Important Note:

Opinions are fun. My friends tell me I am someone with lots of opinions and that's fine since I don't get mad at others when they disagree with me. In this same spirit I am interested in hearing yours views as long as you are able to share your views without boiling over. I look forward to hearing from you. I tend to write in the form of short essays most of the time, but contributions do not need to be in this same format or size. Some of the content here will date itself pretty quickly, other content may be virtually timeless, this is for the reader to judge.

Displaying 1 - 1 of 1

Maybe Procrastination isn’t a bad thing                                                                                    

Posted at: May/07/2012 : Posted by: mel

Related Category: Behavior, Perspectives,

Nearly everything I have ever read about procrastination talks about how to cure it. While this sounds good, I believe it is actually quite impossible. For me and for all of us there are an infinite number of things we could be doing. In most cases, no matter what you are currently doing, there is likely something else you should be doing instead. Chasing the impossible just doesn’t seem like a practical use of my time. Maybe the issue is more that procrastination is not always something bad to be avoided or to overcome; rather it is about how to procrastinate well.

I would argue that there are three types of procrastination. When deciding not to do something we are supposed to do, some of us do nothing, sometimes we do something less important and sometimes we do something more important. In my experience I have come to accept the last variation as “good” procrastination. I am sure someone is offended by the very notion that any form of procrastination can be considered good.

The most obvious example of good procrastination is the “absent-minded professor.” In the grand scheme of things, is it really wrong to forget to eat well or shave while focused on a book or challenging question? During my many decades in the technology world I have been around a number of very impressive people who have solved, or at least made dents in very important questions. The fact that these people can separate themselves from the mundane distractions of our world such as laundry and time-reports to focus for days or weeks on really complicated problems impresses me. Most of the big ideas driving innovation in our world are not merely issues to be thought about for 90 minutes between the morning staff meeting and lunch; they require a certain amount of immersion and mental isolation from the day-to-day in order to achieve the focus necessary to find a solution.

Unfortunately, achieving the focus needed to attack some of the issues on our agenda is not merely a flipping of a switch. Whether it is innovation, problem resolution, complex learning or dealing with difficult people and situations, it can take a special mindset that is not automatic.

When some people are unable to automatically delve into the things they need to do, they throw themselves at the “small stuff”; this is my second form of procrastination. At work small stuff is status reports, training, minor bug fixes, closing out paperwork, those infamous TPC reports, etc. At home the small stuff might include mowing the lawn, cleaning the gutters, laundry, dishes, even taking the time to go fill the gas tank of the car. All this small stuff sounds pretty boring.

When someone is waiting impatiently for you to get a big thing done, throwing yourself at small stuff may seem like procrastination. In the grand scheme of things I know this is not true. The problem with the small stuff is that it is still things that need to be done; but 6 weeks later no one is going to remember that you got a load of laundry done and bought the weeks groceries. If you are really worried about what is going to be said of you in your obituary, cleaning the gutters and other errand type tasks can’t hold a candle to writing the next bestselling detective thriller.

I suffer a great deal from this second form of procrastination. I am terrible at doing nothing. Spending hours laying out in the sun or channel surfing when there is nothing I want to watch is just not part of my operating mode. I rationalize this as adjusted prioritization. There are always high priority and low priority tasks that make up my days and weeks. Obviously, the higher priority actions should happen first. Many of my higher priority actions often involve complicated problems or learning something new; Unfortunately, I am periodically plagued with the inability to focus on these more critical tasks at the level that is warranted on demand. Since I dislike doing nothing with my time I will defer to actions that are easier to accomplish, washing the car, writing that politically correct thank you email or pulling weeds in the garden. These are all things which ultimately need to get done. Sometimes I find that while working on the routine things I also have an epiphany for my more challenging task. Is that a version of multitasking? Nevertheless, for the person anxiously waiting on my response for the complicated task, there is only frustration and accusations of procrastination. I know my day wasn’t wasted; I just wasn’t working on what was expected of me.

I have come to realize that those big things seem to require two thing, large blocks of time and the right mood. If you get inspired by some project or event, it can be a net win to blow off all those things you were supposed to be doing for the next few days. Ultimately errands and small tasks still need to be done.

There is an important variation on this second type of procrastination that needs to be mentioned. When a person specifically chooses to do the errands rather than the higher priority, this avoidance can’t be branded as anything except procrastination. Trimming the hedge rather than doing your taxes on April 13ths is definitely an example of this.

In the engineering and technology world it is especially challenging to get people to work on “big” problems. I suspect that this is based on the issues of dealing with the unknown. Exploring the unknown means you could spend 200 to 2000 hours on a problem. Being unable to predict the scale of the effort before you start makes it hard to measure progress and extremely difficult to keep your leadership supportive. For all the same reasons, attacking something big runs the high possibility of making you feel on a day to day basis like you’re wasting time….sounds like another excuse to focus on those more defined and smaller tasks or errands. Did I just give you a rationale for not taking on that big mission your boss has?

Much of the aforementioned could be applied to the bathroom remodel project you have been putting off. For anyone who has ever done a remodel on an older home, you know that the scale of the project can change radically once you start opening up walls and floors. Hence, dutifully crossing items off of a to-do list can be very safe with an assured sense of accomplishment and satisfaction. That means that starting the remodel could mean having your name tied to a never ending project that takes away your perception of accomplishing anything. This perception is often how others measure us as well as how we measure ourselves.

Deferring what needs to be done to instead do little or nothing is the last form of procrastination and the easiest to understand. This last variation is the one your parents kept accusing you of; remember skipping that homework assignment to go out with your friends. Then, when asked to wash the dishes you all of a sudden had homework to get done. This is simply the avoidance of work or responsibility regardless of the size of the task. I don’t have a convenient rationalization or justification for this behavior. This is the form of procrastination you want most of all to avoid. If your life is dominated by this behavior you are likely also mired and hindered by your own lack of focus or work ethic. Life’s tasks from folding and putting away laundry to going to work each day require overcoming the desire to procrastinate.

Of course, the main reason people find it difficult to work on a particular problem or task is that they don't enjoy it. When you were young, especially, you often found yourself working on stuff you didn't really like that have already been labeled “chores.” Chores are by definitions the unpleasant, but necessary stuff that needs to be performed. Once branded with the label of chore, it is hard to rise above the stigma and feel good about it.

For most of us, life is filled with doing stuff. Some stuff we want to do, some stuff falls in the mundane and errand bucket, and some stuff is just plain intimidating. Having sorted our activities into these piles the behavior of avoidance is likely to manifest itself. Depending on your perspective or parallax, some of this avoidance could be labeled as procrastination.

As stated previously, I believe that there is “good procrastination”…..kinda sounds like an oxymoron. Good procrastination is avoiding the errands and routine tasks to tackle bigger problems and challenges. Good procrastination can also be temporarily avoiding the big jobs in favor of still accomplishing something, such as working on the errands of the to-do list.

Deferring the big things for the smaller tasks can be a short term way of getting things done. If you are doing the smaller tasks on a sustaining basis in lieu of the bigger challenges, then you are dangerously deceiving yourself.

Fundamentally, you can’t talk about procrastination without talking about ambition. To be ambitious it is critical that you overcome procrastination. If you count yourself among the ambitious you need to be able to take on big tasks that do not have clearly defined lifespans or targets. This is risk taking behavior and not for the meek.

If procrastination is part of your routine, you have questions to ask yourself. Am I doing something I like? Am I really as ambitious as I tell myself?

Big problems and challenges require dedication and a sustained effort. Temporarily deferring the big things for stuff on the to-do list is not always bad. If you consider yourself ambitious, you are going to need to finds ways of overcoming the fear of failure and lack of short term accomplishment. There are lots of reasons to rationalize why not to do something. If you want to be measured by what you get done and what you accomplish, you are going to have to manage the temptations of procrastination. If you already find yourself deferring big challenges for errands you need to ask how dominate this behavior is.

Much like those things we classically call vices; drinking, gambling, smoking, drugs, etc., procrastination is easy to start, hard to walk away from and dangerously easy to lie to ourselves about.

Do you procrastinate, and if so, what flavor?

Comments (0)                                                                                                                                                    [Add Comment]