Can Procrastination Be Constructive?

It was 5:48 on a Sunday evening. I was still in my pyjamas, looking crusty and sleepy like a homeless person. Keeping Up With The Kardashians was on TV, and I was holding a copy of David Edgar’s How Plays Work.

I thought that maybe through a special kind of osmosis I might absorb Edgar’s words, whilst still watching Scott Disick’s insecurities drive a wedge between him and Kourtney’s family.

I had worked my way through the kitchen cupboard so I resorted to eating fruit and I whinged to myself about how supermarkets can sell ‘ripe and ready’ peaches at a premium when they are neither ripe nor ready. Whilst I considered the wrongs of the soft fruit market and watched Kris secretly slip a male enhancement pill into Bruce Jenner’s cappuccino in order to ramp up their sex life, far from trivial deadlines clung to my back like monkeys and I got that feeling that the world was running away without me.

This ‘productivity lag’ is what we commonly call procrastination, and we students excel at it. It has a bad reputation, but I think that it can be beneficial, even for creative behaviour. I admit that Keeping Up With The Kardashians in no way challenges or enhances my psyche, and my peachy thought process was not particularly… fruitful. But academics have revealed that some methods of procrastination can be constructive.

The art of introspection- daydreaming- is critical for our mental well-being. In an article, published in the July 2012 issue of Perspectives on Psychological Science, Mary Helen Immordino-Yang, a professor of education, psychology and neuroscience at the University of Southern California says that ‘the reflection and consolidation that may accompany mind wandering is… important, fostering healthy development and learning in the longer term.’ So next time you’re browsing Perez prior to studying, before you become enthralled by SNOOKI SLAMS ANOREXIC RUMOURS!! shut your laptop and have a nice, old-fashioned, think.

John Perry, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Stanford, suggests that negative procrastination is when you put off a task but don’t substitute it with another constructive task. In his essay Structured Procrastination he says that ‘All procrastinators put off things they have to do. Structured procrastination is the art of making this bad trait work for you.’ By making a list of tasks ordered by importance yet all worthwhile, with the most urgent on top, Perry argues that we will perform those lower down on the list as a way of not doing those higher up, and still ‘the procrastinator becomes a useful citizen.’ I don’t think that worthwhile tasks include painting your nails in alternating colours or getting fried chicken though, sorry.

So if we procrastinate constructively, we are allowed to avoid that scary paper for just a little bit longer- just remember not to procrastinate from procrastinating constructively. Hopefully this article may help get some of those monkeys off your back a little easier this exam period, but If you still find that your procrastinatory tendencies are reaching chronic levels, try reading The Procrastination Equation: How to Stop Putting Things Off and Start Getting Stuff Done by Dr. Piers Steel (available on Amazon, £6.99). That is, if you can bring yourself to buy the book before graduation.