It is Monday. A work day, even if I am working remotely. It is Posting Day for the blog.

I am, right now, avoiding work to write a post about avoiding work. The post that I avoided writing over the last week because I was focusing on my language learning.

Does anyone else do this?

Let’s say you have a project to work on, an office procedures manual or a blog post, for example. You know what needs to be done, you’ve gathered the resources, and now it’s time to put it all together into a comprehensive document that will benefit everyone in the office, or your blog audience.

What do you do?

You sign up for a Beginner’s Chinese course.

For me, that is absolutely not a hypothetical. I am on Week 5 of a Coursera class in Chinese, and I’ve yet to get the manual done or consistently post here for a while…

I’d love to say that this is a new procrastination technique due to working from home because of the pandemic, but it’s not. I can remember back when I was in college and I would suddenly get the urge to tidy up my apartment before doing my homework; and that hasn’t changed at all.

Let’s be completely honest here: adding “productive” in front of the word procrastination does not actually change the fact that it is still procrastination. The main task is not being done, even if you are working on something else that seems valid.

So for me, taking that course in Chinese is great, but it has absolutely nothing to do with getting that office procedures manual finished, nor does it get the blog posts written on time. It will be a benefit to me, of course, but it’s not necessary to the work tasks that I need to complete. 

That’s not productive, that is procrastination. 

Also, even if you’re focusing on anything and everything except that Main Task, in the back of your mind is still the Main Task waiting to be completed, and that can add a level of stress to your day that doesn’t need to be there.

When I wrote a paper about motivation and comfort zones last year, I also talked about productive procrastination. What I learned was that these other tasks, whether we like them or not, are a distraction or a reward. We all like distractions from tasks we don’t like or are bored with. Sometimes those distractions can be just what we need, a chance to rest and recharge our brains, before going back to work. 

As long as you do go back to work.

As a reward, the “productive” type of procrastination is fun. I love learning – full stop. So I look at language learning and research as fun, which is why I get caught in Google spirals and sign up to learn Welsh, French, Spanish, and Japanese on Duolingo or Chinese on Coursera at just the wrong times…

The trick to that kind of reward, I was told, was to make sure that the time spent doing that “side project” as it were, does not outlast the time spent on the Main Task, especially if you are breaking up a long project with those rewards.

Don’t work for 10 minutes, and then spend 30 minutes on Chinese. (Are you listening, self??)

Is there a tried and true way to not procrastinate, not even productively?

Nope.

I suppose willpower and being strict with yourself would be the answers, but I am not perfect and that means when I am too strict with myself it’s a set-up for failure.

It’s not easy finding the line that works for you (don’t compare yourself to someone else, yikes) that is both strict yet flexible so that you want to keep trying when it gets hard. Personally, I think that line changes depending on your mental and emotional state. Sometimes when you’re at your lowest, it can be good to get tough on yourself. Other times, learn Chinese.

Right now we all have so much going on in the background, even if we don’t realize it, but maybe it’s also a good time to figure out what we’ve set aside in favor of procrastination. Cross off something on our To-Do list that has been adding to stress levels, or is just annoying to keep seeing there on the list day after day.

Hm…

Okay, I’d better get back to work. That manual won’t write itself…