Diligent Work on Difficult Tasks to Reduce Procrastination

Hold on a sec, I’m entering hyperfocus... “Our work isn’t complex enough, and there isn’t enough of it” postulates Chris Bailey, the productivity consultant. Those pesky, mindless activities that make me feel great, but are not really doing much good at all. Like Instagram, YouTube, and Twitter. My work is probably just not complex enough. Not complex enough? Chris Bailey thinks so. He reasons that most people become distracted when their “skills greatly exceed the demands of the work”.

Dr. Bailey stresses that working on more complex and engaging work will prevent one’s mind from wandering. He encourages entering a mental state called “hyperfocus” in which one task consumes all of an individual's attention. When one is so focused, the possibility of distraction is nonexistent. Simple. Thus, distraction only comes when our brains are bored or are not running at an increased skill level.

But he is wrong. While complex tasks do require more dedication and focus, there is no way of ensuring they block out distractions.

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Working harder and on harder things does not equal reduced procrastination. If anything, it would cause the brain to fatigue quicker, and therefore make you more susceptible to getting off task and being unproductive. While it seems reasonable in concept, in practice, his idea of maximum overload is quite ineffective. Based on personal experience with extremely difficult assignments, I know firsthand that the harder the work is, the harder I try to avoid it. Take my first AP course for example.

AP European History is known to be a brutal 10th-grade class, and it did indeed stand true to its daunting lore. I recall being assigned 8 paged reading guides that corresponded with 15 pages of textbook reading due the next day.

I proceed to sit down that afternoon to complete it all, and if bailey’s formula of the harder the work equals the most focused you get was true, then I would have breezed through it all. However, I ended up going to bed super late that night without even finishing the assignment. This happened multiple times that year and has occurred with many other courses as well. The difficulty of the task never ceases to stop me from getting distracted and finding some way to postpone the work. In the midst of Bailey’s misleading strategies to be more productive, he does provide some viable information on why we put off work. One of which is the Parkinson’s Law. He propagates that any“workload tends to expand to fit the time available for its completion”.

If a Bailey’s methods of productivity are quite unrealistic in many other areas as well. One does not simply find more complex tasks to work on. Easy and hard work comes and goes, it is just the nature of it all. Unless you have complete control over exactly what job comes your way, work can range from effortless to unattainable. He also thinks that people can completely eliminate distractions, which is preposterous. Distraction is like air. It’s literally everywhere, all the time. It’s hard to go a long time without air, just as it’s hard to go a long period of time without getting off topic. However, there are ways to better reduce distraction than following Bailey’s ludicrous modus operandi.

Dr. Pychyl, a renowned psychologist and expert in procrastination, suggests that people break down their work into very small steps that can actually be accomplished. Even the most minuscule parts of an overarching job can help get the ball rolling toward completion. Like if you want to clean your room, start by making the bed or by throwing your clothes in the wash. Maybe you have math homework. Just set up the paper with your name, date, and title, and then move on to the next parts in increments. Tim Urban articulates this method the best. He explains that “No one ‘builds a house.’ They lay one brick again and again and again and the end result is a house” (Urban 6). Challenging work should not be viewed as a whole, but more so as pieces that come together to completion.

To reach the end, you must first begin. Another tactic to help cut down on distraction and minimize stalling is explained in a video by Thomas Frank, a YouTuber focused on helping students learn better, where he talks about the Pomodoro Technique. He considers it to be the “most useful method” in overcoming the metal resistance to start work. The Pomodoro Technique consists of working on a single activity for 25 minutes. After which, you take a short 5-10 minutes break, and repeat the process three more times. This allows for you to start and accomplish work while accounting for time to let the brain relax and do as it pleases for a bit. Bailey’s idea of “hyperfocus” was not entirely wrong, but it merely encouraged working on a single task at a time, where the Pomodoro Technique helps to regulate the time dedicated to working and helps to balance distraction with productivity.