Becoming an Expert Procrastinator is the Key To a Life of Progress

Happy Thursday!

This edition of Thrive Protocol goes over an important nuance to procrastination I got from reading “Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals” by Oliver Burkeman.

While generally thought of as a negative thing, procrastination is vital for a meaningful life. Standard productivity advice doesn’t go into details on how to become a better procrastinator — and this is arguably a very important skill.

Read on to learn 3 insights on how to improve at the meaningful type of procrastination.

Procrastination can destroy potential and create lives of regret.

But this is only true when you procrastinate on those meaningful projects that scare you in a way that tells you that it’s precisely what you should be doing with your precious hours.

To make room for these purposeful and life-changing projects, you will have to procrastinate on nearly everything else.

In his wonderful book Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals, Oliver Burkeman points out that the problem with time management strategies from “productivity hackers” is they suggest finding a way to complete all the projects that come up on your radar.

One of Burkeman’s central points is that you become free when you accept that this isn’t possible: you must face the fact that you have finite time and will have to make trade-offs and sacrifices — there is no point hiding from it.

The first step to becoming a better procrastinator is appreciating the problem with standard productivity advice on getting important tasks done.

The Time Management Matrix

The Time Management Matrix from author Steven Covey categorizes all tasks into four boxes:

• Not Urgent, Not Important (i.e., scrolling on social media, Netflix)

• Not Urgent, Important (your hopes and dreams)

• Urgent, Important (deadlines at work, finding a new place to live at the end of the month)

• Urgent, Not Important (interruptions, chores & appointments, most meetings)

Common productivity wisdom says that to make time for your meaningful projects (important but not urgent), you’ll have to prioritize these over tasks that are Urgent and Not Important.

But Burkeman points out a glaring problem with this approach: you likely have too many important things to do.

Finding time for the most fulfilling projects isn’t simply a matter of procrastinating on unimportant and urgent tasks; you’ll have to learn to procrastinate on things that seem important too. You must create a hierarchy of importance and focus on what’s most important.

Becoming an expert procrastinator is not simply disregarding unimportant things — it’s learning how to procrastinate on important things.

In Four Thousand Weeks, Oliver Burkeman suggests three principles to help you become an expert procrastinator so you can carve out time for your most important things.

Principle 1: Pay Yourself First

If you wait until the end of the month to put money away for savings or investments, you likely won’t have any left.

Pay Yourself First is a suggested financial technique where you allocate funds to your investments as soon as you make income so that you prioritize financial growth over the more frivolous things you could do with your money.

Pay Yourself First applies to time, too. If you try to find time for your most important project only after you’ve cleared your schedule of all the less important things you need to get to, you’ll find that you rarely have time to work on it.

This project sits on your to-do list for days, weeks, months, and possibly years.

It stays on your list for so long because you fall for the trap of imagining that your schedule will magically open up at some point in the future. Then you’ll have time to work on what matters, you tell yourself.

But this isn’t how reality works, is it?

Our lives rarely open up to provide us with ample time to pursue what we find meaningful. The only way to ensure that you get around to this project is to do it first.

Carve out some time at the beginning of every day to work on your most meaningful work.

Early mornings are ideal for this because they are predictable: other people can’t distract you if they’re still in bed.

Stop waiting for the moment when you’ll have time, and start making time. Claim this time out of your day with the full knowledge that it will displace some other important tasks.

This is just how it is to be a human being with finite time.

Principle 2: Limit Your Work In Progress

Committing to a large number of projects simultaneously is probably a way to feel like you’re making progress when you’re not making any.

When you have multiple irons in the fire, you can switch it up whenever one of them becomes too difficult. You delude yourself by being busy yet failing to make meaningful progress on any one thing.

You need to limit the projects that you work on concurrently. Don’t have more than three projects on the go at once. Put all potential projects on hold until you’ve completed one of these three.

If a project isn’t working out, you can abandon it in favor of a new one. Burkeman emphasizes that the main point isn’t to finish every project necessarily but remove the bad habit of keeping an ever-expanding list of projects.

This principle will put your finite time in perspective: When you limit your list to three projects, it forces you to consider all the other important candidates you’ll have to procrastinate on.

You’ll learn to become comfortable with this, resulting in stress-free productivity because you’re no longer deluding yourself by attempting an insurmountable amount of activity.

Principle 3: Resist the Allure of Middling Priorities

Burkeman illustrates this point with a famous anecdote attributed to Warren Buffett (that may or may not have been said by Buffett — but it’s still valuable.)

The story goes that Buffett’s pilot asks the investor how to manage priorities.

Buffett says:

“Write down the top 25 things that you want out of life. The top 5 are the priorities you should focus on.”

The non-obvious follow-up (that has made this story famous) is what Buffett says to do about the other 20 things:

Completely ignore them.

These tasks are sufficiently alluring enough to draw your attention but don’t make up your top priorities. They’ll likely only be a distraction.

The most significant risks to our fulfillment aren’t the annoying inconveniences; they’re the “fairly interesting job opportunity” or the “semi-enjoyable friendship.”

Burkeman sums it up perfectly: The most dangerous are those ambitions “insufficiently important to form the core of your life, yet seductive enough to distract you from the ones that matter most.”

These are your middling priorities, and becoming an excellent procrastinator means procrastinating on these at all costs.

To carve out time for the most meaningful work that will move the needle in your life, you’ll have to learn how to procrastinate on other important things.

Become a better procrastinator by:

1. Paying yourself first (with time)

2. Limiting work to 3 projects at a time

3. Avoiding your middling priorities.