Hello, we are Betsy and Priya, and we are chronic procrastinators. Procrastination has been a problem for us for as long as we can remember. Throughout grade school we can recall waiting until the night before to study for our spelling tests. In high school we almost exclusively started essays the night before they were due, and in college we made a habit of pulling all-nighters to cram for final exams. One of us even procrastinated when applying to graduate PhD programs, turning almost all of the applications in the day before they were due. It wasn’t that we wanted to wait until the last minute to do something (or that we were proud of the fact we did this), it just seemed like we were always too busy doing other things to make time for long-term projects or studying for what felt like faraway exams. To make things worse, the more we put off doing certain, difficult tasks the more challenging the task seemed to become, which led us to put off difficult things because we were afraid we wouldn’t be able to complete them.
Although we would like to say that our procrastination system had been working for us (especially since we’d been able to accomplish our goals), we have to admit that years of sleep deprivation and stress have taken a physical and mental toll. We knew we had to make a change, especially if one of us was going to survive graduate school without giving themselves a second stomach ulcer. We looked into a variety of time-management techniques: scheduling your day out by the hour, setting a time limit for how long we would work on projects, and reducing other time commitments. The issue is that none of these things really worked for us: we hate following strict schedules; we’re terrible at guessing how long tasks will take us; and we like being busy and involved.
The solution to our procrastination problem came by the way of an article published in 1996 (yes, 1996) by John Perry, PhD, titled, “How to Procrastinate and Still Get Things Done.”* In this article, he details a strategy for which he later won a Nobel Prize. He points out that all procrastinators put off work they are supposed to do. However, while procrastinating, they do tasks that are “marginally important” as a way of avoiding larger, more important tasks. In fact, he explains, procrastinators can actually be very productive and accomplish important things, if the procrastinator believes that through doing these things they are putting off other, more important things.
To use this method, Perry recommends making a hierarchy of tasks. with a seemingly very important task at the top. Thus, in an effort to avoid doing that task, the procrastinator does other things lower on the list (which are also important). We have found that a less structured approach works for us by simply keeping a running list of tasks that need to be completed. These tasks range from scheduling a dentist appointment, to rewriting lab data cleaning protocols, to responding to reviewer comments on a manuscript revision. Every day, we look at our list and think, “what is the thing that I don’t want to do the least right now?” and select that task to complete. So, we avoid working on a manuscript revision by writing up a client’s psychological assessment report; we avoid statistics homework by working on a paper for a different class; we avoid sending out the lab meeting minutes by calling up our dentist and scheduling a six-month cleaning appointment. As a result of this method, our assessment report is done, we have a head start on a paper we probably would have put off, and our dental health is in great shape.
Our favorite part about this method for time management is that it lets us procrastinate without allowing us to waste time. We don’t spend hours sitting in the labs of our fellow graduate students, talking about all the work we have to do. We rarely go on coffee runs in the middle of the day. Also, we’ve stopped doing other more subtle things that wasted time before, like watching YouTube videos, checking Facebook or scrolling through Instagram. As a result of this we are less intimidated by tasks, more productive, feel accomplished and even get projects done early — which never used to happen.
Maybe we’ll write Perry an email thanking him for publishing this method of productivity; after all, we’ve got some data cleaning we don’t want to do.
* Also check out Perry’s book, “The Art of Procrastination: A Guide to Effective Dawdling.”