Be Strategic With Your Procrastination To Get Things Done

If you’re a serial procrastinator who is struggling to get things done, one small business owner believes that you can harness this foible and make it work to your advantage. Read on to find out more.

To procrastinate is to delay doing tasks that needs to be done. It’s delaying the inevitable because the task isn’t just going to go away by itself. Over at small business blog Flying Solo, Kelly Exeter, talked about a technique she calls strategic procrastination. A better term for it could be purposeful procrastination or strategic delay: “[I]t’s actually a highly effective tactic for being more productive. Why does it work so well for me? It’s because I am super-intentional about it.”

Exeter noted that she applied the technique to her inbox by not immediately responding to some of her emails:

“I lost count of the number of times I’d open my inbox after an hour and scan through to see an email from someone at 2pm yelling ‘HELP!’, followed by another from the same person at 2.30pm saying ‘Ignore that last email from me — I worked it out!’.
 
“These days, I strategically delay my response to emails, even if my inbox is open. In doing so I save myself hours of time troubleshooting other people’s problems!”

Exeter also applies strategic procrastination to tasks that come up. When she finds it too stressful to deal with a task immediately, she puts it on hold but ensures that she sets a time aside in the near future to tackle it

“If there’s one thing I’ve learned in recent years it’s this: it’s much easier to work with your natural tendencies instead of trying to turn yourself into something you’re not.
 
“Once I stopped trying to be the person that starts projects weeks before they’re due and instead accommodated my ability to produce good work under pressure, my productivity went through the roof.”

How do you beat procrastination? Let us know in the comments.

[Via Flying Solo]


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