Procrastination
When Overwhelmed with Urgent Deadlines, Do This First
Fight the inclination to barrel forward; that can end up costing you even more.
Posted January 2, 2023 Reviewed by Hara Estroff Marano
Key points
- The first thing to do in any seemingly urgent situation is to assess its true urgency level. Is immediate action absolutely required?
- If you've determined that you don't have to act immediately, then take a brief break to assess how much time you really do have to take a break.
- A break is often needed to see the bigger picture of what's actually happening, to properly strategize and prioritize what to do
- Without giving yourself enough time, you could end up hurriedly tackling the wrong things first and going down the wrong path.
This past week, a lot of unexpected urgent matters came up all at once. For a moment, the thought entered my head, "How the heck am I going to find time to get all of these things done?" So what did I do at that moment? Did I immediately spring to action? No, I went for a run. And this wasn't a "goodbye, I'm never going to come back" run. Rather, it was more of a "let's keep up the exercise routine and clear my head" run.
When you are feeling overwhelmed with urgent deadlines, the inclination can be to just barrel forward as quickly as possible. After all, isn't every minute that you wait one less minute for you to get everything done? Well, not exactly. Simply jumping into action can result in even more time wasted, especially if it's not the right action. Often the best thing to do is to not launch into get-everything-done mode just yet and instead hit pause and take a break.
Of course, this shouldn't apply to every urgent matter. Certainly, if an angry rhinoceros is chasing after you, it's best not to hit pause. The first thing to do in any seemingly urgent situation is to assess its true urgency level. Is this an I-better-act-now-or-get-impaled situation or is there actually some time to contemplate how to best move forward?
When you've determined that you don't have to act immediately, then take a brief break to assess how much time you really do have to take a break. It may be more time than you think. For example, if things are due the next day or even later, then surely you have at least half an hour to take a break.
A break is often needed to see the bigger picture of what's actually happening. When faced with a seemingly urgent situation, the tendency can be to get super-focused on the tasks at hand, which can make you lose sight of the bigger picture.
Similarly, without giving yourself enough time to properly strategize and prioritize what you are going to do, you could end up hurriedly tackling the wrong things first and going down the wrong path. Without seeing the bigger picture, you may prematurely leap towards only the most obvious and easiest to tackle things rather than the ones that are ultimately the most pivotal. Such major missteps are going to waste even more time than taking a break would have in the first place. Such mistakes may turn what was an urgent situation into an even more urgent situation, potentially a disastrous, this-can't-be-rescued situation.
That's why it's always important to pace yourself, even when you feel overwhelmed with deadlines. There can be a tendency to equate "pacing yourself" with procrastination when dealing with urgent deadlines.
When you've got seemingly too many things to do, taking a break to go for a run, rest, meditate, eat a good meal, or even, say, write an article for Psychology Today is not the same thing as procrastination. If it gives you time to clear your head and more strategically approach what needs to be done, then the end result could be a whole lot of time saved. So when faced with a seemingly overwhelming situation, don't just make a break for it. See if you can take a break instead.
