Is there ever a good time to procrastinate? Most people upon hearing this question would instinctively respond with an avid “NO!” and with good reason. Procrastination the way most people think about it is a terrible habit. It’s a delay that generally turns into never. It’s what they do when it comes time to start on their goals. With this mindset, it is no wonder why procrastination is the Devil in self-help communities. However, in this post I’m going to explain some situations where you do want to procrastinate, and how you can do it strategically.
The first concept is saving homework for when you can only do homework. When I was younger- like middle school-aged- my parents would always make me do my homework as soon as I got home from school. This was a rule and that was how it was, no matter what. This meant that in the springtime when the weather was beautiful, I would get to watch my cousins go play outside and feel the warm breeze practically torturing me through the open windows.
As I mentioned in my post “Why Homework can Never Come First,” I would sometimes spend hours doing this homework. Many times it would be dark by the time that I got done. This was a problem because I could not play basketball (my main focus) nearly as effectively in the dark.
See, homework was done inside and therefore could be done at any time while basketball was done outside which required daylight. This is where I should have strategically procrastinated on my homework and practiced basketball first. In this case saving your homework for when you can only do your homework refers to when it was dark outside. When it was dark outside, I could only do my homework as opposed to when it was light outside and I could do either task.
Another example is when you have free time in a class. Do your homework as opposed to watching YouTube because in class you probably can’t work towards your goals much if at all and you may not want to anyway. Meanwhile, at home you can do anything to work towards your goals so why would you want to screw yourself over by having to do homework if you could have gotten it done earlier?
Of course that really isn’t “saving” you homework for when you can only do homework but rather just doing it on the spot. It could work like that though. If you know that you will have free time in class the next day to work on an assignment, then don’t do it all when you get home the first night.
The second strategy I will offer you concerning procrastination is adding pressure and therefore increasing focus. My junior year of high school I was in an English class that had a kid who was a character. He was a bigger guy, somewhat of the class clown type. He could be loud but I didn’t consider him to be obnoxious. Anyway, we had a lot of book presentations that we had to do in this class and this kid had a habit of waiting until the last minute to prepare his report. Everyone knew he was like this and whenever it came up he would always say “I work better under pressure!”
At the time I just thought he was lazy or had an out of control procrastination habit but he may have been onto something. Have you ever noticed how low your focus and energy is when you have all the time in the world to do something? Now compare that to when you have a math assignment due the next hour that you forgot about. I would bet money that your productivity doubled or tripled from its baseline in the second scenario.
This is because of Parkinson’s Law: “Work shall expand so as to fill the time available for its completion.” If you have two weeks to do that math homework then it will take two week, but if you have two hours, then it will only take you two hours.
Knowing this fact of human nature, we can use it to increase our efficiency. There are really no gimmicks to this one. Procrastinate on your homework until you have backed it down into the smallest possible time slot that you can reasonably complete it in. Use the time you have spared as you wish.
The only thing you have to watch out for with this one is that you don’t procrastinate too long, forget about it, or underestimate how long it takes to complete even with sharpened focus. Working towards a deadline can intensify focus but knowing that a deadline is impossible will bring your focus right back down. Why work so hard when you won’t make it anyway? This can be a powerful strategy in terms of consolidating time but it can also get you in trouble so you have to be careful.
In the end, sometimes you have to procrastinate on your arbitrary activities and obsolete tasks in order to get started on and get ahead on what really matters. Ultimately, the small things that I said to procrastinate on in the post will not matter five years from when you finally decide to put them off. The things I am advising you to do instead are the small things that in aggregate form your legacy.
Athlete-Student
BucketsoverBooks
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