survival. the brain evolved to anticipate certain situations and to approach the situation in an appropriate way. subsequently, the adapted brains ability to adjust and adapt to different contexts in rapid manner and within a short timeframe allowed certain animals to have an advantage over others. a study from 2014, conducted by wasserman and brzykcy, showed further evidence that precrastination can be explained by evolution. the findings indicated that pigeons precrastinated. as the evolutionary ancestors of pigeons and humans went separate ways 300 billion years ago, it supports the evolutionary theory that the tendency to precrastinate may have emerged from a common ancestor. the suggestions why common ancestors should precrastinate can be linked to survival as well. grabbing the lowest fruit from the tree, eating the grain while it is still nearby and getting food while it is still available, can be crucial for survival. working memory off-loading perspective an alternative explanation for precrastination is related to decreasing the load on one's working memory. when a task is done immediately, it can be mentally checked off and does not need to be stored in one's working memory anymore. in contrast, when waiting to do a task the task related information needs to be continuously remembered which can be taxing for one's working memory. working memory is defined as the active manipulation and maintenance of short-term memory. in contrast to long-term memory, it has a limited capacity of about five to nine units and is readily accessible. in accordance to the limited capacity, dr. rosenbaum hypothesised that in order to off-load items stored within the working memory, people will try and complete certain tasks, even if this is at the expense of more physical effort. further evidence for this perspective is shown in an experiment done by lisa fournier and co-authors in 2018. a similar task to the bucket experiments was given to participants, however, half of the participants were given extra mental load to maintain while completing the task. this extra mental load was in the form of remembering a list of numbers that they had to recall after the task was completed. recalling the list of numbers specifically targeted increasing the mental load of the working memory of the participants. dr. fournier found that the participants with the extra mental load were ninety percent more likely to precrastinate during the task. it shows that people tend to structure their behaviour in ways that decrease personal cognitive effort, which supports the idea of a trade-off between physical effort and cognitive load. in order to reduce the cognitive load, people are willing to put in extra physical effort. this suboptimal behaviour is found within the bucket experiments. individuals often chose to carry the closest bucket first, despite the fact that such action results in an increased physical effort requirement for competition of the task. one critique to this theory is that lifting a bucket does not tax the working memory that much, so it is not clear if this is the only thing that is contributing to precrastination. clear hypothesis the working memory off-loading perspective was expanded on by the cognitive-load-reduction (clear) hypothesis created by rachel vonderhaar and coauthors in 2019. this hypothesis is aimed at explaining how the completion of tasks is ordered mentally. according to the clear hypothesis there is a strong drive to reduce the cognitive load, therefore tasks that are most efficient in doing so will be prioritized. this hypothesis takes a broader view at the cognitive load of a task and suggests that people will do what they can to free up cognitive resources. the study by vonderhaar et al. in 2019 specifically showed that when given the choice in what order to perform two different tasks, one being a physical task and the other being a cognitive task, participants were more likely to choose to undertake the cognitive task before the physical one. the clear hypothesis includes off-loading working memory as well as freeing up other cognitive resources such as attention. this is illustrated by a study conducted by raghunath et al. about precrastination and attention. the set up was similar to that of the bucket experiment, but then with half-full or full cups of water. this cup experiment showed that precrastination is dependent on the cognitive demands of the tasks. when the full cup of water was placed earlier and the half-cup later on, precrastination decreased as the full cup required more attention. this showed that when an earlier task requires more attention than a later one, the prevalence of precrastination decreases. the same was not seen when the weight of the buckets were adjusted. while precrastinating would increase the physical effort even more, participants still choose to do so. people who always precrastinated in the cup experiment even when the cognitive load was higher, mentioned that they did so out of habit. reward perspective a simpler perspective is related to the rewards associated with completing a task. the reward center in the brain is activated when a task is completed that required less effort. the perspective suggests that individuals will perform tasks earlier as it is rewarded in the brain. tasks that are completed earlier are more attractive, as this results in an instant reward. however, when a task requires a delay, this also delays the reward. consequences as of 2022, not a lot is known about the positive and negative effects of precrastination. a possible positive effect that we derive from precrastinating is that we may relieve our working memory by getting a task done as soon as possible, thus making cognitive space for more important decisions. another positive consequence may be that we are able to gain a lot of information as quickly as possible about the costs and benefits of task-related behaviors. completing a task right away also enables us to feel an instant sense of accomplishment. however, precrastination can also lead to negative consequences due to behaving in an overall less efficient or irrational way. making a rushed decision can also lead to completing a task incorrectly. correlates precrastination has been associated with different character traits. impulsivity was expected to be among them because it has been evidenced to be a strong correlate of the contrary concept of procrastination. results provided by the research of sauerberger et al. showed that this trait might be unrelated to precrastination. in his published dissertation, further correlates were listed that have been found throughout studies of his research team. a negative correlation has been established between the trait of clumsiness and precrastination. three of the big five personality traits have been investigated in more detail– conscientiousness, neuroticism and agreeableness. conscientiousness, neuroticism and agreeableness conscientiousness has been shown to be positively associated with precrastination. organization, responsibility, and productiveness are characteristics of it according to the big five inventory. ego resilience, which resembles conscientiousness in many aspects, is also positively correlated to precrastination. another trait is neuroticism for which the results showed no significant correlation. depression, which is one of its features in the big five inventory next to anxiety and emotionality, has the strongest correlation with precrastination. sauerberger stated that no observable correlation with neuroticism might be due to other factors, such as the participants awareness of none consequence following their action and no feeling of uncertainty involved in the experiments as seen in real life situations. he commented that there might be a correlation. a correlation with agreeableness has been proven. the relationship might be either positive or negative depending on the context, example giving precrastinaters exhibit less prosocial behaviour on planes but increased prosocial behaviour on the freeway. according to the big five inventory, the main facets of this trait are compassion, respect and trust.