For the past two weeks, I’ve been writing about pro–crastination,1,2 “willingly deferring something though you expect the delay to make you worse off.”3 Pre–crastination is intentionally completing tasks quickly just to get them done sooner, or to get them done so that you no longer have to remember to get them done. Edward Wasserman calls this the “fierce urgency of now.”4
Author and writer for The Guardian Oliver Burkeman puts this same concept this way: Precrastinators “do things sooner than they really need to be done, even if it costs us more time and energy that way, simply for the feeling of having them over with.”5 For me, it also supports my long-standing habit to do it now if I can do it now! And, it supports even more our tendency to procrastinate even though we’ve been schooled not to by phrases such as: Don’t put off until tomorrow what you can do today. He who hesitates is lost. Procrastination is the thief of time.6
So, I might say it this way: “Precrastination is what you do when you are procrastinating.” Let me give you an example: My big scheduled tasks for this day have been to do the research for and the first draft of this essay and to prepare for an evening meeting focusing on some strategic issues facing an organization I’m affiliated with. These are the sorts of tasks that require clear and careful thinking. So even with those tasks before me, I’ve pro-crastinated by pre-crastinating, addressing short tasks where I knew what to do.
For example, as I scrolled past the screen that displays my open inbox, I was naturally drawn to several unanswered messages and I responded to those that sought a response to an issue where I knew the answer. Great! Got that done! I saw the mailman arrive and leave mail in my mailbox.
I resisted the tug of mail in the mailbox for a few moments but soon paused, further procrastinating on what I was doing, walked out to the street, got the mail I’d seen the mailman leave and proceed to open it, all the while fully expecting that nothing of significance would be there. (And, there wasn’t.)
I could go on and on. But, I won’t. Most likely, your day has not been all that different from mine. I’ve precrastinated because there were easy, most often unscheduled, and not that critical, tasks that needed to be done. And, when I completed a task, I could pat myself on the back and say, “Good job!!” much the same as I would say to my two-year-old great-granddaughter after she picked up the toys scattered around the room. And, this self-congratulation really does feel good.
If we want to successfully get our precrastination and procrastination under better control, we need to address four issues:
I believe that we already have tools at hand that will help us address all four of these needs:
So, we’ve now discussed both precrastination and procrastination and given each of us some important tools to address both situations. The question is whether we’ll make the effort and develop the self-discipline required to consistently change the way we work. I’m going to have a go at it in the coming weeks. I hope that you will as well.
Make it a great week for you and your team. . . . jim
Jim Bruce is a Senior Fellow and Executive Coach at MOR Associates. He previously was Professor of Electrical Engineering, and Vice President for Information Systems and CIO at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA.
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