“You are, in a word, constructively-dissatisfied.”- Jim Casey, founder of UPS
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productivity
“The talking about the thing isn’t the thing. The doing of the thing is the thing.” – Amy Poehler
If it is an epidemic to have people confuse activity with results, then it is even more tempting to confuse talking about work with actual work. Talking about what you are going to do is not doing it. Only doing it counts.
Talking about what you should have done is even worse. It’s not work and will never result in work, unless your work is time travel.
It is the 23rd of December and all over the US, holiday shoppers are out buying last minute gifts. It reminds me again of the pervasiveness of procrastination.
I recently watched Ted Urban’s TED talk on procrastination (and highly recommend it). He describes that master procrastinators have in their brain a “rational decision maker” who would make logical time management decisions if it wasn’t for his pesky shipmate the “instant gratification monkey.” The Monkey finds endless distractions and is only frightened by one thing: the “panic monster.” The monster that reminds of looming deadlines or the impact of poor performance. His description of procrastination sounds like laziness, lame excuse making, or even attention deficit disorder. He ends his talk recounting the misery that is caused by procrastination, in his own life and that in people that he encounters around the shared topic of procrastination.
And this negative view of procrastination is as prevalent as procrastination. We say “Now or Never” or “Time is Money.” Even the prolific Ben Franklin is said to have penned the popular proverb “Do not put off until tomorrow what you can do today.” Practical advice from an over-achiever, we think. We idolize those who save, plan ahead, and are prepared. We fear missing out or missing the train with slow decision making. There is a general view that people who are operating at higher levels of performance or efficiency avoid procrastinating. I have been taught in my personal and professional life that making fast decisions (and course correcting, if necessary) is infinitely better than acting slowly.
But, is that true?
Is procrastination a vice or is it a virtue?
Here are three reasons why procrastination could be the best approach.
1. Tomorrow you will be smarter than you are today
Whether through more life experience, through the solicited advice of others, or with the revealing of new facts and information related to the decision, it is safe to assume that you will know more tomorrow than you do today and that might lead to a better decision. Of course, we can get stuck in the cleverly titled “analysis paralysis” loop where we never make a decision, but perhaps that is a risk you take when trying to be as prepared as possible to make the right decision.
2. Tomorrow new options exist
When I see holiday shoppers out on Christmas Eve (and I see them because, well, I am often with them), I wonder why they procrastinated. They could be horrible at keeping secrets or perhaps they have been extremely busy. Or, they could have been waiting until payday or until a particular item they wanted was on sale. In other words, the options they would have had yesterday are not the same or as favorable as the ones they will have tomorrow. Tomorrow they will have money to spend and their dollars go further. Sometimes making decisions too early, like shopping ahead, can actually lead to worse decisions. In business, the new options available tomorrow might be access to capital, people to work on projects that are currently occupied elsewhere, or even the mind space to explore more creative alternatives that might not exist today. Waiting until tomorrow keeps your options open.
3. Tomorrow you can implement better
Even if the direction you are heading or the decision you intend to make doesn’t change from day to day, the extra time might allow you to get more people involved or on-board with the decision. You can take time to solicit more feedback (see #1), and that has advantages beyond just getting more information. It can get key stakeholders aligned with the plan and committed to implement it. Not only that, fast decision makers rely heavily on mid-stream course correction to respond to new information or feedback. This can lead to rework, the need to communicate new directions, the whiplash that can happen in the organization of changing directions or priorities, and can lead to waste. “Haste makes waste” is often forgotten in the wake of our desire to move forward.
Overall, I am impatient when it comes to making decisions. I would rather decide, communicate a decision, and wring out the ambiguity in the organization (and risk acting hastily) than risk missing an opportunity or the productivity hits that come from delaying decisions. It requires a great deal of discipline for me to wait.
But sometimes waiting is best. Sometimes instead of making excuses to justify why we didn’t take action, we should coin some new proverbs like “tomorrow is option-filled” or “I will be smarter tomorrow” and stop making excuses. Sometimes procrastination is wise.
Or perhaps I am just trying to justify the fact that I waited until right before the holiday to publish my monthly article for LinkedIn Pulse?
Have a warm and wonderful holiday season and as you think about setting goals for the new year, I hope you give yourself permission to procrastinate.
This article was originally posted on LinkedIn Pulse.
"It's the last two percent of a job that ensures your successful completion of the project." - Art Gensler
You have heard the expression “getting your ducks in a row.” It refers to the desire to get things organized or aligned before taking some action. I heard Seth Godin recently talk about “keeping frogs in a bowl.” He was proposing that it was more accurate than getting ducks in a row, since for most of us, the things that we are hoping to align before taking action aren’t exactly in our control. They are as unruly as trying to keep frogs in a bowl. Most action doesn’t need to wait until ducks are in rows and don’t require all the frogs to be in the bowl. We need a new animal analogy.
What animal doesn’t wait for all the information but rather does what they know to do, as soon as they know to do it and figures the rest out in a process of failing forward and failing fast? They are my new hero.
Work, at least in a lot of business, happens in meetings. Because of the time spent, opportunity cost of those hours, and the types of decisions made in those meeting, making them more effective can have a huge impact on the overall success of the company.
In his book Traction, Gino Wickman outlines the basic of a Level 10 meeting. See video to learn more about how it works and how to apply it to your next meeting.