Living with and understanding procrastinators

Every family has its procrastinators and it is important for other members of the family to understand the mindset of the procrastinators. There is a certain logic to their view of things and how they need to be done. Paradoxically often they are people who not only get a lot done but have a reputation for getting a lot done. They don't have neat desks or even neat desktops on their laptops. They spend a lot of time playing catch-up. But they are likely to be creative and on the whole amiable. After all, if you tend to keep people waiting, it makes them crabby; it doesn't pay to make things worse by being crabby yourself.

The truth is that most procrastinators are structured procrastinators. This means that although they may be putting off something deemed important, their way of not doing the important thing is to do something else. Like reading instead of completing their expense report before it's due. Or rifling through old recipes rather than going ahead with the cooking. Or playing video games rather than working on their work resumes. 

It is true that such people often feel bad about being procrastinators. This emerges in their constant defensiveness about why they procrastinate and thus annoy others. For starters, they need to be honest. They need to admit that they are a procrastinator, and also admit that it is a flaw. Maybe someday you will no longer be a procrastinator. After you lose 20 pounds, get in shape, polish up your high-school French, and write that novel, you may get around to pursuing some self-help regimen that will eliminate this flaw from your personality. But for now, don't compound the flaw with denial. If you admit to being a procrastinator, others will probably try hard to find something nice to say about you.

 Dr. Perry, an emeritus professor of philosophy at Stanford University, who is writing a book on the " art of procrastination" has some helpful advise:

"First, don't listen to most of the advice offered to procrastinators by people who don't have this particular flaw." For example: "Keep your commitments to a minimum, so you won't be distracted." This is a way to become a couch potato, not an effective human being. If a procrastinator doesn't want to work on something, it won't help to have nothing else to do. It's better to have lots of things to do, so you can work on some of them as a way of not doing the task that, for whatever reason, you seek to avoid.

Second, don't sit around feeling bad because you lack willpower. That will make you a depressed procrastinator but won't help you get anything done. Most of us lack all kinds of powers. I can't add long columns of figures in my head. That's what calculators are for. Tools give us the ability to make up for what we lack in native powers. The procrastinator has tools that allow him to manipulate himself to achieve results he can't get with willpower alone.

A third bit of advice: avoid perfectionism. I don't mean avoid doing things perfectly. If you are at all like me, that's not a problem. I mean avoid fantasizing about doing things perfectly. Often procrastination is just a way of giving ourselves permission to do a less-than-perfect job on something that doesn't require a perfect job anyway. Or maybe it's a way of getting those we work with to the point where they say, "For crying out loud, just give me something!" You need to give your boss a memo that provides the basic facts; it doesn't need to read like Hemingway.

Sometimes the information available to accurately complete any project is directly proportional to the elapsed time. For example you may be 6 months into a design when some marketing or business “fact” changed and months of work need to be re-done. Thus waiting until the last possible moment may often, paradoxically, provide you with the most efficient use of your time.

But the real key to effective procrastination is speed. If you wait until the minimum amount of time to complete the task, and then work steadily and efficiently, you will be happier and more productive.

Last, but perhaps most important: Learn how to be less annoying to the non-procrastinators around you.