- It is human nature to procrastinate , we tend to preserve as much energy as possible. Given the nature of procrastination , how to we use this innate tendency to our advantage instead of fighting it ? There are 3 ways to procrastinate :
- Do nothing
- Do something less important
- Do something more important
- Most often we are type 1 or type 2 procrastinators – we either do nothing or do something less important (usually errands) than the task we know we should be doing. Those who achieve something are type 3 procrastinators , they avoid doing the errands and put time in doing the hard stuff
- Type 3 procrastinators ask themselves : Is there something more important that I should be working on? Type 3 procrastinators stay away from doing type 2 procrastination as much as possible. Type 2 procrastination is running errands , doing the less important things that won’t be in your obituary.
- Good procrastination is avoiding errands to do the real work. The people who want you to do the errands wont think its good , but you probably have to annoy them if you want to get anything done. Some errands go away if you don’t pay attention – like making coffee. But some errands get worse if you put them off – file taxes. So you can’t put off all errands , but you need to schedule time for the big things
- Doing amazing work needs something that errands don’t need – Huge chunks of uninterrupted time. Always be a time 3 procrastinator , type 2 procrastinators are the worst. Errands kill great work. We often work on errands all day to avoid solving the hard problems. No writer ever failed at writing the novel because they sat at the desk for 8 hours , they failed because of the little errands they ran to be productive.
- You should always be working on the most important thing you could be working on at a given moment. What is the most important problem in your work ? In your field of interest ? Are you working on them ? If not , why not ?
