How to Procrastinate Effectively

Posted by Jacques - March 13, 2009

busy man Sorry guys I know I haven’t written a post in a while, but it was part of my plan to write this post *wink*. Actually, procrastination is a topic close to my heart. It’s one of the slacker techniques we use to be productive and effective. Huh? Effective you say? Yes, it’s true.

Slackers are lazy people, we don’t like to expend energy and time. If a task can be done later, why do it today? Often times you will find that many of these important tasks can put off and some of them can be delayed indefinitely. But there’s a key to successful slacking. That key is found in the margin of error between being that guy who pulled off that amazing project in one night and managing to do more than everyone else, or that other guy who is always late, missing deadlines, and no longer works for the company.

Here are the key points to procrastinating effectively:

1. Sometimes, an ounce of prevention is worth a ton of cures.
Doing some things in advance is important, so not everything can be procrastinated. Like planning your wedding or paying your taxes. Recognizing that some things should never be put off, will help you immensely.

2. Breathe. Don’t stress about it.
Let’s say you have to study for an exam at the last minute, or you have a business meeting and you’re not quite ready with your presentation. The facts show that being stressed is a distraction to productivity. You will be thinking about all the consequences and disaster mitigation rather than the task at hand. It isn’t true that worrying won’t do anything, it actually does. Worrying will steal time away from you and possibly create a self fulfilling prophecy of failure.

3. When deadlines are tight, keep procrastinating.
Think about it, you have a few days before something big is due so you start working on it. Technically, you’ve stopped procrastinating which is fine, but what happens is people tend to want to more productive in general. You start thinking, “I need to be more productive now. I know, I’ll start doing the dishes.” What actually happens is the opposite, you’re continuing to procrastinate on the important item, and stopped procrastinating on others. Avoid this trap at all costs.

4. Complete the task in your mind.
When I have to write a long document, or build some new application, I run through the whole process in my head. You’re going to be thinking about your task while you’re doing it, but thinking about it in advance will save you loads of time when you really need it most. If there are multiple ways of doing something, decide in advance which route you will take. If there’s a possibility that something will go wrong, come up with contingency plans ahead of time so you’re not wasting time thinking about what to do next.

5. Find creative ways to buy time.
If you’re pressed for time on building a presentation for example, skip some detail on the slides and let your presentees know that you will be providing them some other documentation at a later date that goes into more specific details. Push back the meeting due to some “emergency”, but no longer than 24 hours. It’s not a lie, your emergency is that it isn’t done.

6. Focus on the most important pieces only.
If it’s an exam, read the summary at the beginning and end of the chapter. If you have time you can always go back, but if you don’t, it will be costly. If you need to show progress on something that is midflight or even supposed to be completed, build a facade that it makes it seem as if it’s done and drive the presentation. For example, if you’re rebuilding a car, focus on the parts that they will see and worry about the engine later. Just tell them you’re missing one part and all you need to do is swap it in and they’ll be set. In the meantime they’ll be ooing and aahing at your paint job and refinishing. If you don’t do the most obvious parts this way, your clients will only see the ugly primer on the outside and they won’t care that you’ve completely rebuilt the engine.

Anything you like? Please share!

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would agree-if you can do it tomorrow hang in there//
ike

Comment by ike — March 25, 2009 #

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