The Path to Productive Procrastination

How putting things off, correctly, allows us to accomplish more with our time

Mind Candy is a newsletter on practical philosophy and human flourishment—aka how to live “the good life.” Each month we tackle a new theme.

This month we’re exploring the theme of Time.

Each one of us has a list of things that need to get done in the day. Yet many of us get to the evening feeling like we never accomplished anything off our list.

Procrastinating is a common thing we all do when we look at a to-do list. If the task is big enough to write down, it often means there is a time and energy commitment to the task. Yet for some reason, we decide to put it off.

Maybe we’re not in the right headspace. Maybe we tell ourselves we’re not ready. Or maybe it’s too big for the time allotment we have. But each of us puts off tasks that sit there waiting to be done.

In other words, we procrastinate, biding our time to do the thing—or things—that need our attention, finding excuses for why they have yet to be checked off as completed.

But there is a way to be both a procrastinator and an accomplisher. It may sound counter-intuitive but it’s actually about finding the right balance, and right approach, to the to-do list.

For example, if something makes it on our to-do list, it means we both need to do it and it is of some importance to us. But we often order it based on priority with the top spot being not only the highest priority but also the most time consuming.

Yet one who is strategic in their approach to their list may put off the top priority work in lieu of doing the lower hanging fruit first, stuff further down on the list.

This is what the emeritus professor of philosophy John Perry would call a “structured procrastinator.”

It is “a person who gets a lot done by not doing other things.”

What Perry tries to emphasize in his essay turned book, The Art of Procrastination, is that while it seems one is avoiding the work they need to do, they are in fact making progress on many other things that require their time and attention.

And they do it by avoiding the top things on their to-do list.

Rather than writing an article which takes me a lot of time, research, and focus, I may elect to listen to several podcasts for research, or read a book, or copy my notes down.

All of these things need to be done in order to write the articles for a given week (or year), but they also help me (besides procrastinate on writing the article) prepare for future weeks, gather more robust material, and let my brain start to make connections and form ideas it may not have otherwise. An example of this is while I should have been writing this article, I elected instead to watch clips of Ken Burn’s documentary on Benjamin Franklin, which in turn inspired ideas and stories for future articles.

“Structured procrastination means shaping the structure of the tasks one has to do…” Perry writes.

This type of procrastination is not about just avoiding work, rather, it’s about having a structure to the work that needs to be done, ensuring that the wandering is inline with goals and/or tasks that need accomplishing. I am not allowing myself to mindlessly veg-out, rather, I’m actively working to expand my knowledge base in an effort to better accomplish my top goals on my to-do list.

The key is knowing the totality of what needs to be done and properly picking tasks that allow one to put off the heavy or burdensome ones while allowing for growth and advancement in other areas.

“The trick is to pick the right sorts of projects for the top of the list. The ideal sorts of things have two characteristics. First, they seem to have clear deadlines (but really don't). Second, they seem awfully important (but really aren't).”

While our time is precious, we don’t need to think of procrastination as a vice or as some horrible failure of time wasted—so long as we’re still moving along on everything that needs to get done, and there is a concerted effort to chip away at the larger tasks that need attention.

“One needs to be able to recognize and commit oneself to tasks with inflated importance and unreal deadlines, while making oneself feel that these tasks are important and urgent,” writes Perry.

With time in our lives so short, we need to learn how to prioritize our efforts. But sometimes those efforts may want to be avoided, so it’s always good to structure our to-dos in a way that helps us accomplish more of what we would like to get done.

Before you go…

If you enjoyed the above article, you may be interested in the below:

Thank you for reading Mind Candy. If you enjoyed this work, please consider upgrading to a paid subscription. Or if now isn’t the right time, please share to someone who could benefit.

Until next time,

D.A. DiGerolamo

We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com.