Are You Secretly a “Productive Procrastinator”?
TL;DR
Have you ever worked all day and felt like you accomplished nothing? You may be a victim of productive procrastination. This is when we do low-priority, time-consuming tasks to avoid the work that really matters. It happens because we get overwhelmed by a big project, overcomplicate a simple task, or spend too much time on unnecessary details, all while feeling busy and productive.
Are You A Productive Procrastinator?
I never thought of myself as a procrastinator. I never waited until the last minute to get work done. In fact, I’m often known for getting work done far before the deadline. However, I noticed that I was still falling behind on some of my work tasks and it seemed impossible to get all of my work done within the normal workday. I knew I was working all day, yet I felt like I didn’t get anything completed. So, what was going on? This is what we refer to as “productive procrastination.”
There are obvious forms of productive procrastination, such as organizing your office before you start a project. You somehow convince yourself that the mess will distract you from your work. This type of procrastination is easier to spot because you clearly aren’t doing the work you were supposed to do. However, there are sneakier forms that tend to derail many of my coaching clients. We humans are such skilled creatures that we have developed creative ways of getting in our own way while still feeling productive.
The Sneaky Culprits of Productive Procrastination
One of the most frequent ways I would get derailed at work was by getting so overwhelmed by a project that it felt impossible to complete. As a result, I would put off starting the big project in lieu of spending my time on every other project or task. So, I was doing work and being productive, but I wasn’t tackling a project my boss had deemed a priority. Unsurprisingly, my boss didn’t appreciate that. The challenge I was actually facing was that I didn’t knbow where to start and wasn’t sure how to get from start to finish. The project became a black hole I couldn’t see into and was at risk of getting sucked into.
Another way we unintentionally derail ourselves is our inability to identify the most essential elements needed for completion. Instead, we overengineer and overcomplicate the project and the solution. For instance, I have worked with a few clients who, during their job search process, identified the need to create a digital portfolio or website to showcase examples of their work. This can be an easy exercise or it can become a time-consuming task that takes months, delaying the person’s ability to start applying for new jobs. The problem is that they put off applying for jobs until they complete a new task, which may or may not be a legitimate blocker. The problem here is when we haven’t taken a moment to define what “done” looks like before we begin. As a result, we make it harder to complete the task at hand.
One of the last examples of productive procrastination, and I am a huge offender here, is spending too much time on one portion of the task. For example, that could mean spending an hour researching fonts as you are revamping your resume, or working on a 20+ page deck and wasting time looking for just the right image for slide 2. You are working on a task related to the project (yay!), but you are spending too much time on a particular aspect of it that is not going to deliver the right return on your time investment (boo!).
Practical Ways to Fight Back
The good news is that these issues can be resolved. To tackle projects that feel overwhelming, you can set aside a few minutes to break down the project into its mini-tasks. When a project is large and looming, it can feel impossible to complete and to meet any proposed deadline. So instead, we need to start to think through the steps to get the project done. Often, after completing this exercise, I realize that the project is much easier than I had anticipated. This helps me release a lot of the anxiety I had built up.
Another benefit of this approach is that it will help you identify project milestones which enables you to better track and recognize the progress you are making. This helps combat those feelings that you’ve been working for hours, days, or weeks on a project and have nothing to show for it. When you’ve already broken down the project into mini-tasks, you can see how many steps you have completed. You can then clearly articulate what is remaining to any key stakeholders which also helps get you proper credit when you don’t have a final deliverable to show.
To help combat situations where we overcomplicate the work and therefore make it impossible to complete, we need to take a moment before we start the task to review what “done” looks like. In the case of the website portfolio, I took 5 minutes to talk with my client about which elements to include. There were some that needed to be completed before the client felt comfortable applying for new jobs and other elements that could be added later. As a result, my client decided to apply for a few jobs before the portfolio was complete, streamlined what was included, and finished version 1 in two weeks. This simple exercise ensured my client wasn’t adding unnecessary and time-consuming elements that would have stalled their progress.
And finally, one of the best ways to combat the sneaky affliction of spending too much time on a particular task is to develop skills like time blocking. This technique enables you to think through how much time you want to spend on a task and then track your time. This makes it easier to catch yourself when you are engaging in this form of productive procrastination. From there, you can get yourself back on track, saving yourself precious minutes or hours of wasted time.
As we can see, you don’t need to be scrolling TikTok to be considered a procrastinator. Particularly for overachievers, productive procrastination is more likely the culprit preventing you from getting more done in less time, creating stress and anxiety, and holding you back professionally. Which one of the examples above has snuck into your routine? Identify it and then address it to see extraordinary benefits to your productivity.
