In completing work, humans are never free from the tendency to procrastinate. The word “procrastinate” in Oxford Dictionary means to delay doing something that you should do. In other words, work that should be completed immediately can be delayed or postponed for various reasons.

This attitude or habit of procrastination can interfere with productivity that is being undertaken. Why? because by delaying or postponing, the time needed to complete the work becomes longer. In the context of productivity, there is another interesting term to discuss, namely “productive procrastination”.

Productive procrastination is interesting to discuss further because it combines two opposing concepts: “productive” and “procrastination”. But now these two terms have merged into one which can create a paradox in the world of productivity. The question is, whether productive procrastination is really useful or it just pseudo productivity?

There are many opinions about what productive procrastination is. If concluded from those sources, productive procrastination refers to the act of postponing work by doing other work that is not urgent. Despite procrastinating, when someone is carrying out productive procrastination he/she still completes other tasks but not the main task.

For example, a student has the task of writing an essay on the theme of culture in Indonesia. Instead of doing this tasks, he spends his time by cleaning his room, washing clothes, or helping his/her family at home. Even though all the work he/she does is productive because he/she completes several jobs, it does not complete his main task, that is writing an essay.

This productive procrastination often occurs in everyday life. It doesn't matter whether that is a big task or a small task. As long as they delay or procrastinate work by completing other work, it can be said that they are experiencing productive procrastination.

There is a fundamental difference between general procrastination and productive procrastination. Procrastination in general is just postponing work without doing anything, while productive procrastination completes other work outside of the main job. The significant difference lies in whether someone is simply procrastinating or diverting their attention by doing other tasks.

Productive procrastination has both positive and negative impacts. From the positive side, this action can increase creativity by exploring new ideas when someone takes a short break from doing other tasks. With this pause, someone can find other solutions that they had not thought of before. Then, by completing other tasks first, someone can focus more on working on the main task without any distractions from other work.

But on the other hand, productive procrastination also has a negative side. First, a person who procrastinates productively is diverting his attention which results in the main task not being completed properly. All the effort put into doing other tasks cannot complete the main task. Second, energy that should be used optimally for the main task is reduced because it has been used up for other tasks that are not so important. As a result, a person can feel exhausted before completing a more crucial task.

After knowing what it is productive procrastination and what the impact is, now it is also necessary to know and understand what strategies can be used so as not to get caught up in it productive procrastination. The first step is to realize that you are in this phase. Awareness is the main thing that must be done in order to take further action. Second, namely making priorities for the day using the Eisenhower Matrix method, where the task list will be divided into four categories: important and urgent, important but not urgent, not important but urgent, and not important and not urgent. By knowing the priorities, someone can focus more on the main tasks that are truly important. Third, work within a specific time by implementing time blocking. Fourth, break the main task into several parts to avoid excessive stress. For example, in writing an essay, students can start by creating an outline, then look for references, then start writing the introduction, and so on. Breaking the assignment into small pieces can make the student feel like they have completed several things but are still on the same goal, that is completing the essay assignment.

From the discussion above, it can be concluded that although productive procrastination is a productive thing, but in the end delays or postpone still occur because the main task is not completed immediately. However, if it can be managed well, this productive procrastination  can provide benefits to individuals without losing the actual productivity.

Therefore, it is important for each individual to know when productive procrastination can be beneficial and when it actually becomes an obstacle in achieving the main goal.

Author: Alfi Khusnul Fauziah

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