The Good Side of Procrastination

When we talk about procrastination it is often treated as a universally bad thing. That may be the case when something is important to do and there is a deadline approaching which may be missed if not done expeditiously.

However, simply putting off a task is not really a bad thing First, you can’t do everything that is crying out to be done in a day. We have multi-faceted lives. We have jobs, businesses, social commitments, family responsibilities, charitable or religious duties. You can’t do everything, every day. Sometimes the wisest thing to do is put off until tomorrow what you could do today.

So, how do we not use this as an excuse for toxic procrastination?

I teach time management. One of the “secrets” I teach is creative procrastination. Let’s look at a few principles of creative procrastination.

SET PRIORITIES

This is number one with a bullet. (My old radio training is showing.)

Too often we treat every task as if it were equal to every other task. When I was teaching, I had 10 point assignments, 50 point, and 100 point ones. I was amazed at how many students obsessed more about the 10 point ones than over those worth 5 or 10 times as much.

I told them spend 1/10 of the time on a ten point assignment as you would on a 100 point paper.

Business consultants often point to the 80/20 rule. The idea is that businesses tend to spend eighty percent of their time on what produces 20 percent of their income and vice versa.

I heard one consultant say he sat in on a meeting where the board of directors spent twenty minutes discussing the purchase of a multi-million dollar factory and two hours discussing what color to paint the executive washrooms.

I remember sitting in on a department meeting at the college where they were arguing over who would take a post that would only last six weeks and was largely ceremonial for two hours. It wasn’t important at all, but the confirmation had to be done that day.

My Mom who had been a pastor before marrying my father used to say when I was arguing with her over some tiny controversial bit of theology, “Don’t major in minors.”

Some things can be put off simply because they are not that important.

DON’T FALL FOR THE TYRANNY OF THE URGENT

I wish I could take credit for that phrase, but it’s been around for decades. It means that just because something “must” be done today or not at all, doesn’t mean it has to be done.

Ask yourself, what would happen if I didn’t do this? Is it really important or just urgent.

POSTPONE DEFINITELY

I have four levels of priority

• Important and Urgent

• Important but Not Urgent

• Not Important and Urgent

• Not Important and Not Urgent

That’s the order in which I plan what I’m going to do things.

Only the first category is prone to toxic procrastination. If I put it off, there are serious consequences.

The rest can be postponed definitely, and in some cases indefinitely, or not done at all.

POSTPONE DEFINITELY

One of the critical elements of creative procrastination is not just say, “I’ll do it later,” but to set a specific time to work on it. Put it in your appointment calendar, or do like me and say “Alexa, Set a reminder to Tuesday at one pm to ______.”

This way the things you postpone, still get done. They are just rescheduled.

PLAN YOUR WORK AND WORK YOUR PLAN

Another oldie but a goodie. If you have a plan written down, even if it is just recorded in ones and zeros on an electronic device, you can mindfully postpone things without just indefinitely putting them off.

SAY “NO”

This is my problem. I tend to take on too many tasks. Lots of people ask for help, and I help them. That’s a good thing, but if I don’t say “no” then I won’t be able to help any of them because I’m trying to help all of them.

Schedule them in later but only after determining whether or not you will have the time to work on their projects.

SET REALISTIC GOALS

I work with a lot of writers on time management. They work at home, have families, day jobs or writing-related gigs, marketing, hobbies, church or charitable work, friends, and other obligations. Yet they never take into consideration the time spent on those other high-priority activities when setting writing goals.

I teach reality-based planning. You start by figuring out how much time is fixed in stone – day job, soccer practice, holidays, weddings, anniversaries, birthdays, etc. Then you find the low-priority or uncommitted times and create goals appropriate to the time you actually have available.

Sometimes we procrastinate simply because we have more things planned that no human being could possibly handle in a 24 hour day.

BREAK BIG TASKS INTO SMALL CHUNKS

The old joke goes “How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.” My mom put it even more graphically. “You can feed a person a loaf of bread one slice at a time,” she said. “But if you try to push the whole loaf down his throat, he will choke.”

Too often when we give ourselves tasks, we just see the loaf and not the slices. When I set forth on a new task, especially if I have not done it often, I break it down into steps and then create a schedule for the project. I may not assign specific days to each subtask because I have health issues but I assume that I will lose one day every two weeks to some sort of health related exhaustion. On those days, I might do one of the smaller tasks that don’t require a lot of brain power.

Sometimes we procrastinate because the job seems overwhelming. I write novels. I have more than once written a 50-75,000 word first draft in a month. I did it by writing in 15 minute segments each day. I didn’t think about writing 50K words. I just thought about writing 1600 words a day something I could do in five 15 minute sections. Writing for fifteen minutes sounds much more doable than writing thousands of words.

When I was younger and healthier, I used to participate in marathons. I walked, but it was still 26.2 miles. I did it to raise fund for Leukemia research. A coach told me, “Don’t think about walking 26.2 miles, Just think about reaching the first mile marker then the next. That’s how you get to the goal.”

So, to recap procrastination can work for you, if you do it mindfully and follow the principles outlined above.