Productive procrastination is when you’re busy, yet you’re still procrastinating on your most important tasks. For example:You work 8 -10h workdays, you’re always busy, and you feel that you’re productive. But you’re not as productive as you think. Is your big project done? Is it even moving in any direction? If the answer is “not exactly”, you’re presumably a victim of productive procrastination. By keeping yourself busy with a lot of to-do’s, you distract yourself from doing the work. The work that’s important and impactful still remains untouched.

Productive Procrastination

Productive procrastination is when you’re efficient and accomplish everything (except for the most important things).For example: When having a hard project to crack, you may find yourself doing:<ul><li>laundry</li><li>the dishes</li><li>cleaning the house</li><li>washing your car</li><li>organizing files on the computer</li><li>cleaning the bathroom</li><li>cooking.</li></ul>You actually worked and achieved something.  Procrastinating doesn’t have to mean “doing nothing”. You can still do low-level, unimportant stuff. Productive procrastinators are great workers. They are able to do a lot of work, provided it is not the one they should be doing at the moment.

Productive Procrastination: The Positive Side

Time blocking is a great way to procrastinate in a productive way.  You can take a few moments to plan your day if you don’t feel like starting that big project.  It will keep you on track for the rest of the day.The productive procrastination technique focuses on a specific worldview: If you can’t make it great, at least make it.  This approach doesn't perceive procrastination as the opposite of productivity. Even if you’re not working on the task you set out to do, you’re still making progress on eliminating slices of your productivity pie.

If You Can’t Make It Great, At Least Make It 

Before you know it, you are working on tasks that distract you from what you should be doing. You’re busy and you’re getting a lot of tasks done. You feel good about yourself.  In reality, you’re actually killing your productivity levels. If you are close to falling into this trap:<ul><li>Don’t use busyness to protect yourself from doing the things that you should. This way you fail to reach your dreams.</li><li>Hard work doesn’t equal success. It can be its component if you work hard on the right tasks and activities. Think about it. If hard work equaled success, all construction workers would be millionaires</li></ul>

Productive Procrastination: The Negative Side

When you procrastinate in the usual way, you almost always realize it. You hardly ever realize when you fall into the trap of productive procrastination.   Think about those days when you: answer a lot of emails, spend time on social media, or do other random to-do’s. You feel very productive. Your brain rewards you for this behavior. It produces dopamine when you’re working on a lot of different tasks. This, in turn, stimulates the repetition of this behavior. But productive procrastination is unproductive in the long run.

What’s the Trap About?

<ul><li>Learn to identify your most important activities: write them down.  If you have more than 5 tasks that you think are important, take a few minutes to identify your top 5. If you work on any other task before spending time on your identified top, you’re falling into the trap.</li><li>Tackle your most important activities first thing in the day. Don’t work on anything else before you finish your work on your most important activity.  Most people work on low to mid-value tasks first because it’s easier. As we go by during the day, our mental resources, like willpower and our ability to focus diminish. </li></ul>

Tips to Avoid Falling for Productive Procrastination

“All procrastinators put off things they have to do. Structured procrastination is the art of making this bad trait work for you. The key idea is that procrastinating does not mean doing absolutely nothing. Procrastinators seldom do absolutely nothing; they do marginally useful things, like gardening or sharpening pencils or making a diagram of how they will reorganize their files when they get around to it. Why does the procrastinator do these things? Because they are a way of not doing something more important”

Productive procrastination is when you're efficient but not effective. You accomplish everything, except for the most important things.

productivity

Productivity

Understand yourself and those around you.

psychology

Psychology

timemanagement

Time Management

Productive Procrastination: How to Avoid Falling Into the Trap

It may seem normal, but not nice, to experience at least some pleasure when misfortune befalls a rival.New research contrasts a new emotion, "happy-for-ness" with schadenfreude(a German word combining the words harm and joy), envy, and sympathy in response to success or failure in others.By understanding your own tendency to engage in social comparison, you can move past your negative and into more empathetic reactions to others.

How Our Sense of Fairness Influences Judgments About the "Fortunes of Others"

The idea that you should feel bad when someone else encounters a loss or other form of misfortune is hammered into most people’s sense of moral responsibility. Little children may shout with joy when they win a family board game, but this ignoble reaction ordinarily becomes less and less acceptable in anyone over the age of 8 or 9. As adults, you may still experience this sense of delight when you’ve vanquished your opponents, but you know that you have to hold back on expressing it openly.

Hold Back The Victory Shout!

Feeling happy at the expense of someone else’s losses is an emotion that psychologists refer to as schadenfreude, a German word combining the words harm (schaden) and joy (freude). Although this is a common enough emotion, is it inevitable that people take pleasure in the harm that befalls others? Perhaps you hear that a small electrical fire destroyed your neighbor’s kitchen. Isn’t it likely that you would feel sympathetic toward them rather than triumphant?

A Pleasurable Feeling At Others Expense

<ul><li>Social comparisons are at the heart of people's emotional responses to other people's (mis)falls</li><li>If the person you're comparing yourself to unfavourably has a desirable outcome, you'll experience envy.</li><li>You'll feel sympathy because you can "look down" at the other person without feeling threatened by their superiority over you.</li><li>At the other end of the spectrum, you will feel what the German authors call "happy-for-ness" when you don't see someone as having qualities more desirable than your own.</li></ul>

Comparisons Are Natural

A plethora of studies have shown that individuals do not like inequality, also known as inequity aversion.The farther away someone's relative rank moves from your own, the worse you will feel.Emotional reactions to other people's successes or failures exist on a sliding scale.You'll feel envious of a winner, then, who ranks higher than you in some way, as this individual threatens "not only comparative concerns but also self-esteem".

How Fairness Plays A Part

<ul><li>When you see someone get what you would like to have, such as the opportunity to join that outdoor gathering, ask yourself why this matters so much.</li><li>If you feel that your upward social comparison process is being set into motion, you can then start to bring it back down to erase your inequity aversion.</li><li>Feeling joy in other people’s misery doesn’t have to be an inevitable outcome of the social comparison process. By understanding the full dimensions of the FOE model, you can move yourself toward the fulfilling end of the emotional continuum.</li></ul>

The Bottom Line

How our sense of fairness influences judgments about the "fortunes of others."

personaldevelopment

Personal Development

loveandrelationships

Love & Relationships

Do You Bask in Other People’s Misfortunes?

The defining features of a true déjà experience are sudden shock and bafflement, accompanied by the unsettling conviction that what one is experiencing is impossible – and yet it’s happening. This is different to feelings of vague familiarity with things that remind you of something from your past, or someone you know or have known. Such experiences are not uncommon.

Déjà Vu: What We Know

Historically, ‘déjà vu’ has been used as an umbrella term to describe a range of possible déjà experiences.  Physiologists, for instance, have opined that its origin lies in delayed communication between the cerebral hemispheres; psychologists figure these experiences must be due to memory glitches (that the person has seen something in his or her past, and a present situation recalls it); neurologists say they are often caused by temporal lobe epilepsy; and some parapsychologists say they may arise from precognitive dreams. Others prefer reincarnation as an explanation.

History Of Déjà Vu

In his 1981 doctoral thesis, the South African neuropsychiatrist Vernon Neppe listed 21 variants of déjà vu. Among them were the aforementioned déjà vécu, as well as déjà visité (‘already visited’), déjà rêvé (‘already dreamt’), déjà entendu (‘already heard’), déjà senti (‘already smelt’), and déjà lu (‘already read’). It was Neppe, in fact, who first proposed that we place the various types under the heading ‘déjà experiences’.

The Many Forms Of Déjà Vu

Some just find the experiences an intriguing quirk, something fun to think about and ponder. Then there are those who find them scary: they’re afraid everything is predetermined and that they have no free will. Some say they find it reassuring – it suggests that they’re on the right track in life. For others, the precognitive element opens them up to metaphysical and non-materialistic views of reality.

What can the many types of déjà experiences that most people have tell us about reality, memory and the gaps in between?

religionandspirituality

Religion & Spirituality

scienceandnature

Science & Nature

Déjà vu is just one of many uncanny kinds of déjà experiences | Psyche Ideas

<ul>
<li>The only way to make your dreams come true is to influence other people to change their behavior.</li>
<li>Trying to influence someone means you’re a threat to their time, money, pride, or social capital. Most importantly, influence threatens their attention. But when you make an invitation without any pressure whatsoever, they become inclined to lean forward.</li>
<li>Keep in mind that people are more likely to say yes to a face-to-face request, and far less likely to respond to a social media post. The pressure and likelihood of saying yes depend on the closeness of the interaction.</li>
</ul>

Making it ok for someone to say No makes them want to say Yes

<ul><li>There are 2 internal systems governing our thinking and behavior. The first is fast, unconscious, emotional, and instinctive; these are your gut reactions. The second is slow, conscious, effortful, and seemingly rational; these are your deliberate decisions.</li><li>Because the unconscious mind is fast, it is the first responder. The conscious mind, being slow, is the second-guesser. </li><li>We tend to overestimate the conscious system because it’s the only one we can experience, but the unconscious mind is far more powerful. Being influential requires us to focus first and foremost on people’s gut reactions.</li></ul>

Influence doesn't work the way you think 

The biggest misperception about changing minds is that you need to do it at all. A lot of our behavior doesn’t reflect any conscious thinking; that’s why the best predictor of behavior is ease. It’s more powerful than motivation, price, quality, satisfaction, or intentions.
Ease makes people happy, and effort can really annoy people. So whenever you want to influence behavior, make that behavior as easy as possible.

The best predictor of behavior is ease

You can become more charismatic—someone people want to pay attention to—with a few tweaks to your language, body language, and your attention.The simplest charisma hack is to practice focusing your attention on people one at a time. Start by asking questions and using people’s names more often. Pronouns reveal where your attention is focused (and I don’t mean gender pronouns). To have charisma is to shine so that other people feel like they’re the only one in the room, and people want to say yes to you.

Being charismatic isn't something you are; it's something you do

Few of history’s turning points can credit just one hero. Instead, there was an army of poeple who spread the word, or they stepped up and did it.
In Hurricane Katrina, hundreds of boat owners rescued people—single moms, toddlers, grandfathers—stranded in attics, on roofs, in flooded housing projects, hospitals, and school buildings. None of these people said, "I can’t rescue them all". All of them said, "I can rescue someone, and that’s work so meaningful and important I will risk my life and defy the authorities to do it". And they did.

Lasting influence is a group project

Behavioral scientist Zoe Chance reveals one of the aikido moves for handling resistance and other strategies to help you win people over.


communication

Communication

leadershipandmanagement

Leadership & Management

5 insights from behavioral science that can make you better at influencing others

Reflective learning involves actively monitoring and assessing your knowledge, abilities, and performance during the learning process, in order to improve the process and its associated outcomes.Being reflective in your learning means thinking about what you’re learning and how you’re learning it, in a way that helps you understand yourself and your learning better.

Reflective learning

<ul><li>It can help you assess your situation by prompting you to identify gaps in your knowledge and areas where you need to improve.</li><li>It can help you figure out how to improve your learning process, by prompting you to figure out which learning techniques work well for you.</li><li>It can help you understand yourself better by prompting you to consider what kind of assignments or information you struggle with the most.</li><li>It can help you develop your general metacognitive skills, by training you to think critically about how you learn.</li><li>It can increase your feelings of autonomy and control, by making you feel that you’re actively in charge of your learning process.</li><li>It can increase your motivation to learn, by making you feel more in control of the learning process, and by making that process more deliberate and effective.</li><li>It can improve your learning outcomes.</li></ul>

The benefits of reflective learning

There are several things that you can reflect on:<ul><li>Your understanding of the material. For example, how well you understand certain concepts.</li><li>Your understanding of how to implement what you’ve learned. For example, when and how you can use a certain formula.</li><li>Your learning process. For example, how well certain learning strategies work for you.</li><li>Your abilities, preferences, and thoughts. For example, how difficult or enjoyable you find a certain topic.</li><li>Your goals. For example, where and when you plan to implement something that you’ve learned, and what you hope to achieve by doing so.</li></ul>

How to be reflective in your learning

<ul><li>Explain what reflective learning is.</li><li>Explain why reflective learning can be beneficial.</li><li>Explain how people can generally engage in reflective learning, potentially using relevant examples.</li><li>Explain how they specifically can engage in reflective learning, potentially using relevant examples.</li><li>Create an environment that is conducive to reflective learning, for example by giving people enough time to engage in reflection.</li><li>Guide people’s reflection directly, for example by asking them questions that prompt them to think about their learning.</li></ul>

How to encourage reflective learning in others

Reflective practice involves actively analyzing your experiences and actions, in order to help yourself improve and develop.

Reflective practice

education

Learning & Education

Thinking About the Way You Learn

In the modern age, the more options we have available, the happier we feel.
In Too Soon Old, Too Late Smart, Psychiatrist Gordon Livingston writes that those who are most unwell or discouraged suffer from a sense of limited choices, sometimes brought on by external circumstances or illness, but most often by the ways we restrict ourselves.

More options = happier life

We naturally fear loss more than we desire a potential gain. That fear of change keeps us where we are. That is also why most people stay in the same job or industry until they get fired or retire. The paradox is that most people assume staying in the same place will be less risky. In reality, the opposite is true. The longer you stay in the same place, the more you're at risk of a loss. Unless we get comfortable with change, we can't choose a life that makes us happy.

The paradox between risk and reward

What you do for a career matters. How many of your personal problems are related to your work? How often does the stress of work affect your mood at home? Since work takes up most of our time, having more career options and happiness in your career automatically makes you a better person. To have a good career, we need to prioritize learning over short-term goals like money. The more universal skills we have, the more opportunities we have.

How to create more career options

... or move on. There are always options but we can't expect them to come for free. They come at a price. For example, increasing your skills means less leisure time or relationships. If you're willing to pay the price, you won't stay in the same place.

Be willing to pay the price

The more options I have for my career, the better work I do. The more options I have for spending my free time, the less I cling to others.

career

Career

habits

Habits

business

Business

The More Options You Have, The Happier You Are - Darius Foroux

<ol><li>Camouflage – Women who are anxious and insecure tend to use makeup to appear less noticeable.</li><li>Seduction – Women who want to be noticeably more attractive tend to use makeup to be more confident, sociable, and assertive.</li></ol>

Research on makeup: why woman wear it

Researchers have discovered two universal characteristics that contribute to the attractiveness of a woman’s face.<ul><li>The amount of color contrast around the eyes and lips. <a href="http://www.healthguidance.org/entry/17322/1/Why-Are-Men-Attracted-to-Women-Who-Wear-Makeup.html">Women naturally tend to</a> have darker lips and skin around the eyes. So, our brains subconsciously note that as a sign of femininity. Lipstick and eye shadow are makeup staples because they enhance those features.</li><li>We also like symmetrical faces, even when we can’t perceive the symmetry. Makeup evens skin tone and contouring, eyeliner and lipliner also can make those features appear more symmetrical.</li></ul>

The biology of attractive faces

Makeup does more than alter a woman’s attractiveness, it also plays a role in her ability to form new relationships. 
While straight men look at a woman’s makeup or lack thereof to help determine her attractiveness, straight women use makeup to help judge other women’s personalities.

The social psychology of makeup

Why do women wear makeup? Research shows there are two primary reasons why women wear makeup.

fashion

Fashion & Beauty

health

Health

Why Do We Wear Makeup? The Science Behind Makeup Obsession

Movie studios spend millions marketing their product and show multiple versions of trailers to test audiences before releasing the final set of trailers that, more often than not, have the entire movie spelt out for the audience.
This technique is a necessary evil and has become a mainstay of Hollywood trailers despite intense criticism.

When Movie Trailers Give Away The Entire Movie

The reasons movie studios give out major plot points in their trailers:
<ol>
<li>The audience likes to see in advance what they would be paying to see.</li>
<li>Big moments evoke a strong audience response and are therefore memorable.</li>
<li>Major plot points being revealed in the trailer makes the audience understand the product better, and makes the movie familiar and likeable, with no surprises.</li>
<li>Trailers (with the entire movie packed in three minutes) are targeted at people who may not be so tuned in and would decide on watching the movie after seeing the promo.</li>
</ol>

The Psychology Of Movie Trailers

Movie previews can reveal big plot points or moments that can spoil everything. So why do studios do it?

sciencefiction

Science Fiction

marketingandsales

Marketing & Sales

movies

Movies & Shows

The Reason Movie Trailers Give So Much Away

It doesn't work like a check-list: You can't check each item off, get to be happy and old for a couple of decades, then you die. Problems don’t go away, they change and evolve. And accepting life's imperfection is hard because it forces us to accept that we have to live with things we don’t like.

Life is progress, not perfection

Blaming the world for your problems is the easy way out. It gives you short-term relief, you lie in your imagined victimhood, but ultimately it implies that you are incapable of controlling your own fate.

Taking responsibility

"You can only fix your own imperfections and not the imperfections of others. So you may as well get to work on them."

Bravery is not the absence of fear 🌪. It's feeling the fear, the doubt, the insecurity, and deciding that something else is more important.

Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway

In any venture, failure is required to make progress. Without failure, there is no progress and without progress, there is no happiness.

Progress and happiness

We all want to know how to be happy, but we rarely consider the hidden costs of happiness. It is not free. And despite what Cover Girl or Tony Robbins or the Dalai Lama once told you, it's not always easy breezy either.

motivationandinspiration

Motivation & Inspiration

artsandculture

Society, Arts & Culture

The Hidden Costs of Happiness

When there is a new habit to form or a new project to work on, the human tendency is to say, "I'll start tomorrow", or "I'll start on Monday."
We get a payoff when we delay important actions and promise that we will do it at some perfect time in the near future.

The "I'll start tomorrow" trap

In nature, we see perfect beginnings and endings. The sun rise and sets. Trees shed their leaves in winter, and blossom in summer.
One thought payoff we get from delaying our work for a specific time is the idea that if we begin something perfectly, it will go perfectly and end perfectly. This is the main reason people make New Year's resolutions.

The illusion of perfect beginnings

We play mind games to convince ourselves that we are doing the right thing, even though we know its not the right thing.
When we don't feel like doing something that we know we must do, the mind is quick to rationalize a delay by 'giving you permission' to start a habit or do the task at a later 'perfect' stage. However, when we become aware of what we're really doing, we can change our behaviour.

What really goes on in your mind when you delay actions

How many times have you heard someone, or even yourself, say, “I’ll start from tomorrow” or “I’ll start from Monday” or “I’ll start from next month” when

Productive Procrastination: How to Avoid Falling Into the Trap

Do You Bask in Other People’s Misfortunes?

Déjà vu is just one of many uncanny kinds of déjà experiences | Psyche Ideas

5 insights from behavioral science that can make you better at influencing others

Thinking About the Way You Learn

James Cooper