{"id":104236,"date":"2019-04-24T15:58:22","date_gmt":"2019-04-24T20:58:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.artofmanliness.com\/?p=104236"},"modified":"2021-06-03T10:56:42","modified_gmt":"2021-06-03T15:56:42","slug":"practice-productive-procrastination","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/character\/self-improvement\/practice-productive-procrastination\/","title":{"rendered":"Practice Productive Procrastination"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Man<\/a><\/p>\n

Typically, we think of productivity and procrastination as antithetical to each other.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re productive when we\u2019re motivated and focused on working on what we consider to be our most urgent\/important\/difficult task. We procrastinate when we postpone working on that big nut. We can procrastinate actively (turning on the television instead) or passively (pretending like we\u2019re still nominally in work mode by continuing to stare at our computer screen in-between checks of social media), but either way, we\u2019re doing nothing, and we feel terrible about that. We beat ourselves up about it or try (unsuccessfully) to use brute force discipline to get back on track.<\/p>\n

But there\u2019s a better way of thinking about productivity and procrastination than seeing each as monolithic, conflicting states.<\/p>\n

Instead of conceptualizing your productivity as this more linear thing that\u2019s just focused on tackling your next biggest\/hardest task, it\u2019s better to think of it as a pie that you can nibble on from any direction.<\/p>\n

That pie is filled with all<\/em> the tasks — big and small — on your to-do list, and these tasks should be understood as falling into several tiers:<\/p>\n