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DOES PROCRASTINATION AFFECT YOUR PRODUCTIVITY?

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I am just now coming across an article in Huffington Post called "Procrastination and Productivity: What Helps and What Hurts."  It was posted by Sarah Klein.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/31/procrastination-productivity_n_2584774.html

earlier this year; but with my procrastination I am just now getting to it.

One of the main sentences that struck me was "regular breaks throughout the day even just in increments of a few short minutes at a time, can improve focus, productivity and creativity, according to a 2011 study.    The study Klein refers to is one by Alejandro Lleras, Ph.D., associate professor of psychology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.  Lleras claims that "at any point of time you have multiple concerns or thoughts you could be having.  It's difficult to maintain one particular (focus) for a long period of time.  If you break that pattern and force yourself to think of something else very briefly, when you go back to your task you get a refreshed focus." 

Well, all of this seems very nice, neat and a bit too pat for me.  I guess I'm too much of a cynic and perhaps too much of a procrastinator myself to believe it could be that easy.  Of course, the logic is there, but it was too simple.  So I decided to do my own (unquestionably unscientific study) on this.  I have been putting off a very specific task and procrastinating about this project for far too long.  My own web-site developer would only agree full spades with this.  If she is reading this, I am sure she would agree unquestionably.  So I decided to take this project and try and follow Dr. Lleras's advice to see if it worked.  Now in preparation for this experiment, I also read Sarah Klein's complete post in Huffington Post for which the complete link is provided above. 

The experiment starts...............

The rules I established were 1) I would stop every 60 minutes or sooner, so I set a timer on my iPhone to ring every 60 minutes at a minimum.  I took a walk around the house or read an article in today's New York Times, just to break things up., 2) I had my normal music on.  A shuffle from iCloud which is a mix of everything from classical to rock to vocal jazz to Broadway,  and 3)  I stayed at my desk with my normal working chair.

The experiment ended...........

I finished a significant segment of the work I needed to do quicker and easier than I expected.  I think the quality is pretty decent.  I'll wait to hear what my harried web developer says about that. 

So perhaps there is something to what Dr. Lleras and Ms. Klein have written and posted.

Procrastinators give it a chance.  You might end up being more productive and wouldn't that be novel!!!

Bob
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