How to use procrastination

I'm lucky enough to be teaching at a university in my first year. I started this second semester with open-ended questions such as: "Are there anythings you'd like to talk about in this methodology course?One student replied, "How can I combat procrastination?" I was tempted to come up with "operational" answers for 18-year-olds in their first year of university.

What would I have liked to have been told at their age that would have worked?

Procrastination, a term whose sound has to do with the difficulty a human being has in getting into action, can be defined as "deciding, for no good reason, to delay or not complete a task or goal for which a commitment has been made, and doing something of lesser importance in its place despite the negative consequences that will result from not completing the task or reaching the original goal."[Source: University of Ottawa]

By the way, does this essentially concern human beings? Are we the only living beings to procrastinate? What does procrastination tell us about our relationship with time? Is it a desire to control it, not to waste it?

A gift or a curse?

What is procrastination? A form of anticipatory stress? An immobile urgency, a form of stupefaction, a response to our environment? Is procrastination a necessity for 21st-century human beings, as time seems to be speeding up? How can we make the most of the benefits of procrastination without suffering the consequences?

According to researchers at theUniversity of Lausanne, postponing a task "lowers stress levels and eventually ensures that you have the energy to tackle it".

According to comedian Frédéric Gérard of the Swiss TV show Les dicodeurs, the idea of procrastination is linked to the phonetics of the word "pro CRAS tiner" and the sound of the crow cawing and announcing that the flood is not over. (When Noah released a bird from his ark, he started with a crow. The raven doesn't return, announcing bad news. Then he releases a dove, which returns with an olive branch. At last, dry land is announced! the flood is over. ).

The comedian tells us what he does at the last minute. Managing these "last moments" before a deadline requires rigor. It requires a "method" to be truly effective.

Postponing a "potentially anxiety-provoking" moment as a form of avoidance can be practised by everyone. This activity becomes problematic when it leads to "tangible negative consequences". With experience and hindsight, assuming and planning this procrastination allows us to avoid its negative consequences while procrastinating and regulating our stress. cqfd

Benefits of procrastination

Alexandre Roberge confirms that there is a good form of procrastination:

Good procrastination" doesn't consist in "taking it easy" while waiting for the deadline, but rather in arranging one's thinking time so as to complete the task more efficiently and, ultimately, more quickly. Effective procrastination means taking a step back.

It's about "knowing yourself" and being able to accurately assess how much time you need to work. How long will it take me to get to grips with the content of a course, or how long to read and understand a scientific article or chapter of a book?

When I block on certain elements of a task "why not take the opportunity to do the parts that generate enthusiasm" "During this time, the subconscious mind will think about how to make the blocking elements more enjoyable or solve them".

The key is to keep enjoying a task AND staying in action.

Often associated with a particular state of mind such as "anxiety, guilt, shame" (source: Harvard Business Review ) procrastination could allow creativity to emerge.

If I "step back" from a task, I see it in a different light. If I'm stuck on a concept in my semiotics course, procrastinating while surfing and scrolling may enable me to access a video and make unexpected links with the notion of "signifier" as indicated by the teacher in his lecture, and which I didn't grasp at the time.

The solutions? Become an expert in procrastination!

Exploring YOUR procrastination comes down to asking "how do you get into action to complete a task?".

If I take my example here, to get myself into action to prepare a methodology course with a very specific objective: to get my students to understand their relationship with procrastination and co-construct with them effective avenues of "remediation", I start by setting out the intention to write an article right here in Thot Cursus.

Okay, there's more to it than that, but I know that exploring to write an article on a subject will enable me to define a set of "essential" elements.

With this intention broadly defined - I'm relying on my ability to synthesize to define the broad outlines of a content without any idea of its details.

I can now carry out a more systematic search for content to "feed" the outline and gradually allow the final design to take shape. This feeding phase requires as many moments of activity as notions addressed, lasting from 30 minutes to 1 hour. During the "feeding" phase, I take notes directly into the article. This allows me to fine-tune the title with an ornithological anecdote told by a humorist and taken from a well-known intellectual ;-)

Then there's the hour or so of "smoothing", which consists of making the text readable. And there you have it! What do you think?

To sum up, running a business efficiently without breaking your creative tendencies means above all :

• knowing how you work, so you can estimate how much time you'll need (know yourself)
  
• setting a clear intention (where am I going?)
  
• check how much time you have (what's the deadline?)
  
• place the various "sub-intentions" in the free time slots of your diary
• start with the elements that gave us the idea of doing this activity (the initial motivation)
  
• trust our intuition, which leads us down unexpected paths.

Just getting started

In the student practice of procrastination, we often turn a blind eye to ourselves, making excuses like "I've done very well that time". But this success is only an isolated case on which we have built a generality: "I work better under pressure".

This is what we call confirmation bias, i.e. a belief that I've built up and for which I go looking in reality for situations - and only those - that confirm my way of thinking. Here, I work best at the last minute!

Four ideas dominate all this literature on procrastination, four pieces of advice one might say.

1. Giving meaning to the task allows a first form of appropriation.
   If I give it meaning, it becomes part of my reality. In the case of my semiotics course, it could enable me to better deconstruct images, so if I intend to work on it, that could also be interesting.
   
   
2. Start to deconstruct
   A cognitive bias, like any representation, can be deconstructed gradually. This is particularly true of the "just start it" method, which involves taking a few actions to get the project off the ground, without having to finish everything right away.
   
   This principle "makes it fun to get started", and the fact that it's started will "self-fuel motivation for the project", helping us to progress towards its completion. Timothy A Pychyl 's method involves setting up a priming phase whenever we feel the urge to procrastinate emerging. Simple, isn't it?
   
   
3. Decide the day before on the next day's actions
   Setting an intention allows us to think about it in concrete terms. The task may seem less daunting. Start in the morning with the most difficult actions. Once done, the rest seems simple and more accessible.
   
   
4. Structure your time with the help of a tomato!
   The "Pomodoro" methodrefers to a "tomato" in Italian. More precisely, a tomato-shaped timer. You can also find smartphone applications that act as "pomodoro" timers.
   
   The idea here is to divide work time into intense, distraction-free periods of 25 minutes, followed by a rewarding 5-minute break. After four tomatoes, you're entitled to a 15-minute break. Royal!

Finally, now you know what to do if the raven doesn't come back? Throw him a tomato!

Sources :

Harvard Busines Review France (2023) "Discover the unexpected benefits of procrastination" https://www.hbrfrance.fr/magazine/2020/12/32290-decouvrez-les-avantages-inattendus-de-la-procrastination/

Sylvain Prestavoine (2021) "The little-known effects of procrastination" Linkedln pulse https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/les-effets-m%C3%A9connus-de-la-procrastination-sylvain-prestavoine/?originalSubdomain=fr

Nina Pareja (2021) "Distraction can be good for creativity" Slate https://www.slate.fr/story/206939/distraction-procrastination-benefique-creativite-travail

University of Lausanne (2023) "Putting things off until tomorrow ... is not always procrastination. An attitude that's not so harmful as long as it doesn't interfere with your goals" Thot cursus https://cursus.edu/fr/28579/remettre-a-demain-nest-pas-toujours-de-la-procratisnation

Alexandre Roberge (2019) "Procrastination: an evil for a good. What is good and bad procrastination?" Thot cursus https://cursus.edu/fr/12296/la-procrastination-un-mal-pour-un-bien

https://cursus.edu/fr/27390/comment-ameliorer-lattention-des-etudiants-a-lere-du-numerique mindfulness?

Alexandre Roberge (2013) "Ne craignons as de remettre à demain! Procrastination is not well perceived, but it's not always a bad thing." Thot cursus https://cursus.edu/fr/9458/ne-craignons-pas-de-remettre-a-demain

University of Ottawa "What is procrastination? By University of Ottawa Academic Success Service https://www.uottawa.ca/campus-life/sites/g/files/bhrskd281/files/2021-08/quest_ce_la_procrastination_fr.pdf

Timothy A. Pychyl (2013) solving the procrastination puzzle. a concise guide to strategies for change https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCAX1LbJIHo