This Is What Happened When I Scheduled Time To
Procrastinate
Rather than trying (and failing) to force myself to stay on task all the
time, what if I planned for “mini-procrastination” breaks throughout the day?
Most of us are guilty of procrastination.
I call myself an activity-dependent procrastinator. There are tasks that
I have no trouble starting and completing ahead of time, and there are others
that no matter how hard I try (or how early I start), I still find
myself scrambling to meet the deadline. Tax returns, I’m looking at you.
When it comes to my job, I noticed that I was
always filing stories justbefore the deadline, leaving me little
time to mull over my draft and possibly make some improvements with a fresh
mind. I’d also noticed that my non-urgent tasks were always getting delayed in
favor of pressing ones. I end up spending a lot of small snatches of my workday
in and out of Twitter, Slack conversations, and news websites. Sure, some of it
is part of my job, but in truth, I spent a lot of minutes here and
there procrastinating.
I wanted to change this habit, but I knew I
would fail if I attempted restrictive approaches like time blocking or the Pomodoro technique. So I decided to try “managing” my
procrastination instead. Here’s how I fared.
Stanford philosophy professor John Perry
coined the term “structured
procrastination.” The idea is that people procrastinate
by doing the least important items on their to-do lists, so Perry suggests that
we trick ourselves by moving our important tasks down our to-do list and our
least important to the top. This way when we procrastinate, we end up actually
doing our most important tasks. Unfortunately for me, procrastination usually
involves doing tasks that have no place in my to-do list, so I knew this method
wouldn’t work for me.
I also thought about just letting myself
procrastinate whenever I feel like it, as my colleague Lydia
Dishman tried out in 2014, but, well, I’m already
doing that and it’s not working.
After spending time in a procrastination
research rabbit hole, I settled on a method suggested by habit guru Charles
Duhigg. In a Big Think video, Duhigg suggested that instead of denying yourself the
urge to check Facebook, only to end up in a downward productivity spiral when the
temptation becomes too strong, you should schedule those activities in your
calendar so you can fulfill the urge and it doesn’t balloon out of control. To
me, that experiment seemed entirely reasonable and achievable.
I hate the feeling of wasting time, so my
first instinct was to schedule my procrastination time in big chunks when I’m
usually the least productive. That’s half an hour at lunch, and then half an
hour at 3 p.m. (when I hit my mid-afternoon crash). For the first couple of
days, this worked pretty well. Yes, I ate at my desk, but I could guiltlessly
browse through Twitter or read an article without feeling like I needed
to check my email at the same time. When my mid-afternoon
slump came around, I went for a walk and ran
errands. And I even though I technically worked an hour less, I still wrapped
up my work at the same time.
Day three wasn’t so great. I had also
switched my exercise time from evening to morning, but I was struggling to go
to bed earlier to compensate for getting up an hour earlier. As I’ve written
before, my focus suffers when I get less than seven
hours of sleep. I started the day well thanks to the post-exercise high, but as
the high wore off my productive morning turned into a disruptive afternoon. My
willpower was weak, and I was back to checking Twitter mid-task and trying to
edit stories while simultaneously engaging in Slack discussions. I felt guilty
about taking a one-hour break when I felt like I’d been unproductive all day,
so I just stayed at my desk. And guess what? I left the office later than usual
that day.
METHOD TWO: SPREADING MY
“PROCRASTINATION” TIMES THROUGHOUT THE DAY
On day four, I accepted that I live in the
real world–meaning there will be days when I turn up to work tired, even if I
do everything in my power to be as well-rested as possible. So I decided to
switch the experiment to follow my natural tendencies and schedule
“mini-procrastination” breaks between each tasks. Instead of waiting until noon
and 3 p.m., I allowed myself 10 minutes between tasks to do whatever I want. I
checked Facebook messages, tidied my desk, ordered prescriptions, and made
weekend plans. I still took a break, but only for about half an hour. I found
myself finishing my work earlier, and one day I even managed to do two extra
tasks that weren’t on my to-do list for that day, hurray!
CONCLUSION: SCHEDULING PROCRASTINATION FORCED
ME TO TAKE REGULAR BREAKS AND MADE ME MORE PRODUCTIVE
I was surprised by how much more on the ball
I was with my work when I didn’t feel bad about “procrastinating.” In fact, I
realized that I wasn’t scheduling procrastination, I was scheduling
breaks. Guilt-free, mentally recharging breaks. And
I fared better when I organized my breaks in 5- to 10-minute increments
throughout the day, rather than assigning big chunks of time. After all,
walking around when you have no errands to run or surfing the internet
mindlessly for 30 minutes gets pretty boring.
Yes, there were times when my five-minute
Twitter break turned into 12 minutes. But there were also times when I seamlessly
transitioned from one task to the next without feeling the need to
procrastinate first. Duhigg was right, getting rid of the need to fight my urge
to procrastinate freed up a lot of space and willpower in my brain–willpower I
can use to do productive things like write this article and come up with story
ideas.
I realized that being productive isn’t about
stopping, or even “managing” procrastination, but about making time for it in
my schedule and accepting that’s how I work best. After all, some
of us are genetically disposed to procrastination. Rather than spend our blood, sweat, and tears
fighting biology, we might as well make it work for us and save our energy for
getting stuff done.
https://www.fastcompany.com/40492781/this-is-what-happened-when-i-scheduled-time-to-procrastinate?utm_source=postup&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Fast%20Company%20Daily&position=3&partner=newsletter&campaign_date=11132017
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