Why You Should Become A Professional Procrastinator

It’s Monday morning… I receive a long email from someone and procrastinate replying to it because it’s not urgent and I know it will take me a while. Every time I look at it throughout the day, I feel resistance and instead I choose to tick something else from my to do list that requires less effort.

Wednesday morning… Ok it’s been more than 2 days and I still haven’t replied, my guilt levels reach maximum capacity so I sit down to reply and write the email. It takes me less than 5 minutes. 

I get annoyed at myself because if I had just spent 5 minutes replying to it on Monday I would not have put myself through that much guilt.

Does this situation sound familiar? Maybe you’ve done this for a presentation… or getting back to a friend… or even writing a school paper...

The next time I received one of these emails I decided to answer back immediately, however the words just didn’t seem to come and even though I got it done it took me nearly 30mins. WTF? 

I felt super frustrated because it just confirmed that I was right and now I’ve started the day feeling like I’ve lost 30 minutes of my life (I know… Drama Queen right?)

Then it dawned on me that maybe the reason it was so much easier to reply 2-3 days later was because subconsciously my brain had most likely been processing it during that time…

We often forget that when we are not working on a specific task, our minds are subconsciously collecting ideas and processing things to prepare us for it. This means that when we actually sit down to complete the task, we have a lot more ideas in our head on how to go about it.

In my case when it came to replying to a long email, it was so much easier to do so after letting it sit for a bit and letting my mind subconsciously process it.

Now does this mean that we should always wait 2-3 days before finishing a task? No. 

But if we can become more aware of the benefit of sometimes procrastinating on a task, then we might be less hard on ourselves about doing it. 

We’ve always been told that procrastination is bad and that we should avoid it at all costs. As a result we often feel guilty every time we do it and even though we always get stuff done, we beat ourselves up for not doing it the “right way”.

But the truth is that we can use our procrastination tendencies to our advantage in ways that can actually increase our productivity.

If you want to become a professional procrastinator, all you need to do is get good at identifying tasks that will get done faster if you don’t do them immediately.

The key is to get clear on your priorities. Start identifying whether your tasks are important vs urgent.

Next time you feel resistance towards a non urgent task, ask yourself this question: Would I get this done faster if I let it simmer for a bit? If the answer is yes, then schedule time later in the day to do it and spend the rest of your day without feeling guilty about procrastinating.

But what if I just use this as an excuse to procrastinate on everything?

If you are asking this question, chances are you would have procrastinated anyways. And there’s nothing wrong with that as long as you are wise about it. Circle back to your priorities and set the terms of how much you can procrastinate depending on the urgency and importance of the task. 

Be a wise procrastinator and this way you will never have to feel guilty about it again 😉

Drop me a 💪  if you are a procrastinator ready to turn pro!