Procrastinate Properly

 

As near as I can tell, almost everyone is suffering from information overload coupled with an unreasonable need to be available to everyone and to respond to everything immediately. How often are you in a face-to-face conversation with someone who, without a word of apology, answers their phone? How often has someone sent a follow up email to you within moments of their first email, wondering why you haven’t responded yet? Worse, how often have you interrupted something important you were doing to respond to someone’s text which turns out to lack any urgency at all?

How often would the result be different if you waited to respond?

If you’re like most people, the result of waiting until it’s convenient for you to respond rarely makes a difference. In fact, judicious procrastination often leads to better results.

I used to try and respond to everyone and everything immediately. It was a combination of feeling it was a nice thing to do and worrying that if I didn’t respond immediately I would forget to respond at all.

Then circumstances led me to procrastinate. I began traveling long distances and getting caught in places such as remote villages in Uganda and Senegal where the internet connections are erratic at best. My schedules included days when there was not much chance to respond rapidly because I was with a client, leading a program, or giving a talk. Emails languished, texts lingered, voice mails waited. I aggravated about it.

Until a funny thing happened. I noticed that a significant number of issues wound up being resolved without my intervention. Some requests turned out to be so unimportant that the senders couldn’t even remember them by the time I responded. The issues where my input was actually important and useful were sitting there waiting for me, with no apparent disasters occurring during the time it took me to respond.

It was a wonderful learning experience. These days, even when I can respond immediately, I don’t. I’ve trained people to understand that I’m rarely immediately available. It turns out that when people know this, the urgency goes away. A bit of appropriate procrastination goes a long way in both calming people down and making my life easier.

To be clear, I do pay attention to messages I receive as sometimes there are things requiring an immediate response. Family matters, flight changes, meeting postponements. But such things represent only a fraction of the deluge that inundates me daily.

Uninterrupted time has made me more productive and reasoned responses have made me much more effective. Taking my time has led to better ideas and better results both for me and for my clients.

More done better: An unexpected result of procrastinating properly.

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