How To Procrastinate Like A Pro and Find Your Passion
Recognizing your own procrastination techniques may help you be more productive — if you ever get around to thinking about it in the first place.
I’ve been thinking a lot about procrastination lately, probably because it is the one thing that I am really good at. Yes, I usually get done what I need to, but I feel like I can do more. For me it usually involves finishing the next writing project, for others it may be finally getting the house organized, starting a diet or fitness program, or just in general getting one’s act together to finally take charge and make a major life change. Regardless of one’s goals, be they personal or professional, procrastination is always there and instead of denying its existence I’ve decided to dig in and explore, and perhaps in some ways embrace and analyze some of my best procrastination tactics. By recognizing the different ways in which we procrastinate we can begin to get at why we put things off in the first place, and this realization can be a powerful part of realigning priorities and goals.
Mastering Procrastination
Before we get into why we procrastinate, we need to look into how we procrastinate, and to do that we need to break down the most common techniques. Like peanut butter and jelly or beans and rice, procrastination is often associated with excuses, and the two are closely linked. The Oxford English Dictionary defines procrastination as “delaying or postponing action; put off doing something” and excuses as “lessening the blame attaching to (a fault or offense); trying to justify.” With this in mind, pure, unfiltered organic procrastination is something like, “I’ll get back to writing after I go to the store and stop by Starbucks.” Another example of pure procrastination could be putting off pressing items on your To-Do List with a thought such as, “I’ll sleep in today but put in double-time tomorrow and over the weekend.” So what’s the difference between pure unadulterated procrastination and excuses? Think of procrastination as putting something off by using a random and quickly conceived delay tactic, and excuses as a more sophisticated form of justification.
Excuses: Procrastinating With Purpose
I love the complexity that can be found amid a well-crafted excuse, and our expertise in excuse-making has evolved over time. This goes back to our earliest ancestors who employed simple techniques, “yes I know that there is a Velociraptor over there looking at me, but I have to finish sharpening my stone tools before I can run away — I have plenty of time.” Although natural selection was not kind to procrastinators, the trait lived on and became more sophisticated over time. In my own writing and research world, excuses are rampant and range from the existential, “I’m just not in the right mental place to write today,” to the materialistic and physical, “I cannot make progress on this work until I get that new office chair from IKEA.”
Physical Excuses: Finding the Perfect Pencil
Physical excuses, what I call part of the “perfect pencil” syndrome, come from the old idea that if I only had the perfect pencil, then I could really write. This is a well-worn path of fantasy that marketers have played off of for years, “you can be more productive if you have a SuperSeat Office Chair. “This technique can take many different forms, such as I need a new laptop before I can really get started, but other forms follow suit. “If I just had a different program or app I could really make progress, ooh, maybe an app where I can work on my phone as well, that’s right, I need to work on my phone to make progress. Then I can get stuff done!” The more extreme version of this excuse is an entire office makeover as in, “if I can just get my workspace set up right I can really write and get this done.”
Physical excuses are not unique to research or scholarly work but are well known in most other fields. Those who make resolutions to get into shape often purchase new running shoes and exercise gear thinking the pounds will shed themselves — this is known as the “if I only had” gambit. The purchases of most self-help books are predicated on the same idea, that if I want to get out of debt, for example, all I really need is the Get Out Of Debt book, I don’t really need to change my habits. Either way, in writing as in life, you have to put the actual work in at some point, so finding the perfect IKEA desk, e.g. “The Workenharden,” or the most expensive MacBook Pro and headphones are not going to solve any fundamental issues such as motivation, apathy, or the inability to focus on a clear goal of finishing your work. Learn to recognize these excuses because they are the most expensive form of procrastination.
In our ever-connected cloud-based world, with thousands of options and suggestions to help, a great burden has been placed on those who actually need to complete a project. What’s worse is that there are thousands of blogs out there telling you that you should use some software or other things to maximize your productivity. I know of many people (I might be one of them), who spend more time and money buying things to make themselves more productive when they could have been doing research, exercising, or other work on their long term goals. Deciding that you need to use a different online organizer or need new running shoes before you can lose weight can be a stealthy metaphysical excuse neatly cloaked in legitimacy; always ask yourself, is this an excuse? Could I spend time just jumping into work instead?
These physical or “looking for the perfect whatever” excuses don’t only happen at the beginning of a project, they can rear their ugly head in the middle of a project as well. I’ve seen more than a few people decide to change their software, their file keeping system, or their tools in the middle of a project because they thought these items were holding them back from accomplishing some brilliant work. This is an especially dangerous thing to do, and if it happens in the middle of your project, it is likely a motivation or enthusiasm issue, not a problem with your software, tools, equipment, or shoes.
Existential Excuses: “I’m Just Not In The Right Head Space to Do Work Today.”
Where physical excuses involve objects or tangible goods, i.e., “I need a new journal, a Montblanc fountain pen, and desk lamp before I can write,” existential excuses are related to intangibles and usually involve time. The best procrastinators master the art of the existential excuse early on. There are two forms. The first manifests itself in the idea you have plenty of time before you have to get the task done, so you put it off until the last minute, and the second is that you don’t have time to do the work at the moment because of some insignificant thing that you need to do first. Personally, I find both comfort and discomfort in being a last-minute procrastinator. The brilliant cartoonist Bill Waterson once said: “”You can’t just turn on creativity like a faucet. You have to be in the right mood. What mood is that? Last-minute panic.” I am squarely in the Waterson camp — I’ve always been that way, and I am not sure why. The beauty in being a last-minute doer is that it shows you can also motivate when needed — this is just a cheap spin on a problem, but a spontaneous motivator is always seen in higher regard than a slovenly, last-minute excuse maker.
The other form of existential excuses relates to mood or motivation, “I am just not in the right frame of mind to work on this right now.” It’s easy to convince yourself that you’re not in the right mental space at any given time. The other classic existential excuse is “I just have too much going on right now,” which really isn’t an excuse in the conventional sense because it is at best a week justification for putting something off. The tragedy here is that the other stuff going on maybe totally insignificant and non-sensical e.g., “I have to wash my car before I finish the paper that’s due in one hour” or “I need to sharpen my stone ax before I can run away from the Velociraptor” which we first learned of at the beginning of this work. This second form of existential procrastination is tightly linked to priorities, an important consideration when it comes to goal setting and getting things done.
Why We Procrastinate
Now that you recognize how you procrastinate consider the why. We procrastinate because we’re not that into what we are trying to do, and that’s why identifying — and having fun with — procrastination is beneficial. If you put off making progress on a given goal or task more than a few times, then motivation isn’t the problem, its passion. When you’ve put off big changes for years, like “I am going to lose 20 pounds someday” or “I really want to run a marathon” or “I want to move out west and write a novel,” then you know the problem is real desire. Regular and ongoing excuses as to why you haven’t started or made progress on something are a clear indicator that the things you think you want to do aren’t really baked in. In this case, you may want to reassess what your life’s goals are. There is nothing better for personal re-alignment then recognizing that you’ve been creatively procrastinating over the same goals and tasks for years.
Passion is Kryptonite to Procrastination.
All of us have had micro-bursts of energy where we are transfixed on getting something done that we were really into, those periods of time where you’ve worked around the clock to finish painting a room or stuck to years of research to finally finish your dissertation or got up at 5 a.m. every morning to train for the marathon. Think about the last time you were transfixed on a task or goal, usually, you were motivated because you were so sick of a situation that you had to change it (intrinsic motivation), or you wanted to prove something to somebody (extrinsic motivation). Remember, the key to getting things done or making a change is a question of desire, it’s not timing, talent, or circumstances, it’s pure want or passion.
Ironically, I’ve been putting off this essay for some time now, but I’ve really begun to embrace my procrastination, and I’ve become really good at it. This having been said, however, I know there are master procrastinators out there who could teach me a great deal, and I would love to hear from them. At the same time, I, and I’m sure others, have been making the same excuses over the same projects forever, and we should make an attempt to learn why. In the end, finding your passion goes far to eliminate procrastination, so when you find the time, think about it.
