Home » Postponing until tomorrow is a strategy that can work – Arthur C. Brooks

Postponing until tomorrow is a strategy that can work – Arthur C. Brooks

by admin

01 January 2022 09:56

Are you putting off something to read this article? Maybe it’s time to go shopping. Or a demanding phone call. Or a work report.

Sociologists define procrastination (tomorrow, tomorrow, in Latin) as the act of “delaying a task for a long time in a maladaptive way” (a term that indicates the inability to react to an external stimulus in an appropriate way), and it is a behavior that afflicts almost everyone. According to research, more than 70 percent of college students postpone their homework. And a 2005 poll revealed that more than 20 percent of adults were “chronic procrastinators.”

Procrastination has a bad name. In fact, if you postpone the necessary tasks, related to the routine, things to do pile up and this almost always has a negative effect on well-being. Conversely, when combined with creative tasks, a little procrastination can actually be helpful. So better pay your electricity bill now and wash the dishes right away. But maybe you can also wait a day or two to write that essay.

Choose calmly
Procrastination is usually thought of as a time management issue. But according to Timothy Pychyl, a psychologist at Carleton University, Canada, it’s more of an emotion management issue. Many people cope with negative feelings related to a task simply by avoiding it, at least for a period of time. Chances are you also experienced this when you put off a difficult conversation by saying, “I can’t handle this now.”

Whether it’s the inability to manage time or emotions, this approach once again presents procrastination as negative. And in many cases it is: for example, around seven million Americans fail to file their tax returns each year, and this can have dire financial and legal consequences. Or, considering that many employers don’t appreciate the tendency to stall at all, we’re unlikely to miss a joke about our propensity to miss deadlines in a job interview.

However, research shows that under certain circumstances, procrastination can improve the quality of our decisions and work. In his book Be original. How the mavericks change the world, Adam Grant relates that in ancient Egypt, procrastination was described with two different words: “One denoted laziness; the other meant waiting for the right moment ”. From this point of view, procrastination could indicate the vice of sloth or the virtue of prudence.

In fact, in many situations it happens to become hasty, and doing things too quickly can indicate another maladaptive form of managing your emotional load. Sometimes people “precrastinate”, throwing themselves into the tasks to be completed because they are eager to lower their cognitive load. In other words, they want to get rid of the thought, even at the risk of making mistakes and later using more energy to correct them.

Procrastination and precrastination are not mutually exclusive. In a 2015 experiment, undergraduate business management students at the University of Chicago had to choose whether to immediately accept a check for a certain amount of money or wait two weeks for a check for a larger amount. Most of those who chose the lower sum then put off for more than two weeks before cashing the check, thus canceling the benefit earned.

Probably the greatest cost of precrastination – and, conversely, the greatest benefit of moderate procrastination – is related to the creative sphere. According to another study, putting off tasks that require innovation and research to mull over can lead to better results. In early 2021, two psychologists asked participants in an experiment to solve various business problems while urging them to procrastinate. The study authors noted that those who procrastinated moderately (for an average of nearly eight minutes) had more creative ideas than those who completed the task after waiting a little over a minute or twelve minutes.

Procrastination can be linked to laziness or prudence, it can be considered a vice or a virtue, depending on the habits and tasks to be performed. Here are five tips for putting off the right things in the right way.

While strategic and occasional procrastination can be beneficial, chronic procrastination is a problem. To find out if you suffer from it, ask yourself if the way you put things off makes you feel out of control or miserable. Do you sacrifice the time you could spend with friends and family on weekends to get a job done during the week? Do you stay up all night when you would have plenty of time during the day to finish your work?

Raise your awareness

If you answered yes to the previous questions, try working on your awareness. Researchers found that being mentally present, rather than thinking ahead, was associated with better attention to the tasks at hand and less tendency to put them off. To focus the thought on the here and now it is not necessary a month of retreat in a monastery, but some practical techniques, such as getting away from distractions (more on this later) and making an effort to pay attention to what you are doing.

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Use procrastination strategically

“Never put off until tomorrow what you can do just as well the day after tomorrow,” wrote Mark Twain in an 1870 satirical essay. Twain may have been joking, but he touches a very important point, which is: creativity takes some time. Not too much, just a little procrastination is needed to get the ideas to ferment. After I got the initial idea for a project, I got into the habit of waiting a day to start writing. I write down the idea, think about it, sleep on it, go for a walk and then start. If I find it difficult to write down the text, I start the whole process all over again. I’m not putting it off for a week, just a day or two. Usually at that point I proceed quickly; if not, then I have to put in a little more effort by just writing.

Don’t waste procrastination

Remember that putting off creative assignments is useful because it allows you to think about your ideas. But it won’t work if you spend the time doing it doomscrolling, that is to look for (bad) news on the net. Using social networks and the internet senselessly is not only a waste of procrastination, it also fuels a habit. According to research from 2018, procrastination and internet use can create a vicious circle: when we postpone something, we take refuge in front of a screen, but the more we look at the screen, the more we postpone. If you decide to postpone a task, go for a walk, an occupation that, as has been shown, stimulates creativity.

Those who use the internet for professional reasons will find it very difficult to avoid unnecessary procrastination, a bit like trying to quit smoking while working in a cigarette factory. One solution that some have adopted is to schedule long work sessions that involve using a screen but not the internet, such as writing. During these times, leave your phone in another room and turn off the connection if you can, so when your mind starts wandering you don’t risk ending up watching cat videos for forty-five minutes.

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Leave projects unfinished, but don’t get bogged down

The biggest danger of procrastination is leaving something stuck indefinitely. I have a manuscript of a book left in the middle of 2008. I returned the advance a long time ago when I realized that the publication date was never going to come.

The trick to avoiding this trap is to leave the projects in an unfinished state so that they can be easily resumed. “The best thing is to always stop when you are doing well and when you know what will happen next,” Ernest Hemingway explained in an interview about his writing process. “If you do it every day while writing a novel, you will never get stuck.” Research also confirms that this is excellent advice. According to a survey conducted in Japan in 2018, students who clearly saw the end of a task were more motivated to complete it than others.

To put it into practice, try doing this: instead of aiming to finish a project every day, it gets to around 90 percent. The next day complete it and move on to the next project, repeating the pattern.

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There is another aspect to consider: Perhaps you put off a particular task over and over again – like mowing the lawn or writing birthday cards – and none of these tips seem helpful to you.

If so, chances are you don’t suffer from procrastination – you just hate that because it makes you miserable.

The best option for you may be to avoid procrastinating by completely avoiding the task. You could pay someone to mow the lawn for you. You will lose some money, but the time you will save will make you much happier if you use it wisely. If you find that you really hate writing birthday cards, maybe you should just decide not to do it again, and connect with your loved ones in a way that makes you feel more gratified. Your procrastination, maladaptive as it may be, is actually giving you hints on how you might be happier. It’s up to you to listen to it.

(Translation by Davide Musso)

This article was published on the site of the US monthly The Atlantic.

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