Procrastination can be bad if pathological, but it's a great heuristic in the absence of information (close to optimal).
I think people over think it, causing excessive anxiety to themselves.
Why is it a good evolved strategy? Because of uncertainty:
If something is due at some deadline in the future, the further we're from that deadline, the larger the chance that whatever the task is won't be necessary. So waiting for it to become more certain and do something else makes sense in terms of reducing effort (energy expenditure).
Don't try to solve for it, just focus on getting the right things done and learn to let go of things that really don't matter.
I would recommend reading "Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity".
It helped me a lot being successful at that point of my career where I had more things to do than time to do them (spoiler alert: you just don't do some shit, it really doesn't matter).
Sounds good except it doesn’t apply in the worse cases, which are the ones where there zero uncertainty that the task will have severe negative consequences if not done on time. Meaning, hard deadlines for mandatory projects, at work, school or life.
I respect your take, because generalizing advice is always impossible and at some surface level I agree.
I’d investigate more on the poor emotional management and regulation that leads to procrastination, I think there, there is always room for self improvement that applies to other areas of life.
Yeah, if there are pathological conditions (e.g. depression) my advise doesn't really apply.
What I see is a push to make procrastination look like a character flaw and trying to sell "solutions" to it. Even to the point of using ADHD medication to increase focus, training courses, etc.
This causes a lot of anxiety and pressure to perform in otherwise healthy individuals.
As if procrastination is THE reason you don't succeed (and why daddy doesn't love you), and if you could just fix it, all your dreams will become true.
Success is (in my experience) more about luck and prioritization.
Luck because there are a lot of things you don't control, and prioritization because most things don't really matter, and learning to focus your energy in the ones that do, will take you a long way.
I think people over think it, causing excessive anxiety to themselves.
Why is it a good evolved strategy? Because of uncertainty:
If something is due at some deadline in the future, the further we're from that deadline, the larger the chance that whatever the task is won't be necessary. So waiting for it to become more certain and do something else makes sense in terms of reducing effort (energy expenditure).
Don't try to solve for it, just focus on getting the right things done and learn to let go of things that really don't matter.
I would recommend reading "Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity".
It helped me a lot being successful at that point of my career where I had more things to do than time to do them (spoiler alert: you just don't do some shit, it really doesn't matter).