We all engage in productive procrastination, whether we know it or not. When you are organizing your desk instead of writing your paper, cleaning the house while avoiding reaching out to your network, or taking a walk instead of working on your side hustle – these are all forms of productive procrastination.
Don’t feel bad if you find yourself pushing off unpleasant tasks for the future. A study by Human Resources Online surveyed 2,000 full-time employees and found the average person spends 2 hours and 11 minutes each day procrastinating. Furthermore, a study by Ratesetter found people spend 3 hours and 38 minutes each day procrastinating in their life in general.
If you struggle with procrastination or want to stop delaying so much time – this is the guide for you.
What is Procrastination?
Procrastination is simply the act of delaying something.
People procrastinate because they believe that the current reward (doing nothing) is more rewarding than the future reward.
The researchers in various studies used the fancy equation below to talk about why people procrastinate. Don’t worry – the gist is simply people assess the current reward, their time, and the future reward.
When it was deemed that the future reward was less than the current reward, and there was time to do the future task, people procrastinated. The current state was more rewarding than the derived future state.
The Problem with Procrastination
Taking the study, it makes economic sense why we procrastinate. The current reward is better than the future reward, so we delay the less pleasant task.
However, people have a hard time valuing future outcomes. Two logical fallacies come into play to explain why we are bad at predicting future rewards.
- Present Bias – the tendency to settle for a smaller present reward than to wait for a larger, future reward in a trade-off situation. The famous Stanford marshmallow experiment is a fantastic example of this. A child was offered one marshmallow now, or two marshmallows in 15 minutes. Various conditions were changed but the general idea is that people get frustrated while waiting for future rewards – most children ended up eating the marshmallow.
- Hyperbolic Discounting – the tendency for people to increasingly choose a smaller-sooner reward over a larger-later reward as the delay occurs sooner rather than later.
Simply put, people tend to discount future rewards (no matter how large) for present smaller rewards. That explains why 15 minutes of social media sound like a better trade-off than doing extra work at your job which could lead to a promotion and potentially thousands of extra dollars a year.
People tend to be bad judges of future rewards. We’d rather take the guaranteed smaller reward than a potential life-changing reward in the future.
Beyond that – people tend to procrastinate for different reasons. Want to find out which type of procrastinator you are? Check out the article here!
What is Productive Procrastination?
Productive procrastination is a sub-set of procrastination. Research states that
“productive procrastination replaces one adaptive behavior with another adaptive – albeit less important – behavior (e.g., organizing notes instead of studying for an exam).”
Erin C Westgate, Psychologist
We are all guilty of this. We have our priority task, but instead, we figure now is the perfect time to do the dishes or check our email. They are helpful tasks of course, but alas – not what we need to be doing.
In an interesting study, scientists studied Twitter. Finding at the time, 4587 tweets that contained #procrastination. The study found people use the hashtag in an ironic tone – reinforcing the idea that people use their procrastination as a way to represent themselves as relatable and funny to their social networks. Even productively using procrastination itself to promote themselves.
Need help figuring out how to tackle your priority tasks? Check out our guide on how to tackle your most important priorities for the day.
How Productive Procrastination can be Useful
Not all procrastination is bad. Studies have found that people can procrastinate to their overall benefit as well.
For instance, starting a task and making headway on it – then stepping away is a proven strategy to result in higher quality work.
For instance, let’s say you have a report at work. The best way to approach it is to work on it ahead of time – then after a few hours – step away. Go take a walk outside, make dinner, talk with your partner or friends, and even get a full night’s sleep if you afford it.
When you return to the report, you will find you can edit the report, add new thoughts, and refine your points even further. This is because while you are relaxing, and taking care of your well-being, the subconscious mind is working on the report. Generating and editing tons of new information and ways to make the report better.
So, in certain situations – proactive behavior followed by “productive procrastination” can help your work improve even more.
The Realities of Productive Procrastination
As we explored earlier, people procrastinate because the current reward is greater than the perceived future reward. On a small scale, that isn’t unrealistic and can be okay in small doses.
However, the problem arises when that is the default. When life is framed through the lenses of short-term gains over future rewards, life can almost stagnant into a low simmer of mediocrity.
There are other effects of taking the focus on the short-term. People can start to perceive themselves as having low self-efficacy, being lazy, becoming more impulsive, and even lose a sense of further motivation.
Aside from the mental spiral that procrastination can force us down, our goals can be stagnant with them. People might hold upon securing their financial future, pursuing their dream career, starting their side hustle, or any other life-enriching activity.
Need help getting back towards killing it and making your ideal life? Check out some of the below guides
How to Beat Procrastination
Procrastination relies on us valuing the short-term pleasures over future rewards and making the default option the easy one.
So, to defeat procrastination – we have to pull two levers.
- Make future rewards larger than current ones.
- Make working on those goals the default and easy option.
Let’s explore some practical tips below.
1. Conquer Perfectionism
Studies show that one of the causes of procrastination is perfectionism.
Especially for high achievers, there is the fear of failure. Which is what perfectionism is. Perfectionism is fear wrapped in gilded packaging. By accepting that the item doesn’t have to be perfect makes it easier to tackle the task you are procrastinating on.
For instance, I struggled to try to learn to draw because I thought I had to be Michelangelo. Once I realized I was just afraid to fail – learning to enjoy the process of drawing, and making crappy art at the start is okay – drawing became a much easier habit to incorporate into my day.
Give yourself permission to fail and tackle your work!
2. Set Concrete Goals
People are more likely to procrastinate when their goals are vague or abstract.
An easy example is fitness goals. “Get fit” is very abstract. However, “I will go to the gym Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for at least thirty minutes each time. Focusing on losing weight and building more leg muscles” is a very concrete goal.
Making your goals concrete makes it easier to follow through with them and increases your perceived value of them for the future too!
3. Take More Productive Breaks
All good techniques for improving productivity involve making time for short mental breaks. However, even better techniques focus on taking good breaks. Such as walking around, stretching, doodling, or meditating. Instead of passively browsing social media for 10 minutes, make an effort to do one of the above. Often you’ll find that these activities energize you more than social media ever would.
Need help being more productive? Check-out our guide on how to be more productive.
4. Make the Default Option Easy
To encourage people to become organ donors, the United States made being an organ donor the default option when getting a license. The result – the amount of organ donors is 90% of the eligible population. Meanwhile, in opt-in countries, only 15% of the eligible population are donors.
Use the same strategies with your goals. Make going to the gym after work the default. Throw-out all the sweets and leave apples on the counter. Leave your journal open next to your bed each night.
By making the habit easy to start, you are more likely to stick with it. Need help making habits stick? Check-out one of our guides on how to make habits work for you!
5. Make Your Future Rewards Obvious
Aside from setting concrete goals, make your goals salient in your life. Studies found that if respondents wrote down their goals with plans, they were 3 times more likely to succeed than the group who only had some plan in mind.
Write down your goals, and maybe even make a sticky-note of your goal to remind yourself. Planning and making a reminder helps you make your goal become a reality.
6. Set Realistic Expectations
I love thinking I will wake-up at 5 AM and work on the blog for three hours before I start my full-time job. Do you know how many times I have done that? Zero.
However, I can wake-up at 6:30 AM and get a good hour and a half in before work. Know yourself and your limits. That might mean some experimentation. It took me a couple of months before a found a routine that worked for me to handle my obligations and the goals I want for myself.
7. Make new Deadlines
Parkinson’s law is the adage that
“work expands so to fill the time available for the completion.”
Parkinson’s Law
Think back to school, if you had a month for a group project – you wouldn’t start working on it until two weeks before it was due. Effectively making the first two weeks a waste. Why? Because you hadn’t hit the “oh shit” moment of half-way through where work begins.
If you need help starting on projects or tasks – set artificial deadlines ahead of when you need to do the item. Setting deadlines closer to the current date forces you to start working on them sooner rather than later.
Key Take-Aways
- The basic idea of procrastination is the current reward of not doing anything is worth more than the future reward of whatever the tasks are
- Productive procrastination is doing something productive but not the priority item
- To beat procrastination, we need to make future rewards more valuable and make doing the task the default or at least easier
- By implementing a variety of tips – it becomes easier to conquer your tasks and work towards your goals every single day.
Action item
When do you tend to procrastinate? Take ten minutes today to reflect on what you are currently procrastinating on. Pick a handful of the above strategies and do your best to get the task completed!
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