Avoiding procrastination

Last year I read a book by Andrew Mellen, called "Calling Bullsh*t on Busy" (2023). 

Most of the book was pretty straight-forward, containing many strategies and tactics which I tend to follow anyway. However, I particularly liked the final chapter on procrastination. In this chapter, the reader was pragmatically advised that - while there are four options when we are faced with a task (do; delegate; drop; or defer; Mellen, 2023) - really, only three options work in our favour, and actually get things off our worklists. Those are: 

• "Do it"
• "Delegate it", or 
• "Drop it" (Mellen, 2023, 543/600)

The simplicity of these three is great, and I really like the alliteration. I mostly 'do' or 'drop'. Not having staff, delegating is problematic :-)

I try to follow the old adage "handle each 'piece of paper' only once" (not that I get many pieces of paper these days!). But I triage my emails first thing in the morning, deciding what I can do and delete straight away; and what needs more thought. Do and deletes are easy. Items which need more thought - but not too much - get put into my worklist for the day. If they are larger items, they get diarised. 

However, I do try not to 'defer' (although last year I had a load of life admin tasks for a relative that I had been doing exactly that with. Then I found an admin person to delegate to, which got those tasks from 'deferred' to 'done'). However, sometimes pretending to defer tasks does pay off. Working in the education sector, we often get asked to do jobs which we think are pointless. I tend to say "oh, yes, I must get onto that" when asked to do a pointless task, but fully intend to defer it until push comes to shove. And it does not become mental load (or "time clutter", Mellen, 2023), because mentally I have dropped it. A number of those pointless tasks actually go away - get dropped - because government or institutional policies change. 

When it comes to do the doing it option, the author notes that "Dealing with something doesn’t mean you have to complete it immediately, of course. It just means you’re no longer creating time clutter by kicking it down the road indefinitely" (Mellen, 2023, 543). Instead we lighten our load by not "wast[ing] time playing with it, pushing it around, staring at it, and wishing it were gone". And that means that we make a decision about the task: we decide who gets to do the job, and get on with it.

In the words of Andrew Mellen: "It simply needs to be done by you, done by anyone, or not done at all " (Mellen, 2023, 543).

Sam

References:

Mellen, A. (2023). Calling Bullsh*t on Busy: A Practical Guide to Ditching the Time Management Myth [ePub]. First Line Press.