Purposeful Procrastination

Is every kind of "putting off" a bad thing?

Not really. In fact, I believe most of us procrastinators need to improve our putting off skills.

At any point in the day we are doing something, whether its just vegetating, having a conversation with a friend, mowing the lawn or working at our job. Each of these things has its appropriate time and place, but we can normally do only one of these things at a time, what we believe is most important at the moment.

This means that we must learn to put off all of the other things that get in the way of accomplishing that one thing we have set out to finish. That's what we procrastinators (my theory) have a hard time doing, setting some of those other things aside.

For example, when we finally get around to cleaning out the garage we may get a text message we feel we have to respond to, followed by the realization that we need to make a doctor’s appointment for later in the week, and then we remember the flowers in the back yard that need watering. You see where I am going with this.

Because we have such a hard time putting some of those other things off until later--all of which may be perfectly legitimate in their right time--we put off our priority tasks, whatever they may be.

So the secret is to choose well in what order we want to do things, take those things one at a time, and put off everything else until we’ve done them. Then go on to the next thing.

That's what I call purposeful procrastination.