Care and Feeding of your Dissertation-Writing Friend, Part 3: PROcrastination Tips!

By Penname von Pseudonym

You may have noticed that this blog took a while to go up. This is almost entirely due to the fact that I recently got a smartphone (hellooooo 21st century!) and have been spending most mornings playing Boggle in my bed (compared to how much work I’ve actually done on my dissertation in the last two weeks, finding an 8-letter word at 9AM feels like one heck of an achievement).

Also, you may have noticed that the sun has been out recently. If you read Part 2 of this blog, you’ll remember the paragraph about regret-proofing my life. Considering the weather the rest of this year, every moment of sunshine is an almost irresistible tractor beam lifting me away from my desk and towards those rare and ephemeral moments of warmth and happiness. “Dissertations can always be written after the sun goes down,” I tell myself. Unfortunately, this pretty much coincides with bedtime.

If they offered PhDs in procrastination, I would have finished years ago (about the only thing a true PROcrastinator can say with any certainty). The fact that I have accomplished anything significant in my life is always amazing to me in the face of my truly awesome procrastinatory skills. This week’s blog is both a discussion of procrastination and how I am currently avoiding doing any work on my PhD.

There are two kinds of procrastination: productive and unproductive. A true PROcrastinator can find an excuse why almost any kind of procrastination is productive (I justify my mid-morning Boggle excursions as “helping me wake up” and something about practicing cognitive skills...I’m sure someone somewhere has done a study on word-finding games and dementia). Other kinds of “productive” procrastination I have recently undertaken are tidying my room (which will come as a surprise to anyone who has actually visited my room in the last two weeks), filing emails (see Part 1), and writing this blog post.

Nonetheless, it’s actually taken me quite awhile to write this post because I’m also overcome with procrastination guilt. My productive procrastination efforts are more goal-driven (e.g. “be able to walk across room without looking like I’m doing a tribal rain dance”), and so it’s easier for me to identify that I’m procrastinating. Therefore, I will start working on the blog, realise that I’m procrastinating, stop the procrastinatory activity, and then proceed to continue not doing the work I don’t want to do by doing something more nebulous and unstructured like reading my entire Facebook newsfeed.

The issue with unproductive procrastination (and even I would put Facebook checking squarely in that category) is that you’re not really doing anything, and so there’s not that much to stop doing. With productive procrastination, you’re engaged in an activity which can be cleanly stopped, whereas unproductive procrastination can sort of creep up on you. You can spend hours doing absolutely nothing and have no idea where the time went.

There are lots of theories about why we procrastinate. I went to an anti-procrastination workshop in undergrad that was a lot of mumbo jumbo about how we fear failure and so we procrastinate to protect our egos or something similarly special. The truth is, though, I’m not working on my dissertation because I just honestly don’t want to do it. It’s not fun. Writing this blog post is fun. Seeing my friends is fun. Coming up with hilarious, like-able Facebook status updates is fun. Writing a dissertation is not fun. Ask anyone.

With that in mind, my number one PROcrastination tip is actually to pay attention to the ways you procrastinate because they’re more fun than what you should be doing. As referenced above, I find writing this blog fun. I’ve realised I like writing a lot. I should probably incorporate writing into my future career somewhere (as long as it’s not a dissertation). Thanks, procrastination!

Another reason we procrastinate is that it feels too good to actually get things done, and completing one small thing feels better than working on a piece of a large thing. Since I’m not finishing my dissertation for another three months, clearing out my inbox is about as close as I’m going to get on a daily basis to a feeling of accomplishment. If you reflect, you’ll probably notice that your productive procrastination centres around things you can finish rather than incremental steps towards a larger and more distant goal. There’s all sorts of research (which I’ve had to read for my PhD) that short-term goals are more motivating than long-term goals. If you want to reach a long-term goal, the research says, set yourself a series of short-term goals!

Hahahaha! Clearly these people never did a PhD. I (mentally) made a list of short-term goals months ago, and my dissertation was going fine up until the point that I actually had to wait for someone else to do something. My most recent short-term goal idiotically relies on the help of other people, so I’ve been waiting around for several weeks. Unfortunately, I am VERY invested in this short-term goal and refuse to temporarily move on to a different goal, so I’ve been using procrastination to fill my brain with happy thoughts that don’t contain the phrase “submission deadline”.

So yeah. Definitely make a list of short-term goals. That can help a lot. But make sure your short-term goals don’t involve other people. It’s usually a bad idea.

Coming back to our previous point, I promised PROcrastination tips, so here are some wonderful things you all can do to amuse yourselves instead of doing your work:

(1) Facebook! Always the go-to option.

(2) Download a new game onto your smartphone.

(3) Get hooked on that SUPER ADDICTIVE TV show that everyone is into but that’s already 5 seasons in. Catching up will take you AGES. I recently picked Arrested Development, and I’m not going to start the new series until I’ve finished ALL of the old episodes.

(4) Have friends and see them on a regular basis.

(5) File your papers and/or emails.

(6) Shred old receipts/documents (REAL adults have paper shredders! Also it’s weirdly cathartic).

(7) Pre-emptively flat-hunt in the city you think you might want to live in. Motivating and depressing at the same time!

(8) Go shopping in the middle of the day (I have NEVER done this).

(9) Get weeknight tickets to a show in London and then think “well, I might as well spend the whole day in London”.

(10) Have a hobby that you actually enjoy.

As a closing note, remember that not all procrastination is bad. You need to take breaks from the things you don’t like doing to do the things you do enjoy doing, and introducing an aspect of enjoyment to your day is usually a positive thing. You work better when you’re happy. Just make sure you’re not too happy. They kick you out of grad school for that.

Coming up next: what to do when your dissertation-friend has a nervous breakdown in your room.