Self-Help Myths: Procrastination

June 25th 2007   Self-Help Myths   8 comments

The whole point of this Self-Help Myths series is to provide an alternative perspective on common self-help topics and one of the biggest topics in productivity circles is that of procrastination. It is the great bad habit that causes you to get distracted when you should be working and makes you rush your projects at the last minute. There is so much information out there on how to “overcome” it (even I have an article on it) that you can ironically spend much of your time researching the topic.

Most people procrastinate to some degree. We as humans struggle with forward planning, hence all the need for organizers and diaries. Cavemen didn’t worry about the future, they worked on their basic needs (food, water, shelter) as and when they needed to. Modern society is naturally a lot more complex and our basic needs are often taken for granted while we focus on other existential needs.

So essentially what does procrastination cause you to do? It causes you to defer tasks till later dates, typically those tasks that provide us with the least benefit or fulfillment at the current time. For example, going out this evening is a much more enjoyable activity, compared to staying in and doing an assignment, from which the benefit to you (handing it in and getting a good mark) will not become apparent for another week.

Let’s look at procrastination in a positive perspective and view the above example in a different light. The person may be leaving his assignment to the last minute but he will get it done (he has to work solidly for five days but that is a separate point). He spent the first week after getting the assignment partying and going out but now the urgency of the assignment is more pressing. He has essentially followed his mind’s natural approach, of which procrastination is an element of that.

You could argue that by leaving it to the last minute he has caused himself stress and anxiety, compared to an individual who started the work early and was able to take his time. However, this latter individual was also essentially working against himself, having to consciously resist immediate satisfaction and focus on working on something that would give him no pleasure for two weeks.

Take another practical usage of procrastination. The first person has to buy a book for his course so he goes straight into town and picks it up at premium price. The second person, after being told the price, puts it off for a few days. At this moment in time there is no immediate gain to him buying it (he naturally doesn’t want to spend so much money and is keen to avoid doing so) and the timescale is too long (the course doesn’t start for a week). When he finally does decide it is time to pick it up a few days later he discovers the book is on special price so he has saved money (an unexpected positive gain) and because the course starts in mere days he will able to use it straightaway.

I would be very interested in your thoughts on this topic. Do you agree that procrastination is not always the great burden it would seem to be or do you think this alternative argument is nonsense (please leave something more constructive than that though :).

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Reader discussion

Chrissy
September 6th 2007

I know this is an older post now, but I just discovered your site and can’t tear myself away! I am so happy to have discovered you! As for procrastination, my best friend is the world’s worst. She’s always late for everything but seems to barely make it at the last minute every time. I secretly keep hoping she’ll miss a flight or something just so she’ll learn her lesson. She keeps telling me that I stress out too much and if I didn’t worry about keeping everything so organized, life would be a lot simpler. I figure there has to be a happy medium - I hate procrastination but I’m inevitably the idiot who rushes to the book store and buys what they need for top dollar. My best friend always buys online and saves a ton.

James
October 1st 2007

Thanks for the comment Chrissy, you’ve summed up my points brilliantly

Sangrail
March 17th 2008

Uh, sounds like procrastination isn’t really a problem for you. It is for me.

Here’s the issue: it’s not the procrastinating on the things that don’t matter that’s the problem - it’s that what I’m usually procrastinating on is the thing I MOST need to get done. The more important, the more it seems to get… repressed from my mind.

I don’t get the assignment done - in fact, I might not start it til after it’s due! I’ll probably be late going out in the evening, because I’ll run round trying (and failing) to do the things I was supposed to do that day. I don’t procrastinate by doing the more enjoyable thing - I procrastinate by merely doing a different thing. In fact, usually mindless things that I can’t stand when I’ve got nothing to procrastinate over.

I’ll know that the book is on half-price all this week, and only to the end of this week, and the course started two weeks ago, and still fail to get down there to get it. And I have missed flights.

Sometimes I manage to stagger it by lining up the other things I could be doing, to procrastinate on instead of the thing I should be doing (oh! I’ll just tidy my room or work on that side project). Sadly, that still means the biggest and most important thing gets screwed up, and many other things seem to get taken out in it’s wake, but. Oh well.

Why? Well, if I knew that, I wouldn’t be reading articles on procrastination. And well, your article is obviously not actually so helpful for me.

But, I think you could improve for other people, with just a little change in focus - it’s an article on how to tell when you *don’t* have a problem with procrastination, and why a healthy amount might be good.

James
March 20th 2008

The intention of this article was to provide an alternative perspective on procrastination. There are so many articles out there covering how to overcome procrastination which is great if you have a big problem with it. But they all make the assumption that procrastination of any sort is bad, when that is not the case (which is the point this post is trying to make).

If you are after my own take on beating procrastination, you can read my guide.

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