Procrastinate your way
to productivity
I have a confession to make. I’m a chronic procrastinator.
I put off doing things I should be doing, in favor of things I find more enjoyable. Like writing this article when I have a lecture due tomorrow. But here’s the thing, I don’t think procrastination is such a bad idea. Not when handled properly.
There are two kinds of procrastination that I engage in: Procrastiworking and Structured Procrastination. Both of which are practical and useful.
Procrastiworking
Procrastiworking is a term I first heard typographer Jessica Hische use, and it refers to the work you do (or feel like doing) while putting off the work you don’t feel like doing. This term applies to most designers, creatives, freelancers and entrepreneurs.
Run-of-the-mill procrastination refers to avoiding unpleasant chores by watching television, cleaning the house or painting your nails.
Procrastiworking refers to avoiding reconciling bank statements by working on your About Me page, or watching a video which teaches brush pen calligraphy when you should be editing a clients website.
Jessica argues that the work you undertake whilst procrastinating is actually the work you should be doing. Procrastiworking is not work avoidance if you are still working. You just might not always get paid if you are Procrastiworking more than ‘working’.
The result of Procrastiworking is often a creative side project. Most creatives I know don’t come up with their side projects in structured blocks of ‘spare’ time. It is much more likely a result of Procrastiworking that they just couldn’t stop doing.
If you are feeling guilty for what you think is work avoidance, take a look at how you are spending your procrastination time. If you are playing Skyrim for hours, watching cat videos or endlessly scrolling on Facebook then you are probably procrastinating. If you’re working on your folio, learning something, or creating something new, then you are Procrastiworking and should probably stop feeling so guilty.
Structured Procrastination
The other form of productive procrastination is what John Perry calls Structured Procrastination. He suggests you fill your to-do list with everything that needs doing and then complete something further down the list in avoidance of whatever is on the top. The argument here is that we pander to our inner procrastinator by suggesting something else more fun. So long as the something else is also on your to-do list then you are being productive and getting work done.
I do this already, so found it quite a relief to read John’s witty essay about this method. John is an academic like me, and so we find it easy to place difficult, drawn-out tasks on the top of our list. These tasks can stay up there for months, supplying all the necessary avoidance-motivation required to procrastinate our way through hundreds of other tasks.
PhDs are perfectly engineered for this purpose.
Using John’s method, it is possible to appear incredibly productive to the outside world whilst procrastinating 100% of the time.
It pays to note, in his article John points out the most common mistake we procrastinators make and that is to blame our procrastination on having too many things to do. The answer, he claims, is not to empty our schedules, reduce the list or minimise commitments — this would lead to disaster! If our lists are virtually empty, we would have no choice in our pursuit of avoidance but to avoid everything on the list completely. This inevitably leads to sitting on the couch watching a Walking Dead marathon on a weekday, and nobody wants that.
I find a combination of Procrastiwork and Structured Procrastination works well. I have three large and time-consuming side projects plus a full-time job. I manage to get most things done, most of the time, and I am a chronic procrastinator.
So there you have it. Procrastinators unite. Instead of fighting your natural tendencies, I suggest you embrace your inner avoidance urge. Either load up your to-do list with everything you can think of, or pay attention to where the rabbit hole is leading you and make your procrastination work for you.
