We’ve all been warned of the plentiful perils of persistent procrastination, but we would do well to avoid its antipode: precrastination.
Around every corner is someone giving you advice on how to live your life – including tricks to help you curb your procrastination… Well, this is a corner just like any other. This time, it’s psychologists Christopher Gehrig and Kyle Sauerberger discouraging people from falling into procrastination’s “extreme” opposite.
Precrastination explained and common examples
Psychologist Kyle Sauerberger co-authored a research paper in 2019 about the phenomenon of precrastination. In it, he describes the “less well known” phenomenon of precrastination as “the tendency to attempt to get things done as soon as possible, even if that involves extra effort”.
Understanding its prevalence and manifestations is important for trying to explain why people hurry as often as they do. And hopefully, in the long run, such research will “help reduce the chance that haste makes waste”.
People “discovered” precrastination in 2014, according to the paper. If you complete task as soon as they come up, before you need to do them, and potentially in a less-than-optimal way as a result, you may be a precrastinator.
The Guardian describes an example: waiting in an airport for your flight to board, you “hover near the gate” despite knowing you won’t be called to board for another half an hour. This comes at an obvious cost. As a result, you suffer under the weight of your bags while you could be relaxing and reading a book.
Similarly, those who jump up as soon as the plane has landed usually end up standing in the corridor for 5 or 10 minutes before they can disembark. This involves expending extra energy, when they could remain sitting, reading their e-reader, until the plane doors are open.
How bad is it?
“One can envision precrastination and procrastination as two extremes,” Christopher Gehrig argues. He’s a psychology professor at Helmut Schmidt University in Germany.
Precrastinators use extra energy completing tasks early. Specifically, they use more than they would if they approached tasks at a more optimal time, rushing to complete tasks or projects in order to precipitate the relief at having completed them.
“People may precrastinate out of the fear of not being able to finish something on time,” Gehrig says. Stress and burnout can result from precrastination, since it’s associated with an inability to pace oneself.
Gehrig associates precrastination with being neurotic.
“Rather than feeling intrinsically rewarded by accomplishing goals,” Sauerberger adds, “by checking things off their to-do lists […], those high in neuroticism want to get things done because it causes them anxiety to have many tasks to do.”
Keeping your precrastination in check
Gehrig says a healthy balance between precrastination and procrastination could involve “effectively planning and prioritizing tasks without feeling too pressured to complete them immediately”.
Precrastination “doesn’t feel naughty”, wrote Guardian columnist Oliver Burkeman in 2014. His solution was to “clear the decks second”. In other words, do your chores last – but “assign a specific time”, otherwise you won’t do them at all.
Abandon the “secret pride” you feel in having ticked off two dozen small tasks by mid-morning. Why? “If they’re not the right tasks, that’s not really something to be proud of.”
