Procrastination is a waste of time

Philippa Perry

We reportedly waste three hours a day at work. But messing about on Facebook to put off an onerous
task rarely makes us feel happier

According to research published this week (link below) we waste up to three hours of every
working day doing things other than the work we are supposed to be getting on with. Wasting
time is something I am familiar with. I waste my own and I watch other people waste theirs.

As a psychotherapist, many times I have witnessed a client come to the realisation that a
particular pattern of behaving no longer works for them, and that this might be a pattern that
underpins their whole life, for example how they relate to other people. Yet to take charge of
themselves to make necessary change feels so scary that they put it off – it just feels too big to
make the alteration. When they finally do make the change, they often report that what seemed to
be a massive and arduous journey was in fact a tiny step. There is nothing like realising that we
are mortal to give us that push that enables us to take steps to stop wasting our lives.

When I first became a parent and only had 30 minutes of baby’s nap time to complete a chore, I
found I could complete it, whereas before baby, the same task may have taken me hours. When I
had a finite amount of time I somehow found the extra focus to make that time count.

Researchers in Sweden (link below) are finding out the same thing. When workers have a six-
hour working day, they are completing the same number of tasks they used to manage in an
eight-hour working day. I don’t suppose this will be a massive surprise to new parents who have
suddenly had to get a whole lot more efficient with their time.

My fledgling has now flown and the nest is empty once more. I have more time and
procrastination has crept back into my life. But why shouldn’t I spend time on Facebook seeing
where my old school friends are going on holiday this year? What’s the harm of a game of
Scrabble against the computer? Why not enjoy the latest Twitter storm? I found yet another app
to play with recently, called iMoodJournal. This app sends you a reminder several times a day to
record how good or bad your mood is and you log in whatever activity it is that you are doing at
the time. In the interests of increasing my self-awareness, I added this to my list of activities. It
wasn’t a waste of time, because it has shown me, with the hard evidence of my own observations,
that despite my assuming that procrastination was fun, I actually don’t enjoy it.

Not unlike my clients, I have found that I waste the most time just before I embark upon an
activity that feels as though it is going to be more overwhelming, difficult or boring than it turns
out to be.

We are all familiar with the cliche that an author’s house is at its cleanest just before they embark
on a new book, but timewasting doesn’t just happen before we embark on a new creative
endeavour, it happens before we have to do the washing up, before we have a tricky phone call to
make and most often before we go to bed, and then again before we get out of bed. Merely
shifting from one activity to another can be hard, and people who are often late are probably
those who have the most difficulty with this type of shift.

A type of low-level background free-floating dread can also mean that even when we have
embarked on the task we were putting off, we somehow fear surrendering to it. We interrupt
ourselves with music, Facebook notifications or Instagramming the cat, so that it takes twice as
long as it otherwise might do. In this fashion we are not fully facing the dread. The time-wasting
distractions draw out the task, making it harder and longer than it needs to be. This, in turn,
reinforces our negative feelings when next faced with a similar job. When we cut down the time
allowed for a task, as in the Swedish experiment, we will probably find that not only can we
finish it, but that also by having to fully surrender to it, it won’t be as bad as we feared it would
be.

Labelling an activity as “time wasting” sounds judgmental. Should we not enjoy ourselves in
order to relax from time to time? Of course we should. Time spent connecting with people, being
immersed in a good story, and other forms of rest and relaxation are essential to a life well lived.
However, it’s when we are mindlessly giving in to low-level dread and anxiety, when we allow
such feelings to rule us and make us procrastinate that we are vulnerable to not making the most
of our short time on Earth.

Wasting time is a form of mindless, misguided self-soothing. We can do what we find mildly
comforting in the moment, or we can use our uniquely human capacity to imagine the future, to
plan, to delay gratification until after whatever courageous step we need to take is taken. Be it
getting out of bed, limiting our time on Facebook, or saving the world. Carpe diem.

 https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/three-hours-of-each-working-day-is-wasted-
hvx7bwrfztb
 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/17/efficiency-up-turnover-down-sweden-
experiments-with-six-hour-working-day