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