Four-Eight-Four [dot org]

Yesterday, the Times Free Press published an article about a ten-year study on procrastination (unfortunately, I can’t find the article in their archives, so I’m linking to the USA Today version of the article).

I found the article particularly interesting because I’m an admitted procrastinator. To give you an idea of exactly what kind of procrastinator I am, back in college I was the guy who started on his papers 1-2 days before they were due.

The problem was … back in college, I had absolutely no incentive to change my habits. I was really, really good at writing papers (or doing just about any kind of assignment). I could have 25 books and journal articles stacked beside my desk and generally be able to scan them all in the time period and pull out relevant information and quote it if necessary. Despite only spending 10-12 hours on a 10-12 page paper, the lowest grade I can remember getting on one in my college years is a 93.

According to the article, I’m in good company (though I doubt most people experienced the kind of success with papers I did) … and the group I’m in is growing at a tremendous rate. Back in 1978, only 5% of the folks in the US of A were willing to admit they were procrastinators. Today, it’s more like 26%. Just to give you an idea how many people that is, in July of 2006, the estimated population of our nation was 298,444,215. That means 77,595,496 people are admitted procrastinators. That’s right … 77.5 million people. That’s a lot.

I think that there is a reason why there are so many more procrastinators today than there were 30 years ago … and David Allen discusses the issue in Getting Things Done. The problem is that our work is increasingly not delineated by physical tasks (like building a house or assembling a piece of furniture) … but becomes more and more “mental” each year. So, we end up with more and more tasks that we can’t actually see … and if that wasn’t bad enough, we have more to do to boot. On top of that, we’ve got more to distract us. Hands up … how many of you haven’t ever been distracted by the internet at work, if your job gives you internet access and a computer. Come on now, speak up.

That’s what I thought.

Unfortunately, the article doesn’t really deal with the ‘real whys’ of procrastination. Sure, it talks a lot about the symptoms of the problem … distraction, etc. … but trying to ‘fix’ procrastination by attacking those problems is a bit like treating cancer by prescribing aspiring. It might help the pain, but the real problem is going to keep eating away at you.

I’ll cut to the chase. I think that Allen’s GTD methodology is the answer to the problem. It’s been the answer to my procrastination problem, and I have a sneaking suspicion that a lot of those 70 million people who have shown up in my group since 1978 are very much like me.

Let’s go back to tasks being increasingly mental. If I were working at the Ford plant in Detroit on the engine assembly line, figuring out what to do would be really easy. Each time and engine arrived in front of me, I’d need to attach water pump, and send it along to the next person on the line.

I would be incredibly productive, as long as I focused on my task, because I’d already know what I needed to do next, I’d know I could accomplish it, and I’d have a sense of immediacy when the engine arrived in front of me because I’d know that by delaying, I’d hold up the next guy down the line.

Now … check out this quote from the article:

The causes of procrastination combine temptation, sense of immediacy, the value of doing the job, and whether you believe you can get the work done ... (emphasis mine)

For those of us who work with information, whose tasks are primarily mental … we don’t have either of those two things I emphasized. We don’t have a sense of immediacy, because we don’t have something physically sitting in front of us that isn’t done. We don’t know whether we can do the job, because we look at a big project (”create a e-commerce site for client X”) rather than its individual parts … and the result is that the big project looks really, really big.

GTD addresses these two problems.

First, it helps create a sense of immediacy. By filing things into my “inboxes” and processing them on a regular basis, I create a sense of immediacy because I now have a physical, viewable task list to remind me of what I haven’t got done. Every time I look at my task list, I’m reminded that I haven’t worked on importing new items into client X’s web site database, that I haven’t created the photo gallery for client Y’s web site, and that I haven’t worked on converting my e-commerce package to PHP5.

Second, it helps me believe I can get the work done. For the last example above, “convert the e-commerce package to PHP5,” in my task list, I’ve broken it down into small steps that are every do-able … delete Propel for PHP4 libraries, add Propel for PHP5 libraries, re-build Propel runtime libraries for my database, etc. When I look at my project task list for that project, I see a series of things I can complete in a short period of time. It reminds me that the task is do-able.

The article also mentions distractions, such as surfing the ‘net and that blasted “ding” that you hear every time you get a new email message, as contributing to procrastination. Once again, GTD offers a solution to these problems.

For distractions like surfing the net and playing games, my task list provides a constant reminder that I have real work that I need to get done. It also provides a list of “next actions” so that any time I complete a task, I can almost immediately move on to the next best task I can complete based on the amount of time I have, my priorites, and other factors … so I don’t have the time to even think about reading Slashdot for the umpteenth time, or playing a quick game (or fifteen) of solitaire.

When my computer alerts me that I have new email, GTD helps because I know that I will process those new messages in the next few hours … so I can ignore them and wait until my processing time arrives to deal with them. That way, something that comes in can’t distract me from the task at hand. When the time comes, I’ll carefully consider each and every new message, and decide rationally what to do with and about them. My email inbox becomes something I control, rather than it controlling me.

At the very beginning of this article, I noted that I had never suffered because of my procrastination, so I didn’t have any reason to try to eliminate the problem from my life. However, the article notes that procrastination does have ill effects.

“People who procrastinate tend to be less healthy, less wealthy and less happy …”

If I’m honest with myself (and you, my audience), I have to admit that procrastination did cause me problems, even in college. When I started on a paper 2 days before it was due, I inevitably ended up staying up all night the day before it was due so that I could finish it on time. Sleep deprivation isn’t good for you, and neither is the resulting stress I encountered as the deadline moved ever closer and the paper wasn’t done.

Of course, those same problems followed me into my work life. Yes, I completed my tasks (though more recently it happened that they got done after the deadline rather than before) … but the stress was still there. But that wasn’t all …

Since my work basically involves sitting at the computer and working, I get very little exercise. Coupled with my procrastination, that means I spent long hours at the computer and very little time actually being active. For the most part, when I worked, I spent lots of time thinking about what to do next, or goofing off until I was a point when I could do something mentally. At the end of the day I’d find myself with very little time before midnight, and quite a lot to do, and then I’d end up staying up late finishing things up. That left me with very little time do take a walk and do anything even resembling exercise.

Now that I’ve starting applying GTD to my life, I’ve found more and more free time to do things around the house, and more time to do things like play the part of Joseph Hewes in 1776. Next week, I’m going to the Y up the road from my house and joining, and I’ll make the most of some of this free time by spending time there regularly. I want to no longer be obese by the end of 2007.

So, there you have it procrastinators. You know you have a problem. I believe that GTD provides an answer. If you’re one of those 77.5 million in my group … give it a try. I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.

Read More: Scientists research why procrastination is getting worse

Tags: GTD, Getting Things Done, procrastination