Procrastination is a universally derided habit – but sometimes not taking action might just be the best option.

Everybody knows that procrastination is a bad trait – although we’re all guilty of it at some time or another. Type ‘procrastination’ into a search engine and most of the results you get will be articles on how to overcome it. If that’s not enough of an indication of how much it’s seen as an endemic condition, just think of all those proverbs urging prompt action: a stitch in time saves nine; he who hesitates is lost.

Determined procrastinators are universally considered to be ineffective, incurably lazy and doomed to failure because of this cataclysmic character flaw. When people admit to procrastination, it’s usually in the same vein as those over-achieving classmates who smugly claim they ‘hadn’t done a bit of revision’ for an exam, but know they are going to ace it because they have secretly studied very hard. (It can also be a form of self-preservation: pretend to have been lazy and then if things do go wrong, the reason will be laziness and not your intrinsic lack of ability.)

Conjure an image of a typical procrastinator and it will be someone surrounded piles of unopened letters and items that need fixing. Or someone who constantly looks for displacement tasks to keep busy while avoiding a looming deadline.

Proactive people, on the other hand, are super-effective go-getters, always on top of their lists, organised, chipper and successful. Constantly taking action to reach their clearly-defined objectives. They are respected and envied: ‘Where do they get their energy from?’ and ‘I wish I’d thought of doing that!’

The positive side of procrastination

However, in life things are never simple. In some cases, it’s obvious that taking swift action is the best course: feeding a hungry child, getting your car serviced regularly or going to the doctor about a worrying lump.

Other times, though, acting immediately is not always the best way. Going back to those proverbs, how about ‘Fools rush in where angels fear to tread’ and ‘Look before you leap’, warning against being too proactive?

In some circumstances a desire to procrastinate might be a subconscious protective mechanism. Often people procrastinate out of fear or uncertainty: if you never submit the report, your boss won’t be able to complain about it; if you never apply for the job, they can’t reject you.

Some self-help gurus suggest that the best way forward is to ignore your fear and just get on with it. And often this is good advice because sometimes we all need a little kick to get us going and overcome that un-founded fear.

However, fear isn’t always unfounded. Fear is a crucial survival instinct designed to keep us safe from harm. (As the cliché goes, we are all descended from people who knew exactly when to be wary of that odd movement in the bushes…)

So, when you get the urge to procrastinate, it’s worthwhile taking time to consider why you feel reluctant to take that next step. Getting to understand the reason why you want to avoid the action can help you either progress or realise that maybe it’s just not something you want to pursue right now for good reason.

Pathological proactivity: the dark side of doing

Just as there is a positive side to some procrastination, not all aspects of being proactive are necessarily beneficial.

I’m sure you’ve all known people who are a whirlwind of activity. They never seem to sit still and are always doing, doing, doing – but, somehow, nothing ever seems to really happen. Worse still, others can get caught up in the relentless bustle with delegated tasks.

Welcome to the world of busy-work, the hyper-active cousin of the displacement activity. Rather than putting all the effort into an objective with purpose, it’s all directed to something that provides no actual benefit.

I worked with someone once who spent a lot of time each month printing out all the leads we received, writing comments on them by hand, then scanning these commented versions to PDF and filing them away in folders on the server (never to be looked at again). This was busy work because it took up time and didn’t provide anything of value: no one had time to read through all the comments to find out the source or quality of the lead. A better use of the time would have been to log the details in the CRM system, or even a spreadsheet.

Less easy to identify than busy work is when you are involved in doing something that is having a net-negative effect. Ironically, the more effectively this is done, the worse the eventual outcome is. An example of this is a product that is easy to sell, but either because of its production costs, or after-sales service costs, each sale actually loses the company money. In this case the activity does have a clear purpose, but the overall effect is damaging.

Sometimes not acting at all is the clearest and best course. Such as in an argument when deciding NOT to put in that final quip smooths the emotions and helps to heal the rift.

The case for mindful procrastination

Being able to recognise when you are procrastinating and then understanding why is the key to overcoming it. If it’s because of fear, rather than just forcing yourself to act, it probably doesn’t hurt to spend a bit of time just assessing where that fear is coming from and whether it’s trying to tell you something important.

Although I’d not advocate procrastination as a permanent mindset, there is space for each of us to be a bit more mindful of this urge. Sometimes I’ve had my best thoughts and breakthroughs when mindlessly working on what was really a displacement activity. Instead of forcing myself to keep on with the task I was stuck on, relaxing my mind and doing something different actually helped me move forward.