To Stop Procrastination, Do Nothing
It’s a counter-intuitive productivity hack that work wonders for me
During my graduate school days at the University of Central Florida in Orlando, one of my classmate, Tameka, was telling me how she tackled her homework. She said she literally dragged herself to finish it.
Nothing new there.
But what caught my attention was how she dragged herself (technical term is procrastination). These were her choice of dragging herself. First, she cleaned her car and then tidy her room in her apartment. Then, after dong these ‘productive’ things, she went to the gym to workout. Because it was already later in the afternoon, she started to do her homework.
I do that.
You probably do to. We avoid the real work (For Tameka, it was the homework), by doing irrelevant things (cleaning and going to the gym).
Don’t get me wrong, going to the gym and cleaning your car may look very important and relevant. However, if you look at the big picture, Tiger, those tasks are irrelevant.
The most pressing thing that Tameka needs to do was finish homework, but she clean her car first.
Why clean her car first and not the homework?
It took me a while (okay, decades) to understand and discover the real meaning of the situation. Here’s the truth: cleaning the car and going to gym were forms of procrastination, and it helps the pressure in your brain.
To Tameka, it feels like she was being productive, but she’s not, relative to the progress of her homework.
I dug deep to this topic because I always catch myself doing what Tameka have done.
Currently, I am a budding entrepreneur with a full time job. My time management skill is dismal because the browser in my computer stays on CNN news and I read every bit of interesting news before I go to the real work, which is setting up my the next advertising campaign and analyzing my advertising data.
The realization struck me that I was like Tameka.
How to you counter this then?
Do Nothing Instead
Let’s look at Tameka’s situation again, for her, the motion of going to the gym and cleaning her car seems progress. But it’s really not. She is not making progress in her homework.
This made me wonder before then, why clean the car and go to the gym, instead of doing homework?
The homework commands more pressure to her. However, going to gym is not (or less pressure to her), so the brain simply do the task that has less pressures.
Although it seems like not a problem if you clean your apartment and your car before doing your homework, it is a productivity problem in the long run.
For Tameka, as a graduate student, she can afford to do less pressure task as a form of procrastination, because she still have more time to do her homework.
But for me, who works full time and can only afford 3 hours maximum to work on my side hustle, Reading CNN news gives me less time to work on my side hustle.
In addition, reading CNN lessen my brain power, not like Tameka, who can recharge by sleeping.
So what’s the best thing to do?
Do nothing.
Psychologist have been flinging this solution for a long time, but seems like people are not doing it because it’s a very counter intuitive. Doing nothing is procrastination.
But it’s not.
Because by doing nothing, you lessen the brain’s pressure of doing the big task, and at the same time, not draining the battery of you brain (cleaning requires brain energy). Doing nothing recharge your brain and is ready to tackle the real task.
If you want to know how I do it exactly, here’s how.
I know I always procrastinate when it’s time for me to do my side hustle after eating dinner with my family. This procrastination is in the form of watching documentary on TV or I may start to open my laptop but read CNN news instead or real work. So, I devised a workflow that works for me
Before, this is how I procrastinate. After I spend dinner with my family, I open my laptop to start work. However, I start to read CNN news. Or after dinner with family, I go straight to the bedroom and watch Netflix.
Here’s my new workflow that by passes the procrastination stage: After I turned on the dishwasher, I meditate for 5 minutes using an app in my iPhone (basically concentrating on my breathing and doing nothing).
After that, I analyze my advertising campaigns on my Facebook account.
It works wonder.
P.S.
If you read closely, I tie my action of “after turning on the dishwasher…” to another action. This is a technique that I use to improve my productivity and to improve my output in business. I’ll discuss that later.
