Time Management Tuesday: Reading About ADHD Has Made Me Rethink Productive Procrastination

I haven't been doing much with Time Management Tuesday the last couple of years for two reasons.

1. I see a lot of time management articles on Medium that are clearly written with minimal research and are often rehashes of material others have covered. Not much that's new there. It's a little bit book reportish. This left me with anxiety about producing the same kind of material, which I'd really rather not do.
2. I don't feel I've been doing that great with managing my own time the last few years. Am I being a hypocrite writing about managing time or am I writing about how I deal with a professional problem? I can feel a headache coming on. Seriously. 

But recently I've read a couple of things that caused what we might call an interest flair. I am inspired again! I think I have a few months of time management material here, beginning with ADHD-related material for October, which is ADHD Awareness Month.

Can ADHD Behavioral Approaches Help Others Manage Time?

We recently had a family member diagnosed with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. This was not a surprise, which I suspect is the case in many families. As a result, I am attracted to ADHD articles and definitely noticed the #ADHDawarenessmonth hashtag on Xitter. That led to one thing and another and some reading on ADHD and productivity and time management. Some of which sounded as if it could be helpful for any of us.

First off, the National Institute of Mental Health defines attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder as a "developmental disorder marked by persistent symptoms of inattention and/or hyperactivity and impulsivity that interfere with functioning or development."  The inattention part is of particular interest to writers, because it involves problems "staying on task, paying attention, or being organized."

Staying on task and being organized are hugely important for writers, because of the incredible, some of us might say overwhelming, array of things we need to do to write something, get it published, and market it. Each one of those aspects of the job require a large number of tasks. On top of that, the majority of us are working other jobs and possibly acting as caregivers for family members. So many balls to juggle. So many possible distractions.

How to decide what to do?

Procrastivity

In Why the ADHD Brain Chooses the Less Important Task--And How CBT Improves Prioritization Skills in ADDitude J. Russell Ramsay describes what he calls "procrastivity" in which people with ADHD procrastinate by working, but working at lower-priority activities. So they are doing things, but not making progress on a more important task. 

Productive Procrastination

When I read about procrastivity, I immediately thought of productive procrastination, something I've written about here a few times. I thought it was such a fine idea I republished the original post in 2022. My favorite willpower guru, Kelly McGonigal (She has a new book out! Or, at least, one I haven't heard of!) used the term "productive procrastination" in a Life Hacker piece on how she works and said, "I may have built my career on web searches I've done when I should have been doing something else." In another Life Hacker interview Ira Glass said, "I procrastinate by working." Though he did describe working at low-priority tasks when he should be writing as a bad habit. He wasn't as positive about it as McGonigal was.  

I've been feeling good about productive procrastination, believing that all those things I did while I should have been working on that last book for four years were a good thing. I was doing something. Anything. Now, after Ramsay's description of what goes on when someone with ADHD ends up in less necessary activities, I'm wondering about what I've been doing. 

Oh, and look. A far more recent Life Hack article, Productive Procrastination: Is It Good Or Bad? by Leon Ho, comes down firmly on the bad side. 

What To Do?

The Leon Ho Life Hack article includes time management techniques to avoid productive procrastination. But the J. Russell Ramsay ADDitude article has some fascinating stuff on why the ADHD mind leans toward low-priority tasks over the high-priority ones that could actually be more helpful for them to do. For instance, red flags for any of us might be noticing that we're spending a lot of time on tasks that are less demanding, more familiar, shorter, and with a very clear beginning and end rather than a big job that's waiting for us. Like writing a book. 

What I'm Going To Do

For the rest of October, I'm going to be looking for ADHD connected material that relates to time management and productivity, in recognition of ADHD Awareness Month. Next week I'll have a personal case study in how I spent an afternoon that illustrates some of what Ramsay talks about in his ADDitude article.

I think I should also give some thought to why I embraced productive procrastination in such a big way. Someone I liked did it? It gave me an excuse to get away from harder work? Yeah, I think that's it. Don't need to think about that any longer.

Also, I'm correct. As I said in the beginning of this post, I should be anxious about jumping into writing lightly researched blog posts.