Hear Me Out Procrastination Isnt All That Bad

i’m going to start off by asking

everyone watching to think of a moment

in which they’ve consciously delayed a

task for later

which could have been done in the moment

this could be something simple such as

letting the dishes pile up in the sink

or maybe something more complex like

turning in a paper or report the night

before it’s due

in any sense start up in a moment like

this down

this type of behavior is what i’m going

to be referring to as procrastination

now sadly due to the limitations of

technology i won’t be able to see you

all raising your hands or nodding your

heads

but if any of you consider yourselves to

be procrastination free

i’d say that you’re either lying

confused

or straight up inhuman because

procrastination is not only natural

it is also being shown to be incredibly

common

a study by a sociologist named darius

furu found that 88

of the united states working force

procrastinated

every day and the people in question

were just couch potatoes and freeloaders

either

they all reported having a stable income

a household

and performed properly during work so

right at the back

we can see just how common

procrastination really is

however i’m willing to bet that that

number is a lot higher among students

first of all because i am one and i

procrastinate a ton

and second of all because

procrastination among students is so

common

that reliable trends and patterns have

actually been observed

one of these such transient patterns has

been nicknamed student

syndrome what student syndrome entails

is that when you’re given a set amount

of time to complete a task

most if not all of the work will be

completed in the last

portion of the time given this picture

here should illustrate a lot better what

i mean by that

and student syndrome is also incredibly

common to the point where i’m

also willing to bet that a lot of you

could probably fit your own workflow

into the student syndrome graph

so if procrastination is so common

to the point where reliable trends such

as student syndrome can be observed

why is it still so heavily antagonized

why do our bosses our parents and our

teachers tell us that it’s this

unnatural flaw we must strive to

eliminate

the short answer is actually quite

simple

our schools are jobs and society as a

whole is designed

to benefit those who are most efficient

our bosses tell us that

maybe if we put in a few extra hours in

that work we

might get a raise and our teachers tell

us that

study time translates directly into test

scores

it doesn’t take a genius to figure out

that all this mental strain can

lead to a decline in mental health

that’s why over the past

15 years the world health organization

has reported a significant

increase in symptoms of stress anxiety

and depression worldwide it’s because of

this constant mental strain for

efficiency

so just to quickly recap where we are

right right now

now we know what procrastination is how

common it is

and why it’s so heavily antagonized now

comes the part where you’re all gonna

have to bear with me

because i’m gonna try to explain not

only how procrastination is natural

but how it can be good for you which to

me still sounds

really crazy so i bet it sounds really

really really crazy to all of you

however if i compare procrastination to

meditation

the benefits can appear a lot clearer

and i know it sounds like i got the

meditation thing out of nowhere and i

did

but segways are hard so again bear with

me

modern meditation such as the one given

by headspace which for those of you who

don’t know is this

massive program with over 60 million

users aims to give your mind some

downtime

headspace even coined the term that

everyone needs time to

do nothing now compare this do nothing

time to our standard procrastination

activity

we thought about at the beginning

whether you were

watching netflix playing video games or

reading a book

the lack of urgency in the task meant

that productively speaking

you were doing nothing what i’m trying

to get at here is that you don’t need to

be sitting cross-legged

humming mantras in order to give your

mind some downtime simply leaning back

literally and figuratively can help your

mind relax

it’s also in these moments in which our

subconscious is allowed

to truly work ideas and connections

which you could spend for

hours trying to find consciously come to

you out of apparent thin air

a good example of what i mean by this is

the standard shower thought

a shower thought is this intuitive flash

one gets when

their conscious mind is zoned out

normally occurs in the shower

it could be something simple such as

finally remembering where you left your

keys

or knowing what you’re gonna get their

friend for their birthday

another good example of the power of

this intuitive flash

is the probably made up story of isaac

newton isaac you were just sitting under

an apple tree

chilling when out of nowhere one of the

most revolutionary ideas

in the history of mankind came to him

what i’m trying to get at with all of

this is that it’s in these intuitive

flashes

in which modern meditation and

procrastination can truly help

a study by harvard’s professional

development team found that

students who procrastinated every day

had ideas that were related as 28

more creative and i don’t know how they

measured that but

it’s harvard so we’re just going to roll

with it princeton university also

conducted an

experiment in which they try to find the

correlation between physical

exercise and mental efficiency they

found that students who’ve

exercised 30 minutes a day had reduced

symptoms of stress and anxiety in the

following 24 hours

both studies show how this mental

downtime can truly help with mental

efficiency

now i do have to be fair to

procrastination

because procrastination can grow into a

really big problem which can affect

your life in a really negative way

therefore i think it’s fair to point out

the sides of procrastination which are

okay

and besides what you should try to stay

away from the key concept here is

excess if you’re vegetating in front of

a screen for five hours

every afternoon you’re not gonna get any

mental downtime

or any intuitive flashes you’re just

gonna waste an entire afternoon

things such as exercising reading a book

or maybe

even taking a shower have a lot less of

that slippery slope effect which other

activities such as watching netflix and

scrolling through instagram do i’m not

saying that you can’t procrastinate by

watching netflix or

scrolling through instagram just be a

bit more careful around these activities

it’s not an exact science

know yourself and know how to control it

a bit

the second type of procrastination

everyone should watch out for is

the long-term type of procrastination

the tasks normally victim to this type

of procrastination are normally

long-term low priority tasks

maybe you want to learn how to paint or

maybe you want to build a treehouse

or learn a little new language

the point is since we always have more

urgent tasks at hand

we always push these off for later at

the end of the day

we’ll always have more time for those

right wrong that’s how you end up with a

mid-life crisis

if you push off all your life goals for

later you’re gonna end up trying to

regain your lost time by

buying sports cars smoking weed and

embarrassing yourself

so don’t manage your time and priorities

but

sneak in a bit of 20 minutes every day

to work on your passion project it’s

very likely that this passion project is

going to fall under the

good procrastination activities i

mentioned earlier

so just to boil everything down to three

basic points

one it’s okay to procrastinate don’t

stress about it

give your mind some down time however

two

watch out for excessive procrastination

and try to stick to the

good procrastination activities and

three

don’t waste your life get around to that

hypothetical

idea you’ve been thinking about for so

long

work on your passion projects i’m going

to leave you all with a

chinese proverb my dad showed me

ronzo was a chinese painter with many

skills

amongst them he was an expert draftsman

the king asked him to draw a crab

zhranzu replied that he needed five

years a country house

and twelve servants at the end of the

five years

the painting was still not begun ronzo

replied that he needed

another five years the king granted them

at the end of these ten years zhang zhu

took up his brush

and in an instant with a single stroke

he drew a crab

the most perfect crab ever seen thank

you