed. Then I opened YouTube and watched four, five, six, seven videos. I looked at the time on my phone. It’s 8 PM! I’ve procrastinated away what was supposed to be my study day, and my chemistry midterm was tomorrow morning.

Sound like a familiar story?

Procrastination is something that nearly all students are familiar with. Many of us do it without even realizing it. When dealing with the various stressors of school and extracurriculars, it can be a way for us to “just get away from it all.” Sometimes my friends and I would even facetiously use it as a badge of honor, competing for the title of Longest Procrastinator as a way to temporarily ignore the grim outlook of our course grades. It was clear that this was not a healthy way to deal with the stresses of school. Yet why did we keep voluntarily shooting ourselves in the foot by procrastinating on our studies? Perhaps it had to do with the way we thought about studying.

Most of us can agree that studying isn’t exactly fun. We see it as a chore, something we just have to get through before we can do things that are more enjoyable. Unfortunately, sometimes we choose to do the more enjoyable things first instead of studying like we should. This is how we procrastinate. We tap into our most innate urges leading us to do what is more desirable in the moment. In this sense, we become almost childlike in our decision-making. Our minds dwell primarily on the short-term while neglecting to see the implications for the long-term. How can we fix this? There are methods out there that attempt to make studying more bearable. One that I often use is the Pomodoro technique which breaks down study or work time into shorter, more palatable chunks. However, despite my best intentions I still found myself procrastinating even while knowing that I was placing myself at a disadvantage. I still thought of studying and homework as a chore. I wondered if there was a way to change this perception, to change the way I looked at studying. Interestingly enough, I found a possible solution in Eastern philosophy.

In Taoism, there is a concept known as wu wei. It quite literally translates into “without action” or “non-action.” It advocates for the performing of actions in a seemingly effortless way that is harmonious with the natural order of the universe, while advising against struggling against this natural order. It is often reworded into the phrase “doing not doing,” which, unfortunately, sounds like just another annoyingly paradoxical proverb some mystical sage like Yoda or Mr. Miyagi would say. However, the applicability of wu wei can easily be seen in our daily lives. Think about how you learned to ride a bike. When you first began, you had to consciously think about every movement you made while struggling to balance on those two wheels. Yet now when you ride a bike you can do it almost reflexively and without much thought at all. It has become automatic to you, like how your autonomic nervous system controls the beating of your heart. Professional athletes take a similar approach to their sports. A star NBA player no longer thinks about every minute body movement he makes when shooting a 3-pointer. He has drilled this action enough times to where he can make a nearly flawless completion percentage without much conscious thought. He gives autonomy to his body to execute the motions stored in his muscle memory needed to make a basket with minimal active guidance from him. In essence, he does without actually doing.

The implications this has had on my study and work habits are profound. I started thinking of studying as a repetitive activity, like shooting 3-pointers or riding a bike. With enough repetition, practice makes perfect. Science has shown us that when we place ourselves in the same environment every time we perform a task, our brains become primed to focus almost exclusively on the task at hand. For example, we can sit in the same desk or chair every time we go to study, listen to the same music, chew the same flavor of gum. We can even lay our books out in the same arrangement on the desk. If we can give our brains a consistent environmental cue to let it know that it is time to be productive, we may be more likely to follow through with our obligations and avoid procrastination. I started to apply this practice to improve my studying techniques.

In college, I was rarely able to sit down for more than 3-4 hours during a day to study, even on a weekend. Now that I am out of college and well into studying for the MCAT, I sit in the same spot next to a window with the same view, and I listen to the same Spotify playlist. These changes may not have been drastic, but they have helped me realize dramatic results in my studying stamina. My maximum study time has gone from 3-4 hours to 8-10 hours! I feel more focused while studying, and almost never feel the urge to check my phone during allocated study time. For me, placing myself in the exact same study environment was all it took to get me into “the zone.” Plugging myself into my study environment has an almost therapeutic effect as well. I find that once my mind is triggered by the same view out the window and the familiar sounds of my music playlist, my mind gravitates towards thinking about studying. The act of studying no longer feels like a chore once I achieve my focused state of mind. At last, I had found my answer to procrastination.

It may be rather unconventional to think of studying in the context of sports, and perhaps even more unconventional to tie it to Taoist philosophy. However, it does have the potential to give us a much-needed tool to counter our tendency to procrastinate. As future doctors-in-training, we will not be seeing the end of studying anytime soon. Yet the burden of studying may be alleviated if we start tackling it by “doing not doing.”