Procrastinate Like a Pro With These 7 Unusual Productivity Skills

Why fight your natural urge to procrastinate when you can use it to your advantage?

Procrastination and productivity are often pitted against each other as mortal enemies.

The way most people see it, one cannot live while the other survives…it’s a real Harry Potter VS Voldemort scenario.

As a result, you spend your life running away from procrastination, hoping it won’t “infect” you. And in doing so, you fail to see its true worth.

Take it from me, a chronic procrastinator. I have ADHD so, whether I like it or not, procrastination is just part of my life. And for a long time, procrastination made me feel like a failure. That is until my therapist said to me:

“Suzanne, don’t you realise so many of your achievements have been helped by your procrastination?”

I didn’t believe her at first. It goes against everything self-help advice tells us.

But it’s true.

Procrastination teaches us the skills that can maximise our potential for productivity.

Now, I’m not telling you that lying around and ignoring your responsibilities 24/7 is going to get you anywhere…it’s not. But a healthy dash of procrastination will enhance your venture for better productivity.

Here are seven ways procrastination can give you productivity-boosting skills.

1. Procrastination allows your brain to develop ideas in the background of your mind

Just like a good piece of meat (or plant-based alternative) your ideas need time to marinate to get the most out of them. Whether it’s planning a holiday, thinking of new ways to get physically fitter or writing a new article, the very first thought that pops into your head isn’t going to be well-developed.

And while you could immediately sit down and try to workshop it, you might be making your life much harder than it needs to be.

What people often don’t realise is even when they aren’t thinking about something actively, their mind is still toying around with the idea in the background, expanding it and rounding it out. Exploring new angles and different paths that can elevate the idea to new levels.

So, once you come up with an idea and you know the main bullet points about it, procrastinate on it for a few days and let it grow organically on its own. You’ll be amazed to see how much it’s developed!

2. Procrastination gives you the breathing space to handle your initial “excitement tunnel vision”

Have you ever heard of shiny object syndrome? It’s the idea that whenever something new and trendy comes along, you lose focus on what you were doing and turn all your attention to it, instead.

Humans are emotional beings, it’s just who we are. And we can easily get swept up in excitement. And if you’re someone who is easily distracted, then this is going to happen to you often.

In these situations, procrastination can save you from wasting time on fruitless endeavours.

Let me give you an example.

The other day I was reading an article by a popular writer who made thousands of dollars selling notebooks on Amazon KDP in just one weekend.

As a self-proclaimed Canva specialist, I was sold.

Shiny new object… target locked.

But then procrastination kicked in and I ended up on YouTube, investigating KDP. Most of these videos boasted obnoxious titles like:

“How I made $20,000 in my first month of Amazon KDP”
“I earned seven figures this year in KDP sales.”

But ever the sceptic, I kept searching until I saw a video titled “The brutal truth behind selling in your first month on Amazon KDP.”

To cut a long story short, this video reminded me that most videos and articles don’t mention things like:

Advertising expenditure
Previous selling experience
Initial start-up costs
Marketing

It was a much-needed reminder that things might look shiny from a distance, but a close-up look will reveal it was just a turd wrapped in shiny tin foil. And sometimes procrastination is exactly what you need to fix your lens and see your shiny, new ideas for what they are before deciding if they are even worth acting on.

3. Procrastination forces you to take a break

Productivity advice can be pretty toxic. There is an insidious belief that every minute of the day should be accounted for, and it should all serve a purpose…to push you to further success.

But creative people get good ideas all the time and if you always act on them, you’d pass out with exhaustion.

Procrastination can work as your brain’s way of telling you to stop and compose yourself. Take care of other aspects of your life. Connect with loved ones. Practice self-care. And yes, do nothing.

Because sometimes, doing nothing can be productive, too.

4. Procrastination helps you focus better when you do work

Many procrastinators, myself included, tend to leave deadlines down to the wire.

Two of the main culprits of this type of procrastination are ADHD and Perfectionism. Lucky me, I have both.

But rather than being detrimental, it’s actually helped me produce some of my best work.

Perfectionists overanalyse every detail. Which makes every tiny stepping stone of a task feel like a trek. The more time you have to do something, the more time you have to fret about whether it’s “good enough” or not. The end result is the same… deadlines being met last-minute.

What procrastination does is eliminate the time you spend worrying about how good your work is. It is the epitome of “done is better than perfect.”

Giving yourself less time to produce work sounds counterproductive but it’s actually the opposite.

Personally, I produce better work in a time-constrained hour than on a stress-free day. When I only have an hour to submit my work, my self-inflicted inhibitions go out the window and I’m empowered to create my best work.

And I know I’m not alone in that.

5. Procrastination improves your problem-solving and decision-making skills

No one likes having problems chucked at them. But they happen. Schedule conflicts, broken appliances and forgotten grocery shopping trips… If it were up to you, I’m sure you’d choose the easy life over having to constantly be on high alert.

Most of us put off dealing with these issues. But procrastinating over them has its perks, too. Having less time to think makes it hard to overanalyse the task at hand. You have to make decisions faster and think outside the box.

Near-empty pantries mean creative new recipes, schedule conflicts mean prioritising the events that mean the most to you, and broken appliances may be the perfect time to visit mum and dad and use their washing machine!

Not every delayed decision is positive, but procrastination will greatly improve your “thinking on the fly” skills.

6. Procrastination helps you prioritise your life more efficiently

Procrastinating means your output and productivity time are reduced.

But that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Nor does it mean you get less done than someone who doesn’t procrastinate.

Reduced focus time means you have to prioritise the tasks that actually bring value to your life. Just because someone has 20 items on their to-do list, it doesn’t mean they are getting more value out of their day than you are.

Have you heard of the 80/20 rule (otherwise known as the Pareto Principle)?

It’s often considered the gold standard in the productivity and self-improvement landscape.

The principle goes like this:

80% of your success and results come from just 20% of your tasks/activities.
The other 80% of tasks only account for 20% of your success, making them less valuable to your productivity.

Procrastinators are notorious for pinpointing the “20% tasks” that yield the best results.

They have to be… procrastinating takes up too much time not to!

Which means procrastinating teaches you to prioritise the most valuable activities in life. In turn, it rewards you by improving your work/life balance in the process.

Work smarter, not harder, right?

Besides… who said you couldn’t have your cake and eat it, too?!

7. Procrastination helps you build your self-esteem so you can get work done

Years before I was diagnosed with ADHD, I was told the root cause of my anxiety was perfectionism (this isn’t wrong by the way, it’s just none of us knew my perfectionism was caused by my undiagnosed ADHD). And without fail, I was always recommended the same book to overcome it.

It’s called Eat that Frog by Brian Tracy.

For years I took the book at face value. That to eat my frog, I had to get the most daunting item on my to-do list out the way first so the rest of the list felt less intimidating.

And don’t get me wrong, I still think it's a good strategy for some people and anyone that suffers from perfectionism should definitely check out the book.

But these days, I’ve been “eating the frog” a little differently.

When I know I have something daunting to do, there is absolutely no way on earth my dopamine-craving ADHD brain wants to deal with it. In fact, setting a big task for the beginning of the day is the best way to trigger my ADHD paralysis.

But the philosophy behind this book remains the same. Checking something off your to-do list first thing in the morning helps boost your productivity. It’s just, the “frog” doesn’t have to be the big scary thing that you’re procrastinating on to be effective.

You can maximise your procrastination by finding the least intimidating task (one that’s either exciting or an easy win) and start the day with it. It feeds the dopamine centre that keeps you motivated to keep going.

Procrastination releases dopamine, and if you use it to your advantage, it can work in your favour.

Productivity comes easily when you learn to harmonise with your procrastination

Everyone’s brain is wired differently. Some people are more prone to procrastination, others not so much.

But procrastination can be an incredible productivity tool when you learn how to leverage it effectively.

So ignore the self-help “gurus” telling you your procrastination has no place in productivity. If you’re naturally predisposed to procrastinate, learn how to make it work to your advantage.

You’ll soon see things get easier when you learn to work with your brain as it is, instead of trying to manipulate it to work in ways it just wasn’t built for!