Finally, after years of thinking I was merely odd, I have a diagnosis: I'm a "precrastinator", a term coined by psychologists a couple of months ago. We precrastinators don't put things off until the last minute (well, actually, in other moods, we do that, too, but never mind). Instead, we do things sooner than they really need to be done, even if it costs us more time and energy that way, simply for the feeling of having them over with. I sometimes worry that that'll be my epitaph: "He crossed a lot of items off his to-do list." Actually, come to think of it, maybe I should contact a headstone engraver and get that made now, just to have it out of the way.
In the experiment that inspired the term, US researchers gave participants the choice of carrying one of two heavy buckets to the end of an alleyway. One bucket was positioned closer to the finish line, but most people chose the other bucket – the one nearer to them – even though they had to carry it farther, which meant expending more effort. The reason, according to the study's authors, was that the task they'd been given weighed on their minds; they wanted rid of it. "By picking up the near bucket, they could check that task off their mental to-do lists more quickly than if they picked up the far bucket," said the lead researcher, David Rosenbaum. "Their desire to lighten their mental load was so strong that they were willing to expend quite a bit of extra physical effort to do so." Even if, like me, you doubt the relevance of the bucket-carrying scenario to your daily life, I suspect you recognise the general phenomenon. It manifests itself in that seductive urge to "clear the decks" before the "real work" can begin.
The special danger of precrastination is that, unlike procrastination, it doesn't feel naughty. When you're putting off revising for an exam by doing BuzzFeed quizzes, say, you're nagged by the knowledge that you ought to be working. But clearing the decks – answering emails, tidying the living room, running a few quick errands – feels virtuous. It often isn't, though. Partly that's because the decks won't ever be clear: there's always more email to answer, more preliminary research you could do, more specks of dust you could wipe away. (Classic Onion headline: "Plan To Straighten Out Entire Life During Weeklong Vacation Yields Mixed Results".) You'll also be using up energy on the wrong things, postponing the most important ones to when you're depleted.
And yet those emails do need to be answered, living rooms do need tidying. The best solution I've discovered is to stick to a simple rule: don't clear the decks first, clear them second. If your job permits it, schedule a daily deck-clearing hour – but at 4.30pm, not 9am. Switch your weekends around so that chores get done last (but assign a specific time, otherwise they won't get done at all). And whenever you catch yourself thinking, "Let me just get these little things out of the way first", consider the possibility that you'd be better off not bothering. Some don't need doing at all, while others can wait. It's time to abandon the secret pride we precrastinators feel in having completed 25 small tasks by 10am: if they're not the right tasks, that's not really something to be proud of.
oliver.burkeman@theguardian.com
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