Procrastination and the Value of time

I am a procrastinator, and as procrastinators do, I have also thought and read about procrastination a lot. I am sure you also read a lot, if not, you should at least read the great explanation of procrastination by Tim Urban on his Blog Waitbutwhy.com or watch his TED Talk. Anyway, I am not here to shine light on the same elements of procrastination all over again, or give you another obvious, good in theory (but if you are a real procrastinator) difficult in practice, top 5 tips.

Instead, I am now here to talk about one aspect of procrastination behavior I noticed when thinking about the way I procrastinate and how to keep it contained: The value of time. In short, here’s what I noticed. The more free time I have, the less valuable is every minute of my day and I will procrastinate. If I am busy though, each minute counts and I will procrastinate less. In other words: There are feedback loops that make procrastination worse over time in one case, or effectively reduce it in the other case.

This does not seem counterintuitive and even makes common sense, but you have to really internalize that thought and understand the implications if you want to procrastinate less. I noticed that I procrastinated the most when I have an excess supply of time (even though at some times this excess supply of time is just perceived, but that is a story for another time), which reduces the value of that time dramatically, This, in turn, gave me little incentive to actually get going and do something, because I will have all the time in the world, until eventually a deadline can induce a shortage of time (which Tim illustrates as the Panic Monster). So far this is nothing new.

The curious thing is that this also works the other way around. If you have an excess demand of time and very little supply, you are forced to use your time as efficient and effective as possible and in these cases my procrastination has radically declined. However, not only did I become less bored and less wasteful with my time, but I also got more things done faster. This is where a positive feedback loop is created: The more I do, the more I do.

The takeway for me is that in order to fight my bad habit of procrastination, it is all about creating this momentum. Starting to do something, anything, that is not consumption is key. This could be cleaning, doing laundry, calling someone, writing something or just going outside. If you start to think about it, your perceived free time will likely also not be real free time, because there will be things you should be doing, but rather than then thinking about all the things you should be doing, inducing anxiety or worries, actually start with one thing.

I know this is not very helpful advice, neither for you, nor for me, but is the most honest advice I have and I figured there is no easy “hacking” your way out of procrastination. You have to get yourself out of your artiificial comfort zone and do the hard thing.

There are some methods to help, though. Whenever I feel like I am slipping away into a zone of procrastination, down that slope that makes it even worse over time, I try to counter that by signing up for responsibilities where what I do matters not only to me, but also others. Getting involved in work, projects, clubs, a peer group or a relationship that demands your effort, presence and time, in order to structure your life and make your time precious again.

Procrastination, ultimately, is very privileged and luxurious problem to have, because in order to procrastinate, you have to be able to afford carelessly wasting time. That still makes it a very real and difficult problem that should be taken serious, thought. Getting out is hard, even with what I suggest, so proposing easy solutions to a hard problem will only make it worse for some people as they will look for the roots of the problem in themselves. I have experienced that the best way to deal with the situation is to embrace procrastination habits as a part of yourself of which you have to deal with and become the master of.