Kick Pre-crastination (not a typo!) and other unconventional productivity hacks

Do you open up your mail box every morning and start working on mails right away? If you replied, “Well, duh!”, you may well be a victim of pre-crastination.

Put simply, pre-crastination refers to doing things as soon as possible.

Now, isn’t that a good thing? Does the early bird not catch the worm?

Kabir too said “Kal kare so aaj kar, aaj kare so ab (do today. what you need to do tomorrow, and do now, what you need to do today)”.        

While not doubting the sage's wisdom, I'm going to offer a different perspective. Actually, three counter-intuitive approaches to living a more productive life.

Number One: Stop pre-crastinating.

Answering mails the moment they reach your inbox, sending off that proposal asap, deliberating on the first idea, taking a decision too quickly – we can pre-crastinate in myriad ways.

Pre-crastination is the tendency to do things earlier than required. (David Rosenbaum, 2014)

In an interesting study on pre-crastination, participants had to walk down an alley and choose between two buckets: one near the beginning and one near the end. Despite being advised to select the easier-to-carry bucket, they often picked the one at the start, justifying it by wanting to complete the task quickly, though this required more physical effort.        

Our inclination to swiftly complete tasks, even to our own detriment, is rooted in survival instincts developed over billions of years (e.g. primitive men and women needed to gather and secure food efficiently before it spoiled or before predators arrived). Add to this the stress of unfinished business, worries about future time constraints, and the urgency mindset, and it seems logical to check things off our to-do lists promptly. But the deeper truth lies in the satisfaction our brains derive from task completion, and hence the urge to do things asap.

The disadvantages are clear: from grabbing groceries early and carrying around a heavier load, even when some items are closer to the check-out; to skipping ideation and feedback (which improves quality and develops stakeholder buy-in) in our rush to finish, to missing out on more important tasks while prematurely spending time on less important things: all leading to unnecessary stress.

The simple answer? Take a nuanced view of when something needs to be done and when something can be deferred. E.g. not answering emails as they pop-up, but batching them.

But if you're a serial pre-crastinator, you need to be craftier to deal with it.

What works for me?

Pre-crastinating followed by Delayed Deliberation.  

So I might draft out an email response, or create the outline of a proposal, thus reducing stress of deferring (aka procrastination), press pause for a while, and then come back to it when the time is right. It's kind of like running a marathon: get started quickly, but then pace yourself to finish strong.

On the topic of finishing strong, here’s counterintuitive idea number 2.

Number Two: Good Enough is Great

Recently, studying for an online statistics course, I kept re-taking a test, aiming for a perfect 100%, even after hitting the required 80% on my second try. It was late at night, and I was exhausted and wondering why I couldn't stop chasing that magic 100% when it wouldn't impact my learning.

If you're driven to excel at everything, you'll empathize; and may also want to rethink your approach.

Embrace "good enough" over perfection.        

This goes against today's conditioning, where we link self-worth to 'being more' and 'doing better'. Yet, this drive can lead to stress, burnout, and lower quality.

The alternative? Say Hello to "good enough", a concept familiar in the software industry, where it means meeting requirements without unnecessary extras that consume time and resources.

For ourselves, it means to plan (and intentionally spend less time and effort) for a less than 'excellent' output, in situations where 'excellent' is not required.

This principle is vital for personal productivity. Is it worth finely formatting a PowerPoint for just displaying numbers? Or spending hours crafting a perfect budget proposal, knowing it'll likely change?

While it's hard to shift from always striving for excellence to embracing "good enough", for some tasks it's certainly possible.

I've made this switch recently, identifying areas where a solid B is acceptable. This guides my effort as well as result expectations, allowing me to focus where an A truly counts.

One of the ways I do this is Counter-intuitive Idea Number 3.

Number Three: Spend less time to get better quality

That doesn’t seem quite right, does it?

According to Parkinson’s law, it makes perfect sense.  Cyril Northcote Parkinson, wrote a seminal essay in 1955, where he coined the principle that:

“Work complicates to fill the available time”.

It was later amended to it's more popular version: Work expands to fill the available time.

This leads us to Spuddle (an old english word sadly not in use anymore).

Spuddle: to work ineffectively, to be extremely busy whilst achieving absolutely nothing.         

To achieve something faster and better, try setting a time limit, and a short one at that! For instance, if you give yourself just 15 minutes to tackle 15 emails, you'll likely do it with heightened focus and speed. With 2 hours, you may waste time overthinking, endless drafting, and getting distracted.

Of course, this does not apply to all work, but there is certainly power in allocating a small, set amount of time for some tasks, and avoiding time wastage from starting too early or aiming for 'A' (refer Idea 1 and 2). Many people also work better under tight timelines and are surprised by how much they get done when under the pump.

To conclude, in a world devoted to perpetual motion and ceaseless perfection, consider ditching pre-crastination, welcoming good-enough, and mastering the art of working in small, focused time blocks. This overused cliche says it all: "It's about working smart, not hard."