"Procrastination occurs when there is a temporal gap between intended behaviour and enacted behaviour." - Professor Clarry Lay - Psychologist.
Most people would admit to being guilty of the act of procrastination in their day to day lives. It is when someone has an assignment or a chore or any type of work to get done, but he or she keeps putting it off until a later time. Sometimes people procrastinate or avoid doing something until they reach a point in time when it can no longer be put off. It is often the bane of productivity, the biggest obstacle to success.
"Procrastination is the thief of time," remarked Taiwanese filmmaker Edward Yang. Procrastination has a bad reputation all around as an impediment when it comes to productivity. But Adam Grant, American psychologist and professor at Wharton University would disagree. "Procrastination gives you time to consider divergent ideas, to think in non-linear ways, to make unexpected leaps," said he on his TedTalk about original thinkers. He conducted a study on the effects of procrastination. He found out that procrastination can be rather fruitful for creativity and innovation. People were asked to generate new business ideas which were then judged by independent readers based on creativity and feasibility. It was found out that people with a moderate level of procrastinating came up with the most innovative and useful ideas. And many people in the creative line agree that they come up with the best ideas when they've been doing something other than actively working on a particular project, in other words, while procrastinating. "My best painting ideas have occurred to me in moments of procrastination," remarked a painter and designer. Julia Larson-Green, Chief Experience Officer of Microsoft, uses procrastination to her advantage and has said, "Being lazy makes me more efficient because I try to find ways that I can do the best work in the most minimal amount of time. I also know that I need pressure to perform, and procrastination is one of the levers for creating that pressure."
However, there remains a very fine line between intended procrastination and procrastination to the point of unproductivity and failure. Research provides psychological reasons behind procrastination. Hilary Rettig, in her book "The 7 Secrets of the Prolific: The Definitive Guide to Overcoming Procrastination, Perfectionism and Writer's Block", says that people with a penchant for perfection tend to procrastinate due to a fear of imperfection. Another reason could be that people with too much to do are unclear on how to proceed, leading to procrastinating by not starting at all. But a major form of procrastination comes from a term called Present Bias. It is when people choose to work on things giving immediate results, rather than things requiring effort and time which will lead to better results in the future. People tend to keep doing small unimportant tasks giving the illusion of productivity.
Finally, it is due to the distractions. It has never been easier for people to fall in the eternal loop of procrastinating till the proverbial last minute, then scrambling to get things done in haste. "It's almost impossible to ignore the chime of my phone when I'm about to start working," said a student from a private university in Dhaka. The most significant distraction for people these days exists in the palms of their hands - smartphones. There are text messages to reply, feeds to scroll through, memes to react on, videos that are too irresistible that people must watch just when they're about to finish that school assignment, or that great business idea that they know will be the next big thing. Thus time management becomes of utmost importance.
To avoid procrastinating on social media, Richard Branson, the founder of Virgin Group, does a 'social sweep' at the end of his morning routine. He goes through his social media accounts such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, to reply to messages or comments and get updated on all the news so that during the rest of the day he does not incline to waste time browsing social media. This could be a technique employed by people in all stages of life to keep their procrastination through social media to a minimum, thus being more productive during the day.
Elon Musk has an interesting procrastination limiting technique, which results in the highest productivity. He divides his time between SpaceX and Tesla, procrastinating on one by working on the other. This means that he is always making the best use of his time, and people in their daily lives could use this. If one has something to get done but feels like putting it off, he or she could do something else that is productive instead. Because there is usually no end to things that everyone needs to get done. "I sometimes procrastinate on studying physics by studying chemistry instead," said a university admission candidate with excellent academic history.
The cycle of procrastination is quite hard to break for people who have made a habit out of being unproductive. It is a paradoxical phenomenon, giving a boost to creativity when done in moderation but taking away the drive to implement that when done in excess.
Raiysa Zuwairiyah
The writer is a first year student of BBA programme at the Institute of Business Administration (IBA), University of Dhaka. She can be reached at z.raiysa@gmail.com