6 Reasons to embrace procrastination

Here are six reasons why you shouldn’t worry about putting off to tomorrow what you could do today:

1. Structured procrastinators get more done.
If you have a task that you want to put off, structured procrastinators will find something else to do in its place. You might clean the house, pay your bills, research another project or send out overdue emails, for example, but in the end, you’ll get around to doing the thing you’re supposed to do. This isn’t bad because you’ve gotten all of those other things done in the meantime. If you had done the assigned task first, you might have called it a day and not accomplished anything else.

2. Procrastinators make better decisions.
Procrastinating is thinking about the greatest amount of time you can delay taking an action or making a decision, and then waiting until the last minute. During the delay, the procrastinator is gathering information, which is a recipe for success. We like to believe there is wisdom in our snap decisions and sometimes there is. But true wisdom and judgment come from understanding our limitations when it comes to thinking about the future. That is why it is so important for us to think about the relevant time period of our decisions and then ask what is the maximum amount of time we can take within that period to observe and process information about possible outcomes.

3. Procrastination leads to creativity.
Procrastinators are often big thinkers and putting off work can be an engine of human progress. When you’re assigned a task that seems too hard to do, procrastinating often leads you to invent a better way. If you go back through history of human culture, and take away every invention that was made by someone who was supposed to be doing something else, I’m willing to bet there wouldn’t be a lot left.

4. Unnecessary tasks disappear when you procrastinate.
Most large organizations assign tasks that aren’t vital to the success of the company. When the employee procrastinates on this busy work, it often gets scrapped when important tasks arise. You would have wasted time doing these unnecessary things adding that there is an exception. If your colleagues are counting on you, you should do the task so they don’t get annoyed.

5. Procrastination leads to better apologies.
If you step on someone’s foot or run your grocery cart into theirs, an immediate apology is expected and appropriate. In other situations, however, it’s best to wait. The most effective apologies come six hours after the situation. This is because the aggrieved has had time to vent and gather more information. The emotions of the situation may have also subsided a bit, and they will be ready to receive an apology.

6. Procrastinating gives you insight as to what you find important.
Your subconscious is often telling you something when you want to delay a task. If you’re a productive person, the desire to procrastinate on a task can mean that the task isn’t important or valuable to you. Pay attention to that and ask yourself if you should be doing it at all.

Authors: Frank Partnov and John Perry