You can percolate a lot of ideas. Instead of snapping to it and methodically working through the task, a procrastinator could very well be allowing the ideas to percolate, mature, and bubble to the surface in a much more inspired and fascinating form!
You might be using procrastination to protect yourself when you’re not ready to do something. If you lack the skills, the courage, or the experience, procrastination can prevent you from leaping in where you’re just plain incompetent, incapable, or uncomfortable. Procrastination can allow an unpalatable idea or task to grow on you. If you’ve been putting it off because you hate it, or don’t want to be associated with it, procrastinating can provide the time needed to get used to it and to eventually settle in to a place of acceptance that lets you get on without feeling disinterested or even hostile about being involved in something. Procrastination can give you the time needed to build up the energy needed to proceed with gusto when you do get going. For people whose work is principally cerebral based, doing something practical (with the hands) is often a much-needed break from the depths of intellectualizing everything. Think about all the other things that are getting done as you avoid the procrastinated task!
What you’re doing is genuinely boring and even if it has to be done, perhaps there are better ways of doing it? Ways that don’t necessarily involve you, or you on your own? What you’re doing isn’t your strength or even interest. Perhaps you’re studying the wrong field because your parents told you to become a doctor or lawyer but you wanted to be an artist? Or perhaps you’re working in the wrong job because you liked the sound of the company until you joined it and realized what you’re really in for? What you’re doing is riddled with inconsistencies, weaknesses, errors, and blatant inaccuracies but to fix these would take a lot of effort or even explaining to the boss and you know it’s way over your ability to fix. What you’re doing is no longer a strength of yours because you’ve moved on mentally and experience-wise and you’re ready for a new challenge. What you’re doing is objectively pointless, and there are probably really much better things you could be expending your energies on. You just need to find the right way to explain this to the boss, teacher, or client. . .
A deadline can sometimes be truly the only source of motivation to bring about its completion. Recognizing how you value or cope with deadlines is part of procrastinating in a way that doesn’t harm your own goals, efforts, and opportunities in the long run. Deadlines can be the procrastinator’s friend if they’re viewed in a positive light, as a source of eventual motivation and as a source of drawing out creativity. Work out your perfect equilibrium of brushing with deadlines and getting work done successfully. Once you know the absolute limit, use a balance of both deadlines and procrastination to your advantage.
Stop admiring busy people and busy methodologies. These can give the impression of doing something when really, nothing’s happening at all. At least when procrastinating, something else is happening! Allocate thinking time. Allow yourself to use this time to think through ideas, consequences, and the bigger picture. Enjoy the process and not the destination. Procrastinating allows you to immerse yourself in the process. Some of it’s boring, some of it’s rough, and some of it’s really enjoyable but all of it’s a whole. Embrace distractions for what they are and let guilt fly. Recognize that a refreshed you works twice as hard and twice as focused upon return to the task at hand. Sticking with it without breaks, means losing sight of the forest for the trees as your perspective and enthusiasm turns stale. If other people want to negatively label your thinking-time procrastination, that’s fine. Tell them that procrastination has become a positive, must-do in any modern achiever’s life and watch their confusion.
Excessive worrying doesn’t change anything but it can entrap you in a cycle of fear, marrying you to sub-standard work and living choices for the rest of your life because you’re too afraid of the consequences of letting go of those initial sub-standard choices.
Balance procrastination with obligation. Life isn’t either all easy cruising or all full throttle. Try to combine both elements in your life and allow distractions in rather than letting them become moments of guilt or worry.
Stare at the mirror and make random faces. For starters, you could act like a monkey, just fold your lips inside and over your teeth, and jump around like a madman. If you can do this for a good half hour, you’ve been successful at wasting a good chunk of your time. Stare out the window. Notice what form the clouds are taking, people watch, count the arrival times of trains, watch the street being swept, and work out how long it’ll take to reach the next corner, etc. Create your own laser light show.
You might want to choose movies over TV shows. TV shows are an hour maximum, most half an hour (some specials, especially some reality shows, sporting events, and shows on the History Channel are two). Each time a show ends, it forces you to make a decision between work and more TV. If you’re given that decision two times every hour, sooner or later you’ll crack. Movies, on the other hand, are at least two hours, and since most channels string about three movies together, that is only three TV-work decisions in six hours!
Work is only as serious as you make it. Procrastination lets you enjoy the little things in life that would otherwise pass you by. The grass is greener, the clouds are fluffier, and Seagal’s boots are just a little bit more blood-soaked.
Work is only as serious as you make it. Procrastination lets you enjoy the little things in life that would otherwise pass you by. The grass is greener, the clouds are fluffier, and Seagal’s boots are just a little bit more blood-soaked.
