Purposeful Procrastination

You're listening to the uppercase life where even when we procrastinate, we do it on purpose. I'm your host, Joseph Brewster. 

I want to talk about procrastination today, but I've been putting it off for weeks. No, I'm just kidding. You know, procrastination is usually a negative word. It gets a bad rap and quite honestly, for good reason. A lot of times we associate procrastination with being lazy or maybe being hesitant to do a thing and willing to jump in and commit.
But procrastination and the act of putting something off from its intended timing isn't always bad. And I want to talk about three cases in which I think it's okay and even good to purposefully procrastinate. So let's get started. The first thing is impact timing. Now, I call this impact timing because sometimes we are trying to accomplish something or we have an action planned and we get more information after we've planned it about how the timing of that action is going to affect the project or the desired outcome.
For example, let's say that you had a gift for somebody that you really cared about. You know, just thinking of you and wanting to get you something and you were going to give it to them at a particular time. But then you notice that they're preoccupied and busy and you think, you know, I'd rather give this to you and we have a minute and you can really enjoy it.
I think in a case where the impact will be greater at a different time, you want to be intuitive and time that impact to where it gets the desired results. So you may want to procrastinate the action of that thing until you can have the greatest impact, which is what I would call impact timing. So look for the timing of that impact and ask yourself, is now the best time?
And if not, maybe I can choose a better time later and I will get more for the effort. The second thing is what I'm going to call priority spotting. Now, this is really important, and if you're not familiar with the idea of priority, go back and listen to our episode on priority. I think it's really important for you to be aware of what your priority is in your day and your action.
And it doesn't matter if well, today you're working on a project that is very high priority. Or maybe you want to say today, you know, I'm with my family or and my family is high priority. You want to identify what is the priority in this scenario and say sometimes you can replace the current plan or the current action with something that's even higher priority.
Now, don't confuse this with something that feels more urgent. This is a really important distinction because sometimes we make our decisions based on that outside pressure to do a thing. That is not what I'm talking about. What I'm talking about is to look at what you have on your schedule and maybe you receive new information that indicates to you that there is a higher priority objective you could be putting your time into.
And these other things you had initially planned, they really could wait. Maybe they're not time sensitive and maybe they're not as important as the thing which has just come up in an easy example of that is, you know, if you were forced into a situation where there was an emergency, let's say you get a call and someone you really cared about had been in an accident, you might suddenly in your mind be able to re categorize your priorities in that moment and say, Well, I thought I had important work to do today, but I am not going to do that.
I'm going to go and be with this person. I care about. That is when our brain just kicks in for us and automatically reprioritize. But on a smaller and less urgent scale, I think there are ways you can be doing that on a daily basis to identify the really high value things, the things you care about, the things that impact your life the most, and sometimes procrastinate those lower value things that could be done any time they don't have to be right now.
And then the third thing is contemplating commitment. Now, I'm going to do something that might sound a little weird right off the bat. I'm going to tell you commitment. Maybe you should be a little hesitant on the commitment in some cases. So, for example, if you go shopping for a car, you know, historically, the classic idea of a car salesman is this person who is there on the lot to high pressure you into a purchase you're going to make today.
And maybe you've gone into this thinking, well, I really do need to make a purchase today. You know, I need to get this thing and maybe you're set to do it. But I would say contemplate your commitments if the thing you're about to do is going to engage you in some sort of a long term or high risk endeavor.
You may put that decision off for a little bit. And here is why. Just based on your mood, your activities, the information you have in that moment, maybe you don't have all the right data or maybe you're really not in a good headspace to be making this big life decision yet maybe somebody just proposed you or, you know, handed you a ring, or maybe you've been given a job offer.
And at first glance you think, absolutely, that's what I want to do. I would say maybe stop for a second, put that off for a minute. Let that commitment percolate in your mind. If that is something that you can do, maybe there's a deadline. But I would say for commitments, sometimes procrastinating, the decisions will help. Things bubbled to the surface that make better decision making.
So, for example, we might rethink how much money do I have in the bank? Maybe I don't need to make that purchase. How much do I really want to do this thing? Maybe that's not where I should be spending my time. Now, again, I want to caution you this can very easily be confused with overthinking, and that's not what I'm encouraging you to do.
I'm not encouraging you to sit around all day and not do things because you're thinking too hard about how important they might be in the long term. You want to be able to do things right. You want to be able to do things. We just don't want to jump in blind into big commitments. So when we are encouraged to do a thing, think about a salesman coming in, knocking on your door with a product.
You're probably not going to buy that right away. And that's a good thing because you don't know this person. You don't understand the product. When you have limited information and you're contemplating a big commitment, I think it's okay in most cases to procrastinate that decision and try to accumulate more information and maybe you can think of other really useful places you could procrastinate.

I would love to hear your comments on where do you think it's okay to procrastinate and win? On the other hand, do you think procrastination is really hurting your daily productivity or your your intentional time? I'd love to hear your feedback, your comments or criticisms. You can email me at [email protected] and I'll see you next time.