Procrastinating the Right Way: How to Become Productive by Postponing Tasks?

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

Procrastination is automatically equated with harmful psychological phenomena, associated with laziness or a waste of time. All in a voice assert that with it it is necessary to fight, and explain how to do it. But what if procrastination isn't such a bad thing, and you can even increase your productivity by properly postponing your business?

Why do we procrastinate?

Procrastination arises from the opposition of two parts of the brain. One of these is the limbic system, which includes the pleasure center. The second is the prefrontal cortex, our inner planner. So the limbic system fights for pleasure in the here and now, and the prefrontal cortex fights for what is best for us in the long run.

According to Timothy A. Pychyl, Ph. D. and author of the Procrastination Digest, the prefrontal cortex is the part of the brain that distinguishes us from animals that are governed only by reflexes and stimuli. Unfortunately, we also have weaker areas of the brain, so we have to force ourselves to do something.

On the other hand, as soon as our control subsides, the limbic system immediately allows us to abandon a difficult or uninteresting task so that we feel good.

So, procrastination is primarily associated with biology. Economist George Ainslie even called procrastination "the basic human impulse."

Fear is to blame

Entrepreneur and investor Paul Graham sees more than just procrastination in procrastination. He says people are often afraid of big projects. Big problems are terrifying, and they literally hurt the soul.

Probably, everyone has encountered this before: when you decide to take on an ambitious, large-scale project and suddenly face a huge number of small problems that arise along the way.

When a pile of urgent tasks constantly distracts you, it can be difficult to focus and start writing a great novel. Every time small problems prevent us from starting a big project, it is the limbic system that takes care of taking us away from the most unpleasant reaction of the psyche - fear.

In an article published in the New Yorker, James Surowiecki explains procrastination this way: “To protect yourself from the risk of loss and failure, you prefer to unconsciously create circumstances that make success unrealistic in principle. It is a reflex that creates a vicious circle."

Why shouldn't procrastination be treated?

There are different types of procrastination, and some of them are beneficial. In general, there are three types, depending on what you are doing instead of work:

• do nothing;
• doing something less important;
• doing something more important;

It's not hard to guess which type of procrastination is actually more beneficial for you. Instead of doing a bunch of unnecessary things, writing emails, or doing household chores, you can focus on more important work.

On the other hand, John Perry, a professor at Stanford University, wrote in the Huffington Post that there are two types of procrastination that help us increase our productivity.

The first type is associated with perfectionism. The professor argues that since most procrastinators are perfectionists who dream of perfect assignments, postponing projects can be beneficial.

If you leave the task until the last minute, you will do them adequately, without redoing them a thousand times because of nonsense in order to achieve an ideal that does not exist.

I am a perfectionist procrastinator. I'll do it perfectly, but tomorrow.

Yet procrastination can be useful to understand which tasks are not really that important … When you put them aside, they eventually disappear by themselves, and you don't have to waste time on them.

Good procrastination

If we want to use procrastination in a positive way, there are several theories on how to do it. The first is Paul Graham's idea of three kinds of procrastination, or "good" postponement.

This is when you put off unimportant tasks, such as small assignments, in order to spend time on really serious things.

Bounties are a classic form of destructive work, and procrastination helps to cope with them. There are many things that absolutely anything can do. At the same time, there are projects and affairs that only you can handle, and if you have to postpone assignments, there is nothing to worry about. On the contrary, this is the correct approach to work.

There is another good reason why leaving important work unfinished is useful for large projects. Our serious projects always require two things that cancel assignments: a lot of time and the right mood.

When we are working on a project with inspiration, it is foolish to waste time on some unimportant task just because we were told to do it. Of course, if you spend all your time on big projects, it can turn into blockages in small matters, but it may be worth doing this to get a great result.

At the end of the day, working on projects like this is really fun, so putting off small things is easy - the limbic system won't mind.

Structured procrastination

This is another kind of good shelving that John Perry suggested.

According to him, structured procrastination is a great strategy to work effectively. It's all about the same psychological fear of big and serious things.

Typically, when you are making a to-do list, the most important and difficult tasks go to the top, while the less important ones go down. When procrastination turns on, you do all the things from the bottom of the list, and do not do the most important ones.

The trick is that you can fool yourself and put difficult things at the top of the list that aren't really that important.

Robert Benchley wrote about this psychological fact back in 1930:

Anyone can do any amount of work, provided that it is not the work they should be doing at that moment.

Pierce Steele, a psychologist at the University of Calgary, argues that many procrastinators, through such self-deception, have already turned their trait into a good habit.

How to make procrastination work for you?

There are several ways you can make procrastination increase your productivity:

Start small

If a big project scares you so much that you can't tackle it, you can start small. Do the small tasks that are needed for this project, so you can painlessly move on to its implementation, stop being afraid and procrastinate.

Plus, you can collaborate with other people so that your part of the project will be smaller and there is still time for other tasks.

Customize your to-do list

Structured procrastination as proposed by John Perry may well work. Try to fool yourself by adding to the top of your list tasks that seem incredibly important and urgent, but actually tolerate and allow them to be safely postponed or not done at all.

The main thing is to believe that they are important and difficult, then you will want to complete all the other tasks on the list (in fact, important) in order to avoid your "monsters".

Set the rules

Writer and screenwriter Raymond Chandler has set two rules for himself to help him get started. Each day he sets for himself four hours to devote to work, and remembers two basic rules:

1. You can not write
2. At this time, you do nothing

Sitting just like that for four hours is terribly boring, so he became a very productive writer.

Demand more of yourself

According to John Perry, the procrastinator is constantly trying to reduce commitments, hoping that if there are fewer things to do, there will be more tasks completed.

John explains that this removes the most important cause of procrastination, but also removes the choice between important and unimportant tasks. So in the end, with few tasks on your to-do list, your procrastination will be that you don't do anything at all.

This is the path that will make you a vegetable, not an effective person.

Moral: procrastination is quite natural for a person, and it does not necessarily cause harm, the main thing is to procrastinate correctly.