On October 14, 2011, in this blog's first season, I published a short list post that opened like this:
Procrastination is an inescapable part of everyday life, but that doesn't mean you can't procrastinate productively.
Fifteen years of coaching high performers later, I stand by every tactic on that list, and I've learned something the 2011 version had no way to know. This refresh keeps the original 5 ways at their original URL and adds the layer that matters most for high performers: what the procrastination itself is telling you.
TL;DR: Productive procrastination means doing a different useful thing when your target task stalls, so momentum survives until you can return. My original 5 tactics from October 2011 still work: run an errand, finish a smaller to-do, exercise, chunk the dreaded task, or set a deadline with a reward. The 2026 addition: treat repeated procrastination as data about alignment.
About the author: I'm Marissa Brassfield. I've published at Ridiculously Efficient since 2011, and this post's first version ran here on October 14, 2011, years before productive procrastination became a crowded conversation. Since November 2022 I've coached 500+ senior leaders, where procrastination shows up as a diagnostic, and I run my own practice on a 3.5-day workweek documented since March 16, 2023.
Productive procrastination is redirecting a stalled work session into a different useful activity, so your momentum keeps rolling until you can face the original task. The philosopher John Perry later made a similar case in his essay on structured procrastination: procrastinators rarely do nothing, so the craft is arranging your task list so the avoidance produces value.
My 2011 framing was blunter. Time management experts get derailed like everyone else; the difference is what they do while derailed.
1. Run an errand on your to-do list. Laundry, dishes, the grocery run. The 2011 post named the mechanism before I had the research for it: escape the workspace, get your muscles moving, and let your eyes focus on mid- and long-distance objects. Attention restoration theory backs the move: directed attention is a depletable resource, and changing environments restores it.
2. Complete a smaller work-related to-do. Dreading a lengthy email? Draft the short one instead. Momentum compounds, and the Zeigarnik effect works in your favor: the open loop of the avoided task keeps humming in the background while you stack small wins against it.
3. Exercise. The 2011 version quoted a surgeon I know who swears by his morning runs and the brain activity that arrives 60 minutes in. The research caught up: regular exercise measurably improves memory and thinking. My workout of choice has evolved from HIIT to lifting, and the effect holds.
4. Break the dreaded task into bite-sized chunks. Writing a chapter? Mind-map it. Avoiding the long reply? List the points in bullets, walk away, then return and take the outline point by point. The chunk converts a wall into a staircase.
5. Make a deal with yourself. Set a hard deadline ("before noon" still works) and attach a real reward. The 2011 reward was a half hour on Reddit. Pick yours with more love than that: the deal trains your brain that finished tasks buy freedom, the same logic as earned laziness.
Here is what 15 years of coaching added to the list. When the same task keeps getting avoided week after week, the tactics above stop being the point. In my own words, from a working session earlier this year:
Procrastination and all these things that I know are signs and signals of working in a way that isn't aligned.
Repeated procrastination reads three ways in my coaching practice:
The distinction matters because the crowded advice on this topic treats all procrastination as a bug to fix. Roughly half the productive procrastination conversation warns it can become sophisticated avoidance, and that warning is fair. The audit above tells you which kind you're holding.
Redirecting a stalled work session into a different useful activity (an errand, a smaller task, exercise) so momentum survives until you can return to the original work. I published my first version of this method in October 2011.
Used deliberately, yes: the redirect keeps your day producing value and often builds enough momentum to retry the avoided task. Used unconsciously for the same task week after week, it stops being a tactic and starts being information.
They procrastinate into their to-do lists: errands, smaller deliverables, movement. The output survives the derailment. The skill is noticing when the avoidance repeats, because repetition converts a productivity trick into an alignment signal.
When you're rested, the task is chunked, and the avoidance still returns for the same category of work across a season. At that point the question stops being "how do I focus" and becomes "does this work still belong in my week."
The 2011 post ended with a question, and it kept working for 15 years, so it stays:
How do you remain productive when you experience periods of procrastination?
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