Productive procrastination: how to become a better procrastinator
“Productive procrastination” sounds like an oxymoron – how can you possibly be busy while still putting things off?
Actually, it’s something that most of us do (many of us daily), and it can actually be beneficial. In this article, we explore how productive procrastination can be harnessed for good – as well as taking a look at potentially negative effects.
What is productive procrastination?
Productive or structured procrastination is about being busy while still avoiding the most important tasks. By carrying out secondary tasks, you continue to delay the main task while remaining productive.
For example, you have a report to hand in at the end of the week. It’s the most important thing on your work to-do list, but it’s a complex piece to pull together and let’s be honest, not the most interesting of tasks. By Friday morning, you’re up to date with all your emails, you’ve caught up with all your colleagues and you’ve even cleaned your desk. If you work from home, your bathroom is now gleaming and your kitchen cupboards enviably neat. The report document remains blank.
But, you’ve been active all week and completed lots of jobs that needed doing – so putting off the report wasn’t wrong, right? Let’s take a closer look at that theory…
Is procrastination good or bad?
We’re used to hearing “procrastinate” in negative terms; however, the productive procrastinator is hardly what we’d call lazy. They’ve powered through their to-do list and ticked lots of things off. However, it remains that the most important task has been left to the last minute (again), and while it’s great that various secondary tasks are checked off, they’ve merely been distractions.
Productive procrastination creates an illusion of achievement; however, busyness is not the same thing as productivity, and your tidy filing system means nothing when Friday afternoon arrives, report-less. You may have salved your conscience and cleared your inbox, but there’s a constant background awareness that your priorities have ended up skewed. For many of us, this creates feelings of stress and even anxiety.
This sounds like we’ve come down firmly on the side of “Productive procrastination = bad.” Not necessarily – we just need to learn to use procrastination as a tool for good.
Writer and time management expert Oliver Burkeman points out that we procrastinate all the time – we have to, because there’s no way we can complete all the important things at once. When we realise this, according to Oliver, we need to become “better procrastinators” who consciously decide what to do and what to delay.
How to become a better procrastinator
There are ways to procrastinate that actually make you more productive. While swerving report writing in favour of organising your folders is mostly about avoidance, it is possible to structure your delaying tendencies for good, while avoiding the procrastination pitfalls. Here’s how to procrastinate for genuine productivity.
- Ask yourself – why am I putting this off?
Before we look at practical ways to become perfect procrastinators, we need to start by asking why we’re putting off a certain task (or type of task). Sometimes understanding why we delay certain tasks can help us accomplish them. Maybe we don’t have enough resources to complete it. Perhaps it seems dauntingly big or beyond our skillset, or it could be simply so dull that you can’t face devoting time to it.
When you start to focus on why you’re delaying the task, you can start to find solutions. It could be as straightforward as breaking this unwieldy report into three sections and working on each one separately.
Oliver Burkeman explains that sometimes we procrastinate because we’re “not willing to confront our limitations.” We will often put off something important because we want it to be perfect, but fear that we can’t achieve this perfection. He suggests a shift in perspective that means we accept imperfection, and while he does acknowledge that this isn’t easy, when we manage to internalise this idea, it’s “incredibly freeing.” As the old saying goes, “Perfection is the enemy of progress.”
- Find your “power hour”
We all have a time of day when we’re at our productive best. Often, this is in the morning, between the first cup of coffee and the lunchtime slump, but it does vary between individuals. When you plan your time, the golden hour is the slot for your priority tasks. You’ll feel more inspired to work on important tasks when you’re at your most mentally alert, and you’ll do a better job of them, too. Don’t force yourself to work on priority tasks during your less-agile times.
- Identify and schedule your priority tasks
But what are these priority tasks? Be clear about which tasks have the most impact and the highest value. At the start of each week, allocate the golden hour slot to the highest-priority tasks and be really strict with yourself about this. We’ll look at an exercise to help you create a shortlist of projects next.
- Limit your live projects
Oliver Burkeman recommends cutting down on the number of projects you’re working on at once. Jumping between projects is simply another way to procrastinate, as he explains here:
“…if you have fifteen projects that all need progress to be made on them, it’s really tempting to try to make a little bit of progress on all of them during the same day. We like this, because it makes us feel like we’ve got a finger in every pie, we’re taking care of business, moving everything forward. In fact, what actually happens when you try to do all these tasks in parallel is that the moment you get to a difficult bit of one task, you just bounce off on to another one. And so, far from making progress on lots of projects, it’s all too easy to end up making progress on none of them.”
Prevent this by limiting the amount of projects you work on at once. Oliver suggests making this even easier to manage by having two to-do lists.
The first list is the “open list”, which details everything you have to do. This can seem impossibly long, but don’t worry about that because you also have a second list. This “closed list” has a set amount of slots (no more than five). You fill these slots with tasks from the first longer list. The rule is that you can’t add another task to the short closed list until a slot becomes free – and it only becomes free when you complete the task. As well as completing tasks, you’ll find that you’re really focusing on prioritisation, while actively deciding which tasks to complete and which to delay.
- Have “warm-up” tasks ready to go
Diving straight into a major piece of work can be daunting, so have a few “warm up” tasks scheduled first. These tasks can be as small and simple as checking your emails in the morning – anything that gets those cogs turning. This is harnessing productive procrastination for good: using those secondary tasks to mentally prepare you for the more important jobs.
- Pay yourself first
This is another of Oliver Burkeman’s wise suggestions, and it uses a financial management analogy. When we get paid or pay ourselves, we often use up a large chunk of the money immediately on essentials, leaving us with little to save, invest or actually enjoy spending. Time works in the same way as money. If we get everything out of the way first, we have very little time left for the important tasks.
This can be something like that important work report or something that matters in our personal or family lives. By Friday afternoon, we’re spent up time-wise, but you can prevent this by paying yourself first. Complete the important work projects early in the week, or go for that refreshing swim before we tackle the weekend DIY chores. That way, we won’t run out of time before we’ve accomplished the most important tasks.
- Give yourself a break
Putting off particular tasks can be a sign that you’re in need of a break. If you find yourself increasingly reaching for the low-hanging fruit, it could be that you’re simply too tired to aim higher. Procrastination can help you recognise when you need to slow down, and that sometimes taking time out is the most productive thing you can do.
Find out more about productive procrastination and other time management topics from writer Oliver Burkeman. He takes a deeper look into procrastination in his fascinating BBC Maestro course about Time Management.
