Procrastination is something that afflicts all of us without exception — a perceived kind of mental vulnerability that exists within everyone. I’d hazard that if you believe to know somebody who isn’t a procrastinator, someone who seems to get an inhuman amount of work done every day, they’re simply a very effective procrastinator.
Procrastination at its core is a chronic reflex inseparable from the human condition. Our brains are in a constant battle between the short-term pleasures of the self (thanks to our limbic system) and the long-term, more gratifying rewards that our prefrontal cortex is striving to achieve[1]. This battle rages our whole lives, and we have to actively engage the prefrontal cortex and resist short-term pleasures to get the big things done.
With that concept in mind and considering the fact that we all have to deal with procrastination, how do effective, productive people manage to pull it off? As Paul Graham puts it, there’s ultimately three kinds of procrastination: [1], [3]
- The kind where you do nothing
- The kind where you do small, but ultimately unimportant things like busywork and errands
- The kind where you work on big projects and larger goals
Those individuals you’ve observed, seemingly impervious to the effects of procrastination, most likely fall into category 3.
Category 3 procrastination involves sacrificing smaller tasks in favour of progressing the big ones. You may end up (consciously or unconsciously, depending on who you are) sacrificing small errands like cleaning and grocery shopping in favour of focusing on whatever your big project is at that time. This obviously comes with its own set of issues — you tend to get a lot done when it comes to the important stuff, at the cost of just about everything else.
Most people then typically tend to fall into type 2 procrastination. You’ll do anything to avoid doing that big, important task — even something as menial and boring as doing the dishes, shaving, or finally getting around to building that Lego set you bought 4 months ago. This in itself, John Perry argues, is not a bad thing, but a powerful reflex to be harnessed and exploited.
John Perry advocates in his short essay for a concept he calls ‘Structured Procrastination' — A form of procrastination that involves completing “low urgency” tasks as a way of avoiding doing all of your very important “high urgency” tasks. If you keep a to-do list, you’re probably already familiar with working in this kind of way.
What if however, you could deceive your own brain into thinking that the “low urgency” tasks are really the “high urgency” ones?
Procrastinators are already adept experts in tricking one’s own brain. By inventing conditions for yourself that makes it impossible to do the task you want to do, you are setting yourself up for inevitable and unavoidable failure which eventually comes to pass, only further perpetuating the cycle. It’s for that reason that Structured Procrastination can be such a powerful framework of thinking.
Take for example this blog post right now. I have been actively avoiding putting these thoughts down for weeks. And yet, I’m writing, because there is an entire dishwasher full of dishes I need to unpack and dry. I’ve then got to get dressed, get ready, and walk to the grocery store to buy food for the dinner I need to make tonight. A type 2 form of procrastination would be to avoid writing this blog yet again in favour of going and doing all those errands. But by reframing them as the most important task rather than this blog, I am now writing instead. And just like that, I’m now experiencing type 3 procrastination. A mental trick, no different — psychologist Piers Steel points out — is “along the lines of setting your watch five minutes fast. You know you did it, but you still pretend you didn’t”.
However, this all comes with caveats. It is generally not a healthy way to exist all the time. You still need to do your errands and look after yourself. The little tasks still need doing. And sometimes, you just feel like doing type 1 procrastination, I.e. nothing. And that’s okay! As I’ve talked about before, productivity as a lifestyle is a trap. You’re probably reading this article as a means of avoiding doing something else! And that is totally fine. Procrastination, I feel, is not something that needs fixing or solving. It’s simply down to balance and structure. The counterbalance to being productive, occasionally, is to simply not be productive every now and then.
This post is a small departure from my Detection Engineering content, and was written while procrastinating doing something far more important.
References
- Why Procrastination Doesn’t Need a Cure: A Guide to Structured Distraction, Why we procrastinate — Belle Beth Cooper, Buffer, 2013.
- Structured Procrastination — John Perry, 2009.
- Good and Bad Procrastination — Paul Graham, 2005.
