The art of defer things: strategic procrastination
Very often it is thought that procrastination is something negative, but, Can it be something positive?
Notes before start: I already wrote this article in spanish, but since I really liked it, I decided to translate it to english.
Nowadays the procrastination is perceived as something bad, as a bad habit to eradicate, as an act that decrease productivity, and as something that we must to avoid at all costs. In some way, these ideas can be correct, but they are wrong in the fact that generalize the concept of procrastination. So, Why procrastination is perceived as something bad?
Historical background
First, we have to understand that the thoughts that are flowing from traditions of people that have lived before you, and the material conditions governing your own epoch, contribute to determine your way of think. Therefore, the fact of thinking procrastination as something bad is given, largely, by this two factors. So, What are these thoughts due to?
These thoughts are propitiated by the Industrial Revolution, since it imposed the obsession to efficiency and productivity. Of course that it didn’t be something bad, since this obsession to efficiency and productivity produced a large economic growth. Indeed, the Industrial Revolution was a big milestone in the history of humanity, and it can be understood as the most important economic change in the history. But, Why does this conflict with the concept of procrastination?
Long before the Industrial Revolution imposed the obsession to efficiency and productivity, the civilizations recognized the benefits of procrastination. In Ancient Egypt, there were two hieroglyphs to “procrastinate”: one meant laziness while the other meant to wait the right moment.
My critic to the idea that procrastination is a bad habit is given by what I commented above. It is thought procrastination mean laziness to do something, and partly yes, it can mean that. But also it can mean to wait the right moment, and that is what I am going to talk about today, about strategic procrastination.
Strategic procrastination
In an experiment conducted at a university, college students were asked to make proposals for a business on the university campus to occupy a lot recently vacated by a store.
When the students started the task immediately, they leaned to propose convencional ideas, such as another store. But some students were chosen, in a random way, to delay the task and instead to play games such a minesweeper or solitaire. These last produced business ideas newest, such as a tutoring center and a warehouse. At the end, the result was that the proposals of the students that procrastinate were 28% more creative. Why the fact of procrastinate made their ideas more creative?.
When they started to think in business ideas and then deliberately delay the task, they started to consider more creative possibilities. But, Why is this about? Well, this is due to Zeigarnik effect.
In 1927, the Russian psychologist Bluma Zeigarnik showed that people have a better memory for incomplete tasks than for completed ones. Because once a task is done, we stop thinking about it. But when it is interrupted and left pending, it is still active in our minds.
Throughout history great thinkers, inventors and prominent individuals have been procrastinators, and a great example of this was Leonardo Da Vinci.
Leonardo Da Vinci, a procrastinator genius
Leonardo is one of the most fascinating people in history. He was the ideal of the Renaissance man, that individual who soaks up all kinds of knowledge and participates in various areas of science and art. Leonardo was a painter, scientist, military engineer, hydraulic engineer, anatomist, paleontologist, philosopher, musician, and inventor.
He was an incredibly curious person, he was interested in everything, which is partly due to his wide range of interests. His genius was of a kind that we understand and can even serve as an inspiration to us, as it was based on skills like curiosity and great powers of observation, things that all of us can aspire to. Some people are geniuses in a specific field, like Mozart in music, but Leonardo’s brilliance lies in the fact that he combined multiple different fields, which allowed him to have a more complete perspective on things.
Throughout his life, Leonardo had a propensity to abandon works of art and treatises without finish them. He initiated many treatises on topics such as flight, water, anatomy, art, horses, mechanics, and geology. But he only started them, he didn’t finish them.
Leonardo painted the Last Supper in the Santa Maria delle Grazie church in Milan, Italy. According to the account of a church priest, Leonardo “used to go first thing in the morning, he would climb the scaffolding” and, later, “from sunrise to sunset, he would stay with the brush in his hand, forgetting to eat and drink, without stopping to paint ”. Other days, however, he didn’t. “He would spend an hour or two just looking at the work, reflecting, examining and judging the figures he had created.” And other days, because of his tendency to procrastinate, he would grab the brush and give one or two strokes to one of the figures and then go elsewhere.
Leonardo began to paint the Mona Lisa in 1503, commissioned by Francesco del Giocondo, to paint the portrait of Mona Lisa, his wife. Despite being a commission, Leonardo considered it his own work rather than a commission. He kept it with him in Florence, Milan, Rome and France, until he died, 16 years after starting it. During those years, he added to it, brushstroke after brushstroke, layer after layer, of oil paint to perfect it. In the Mona Lisa, Leonardo applied the same modus operandi as in the Last Supper, painting from time to time for several years.
You can’t produce a piece of great work by sticking to a schedule or an outline. — William Pannapacker
Indeed, Leonardo’s critics believed that he was wasting his time doing optimal experiments and other distractions that prevented him from finishing his paintings instead of working fully on his paintings. However, his distractions, his procrastination and his tendency to procrastinate were vital to his originality.
Once this analysis is done, we can see that Leonardo understood, whether consciously or unconsciously, the benefits of strategic procrastination. Sometimes he dedicated long hours of work to his works, and other times his procrastination was due to the desire to wait for the right moment, which denotes that his procrastination was not due to laziness.
The genius sometimes achieves more when he works less, because he is thinking of inventions and forming the perfect idea in his mind. — Leonardo da Vinci
Personal experience
Now reader, if I may, I would like to share my personal experience as a programmer using strategic procrastination.
In software development, code bugs are unavoidable, or sometimes it’s not code bugs, but you don’t know how to perform a certain program or algorithm. So, when these unavoidable events appear, at first I try to solve the problem, but if I see that the problem becomes a little complex I leave it. And in an hour I come up with a solution, I implement it and that’s it, problem solved!
Many programmers have said that when they have a problem, they leave it, go to sleep, and when they wake up the next morning, they already have the solution to their problem.
Procrastination can be the enemy of productivity, but it can be a resource for creativity.
When procrastination becomes a problem
Up to this point, you have already understood my point. The term procrastination can be used to refer to two different things. Procrastination can be a bad habit, something to kick, when it’s caused by laziness. But procrastination can be a good thing when we use it as a resource for creativity, when we use it to bide our time. We refer to the latter as strategic procrastination.
Now I would like to talk about procrastination as a bad habit that comes from laziness. Procrastination (remember, caused by laziness) occurs when our efforts are to be happy in the present, and thinking about the future implies an additional burden. We avoid the uncomfortable feelings associated with our work by spending time on mood-enhancing activities, like playing games. Procrastination is caused by wanting instant gratification rather than delayed gratification.
In our modern world there are multiple sources that provide us with instant gratification such as social media, Youtube, Netflix and the list can go on indefinitely. But then how can you beat procrastination?
Well, there is a very good trick that allows you to hack your mind and not allow it to be mediocre. It consists of thinking about the following:
I’m not really going to do the homework right now, but I’ll just do your first step.
If the reader procrastinates the act of reading, just tell yourself that you will only read one page, you will notice that you read not only one page but many more. And so he can apply it with all kinds of activities. Why does this work? Because the first step is always the hardest, once you take the first step, the second step is easier.
In what situations to use strategic procrastination?
Knowing when to use strategic procrastination must be given by the reader’s criteria. You will come across times when things need to be done quickly and efficiently. There are times when it is advantageous to speed up the process and accomplish tasks quickly and efficiently, but there will also be times when it is advantageous to delay progress. In the end it all comes down to knowing when and what strategy to use.
