Procrastination: good or bad?

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They say procrastination is bad. It is always drilled into the heads of every student, as well as adult: “Don’t wait until the last second. Pace yourself. Do a little bit of work each day.” And it all makes sense, but… does anyone really do that?

Let’s take it from a student perspective who has a project to do. Yes, it is possible to pace yourself in terms of:

• Day 1: Choose a topic
• Day 2: Investigate your topic
• Day 3: Plan your product
• Day 4: Create your project

But it this realistic? Not in my opinion, no. Even if you try to chunk up the project, choosing a topic shouldn’t take a whole day of work, and creating your product should take days, if not a week or two.

Even if you plan a chunking schedule to fit time constraints, I don’t think chunking a schedule out is effective because, when you are supposed to be completing a task, but it isn’t due for two weeks, there is no sense of urgency.

Urgency is my best friend. He’s that little guy who pushes you to work hard, be efficient, and do as high-quality work as you are able to.

Now, don’t get me wrong. You can’t wait until two hours before a big project is due and expect the magical “sense of urgency” to fly down and save you. Uh uh.

And for those who can’t handle high-stress levels, or they stress themselves out unnecessarily, this technique isn’t for you. You guys need to go get yourself a nice calendar with pretty bunny rabbits and flowers on it to make yourself a word-specific schedule of how you are going to do this, come to find out that you didn’t really stick with it in the end because the project is an evolving work, not a static thing you can put an exact time-frame on.

If you can create a superficial sense of urgency, like offering yourself awards for meeting the different milestones, that’s great. But while you are planning out this whole project to an exact science and awarding yourself for taking an entire day to choose your topic, I’ll be making a better use of my time doing other work, and we will have an equally good – if not, mine will be better – product in the end because I had the sense of urgency, or the need to do it the best I can, and you didn’t.

I’d love to hear what other people have to say about this topic -- I think it is a personal thing. Why not drop me a line or two in the comments? Let’s get a discussion rolling here!