Prokrastiniruem right: how to become productive, postponing the problem?

Procrastination is automatically equated with harmful psychological phenomena associated with laziness or a waste of time. All in voice say that it is necessary to deal with it, and explain how to do it. But what if procrastination - it's not such a bad phenomenon, and, putting aside their affairs properly, you can even increase productivity?

Why do we prokrastiniruem?

Procrastination comes from the counter the two parts of the brain. One of them - the limbic system, which includes the pleasure center. The second - the prefrontal cortex, our "internal scheduler." Thus, the limbic system is fighting for the pleasure of the "here and now", and the prefrontal cortex - for what will be best for us in the long run.

According to the doctor of philosophy and author Digest procrastination, Timothy A. Pichila (Timothy A. Pychyl), the prefrontal cortex - a part of the brain that makes us different from animals administered only reflexes and stimuli. Unfortunately, we have the weaker areas of the brain, so we have to drive yourself to do something.

On the other hand, as soon as our control decreases, the limbic system immediately eliminates the complicated or uninteresting tasks that we felt good.

So, procrastination, primarily related to biology. Economist George Ainslie even called procrastination "basic human impulse."

Blame fear

Entrepreneur and investor Paul Graham sees procrastination is more than just procrastination. He says people are often afraid of large-scale projects. Big problems are terrifying, and from literally soul hurts.

Probably all seen this before: when you decide to take on an ambitious, large-scale project and a sudden encounter with a huge number of small problems that arise on the way.

When the pile of urgent matters constantly distracts you, it's hard to focus and start to write a great novel. Every time when small problems do not give rise to a great project - it is the limbic system takes care to take us from most unpleasant mental reactions - fear.

In an article published in the New Yorker, James Surovetski procrastination explains as follows: "In order to protect themselves from the risk loss and collapse, you prefer to unconsciously create such circumstances that make success in the unreal principle. This reflex, which creates a vicious circle. "

Why is procrastination does not need to be treated?

There are different types of procrastination, and some of them are useful. In general, we can distinguish three types, depending on what you are doing instead of working:

• You do nothing;
• You are doing something less important;
• You are doing something more important;

Not hard to guess what type of procrastination actually more profitable for you. Instead of doing a bunch of unnecessary things, writing email or doing something at home, you can concentrate on more important work.

On the other hand, John Perry, a professor at Stanford University, wrote in the Huffington Post, there are two kinds of procrastination, which help us to increase our productivity.

The first type is associated with perfectionism. The professor claims that since the majority of procrastinators are perfectionists who dream about the perfect job done, postponing projects may be useful.

If you leave the job until the last minute, you will make them adequately, not tinkering with a thousand times because of nonsense, to achieve the ideal, which is not.

I - a perfectionist procrastinator. I will do everything perfectly, but tomorrow.

Still procrastination can be useful to understand what the job is really not so important. When you postpone them, they will eventually disappear by themselves, and you do not have to spend time on them.

good procrastination

If we want to use procrastination in a positive way, there are several theories of how to do it. The first - the idea of ​​Paul Graham about the three kinds of procrastination or "good" shelving.

This is where you set aside unimportant tasks such as errands, to spend time on the really serious stuff.

Orders - this is a classic kind of destructive work, procrastination, and helps to cope with them. There are many things that can do everything. At the same time, there are projects and actions, which can handle only you, and if it is necessary to postpone the order, there is nothing to worry about. On the contrary, this is the right approach to work.

There is another serious reason for which leave important work is not made useful for large projects. Our major projects always require two things cancel orders: a lot of time and the right mood.

When we enthusiastically working on a project, it is foolish to spend time on some unimportant tasks just because we were told to do it. Of course, if you spend all your time on large projects, this can result in blockages in small matters, but it may be wise to do so, to get a great result.

In the end, working on such projects really is fun, so put off small business is not difficult - the limbic system would not mind.

structured procrastination

This is another kind of good shelving, who suggested John Perry.

According to him, the structured procrastination - it is a great strategy that helps to work effectively. The thing is the psychological fear of large and serious cases.

As a rule, when you make a list of cases, the most important and difficult tasks get up, and all the less serious are located below. When you turn procrastination, you are doing all the works from the end of the list, and do not the most important.

The trick is that you can fool yourself, and put the top of the list complex cases, which is not really so important.

This psychological fact as early as 1930 Robert Benchley wrote:

Anyone can do any amount of work provided it is not the work that he should do at this point.

Pierce Steele, a psychologist at the University of Calgary, says that many procrastinators by such self-deception has turned the feature into a useful habit.

How to make procrastination work for you?

There are several ways that you can make more productive procrastination:

Start small

If a big project like this scares you, that you just can not take for it, you can start small. Perform small tasks that are needed for this project, so you can safely move to implement it, to stop being afraid and prokrastinirovat.

In addition, you can collaborate with others so that your part of the project will be less and will be more time for other tasks.

Customize your list

Structured procrastination, proposed by John Perry, may well work. Try to deceive themselves, adding to the top of the list of tasks that seem extremely important and urgent, but really suffer and allow safe to postpone them or not do at all.

The main thing - to believe that they are important and difficult, then you will want to perform all the other tasks from the list (really important) to avoid their "monsters."

Establish rules

Novelist and screenwriter Raymond Chandler has set itself two rules that help him get started. Every day he sets for four hours to devote to work and remember two basic rules:

1. You can not write
2. At this time you do not do anything

Four hours to sit for a reason - it is terribly boring, so he became a very productive writer.

Require myself more

According to a statement by John Perry, a procrastinator is constantly trying to reduce liabilities, hoping that if there is less things to do, there will be more completed tasks.

John explains that it eliminates the most important reason for procrastination, but also deprives the choice between important and unimportant tasks. So, in the end, with a small number of jobs in its list of cases, your procrastination would be that you do not do anything.

This is the way that will make you a vegetable, rather than effective person.

Moral: procrastination is quite natural for a man, and it is not necessarily harmful, most importantly - prokrastinirovat correctly.