If you talk to academics about their experience of procrastination you rapidly encounter moral judgements. People feel guilty about their procrastination. They even feel ashamed about being someone who procrastinates, turning the behaviour into a character trait through their self-recrimination. To procrastinate is to fail to meet one’s obligations, to refuse to act when action is necessary and being unable to prioritise.
Obviously we all procrastinate sometimes. In my experience those who are most self-critical about their procrastination can get stuck in a doom-loop where the recrimination makes it even more difficult to get started. The cognitive machinery which would otherwise be churning away in the background helping prepare for immersion in a task, instead gets redirected towards obsessing over one’s own perceived failings. To procrastinate sometimes is inevitable. To systematically castigate oneself for doing what is inevitable is an act of self-defeating cruelty which amplifies the underlying behaviour.
I procrastinate constantly. The only time I feel guilty about it is when I realise that someone I’m late on an obligation* for can see that I’m working on something else. In part that’s because I realised a long time ago that feeling guilty about procrastination often makes the problem worse. There are factors which drive procrastination: failing to divide a task into concrete next action steps, worrying about your ability to complete the task, not wanting to deal with the consequences of completion etc. There are practical steps you can take to address this, such as working out exactly what steps are necessary for a task or reflecting on what it is that’s worrying you about it.
If you’ve taken what practical steps you can see then I honestly struggle to see why you should feel guilty. You’re doing the best you can and it might be the demands placed upon you need to be challenged in some way. This might involve refusing to be responsible for finding biographical solutions to systemic problems which is something I (seemingly) see constantly in others. It could also mean that you need to learn to say ‘no’ and start keeping track of what you’ve committed to, in order to avoid a self-defeating escalation in your workload. If you learn how to do this, let me know. Thanks.
What is often missed in these discussions is how procrastination can be productive. It can be structured and a virtue can be turned into a vice. I struggle to say ‘no’ to anything I find intellectually interesting (again ADHD and side quests) and it frustrates me because having a pile of unmet obligations robs writing of its joy. When I know what I’m working on is one in a whole sequence of unmet obligations, I start triaging my way through them in a profoundly joyless manner. But when I keep this under control I find that a little procrastination can be hugely stimulating. I’ve written in this series that maximising your flow is crucial for enjoying writing, suggesting that you can surf on the waves of your interest by moving between different sections of the same project or skipping between multiple projects. Creative non-linearity creates the space for you to follow this threads in a responsive way.
The flip side of this is how avoiding something can be a huge support in immersing yourself in something else. There is something I have to do today which I’m putting off because it’s anxiety inducing and I’m not entirely clear how to do it. I don’t know how to solve these problems. But I’m confident if I sit down and focus it will become clear to me. But my god does everything else seem engaging while I’m avoiding this task. I’ve done a whole sequence of things I was previously unenthused about because suddenly they sparkle as actions I can take which postpone the confrontation with my displaced obligation. This post is another procrastination exercise which I’ve hugely enjoyed writing. Calling back to #3 in this series, I’ve written this post in under 10 minutes, illustrating how quick writing can be when you’re immersed and, as I’ve argued above, how conducive to immersion procrastination can be
Eventually I will have to confront what I am putting off. When it comes to things like final stage editing and marking I’ve become increasingly adept at just forcing myself to get started. Inevitably once you get started, a cognitive map starts to form and this once imposing undertaking becomes a minor inconvenience. But there’s a weird creative charge prior to this moment which I know other people experience, yet I’ve rarely seen written about. When I really don’t want to do something, I note this fact and commit to eventually doing it. But rather than beating myself up about it, I usually let that procrastination direct me elsewhere for a period of time, turning what might otherwise have been self-recrimination into creative energy. I often gain the most satisfaction from writing when I’m procrastinating.
*I’m talking about procrastination in the broad sense of failing to prioritise. I feel guilty in this narrower sense of being late on an obligation. If this were a longer post I would distinguish between them more clearly, but I’m not sure exactly how I’d do that (or how it would it complicate my argument) so I’m putting it off till a later date 😊
Mark Carrigan 