Procrastination Can Be Advantageous

How you procrastinate is what matters

Productive and procrastinating. You might think that these two words are not meant to stay together. Either you’re productive or procrastinating, right? Well, it’s not necessarily black and white. Here I will try to explain why it is possible to be a massive procrastinator while still doing a ton of work.

Okay, let’s look at it this way, anything you do could be categorized into 3 levels of importance. Level 1, level 2, and level 3.

Level 1 is the most important. This is where your most crucial work fits. Performing these tasks as early as possible is necessary because they will have the greatest impact on your life. For example, writing a thesis for your master’s degree, carrying out a large project for your work, planning your finances. The sooner you complete these tasks, the better.

Then we have level 2. These activities are still important, but not as important as your main task at level 1. Some things that fall under this level are: answering emails, cleaning the house, going to the gym. You should do these tasks when you have free time and you are not working at level 1. When working at level 2, you are still productive.

Finally, we have level 3. This is where anything that doesn’t need to be done at all falls into place. For example: watching TV, scrolling through Instagram, going out for coffee with someone you don’t care about. By doing any of these tasks, you are essentially wasting your time. They are not important at all and yet this is how most of us choose to spend our time.

While you ideally want to do Level 1 work, sometimes you just can’t bring yourself to do it. And no matter who you are, it happens to all of us, sooner or later there comes a time when there is just too much mental resistance to our most important work. So we procrastinate.

But procrastination doesn’t mean we’re doing nothing or just staring at a blank wall. We always do something, it’s just low level or irrelevant things. Most of the time, we are hopping on a couch in front of a television, while browsing our phones. It’s almost like we’re either super productive, doing level 1 work, or we’re super lazy doing level 3.

Now, what if you take away the ability to perform level 3 tasks altogether? Or at least make it harder for you? What if you unplug the TV, turn off the internet, and hide your phone?

Essentially by doing this you would remove the option of procrastinating by doing unnecessary things. However, you still have the option to complete level 1 and level 2 tasks. Looking at a wall is also an option, but trust me, you would quickly get bored and start doing something. And that something is usually a level 2 job.

When you procrastinate on something, you want to do something other than that big project. And whatever you choose to do, you’ll feel like a piece of cake, compared to level 1. So take advantage of it and do something worth doing. And it’s up to you to make sure it’s at least a level 2 job.

So clean your desk, do the dishes, note down a few goals, think of a new idea, go to the gym, answer a few emails. Be productive in something worthwhile.

Let me give you my example of how I have used this in my own life. I was working on a project and I had a strict deadline for the project. However, one day after working on this project for a long time, I just couldn’t bring myself to keep working on it. So I started to procrastinate.

Usually, every time I procrastinate I like to browse the internet. This is my biggest weakness. However, as I am aware of this weakness, I unplugged the internet so I was unable to browse various websites. Now, because I wasn’t able to do what I wanted to do, I quickly got bored.

I wanted to do something that was not related to work, but deleted my preferred option. And since I didn’t want to do my level 1 and level 3 was stuck, I instead performed level 2 tasks. I cleaned my whole apartment, read 4 chapters of a book and I went to the gym.

Was I productive? Sure. Was I procrastinating? Yeah, high time. You could say I was procrastinating productively. And all I had to do was stop myself from doing level 3 things that didn’t matter.

So the next time you see someone who is super productive, they may just be procrastinating on something and their apparent productivity is the result. And you can replicate that in your life as well. Anytime you have something important to do that you don’t feel like doing, don’t jump straight to level 3.

Instead, make it harder for yourself to even start level 3. Boredom will then push you to get up and do something, which will hopefully be at least a level 2 job. That way you’ll at least be doing something worthwhile while you’re procrastinating. Essentially, you will become a productive procrastinator.

Thanks for reading!!

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