"Usually when I'm working most diligently and industriously, it's actually when I'm procrastinating on something more important." When my friend said this over dinner a few weeks ago, I deeply resonated with it. After all, I'm quite the procrastination expert myself. Then recently, when I revisited Paul Graham's article "How to Do Great Work," I found he addressed this same issue, making me realize this might be a common problem for many people. Here's what he wrote:
You put off working on something because you feel like the timing isn't right yet, day after day. When procrastination is measured in years, you actually have much less time to accomplish what you consider important.
The danger of this type of procrastination is that you choose to focus on another task to procrastinate on a more important one. And you appear to be working very diligently on that other task. This kind of procrastination is extremely difficult to detect—you might even feel like you're living a fulfilling and busy life.
Recently, two incidents made me realize I was running a procrastination marathon—a race where I deliberately kept pushing the finish line further back.
Health Issues
The first thing happened two years ago. During a pre-surgery examination for a physical ailment, the medical staff told me my heart report showed some minor abnormalities. "It's probably nothing serious, but we recommend you get further tests," they said, and I immediately recorded it in my to-do list.
And there it sat in my to-do list. Even though I reviewed my to-dos every month, deciding what important work to tackle next month, the medical staff's words "probably nothing serious" became the perfect procrastination excuse. This task survived more than twenty monthly work reviews (twelve times a year!) over two years until recently, when reading Paul Graham's discussion of this kind of long-term procrastination finally made me seriously examine how to eliminate work I know I need to do but keep procrastinating on from my workflow.
But another symptom is even more terrifying and harder to detect.
Using One Job to Procrastinate Another
After leaving my previous job and taking a well-deserved long break, after much thought I decided I wanted to do an independent development project—to try how far I could go developing a paid software or service on my own. But whether it was choosing a topic or figuring out how to start, there was so much uncertainty. Since I'd never done this before, it wasn't easy to begin.
While I was still struggling with how to start, a member of the Ethereum Foundation happened to ask if I'd be interested in taking on a project. This gave me a few months of work buffer, so I eventually started this project (details in this article).
A few months later, the project was complete. Through this work, I got to know friends at the Ministry of Digital Affairs, who asked if I'd like to be a temporary consultant for next year's DID project. The work was interesting, so I accepted and spent about half a month as a temporary consultant. I also agreed to continue allocating some time each month for consulting work.
Until one day, chatting with a friend over coffee about what I'd been doing these past months and my future plans, I inadvertently said, "Actually, I shouldn't have taken this job..." That's when I suddenly realized I was using total focus and concentration on one job to procrastinate on another job I really should be investing my energy in.
Because I was so focused and worked so hard on this contract work, everyone thought the project results were great. Neither others nor myself could easily detect that I was procrastinating on something else.
What's Really Going On?
Whether it's procrastinating on health issues or using focused work to procrastinate on another more important job, both problems share a common mindset: uncertainty.
The uncertainty with health issues comes from worrying about knowing the results, yet choosing to remain in this uncertain state. Using contract work to procrastinate on independent development is because the latter, though more important, is full of uncertainty, while contract work, no matter how difficult, always has a clear completion goal—unlike developing your own project with so many uncertain things to think through.
These choices bring various degrees of problems. Health issues go without saying—the sooner you understand your body's condition, the better. More importantly, regardless of the type of procrastination, these tasks linger in your mind, occasionally popping up to disrupt your mood and destroy the focused work state you've carefully cultivated.
These unresolved work items are all very important to you, but procrastinating is like pretending to live in peaceful times, acting as if you're seriously living your life.
How to Fix It?
Honestly, this type of long-term procrastination is extremely difficult to detect and resolve. But even so, we can still use some methods to reduce the impact of procrastination.
First, if you've read this far, you've already solved the most serious problem—you now know that using focused work to procrastinate on another important thing does exist. Right now, you can reflect on whether you're working with 120% focus but actually trying to procrastinate on another important job. If so, you should record it now for follow-up action. Being able to recognize this phenomenon already solves most of the problem.
When you realize you have work items you're procrastinating on, I suggest creating a project for them and establishing a concrete completion goal. For how to plan a project, I recommend watching this video: How to regain control of your life today. Also, when listing important work, people often tend to list their responsibilities rather than projects with clear completion conditions. For how to solve this problem, I think The PARA Method is good reading material, and there's also a Chinese version of the book.
Another practice I find very helpful is finding time each week to set a Theme for each day of the coming week. For example, on Sunday I'll plan themes for each day of next week, which might look like this:
- Monday: Software Development
- Tuesday: Schedule health checkup, pay various bills
- Wednesday: Day off, visit a new coffee shop
- Thursday: Software Development
- ...
Setting a work theme doesn't mean you only do that thing on that day—rather, that theme is the most important thing that needs to be completed that day. This arrangement gives me an opportunity each week to schedule some monthly important work into that week, and has definitely reduced the number of monthly important tasks I leave incomplete.
About the Things I Was Procrastinating On
After discovering those things I was procrastinating on, I've already completed the heart checkup—the doctor said I have no problems at all. As for the independent development software project, even though it's full of unknowns, I'm slowly making progress on these things too. Advancing and completing these work items has genuinely given me peace of mind.
Thanks to the friends around me who often listen to me talk about all sorts of random things—this gave me the opportunity to discover these procrastination problems. I also hope sharing my own experience can help you re-examine whether you have this kind of long-term procrastination.
If you've also realized you have the same problem—don't worry, you're not alone. Observe and understand yourself well, and create your own solution.