avatarEsteban Thilliez

Summary

The article "Procrastination Is Not That Bad" suggests that procrastination can be beneficial by helping individuals discover their true passions and improve performance through strategic task management.

Abstract

The author of the article reflects on their personal experience with procrastination, arguing that it is not inherently negative. Instead, procrastination can serve as a tool for self-discovery, revealing what tasks one truly enjoys. The article distinguishes between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, emphasizing that tasks aligned with intrinsic motivation are less prone to procrastination. It also discusses the concept of "Love Can Do," which posits that enjoying what one does can lead to better performance. The author suggests that procrastination can lead to increased productivity if it involves substituting less enjoyable tasks with more enjoyable active tasks rather than passive ones. The article concludes by offering strategies to manage procrastination effectively, advocating for a balance between tasks we love and those that require effort.

Opinions

  • Procrastination is often misunderstood as purely negative, but it can have positive outcomes.
  • The concept of acrasia, acting against one's better judgment, is challenged by suggesting that procrastination may lead to actions that are actually better for the individual.
  • What is considered "best" for a person is subjective and varies greatly between individuals.
  • Procrastination can be a sign that one is engaged in tasks that are not intrinsically motivating.
  • Establishing routines or habits can reduce resistance to tasks that are extrinsically motivated.
  • A balance between high-resistance and low-resistance tasks is essential for long-term sustainability.
  • The "Love Can Do" principle suggests that focusing on tasks one loves can optimize performance.
  • Procrastination can act as a filter to identify one's true interests and strengths.
  • Managing procrastination involves transforming stress into positive pressure to enhance performance without succumbing to negative stress effects.
  • Active procrastination, where one substitutes less preferred active tasks with more preferred ones, is healthier than replacing active tasks with passive activities.
  • Strategies such as setting precise goals, planning tasks, and managing stress are mentioned but not detailed, as the focus is on leveraging procrastination for self-improvement.

Procrastination Is Not That Bad

How to use it to become better

Photo by Magnet.me on Unsplash

I procrastinated for almost a week before writing this article. No, it’s not a joke just for the article, just look at my profile to see that I normally publish articles every day, but since the beginning of September I haven’t published anything. I’ve been procrastinating, and then I realized that it wasn’t all that bad after all!

Procrastination

Procrastination has a rather negative connotation. When we procrastinate, it’s usually because we prefer a more pleasant task to a less pleasant but more important one. Plato speaks of acrasia:

“You act against your better judgment”

The definition is clear, and if procrastination is frowned upon in this way, it’s because it seems to lead us astray from what’s best for us. But we still need to define “best”.

The Best?

How do we define what’s best for us? To do so, the notion of “best” must exist, which implies that it must be incontestable. And there are very few things that are indisputable. What’s best for us is generally not best for our neighbor.

For example, is it possible to define a particular diet as the best? Or a sporting activity as the best? It depends on each individual. I have a feeling it’s the same for procrastination.

Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivation

Our motivation can either be extrinsic, i.e. we like the result, or intrinsic, i.e. we like the process. Procrastination often occurs when our motivation is extrinsic.

For example, I love programming. When I’m programming, I don’t see the time go by, and I even find that I’m running out of time to program as much as I’d like. I’ll never have a problem completing a program, I’m more attached to the process than to the result. As for writing articles, the process isn’t always pleasant and I don’t always like it, depending on the subject. On the other hand, I like to click on the “Publish” button once the article is finished. So it’s logical that I procrastinate when it comes to writing articles.

Resistance to Action

Each of our actions is therefore either intrinsically or extrinsically motivated.

When motivation is extrinsic, there is a certain resistance to action, which we can try to reduce as much as possible by using various techniques. For example, setting up a routine or habit, so that you can say to yourself, “this is neither pleasant nor unpleasant, I’m doing this by habit, automatically”.

And we can then sort each of our actions according to this resistance.

A Balance to Find

I think it’s impossible to do only high-resistance stocks, all the time. It’s not sustainable in the long term. So we need to find a balance between actions we really enjoy and could do at will, and those that require a little more effort to break the resistance.

We can also focus on the actions we enjoy doing most. Idriss Aberkane, a French essayist, evokes the concept of “Love Can Do”, saying that results depend on our ability not only to be able to do something, but also to do it with love.

Optimizing Performance

Using this “Love Can Do” principle, we can think of two ways to optimize our performance:

  • Trying to appreciate better what we can do.
  • Capitalize and develop in what we love to do.

I’m sure you’ll agree that the second method is the simplest, i.e. to capitalize on what we know how to do. Indeed, it’s simpler and more pleasant to develop in what we like than to force ourselves to like something we don’t.

Procrastination Makes Us Better

And there are several reasons for this. The first, and the one I’ve been getting at all along, is that procrastination is certainly the most reliable way of finding out what we really like. If we procrastinate, it’s a bad sign. After that, it can also be due to external factors, we should be aware of this (e.g. I don’t want to program right away because my computer has broken down, so I need to get it fixed first). Once we know what we really like, all we have to do is capitalize on it to get results we wouldn’t have been able to achieve in any other field.

The second reason is that procrastination makes us push back deadlines, and therefore pushes us to put in more effort in less time, because we have to deliver the same result in less time. This assumes that we don’t procrastinate to the point of not having the time to complete our tasks on time.

Indeed, having less time puts us in a stressful situation, but if we manage it well it’s a positive stress because it enables us to perform better, without suffering the negative effects of stress.

https://app.assistertselvhjelp.no/en/how-does-stress-affect-performance

We are therefore apparently more productive (we produce more in less time), but this is only true if we were also productive during our procrastination period, doing active tasks when we had to do active tasks, and not replacing active tasks with passive tasks.

Active Tasks/Passive Tasks

Our tasks can be divided into two categories: “active” and “passive”. Active tasks are those that enable us to produce something (writing, painting, working…). Passive tasks are those that produce nothing (watching TV, eating…).

Procrastination becomes a problem when active tasks are replaced by passive ones. Good procrastination, on the other hand, means replacing active tasks with other active tasks. If instead of writing a Medium article, for example, I prefer to make a YouTube video, well, that’s not so bad.

And When We’re Obliged

When you have to, you have to try to make the process as pleasant as possible. I mentioned the example of routine above, which is a good starting point. If you’re a student and you don’t like revising, of course don’t procrastinate, but tell yourself “every evening at such and such a time I’m revising”.

You also need to get your dopamine from the right place. If you’re used to getting tons of dopamine very easily, for example by watching TV or scrolling on your phone, it will obviously be difficult to achieve something a little less stimulating.

I can also give some generic tips, such as setting precise goals, planning tasks, good time management, or using stress management techniques, but I don’t feel like going into detail on that, as the aim of the article isn’t to explain how to overcome procrastination, but rather how to use it to become better.

Final Note

I finally managed to get back to writing after procrastinating for a week, great! After going on vacation for 3 weeks, I lost my good habits when I came back, but it was an opportunity to see what I really liked to do because before I was a bit too biased by my various means to remain productive, a bit like a robot. Productivity isn’t always a good thing, it takes us away from what matters to us if we don’t use it properly…

Thanks for reading! Here are some links that may interest you:

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