Do you have problems with your motivation? You want the grades, but when it comes to putting in the hours, you sometimes feel just a bit, well, meh? You live in a state of low-level dread while deadlines edge ever closer, and yet you still can’t resist an opportunity to procrastinate.
Well, welcome to having a human brain! One problem with the human brain is that it is hardwired to be lazy, so it’s not actually your fault if you sometimes ‘can’t be bothered’. Our in-built laziness is a side-effect of our brain’s dual information-processing systems: one which is slow, effortful and hardworking, and the other which is fast and jumps to conclusions based on cognitive shortcuts. Our brain selects these shortcuts whenever possible. It is, after all, far more time- and energy-efficient to make assumptions based on prior experience. Hence, the human tendency to jump to conclusions and have our judgments clouded by bias from time to time. (This perspective comes from Daniel Kahneman’s notion of fast and slow thinking.)
Your organisation does not have access to this article.
Sign up today to give your students the edge they need to achieve their best grades with subject expertise
Subscribe