You wake up on the day of a deadline that you’ve known for weeks. You try penning down your thoughts, but your mind is drawing a blank. You’re stressing and continuously glancing at the clock. But mostly, you’re cursing at yourself for procrastinating once again. Wouldn’t life be much easier if you were the opposite? Turns out, it wouldn’t be. PREcastination is a real thing, and it’s not the answer you’ve been looking for.
The term sounds so made up that my laptop won’t recognize it without a squeaky red line. Passive-aggressively hinting that I change the third letter of the word. But pre-castigating is a habit that is almost as common as procrastination, if not more.
What is Pre-castination?
Pre-castination is the tendency to get a task off your to-do list as quickly as possible, at the cost of putting in the extra effort. For example, sending emails before you proofread them or carrying your six grocery bags in one trip, are common pre-castinator traits. Here, you’re choosing to spend less time on these activities to get them out of the way. But in the process, you’re also subjecting your reader to typos or dropping items as you walk home. Here, it is important to note that there is a thin line between people who simply manage their time well and those who pre-crastinate. The former also believes in getting work done in advance, but is not in a hurry to complete tasks for the sake of it.
The term was coined in 2014 when Psychologist David Rosenbaum made a very strange discovery. He asked a group of college students to pick between two buckets placed between point A and point B. The first bucket was placed at the beginning of the walk and the second was placed closer to the finish line. He was sure that people would pick up the second bucket- it’s less effort because you walk free of any burdens until the end, right? Well, yes. But apparently it still wasn’t the most popular choice. The students merely wanted to get picking the bucket out of the way, even at the cost of doing more work.
“When I first got to college, I was very anxious about doing really well. I put a lot of pressure on myself and made sure that all my work was done as soon as possible. This meant that I was completing my assignments 3 weeks before the deadline at times. You’d think that was a great thing because I was done with it and didn’t have to look back. Often, I’d have to go back and keep re-editing my work based on class discussions or what others were doing. I usually ended up investing a lot more time and effort into it,” says Avaantika, a 21-year-old Media Practitioner.
Why do we Pre-castinate?
Pre-castination is a result of what is known as the “mere-urgency effect.” Most people want to do their tasks to avoid having to remember later. We wish to reduce any mental effort that comes from postponing our work. So compromising on the amount of energy we’re putting in at the beginning, seems worth it.
Anjana, a 22-year-old marketing trainee says “I can’t have my work sitting idle for too long. I have to complete it as and when it comes. But in the hurry of trying to get everything done as soon as I can, I often overlook a lot of things.”
It may seem as though this method is more practical because hey, at least we’re not procrastinating. But in reality, pre-castination is as much of a tool for shortcuts as it’s twin sibling. According to an article in the New York Times, “People who are checking things off the list all the time might look like they’re getting stuff done, but they’re not getting the big stuff done.” Basically, we spend a lot of time on things that seem essential to our checklists. But by the time we make it to the important stuff, we’re tired from everything that preceded it. Productivity is still compromised.
What can you do about it?
“I get away with pre-castinating most of the time. It’s not always a bad thing. But sometimes I need to step back and tell myself that things aren’t always as urgent as they seem. I can take my time and not stress as much.” says Ria, a 23-year-old post-graduate student.
Clearly, it doesn’t matter which side of the see-saw you’re on, both these methods have their ups and downs. Depending on your natural tendency, you can choose to tweak your go-to response and ensure maximum productivity. Of course, balance and strategic planning seem like the obvious answer in an ideal world. So until you find that balance, just rearrange the order of your pre-crastination. For a lot of people pre-castination is but a step in the right direction to getting their work done on time. But for the rest of us, arguing about the dangers of pre-castinating can be a great way to procrastinate.