Mar 4, 2007 Dec 1, 2025 2007-03-04

Well, I’ve been in a quite oximoronic mood lately. I had a lot of work to do, and I managed to do it far better and faster than usual. I even worked more than initial planned. The job was programming related, and it was a project that I have for several months. It had a quite hectic path so far, and only in the last few weeks it started to shape as I wanted it to. And, after the last few days, I realized that what I planned was in fact easier than I thought. It happens for everybody, I agree, but this time, was something more obvious than other times.

Maybe I have a bigger work capacity? Maybe I was underworked all this time and I just start to realise that? Maybe. But that means that, until now, I constantly had a false perspective about my own work capacities.

This whole situation made me think about my procrastionation habits. Do I have them? Of course, like everybody else. Do I cultivate them? Well, that’s another question. I think I stopped cultivating my procrastinating habits, but, like in a delayed “sync”, the results are not quite ready to be shown.

So, knowing that, and being in my oximoronic state, I just come up with this strange idea about how to better support your procrastination habits by using productivity techniques. I know it sounds twisted, and, to some extent, it is. But I think it’s more funny than twisted, and you’ll see what I mean.

So, here are my 7 tips for maximizing procrastination output by using a more productive approach:

1. Chose The Things You Have To Do Carefully

• chose only things that you know are undoubtely over your competence level
• chose things that are likely to be done by somebody else pretty soon, so you won’t have to do them, actually

2. Always Start Doing A Thing By Postponing It

• And, when postponing, pay special attention to the date, chose it to be:
  • when you know you’ll be in a meeting
  • when you know you’ll be doing something else (sleeping for instance)
  • at a random, but somehow interesting date, such as: the third Friday from the October month of the year 2013

3. Talk As Much As You Can About What You Have To do

• talking about something actually prevents you from doing it, so you are on the safe side
• brag about it as much as you can. people will soon be bored and eventually leave you alone.

4. Forget Stuff

• constantly. make a habit out of it
• train to forget at least one thing per day
• exercise your forgetting techniques, if necessary hire somone to help you forget stuff completely and honestly

5. Avoid Interaction At All Cost

• keep a low profile, like this, you won’t be assigned anything, not the smallest responsability
• if you need to interact for asking something from somebody, do it fast: hit and run, so the other guy doesn’t have time to react

6. Keep (And Grow) A Huge Task List

• if you intent to do more than you actually can perceive as being doable, then you’re set
• constantly add stuff to your schedule, so you won’t be caught in a situation with no escape, like being forced to actually do something

7. Pretend To Be Tired

• start from the dawn, so you’ll get really exhausted by noon
• in a very short period of time you won’t have to pretend anymore

And, for those of you already used to my mind mapping habits, here is the mind map screenshot:

(The mind map is in MindManager format. You can go directly to their site and download MindManager.)

Until then: procrastinate productively :-)!