Precrastination and why it’s just as bad for your career as procrastination

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Answering emails the moment they ping into your inbox, getting started on tasks the second they drop on your desk, jotting down your ideas as soon as you’re aware a brainstorm is looming. All strategies of a highly organised and
efficient person, right? Not necessarily, say scientists, who having spent years warning us of the career implications of procrastination, now say that precrastination (the impulse to get things done as quickly as possible) is
potentially just as harmful.

The term – coined by the psychologists behind a recent paper in psychological science – came about as a by-product of a study into the rationale behind decision-making and physical exertion. Subjects were asked to carry buckets
down alleys to a finishing line. They could either pick up the bucket nearest to them, or they could pick up a different bucket closer to the line.

The researchers assumed that most people would wander towards the finishing line, picking up the bucket furthest away from the start point on their way. Not so. Most people picked up the bucket at the start line, and carried towards the
finish.

The pennsylvania state psychologists behind the study couldn’t figure out what on earth was going on, and assumed their instructions hadn’t been clear. They conducted the study eight more times, using heavier buckets filled with water
and pennies, and increasing the distance subjects had to walk.

The results came back the same – most individuals struggled along the route with heavy buckets, rather than collecting them just before the finish.

And so a hypothesis was born. In our deadline-driven society in which early birds are said to catch all the worms and ‘putting off until tomorrow what you can do today’ is frowned upon, we are, said the paper, increasingly making ‘an
irrational choice,’ in order to ‘keep from feeling overwhelmed’.

That choice is precrastination, or, ‘the tendency to complete, or at least begin, tasks as soon as possible, even at the expense of extra physical effort’.

In particular, said the paper, people seek to ‘eliminate the burden on their working memory’. In other words, by picking up the buckets early, people were eliminating the need to remember to do it later, essentially freeing up their
brains for other instructions, tasks or curveballs they might meet along the journey. We’re programmed to prepare for difficult projects by reaching for the ‘low-hanging fruit’ wherever it grows.

 

So if procrastination frees up our mind for when the going gets tough, is it such a bad thing?

Perhaps, say the researchers behind the study. Clearing smaller tasks like responding to emails or checking off low priority admin might mean you’re focusing on the trivial stuff and ignoring the bigger picture. In the digital era it
might also mean you’re constantly lured into answering email or the phone. ‘precrastination can also,’ says the paper, ‘result in lost details and even missed opportunities for cognitive processing.

We’ve all heard the expression “to sleep on something”. Oftentimes, you’re able to remember things better or things occur to you that wouldn’t have occurred to you in the moment’.

So while it seems us humans are predisposed to ridding our conscious minds of unpressing tasks as quickly as possible, this trend for precrastination hasn’t done anything to halt our tendency to also put off more pressing tasks until
the eleventh hour.

US president bill clinton was described by time magazine as a ‘chronic procrastinator’, whose tendency to leave speech-writing to the eleventh hour resulted in ‘harrowing last-minute cut-and-paste sessions’, while the bestselling
writer and feminist rita mae brown famously said, ‘if it weren’t for the last minute, nothing would get done’.

The era in which emails and social media are a click away from the task at hand, is really ‘the golden age of procrastination’, says dr piers steel, author of
the procrastination equation whose research has found that one in four people are chronic procrastinators and over half
frequently put things off.

This number is only set to grow, as technology becomes increasingly dominant in our lives (another recent survey found that the average uk smartphone
users picks up their device over 200 times per day).

So whether you’re prone to procrastination, precrastination, or a time-guzzling combination of both, striking the right balance using time management principles would seem to be the common sense approach.

 

Top tips from our everywoman workbook ‘managing your time’

  1. Keep a weeklong time audit, detailing by half hourly chunks what tasks you performed and how effectively you completed them against your key priorities. After a week take a view of how you’re effectively managing your day-to-day
    against the bigger picture of your kpis.
  2. What are your ‘time thieves’? Review your time audit; noting which behaviours resulted in lost time. Are you failing to delegate? Do you need to review your immediate environment? Are you taking on too much and getting in a muddle?
  3. Prioritise all looming tasks not just by importance (responding to the needs of others, essential emails) but also by urgency (business critical tasks).
  4. Set weekly, realistic goals for clearing backlogs or working through new projects.
  5. Work backwards from final desired outcomes to ensure you capture all elements of a new task.

 

Another perspective

In our voices of experience video series, everywomanclub member
Mitzie Almquist talks about effective time management in terms of ‘commitments’. Rather than focus on
the hours in the day, she advocates setting out what’s to be done in terms of promises made to others and commitments she’s made to herself around her own goals and development.
Watch the video

Finally, we’ll leave you with this chance to do a little procrastination of your own today, a brilliant and hilarious video on the power of procrastination by a graduate of the royal college of art: Procrastination from
Johnny Kelly.

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