Procrastinate More — and 6 Other Counterintuitive Productivity Habits

It’s human nature to delay effort. Call it time management, energy management, mood management. But the notion of productivity for its own sake can be a trap. In this article, you’ll learn why you should stop trying to figure out how to stop procrastinating and, instead, change your relationship to productivity and procrastination once and for all.

You have an idea, and a plan, for starting your book in earnest, for launching your side business this year. You want it to happen, you can see yourself doing it. The desire is so real you can taste it.

You just have to take care of a few other things first.

Famous. Last. Words.

FWIW, I believe you. I believe you want to do this. And I hear your frustration when you say you’re so tired of working so hard and wondering why the faster and harder you work, the further away you get from starting.

Ever wonder this: That it might be your ability to produce, and love of getting things done, that could be keeping you from what you most want to pursue? What if a passion for being productive at all costs…is costing you?

Why Procrastinating Doesn’t Make You a Bad Person

You might assume that putting something, anything, off is a negative, a character flaw that you must fix in order to achieve anything of worth. Like, when you put off your taxes, or ending a relationship, or having that mold looked into.

It doesn’t mean you’re “bad” at stuff, or weak, or incapable, says Adam Grant in Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things. “Procrastination is a common problem whenever you’re pushing yourself beyond your comfort zone.”

You Just Hate Pain (duh)

While we may associate it with laziness, Grant says procrastination isn’t a character flaw or even (and we can debate this) a time management problem.

“It’s an emotion management problem,” he writes. “When you procrastinate you’re not avoiding effort. You’re avoiding the unpleasant feelings that the activity stirs up.” But sooner or later, he says, it becomes clear that avoidance of these emotions can keep you from moving ahead.

Plus, there’s another problem behind it:

Also, You’re Probably a Perfectionist

In this book 4,000 Weeks: Time Management for Mortals, Oliver Burkeman attributes this tendency to delay as due in part to our refusal to acknowledge limits.

We fear that if we try to, say, write a book or craft our website copy, nothing we can actually do today will capture the version that exists perfectly in our minds. That book, that website, that dream does not yet have real form; it’s pure potential, and we know the minute we try to make it real we will eff it up royally.

The fear of “what if it sucks” has kept many an artist from the risk of making. This means perfectionism, not procrastination, may be the real problem. And that’s why devotion to our own fantasies can be our undoing, because, well, we never do it. Fact is, acknowledging and setting limits may be the key to igniting creativity.

Why You Don’t Need to Overcome Procrastination

I still hold that procrastination isn’t a lack of time management—but a form of it. If you didn’t procrastinate, you’d be doing literally everything you’ll ever do right now, in this moment, and that’s impossible.

By virtue of the time-space continuum and your limited time, attention, and resources on earth as a human, you must put not some things, but MOST things off. Maybe forever.

“The point isn’t to eradicate procrastination, but to choose more wisely what you’re going to procrastinate on, in order to focus on what matters most,” Burkeman writes. “The real measure of any time management technique is whether or not it helps you neglect the right things.”

Focusing on Productivity Alone Will Make You Miserable

If you want to know the real roots of our procrastination and the Sisyphean tragedy that informs our daily to-do lists, we need to zoom way, way out. Try 10,000 years ago.

In his book The Mismatched Human: Our Fight for a Meaningful Existence, philosopher and professor Mark Hawkins, PhD, argues that the root of our disconnect with meaning and satisfaction began when we moved from the Paleolithic era to the Neolithic era. This shift to an agricultural lifestyle represents in many ways the birth of civilization, when we went from roving bands of eat-what-you-find to people who literally put down roots.

The desire to do, grow, and have more has only increased over the past millennia, as we attempt to do more in less time—which has led to our ever-worsening relationship with burnout.

We have come to define ourselves, our value, our worth, by how much we can do in less and less time. And the entire industry of productivity hasn’t helped, even if it seems to want to.

“Most productivity experts act merely as enablers of our time troubles, by offering ways to keep on believing it might be possible to get everything done,” writes Burkeman.

7 Counterintuitive Productivity Habits That Will Actually Save You Time, Energy, and Frustration

1. DO LESS: Efficiency is a trap. The more work you can do in less time, the more work will appear.
2. THINK BIG: If you prioritize the small things, that’s all you’ll do.
3. BE MORE PESSIMISTIC: Toxic optimism will crush your soul. You’re not expected to do it all. Be choosy about what you take on.
4. PROCRASTINATE BETTER: It’s not about whether, but WHAT, not to do right now. Put off the things you KNOW are not critical.
5. ACCEPT YOUR LIMITS: The sooner you acknowledge your own limits, the sooner you can commit to what matters.
6. CHOOSE PURPOSE OVER PRODUCTIVITY: Productivity for its own sake will not scratch the itch. Be specific about what you want to (not “should”) get done.
7. CHOOSE VALUE OVER EFFICIENCY: Really good stuff takes time, and value requires some inefficiency to be real. Give good stuff space to grow.

And…Three Ways to Free yourself from the Efficiency and Productivity Trap

Pay yourself first.

In the Profit First approach, Michael Michalowicz says that rather than invest in your business and “hope” there’s something left over for you, pay yourself first. This doesn’t just go for money but time, too.

Resist the urge to clear the decks. Do not try to “get through email first” or do a full sweep of tiny tasks. They will take longer than you think, and you’ll end up with little to spare.

This idea of “do it now and have time later” is an illusion. If you’re serious about doing what you say you want to, then you pay yourself with that time first, during your most focused time of day. This, too, requires a sacrifice of sorts. Pick the sacrifice that feels more worth it.

Challenge the rules.

You may “think” you’re not supposed to do what you want first, or you “should” prioritize what other people need. Where did that rule come from?

I gave a prompt during a workshop recently: A rule you never questioned. One woman shared that she always believed that if she worked very hard for a long time, she would be rewarded. She’s decided she’s done waiting.

What rules are inhibiting you from starting (or finishing) projects that you believe in and are determined to do? How can you rewrite them?

Find the value in inefficiency.

I know this is hard to believe, but your ultimate purpose in life is not to do more in less time. It’s great for business, but not how you, as a human, achieve your best work.

We never think we have enough time; we think we’re always on the verge of running out, that we’re endlessly behind. But since time has no beginning or end, there is no “behind.” And thinking that way doesn’t help.

I leave you with the beautiful words of poet David Whyte, author of Consolations, who defines procrastination this way:

“What looks from the outside like our delay, our lack of commitment, even our laziness, may have more to do with a slow, necessary ripening through times, and the central struggle with the realities of any endeavor to which we have set our minds…”

He says that to hate our tendency to procrastinate is in some ways “to hate our relationship with time itself” when really it can be “a beautiful thing, a parallel with patience, a companionable friend.”

So rather than fight procrastination, find yourself in that effort: “What is worthwhile carries the struggle of the maker written within it.”