How to make your procrastination productive – Part 2

Yesterday as Part 1 of today’s topic I showed you how you can use the fact that you tend to procrastinate to identify why you actually don’t want to do the things that you have to do (read more). Today I’ll look at the topic procrastination from a different perspective and this is actually one of my own secret weapons that I use almost every day: how can you make your procrastination something that is actually productive?

To demonstrate what I mean, let’s start with some insight about how I use this little powerful technique:

At the moment I’m doing a research project at the University of York, which involves computational biology and robotics. It’s a very cool project and so far I’ve learned a programming language that I didn’t know before (it’s C++ and we learned Java in our first year at Sussex), I refreshed my knowledge about Genetics and Evolution, figured out how to install the simulation software Player/Stage on a mac (not trivial at all), learned a bit about multi-threading – even though I gave up on it, because it wasn’t really necessary – and now I know how to control a simulated robot in Player/Stage.

On top of that after only 5 weeks this project fulfilled one of my goals connected with my Computing and AI degree. When I did my research for my Bachelor thesis in Media and Cultural Studies (the title was ‘Intelligence and the so-called “New”. On selected questions in earlier and recent AI-Research’) I read a lot about Rodney Brooks and his robot control approach of a subsumption architecture and I really had no idea how to implement this kind of stuff. My Computing and AI degree was supposed to teach me how to do that. Yesterday I finished coding a subsumption architecture to control my simulated robot and I’m really happy about that. I now know how to implement it! And then came something that we all know too well: I tried avoiding the harder bit – I tried avoiding to start with the computational biology part of my project, because I don’t quite understand the underlying concepts yet and the computational bit is someone else’s code, who didn’t document it at all. It’s just a nasty bit of work to understand what he’s doing and how I can use it!

Yesterday instead of starting with that in the afternoon I had a chat in the coffee kitchen and then my work day was over. That was still fine, because I just finished a nasty bit of work before that and needed to unwind for a bit. Today it became obvious though: I was actually documenting my own code to avoid looking at someone else’s undocumented code. Documentation is one of the really really boring bits of programming. Most code stays undocumented, because nobody can be really bothered to write down what it does. After about 2 days even the person who coded it won’t understand anymore what it’s doing, but well, it works, why bother? Some people even don’t document there code, so that nobody else can understand it and they keep their job. And I documented my code for the entire morning! I was procrastinating!

Everyone in the office thought I was doing something productive, something necessary and important and there I was procrastinating. You might think now: “Oh she’s telling us, that it’s a matter of perspective and the youtube video I watched earlier might change my life in 5 years …”, but oh no, I’m definitely not saying that: the youtube video you watched was probably not worth your time and you know it. This is no matter of perspective, this is a matter of choice and discipline. As I already mentioned in the post Getting things done without a deadline, there is always something that is worse than the one thing you’re doing right now. Along the same lines there’s always something easier, than the one thing that you’re trying to avoid.

Let’s bring in some more examples:

• When exams were close, my bathroom was always clean, because I was procrastinating. Cleaning the bathroom still was something I had to do though!
• In the last deadline period I couldn’t be bothered to start with a certain deadline, because it was horrible. Instead I did the one deadline that was furthest away, because it was the most interesting one of that period. I had to do it anyway and it gave me an excuse to avoid doing the nasty first deadline.
• When I was ill from a diet mistake 2 weeks ago I was actually supposed to write some C++ code for my project. I got stuck though, because I didn’t know the language very well and basically didn’t really know what I was doing. What did I do instead? Well, I set up this blog, which was something that I wanted to do for a very long time now and it was still procrastination!

Let’s just be honest with each other: Procrastination gives you a really good feeling! You’re avoiding something that you don’t want to do for one reason or another and for a while you even have the feeling that you might get away with it. You might even think that you might not have to do the thing that you’re avoiding at all. It will just go away if you ignore it for long enough, won’t it? Well, that’s how problems really get out of hand and you suddenly end up in your yearly performance meeting with your boss telling you that he knows that you’re procrastinating. Not good, not good at all!

What I’m trying to tell you today is that procrastination doesn’t necessarily have to be bad at all! In fact it is a very healthy response to a rather unbalanced situation where you constantly confront yourself with things that you don’t want to do. It can’t be good for your mental health to hate what you’re doing and to still do it anyway!

Now let’s come to the practical side of this insight: How can you use this in your daily struggle for productivity? How will you end up doing something productive as a form of procrastination rather than looking for funny stuff on the internet? Here is my work flow:

1. When I review my to do list I always think about how long it will take me to actually complete something and how horrible this task actually is. With this little thought process I identify what kind of tasks I’m likely to avoid.
2. Procrastination is something you can’t really control. You will certainly do something that will be easy and effortless and still takes some time. Remember you’re trying to avoid stuff, as long as possible! When thinking about how horrible some of your tasks will be, you’re secretly also identifying the easy and effortless tasks. Your subconscious will probably hold onto them, because they are a lot more fun than the hard ones.
3. When you’re feeling the urge to procrastinate, instead of just clicking on one of your bookmarks or switching the tab to facebook, stop and think for a second. It really only needs a second to trigger these pre-considered easy tasks. “Oh, I would much rather do the easy xyz now”. Depending how pressing your hard task is, you can either give in to the sweet feeling and go off doing the easy task or you can stop yourself and say no to yourself.
4. If you already gave into the urge through clicking onto a link or going on facebook, say NO. “NO, I won’t waste my time on that now, I can do that tonight!” and close what you just opened. If the urge is still there, then you can rationally think “Let’s do something nicer for half an hour …” and go off doing your easy pre-considered tasks instead of the hard one that you’re trying to avoid.
5. If everything fails and you just can’t concentrate: Procrastinate! Do something that is not worth your time, watch something, read an article about a gadget you can’t afford, but please please set a time limit! One hour should really be the maximum that you allow yourself, because after that your concentration won’t come back. In fact with every minute you procrastinate the barrier of getting back to speed becomes higher. The longer a task is actually on your to do list, the harder it is to start this task!

If you are someone who is likely to procrastinate, then it would be unwise to ignore this problem. Every time you allow yourself to not take this problem seriously you lose an hour, maybe even two. You really don’t want that kind of productivity drain on a regular basis! Procrastination is healthy and can be used to your advantage. It can tell you when you’re getting bored and when you should switch your attention to something else to keep your concentration levels up. It can tell you that you might want to change your job and it can even help you to get other chores done. This is another perfect example, where conscious effort can turn something that is considered bad into something that is good for you. Live consciously and you will experience a lot of other examples of this principle!

How do you deal with procrastination?

Check out the other articles featured in the productivity week:

• Why being busy isn’t necessarily being productive
• On the meaning of productivity
• How to make your procrastination productive –
  Part 1
• Productivity tips from a busy bee

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