Procrastinating can be effective if done in the right way

Would you rather undertake the prolonged, tiring task of writing a “Lord of the Flies” essay, or would you rather simply push it to the side, clean up your super messy room and come back to writing that essay later?

Technically, doing something else productive instead of assigned tasks means there is little or no loss in actual productivity. That’s why productive procrastination isn’t so bad and in fact may be good.  

Productive procrastination differs from regular procrastination because it comes with a rewarding sense of accomplishment without the pain of doing the daunting assigned task. Plus, it can’t be considered complete laziness, because productive procrastinators complete tasks on their to-do lists that otherwise would not have gotten done.

If a student had completed the assigned task first, they would have stopped working and not finished anything else for the rest of the day. By filling time and crossing off the extra to-dos, active procrastinators get more done, while building up momentum for the ultimate task.

Remember that essay that was assigned? A non-procrastinator starts as soon as they got home, spending an hour thinking about the prompt, and then the rest of the day writing. A productive procrastinator, on the other hand, watches videos on Coursera or puts some work into Duolingo to put off the essay for just a little longer, and motivated by their productive spree or the urgency of an upcoming deadline, is able to jump into the essay and finish it just as quickly as the non-procrastinator. Even better, during procrastination, the mind continues to subconsciously tackle the essay, ultimately leading to more efficient writing.

Especially with work that does not require much thought but requires a lot of repetition, productively procrastinating ultimately allows students to save time. By reducing the amount of time available, students force themselves to do the same amount of work in a shorter span of time. This ability to save time is invaluable, and opens up more time to do other  useful things.

The critical part of the strategy is to know when to start doing work. If it is started too early, the strategy does not work optimally. If it is started too late, then the work may not get done on time. Therefore, effective productive procrastinating depends on a person’s ability to predict their top efficiency and determining the exact distribution of time that leads to the best results.

Thankfully, studies have shown that this work strategy actually comes naturally to humans.

According to Dr. Piers Steel of the University of Calgary, human beings’ behavioral and psychological instincts lead them to “pursue any vile task as long as it allows us to avoid something worse.”

To translate into high school terms, it means that students are willing to clean their room, water their plants or even learn a new language if it means they do not have to do their looming history project. This innate desire to do something besides the strictly assigned task can be channeled into useful work with a little bit of self-control, ultimately yielding massive amounts of productivity.

Active procrastination is not as bad as it is made out to be; rather, it promotes greater productivity, while eliminating any sense of guilt, stress or self-blame that comes with regular procrastination.