Pre-crastination was first observed in a lab experiment. Students were asked to carry one of the seemingly randomly placed buckets to a platform around 5 meters away. Instead of choosing the bucket with the shortest carrying distance, most students picked up the closest to themselves. When asked why, the answer was ‘to get the task done as soon as possible.’
I can think of two things I constantly do that fit into this category:
- Answering emails as soon as they arrive
- Trying to complete as many tasks as possible in the morning, including chores that require little to no mental energy
This behaviour may be related to three theories:
- Low-hanging fruits grabbing - the early bird catches the worm
- Tendency to reduce working memory load - do what is easiest.
- The idea of completing a task itself is rewarding.
I often feel good about completing back-burner tasks even when I have plenty of higher-value tasks in my TODO list. Applying the 80/20 rule, delaying these back-burner items is economically better until they become obsolete. Unfortunately, the reality is that my brain wants the opposite.
The two-minute rule from James Clear’s Atomic Habits and GTD workflow recommends completing a task immediately if it only takes less than x minutes. However, after trying both, I am sceptical about them. Instead of trying to ‘deal with’ the issue, is there a way to not load our working memory with trivial, low-value tasks in the first place? I often find myself spending up to 20 minutes on seemingly 2-minute tasks. For example, I would quickly skim through a short recommended reading list and bookmark the items that look interesting for later. The activity itself can be completed within 2 minutes. However, with more items added to my TODO list, I am more inclined to read the newly added bookmarks instead of chipping away at the overdue 1000+ pages of books I was supposed to finish months ago.
References
- Wasserman, D.A.R.A. (n.d.). Pre-Crastination: The Opposite of Procrastination. [online] Scientific American. Available at: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/pre-crastination-the-opposite-of-procrastination/ [Accessed 25 Feb. 2023].