You may have heard of procrastination, but have you heard of its more productive cousin, procrastivity? 

It’s when you have your room cleaned, your laundry folded, your floor mopped and sparkly clean – but you have yet to start doing your school work. It’s when you’re mopping your floor while you dance to your favourite song – but you haven’t started the work that you have been putting off for weeks and your boss is already fuming and tapping their nails impatiently against their desk thinking when in the world are you planning to hand that document over.  

Productive procrastination, also called procrastivity, is a delay tactic that makes us feel good and accomplished because no matter how much we’re avoiding that One Big Task, technically we’re still getting things done by finishing A Completely Different, Irrelevant Stuff That We Fool Ourselves Into Thinking Is Important To Do. And no, finishing that 1000-piece jigsaw puzzle is not as important as finishing that report that you so dread to even start writing. 

Feel guilty? Don’t worry, we’ve all been there.

Want to actually be productive without getting distracted? Here are a few tips to help you beat productive procrastination. And please, don’t say “Thanks, I’ll read it later.”

1. Find people who hold you accountable. 

2. Minimise bad distractions. 

3. Break down big tasks into smaller chunks.

4. Figure out your approach. 

5. Use logic to build a strategy to reduce productive procrastination. 

6. Avoid negative self-talk, exaggeration, and trickery. 

Remember, you are only prolonging your suffering when you procrastinate. Better put yourself under a tough situation now than feel the long-term stress later. You’re going to get tired anyway, why not just get it over and done with right?

Hang in there, we got this, friends! 

Sincerely,

Lily