Note: This article is from blogger Tyler Tervooren, who talks about how to turn procrastination into a productivity booster.
There were only two weeks left before the start of the marathon in Greece, and I had not yet got the ticket, and then I found out that there were only two days left, and yet I had not bought new sneakers, and then two hours before the flight I had not yet I packed my bag. In spite of all that, I got a ticket, did not care about the shoes, packed my things without forgetting a thing, and had a great trip.
I did this article in a similar way; I wrote it quickly and published it before the deadline; however, I think it is a good article.
Throughout life, several things seem to fall into one of two categories:
- Something that all people think is good, but is actually bad.
- Something that all people think is bad, but is actually good.
Procrastination falls into the second category. We hate procrastination, and we spend a lot of time and money learning how to get rid of the habit.
It is enough to do an Amazon search to get 1546 results, knowing that none of these results tell you anything new about procrastination. Procrastination has always been an abomination to us, and through ages of attempts we have not yet been able to overcome this habit, but what if we are squandering our efforts in the wrong direction, meaning that procrastination may be helpful, not necessarily harmful.
What you should know about the reality of procrastination?
If procrastination is so bad, why do we love it? And why does society's culture despise it, even though we, as individuals, do not think it is that bad?
Personally, I polled my Twitter friends for a tweet I wrote, “Is procrastination always bad?” The answers were plenty, and many of them defended procrastination.
It is true that Twitter and other social media platforms are tools that encourage procrastination and may not be a reliable source for unbiased answers, but at the end of the day what I have seen are answers from real people just like us.
However, if we want a more reliable source, we cannot ignore empirical studies. A Columbia University study found that students who procrastinated were more likely to feel the same amount of satisfaction, have the same motivation, and get the same amount of work done than students who did not procrastinate, which was contrary to what was expected.
How do you understand the results of this study?
The results of the study did not confirm that people who procrastinate are the same as people who do not; rather, what it concluded was that there are two different types of procrastination, active procrastination and passive procrastination, and the type of procrastination you have is responsible to a very large extent for how satisfied you feel with your life and work.
The difference between active procrastinators and passive procrastinators
The main difference between passive and active procrastinators is that active procrastinators postpone things in order to pursue other things that they deem to be equally important, but more urgent in terms of time. Whereas passive procrastinators procrastinate without prioritizing, and when they find it inevitable to go through the experience or fail they often choose failure.
This means that active procrastinators get the job done at the last minute, and passive procrastinators do not even try, they choose to fail quickly.
- At school I would hand in projects at the last minute, but I graduated with honors.
- When I wrestled, I often won in overtime.
- At my previous job, I delivered successful projects just before the deadline, and projects were always finished on the last day of the schedule.
Even now, when I am working on something I am passionate about, I tend to work on a schedule and I like to finish tasks at the end of the allotted time, and I spend my time doing things that have to be done right away, after I have done other tasks that were also time consuming, I might like this way, that kind of pressure does not bother me.
For the active procrastinator, the stress of close deadlines gives them the energy needed to make them more productive rather than less enthusiastic. Which means, the active procrastinator understands and adopts Parkinson's Law.
How does the active procrastinator benefit from Parkinson's Law?
A few years ago I got tired of my job and decided to quit; So I gave myself six months to put everything in order, and at the end of that I was going to tender my resignation, but it happened sooner than I expected; I was laid off after only two months, and I had not yet developed a fully coherent plan, and after I was laid off from work, I used to sit with myself daily for 30 days, and in the end I started my new project, and here I am after almost two years, I still feel happy and I am still continuing with my work.
Parkinson's Law states: "Work expands to fill all the time given to its completion"; This is the theory on which this law is built, and it is in the position of a guide for the positive procrastinator. If you give yourself two months to complete a project, you will complete it within this period. Likewise, if you give yourself only two weeks, you will complete it at the end of these two weeks.
That is, no matter how much time you give yourself to accomplish a task, this is the time you need to accomplish it, and the reason is that when you are given a tight time to accomplish something, your brain internalizes what you can accomplish during that time, and then adapts accordingly.
At work, for example, think about how you act when you are asked to complete a project within a month, for example. If you are not a procrastinator, you are likely to shorten some other things, and then start the project immediately. If you are a procrastinator, you are likely to put a reminder on your calendar. About a week ahead of time, you turn to other things, and then when the time comes you put in a few days of hard work until you finish the project.
This is a practical example of Parkinson's law, and it was used mainly as an attempt to explain why the British government's business expanded despite its diminishing number of colonies, but it applies just as well to everyday life.
The proactive procrastinator may realize that if they want to get something done faster, all they really need is to schedule less time to get the job done, when it comes to procrastinating on important and personal issues.
Two obstacles prevent the passive procrastinator from living a happy life
- accountability.
- Speed in completion.
Although all people know that procrastination is not necessarily a bad thing, most of them have negative feelings about it. In fact, it is not enough to know that procrastination is a good thing sometimes in order to utilize it. If you are a positive procrastinator by nature, starting and finishing work on time is not difficult for you.
The problem is that most of us are not active procrastinators; Procrastination becomes a problem when you know what you want to do, but what you want to do either cannot accept procrastination because of the huge amount of work that cannot be accomplished in a short period, or you suffer from a lack of enthusiasm, which prevents you from starting work; Solving these two problems is easy, but it is rarely implemented. Of course, the skilled procrastinator knows what we are talking about, as they possess these two tools and are good at using them, namely:
- Interim goals that indicate the amount of progress you are making.
- Deadlines, which are what require you to make progress.
We have said that these two tools are easy, because everyone knows what they are, and their use does not require much explanation, and the reason that their application is difficult is that adherence to them becomes a problem when you feel unwilling, but this problem also has a solution, which is the division of the very important task into tasks smaller and less important.
Having several milestones can make it easier to get started. There is nothing confusing when the task is easy, and once you see that you have achieved an interim goal, you will feel more confident and motivated to accomplish the next goal.
The importance of checking your progress may decrease as you go further in completing the task, especially when the task is more than half-finished, but the biggest obstacle is the deadline, as easy as it is to set it, but it is very difficult to adhere to it, and we are talking about personal tasks here. When you are trying to meet personal deadlines, it is easy to miss them, because no one is holding you accountable for a date you set for yourself.
The role of accountability
This is where accountability comes into play. You need someone or something to ensure that you stay on track. Of course, it is not enough to tell someone that you have set yourself a deadline. In fact, just talking about your goals can have a negative impact on the amount of actual progress. This is because it makes you confuse real progress with planning that progress.
So you need something serious. you need a consequence for non-compliance, something like a punishment, and the best of these are automatic consequences; The consequence you intend to prevent occurs automatically when you do not comply.
For me, when I plan to participate in a marathon, the first thing I do is pay the fees, which means that I lost this money whether I participated in the marathon or not, but I would be upset if I did not participate after I spent the money, and this method motivates me very much.
How long does it take you to turn Passive Procrastination into Active Procrastination?
This was just an example, but of course you can find other ways that motivate you to commit. What you should know is that the more you trust yourself, the less you need an external stimulus, but the consequences method is useful in the beginning.
In conclusion
Although what we said may seem strange, procrastination is in fact a tool that can be used to do useful things or be lazy to do them. The key to successful procrastination lies in its application: you have to be strategic with it, and the truth is that useful procrastination often does not involve a lot of slowing down, because you are putting things off in order to do other important things, too.
Don't forget that changing habits can be confusing at first; Replacing passive procrastination with active procrastination is not always easy, and you will often fail at first until active procrastination becomes an ingrained habit.
When things get tough, you will be tempted to stop and do something distracting; it is tempting to give up if you do not have any help, but with features like Focus Mode in Chrome,
You can avoid sites where you would normally waste your time trying to evade your responsibilities, and when you are not online, you can take up alternative activities, things you can do without feeling guilty if you need to take a break from what you are working on right now.
There is a lot you can do, but most of all, just enjoy procrastination, it is good for you.
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