What Procrastination Teaches Us About Peak Performance

Leaving work to the last-minute became a strategy of mine - turns out there's good reason.

This summer marks my 12th year facilitating leadership workshops for high school students from around the world through the National Student Leadership Conference. 

Being around high school students always calls me back to my own teen years: when my ambitions were massive, my energy seemed unlimited, and my peers and I began poking our heads out of the cocoon of childhood to discover this mysterious place called “the real world.” It was fun, confusing, and magical.

As a teenager I developed some bad habits - eating too much junk food, staying up too late, but the one that stuck with me the longest was leaving everything to the last possible minute.

I’d get three weeks to write a 1,000-word essay and wouldn’t start until the day before the deadline. 

I might have learned to change my behaviour a bit earlier in life if my strategy wasn’t so darn effective. It always seemed to work!

I heard older, presumably wiser, people tell me that procrastination was a symptom of laziness but for me it was a success strategy that I practiced well into my undergraduate years and beyond.

I’d wait until I couldn’t wait any more, sit down to work, and crank out an entire report, essay, thesis, you name it, and I’d be proud of my work. When the grades kept coming back in my favour, I kept up the strategy.

I always wondered how it was possible that I could do what was supposed to take three weeks in less than a few hours. Was it that I was a genius with superpowers? 

Despite my egoistic inclinations to compare myself to Einstein, I have learned that there’s some neuroscience behind my procrastinatory power. 

We’ve all left work to the last minute. And we’ve all found a way to get the work done in a surprisingly scant amount of time. I suspect procrastination wouldn’t be as commonplace if it cost us more, but the truth is that we humans have the ability to be superproductive under the right conditions. 

Parkinson’s Law and the Problem with Too Much Time

In 1955, British naval historian Cyril Northcote Parkinson published an article in The Economist observing that:

“Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.”

He illustrated this with a satirical story about a woman taking an entire day to mail a postcard, something a busy person would knock out in three minutes. The point is that more time doesn’t necessarily mean better work - it just means more time.

Well, it turns out the inverse is also true: less time can lead to better work, if the conditions are right.

Enter Flow: The Performance State

Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi introduced the concept of flow, a state of total immersion in a task where time disappears and performance peaks. Flow often arises when we’re:

• Facing a challenge right at the edge of our ability

• Working toward a clear goal

• Receiving immediate feedback

• And, crucially, feeling a sense of urgency

  
  

Leaving my essays to the last possible minute accidentally created some of the conditions to kick me into flow. With a deadline looming all distractions vanished and my focus sharpened. I knew exactly what needed to get done and I did it.

Work Compression: Procrastination on Purpose.. Sort of

If procrastination is accidental compression, then work compression is what happens when we apply that same time pressure intentionally.

Work compression is the practice of giving yourself less time than you think you need. By reducing the time designated for a task we can increase our cognitive performance. It’s amazing really, if at first a bit counterintuitive. 

Why Work Compression Works

• It forces focus. When time is tight the mind filters distractions.

• It demands clarity. What matters most rises to the top of mind. 

• It supports flow. Clear goals, urgent timelines and full focus are flow’s best friends.

• It makes space for recovery. By putting a hard stop on work, there’s room to properly recover resources (which we could all use a little more of)

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And unlike procrastination, it doesn’t rely on fear or avoidance. It’s a deliberate strategy to unlock productivity.

How to Use Work Compression (Without Burning Out)

Here’s the strategy that I’ve been using, learned from the Flow Research Collective.

Look at your work schedule, and cut the time dedicated to each task by 20%. That’s it. 

For example, if I normally spend an hour doing outbound sales emails the new target time is 48 minutes to reach the same number of sales emails. 

At first it will likely feel a bit ridiculous, and you’ll start to wonder what to do with the time you’re buying back in your schedule. But keep with it, and you’ll be amazed at what your brilliant mind can accomplish. 

And while you’re going to be tempted to fill the extra time with more work, DON'T. This would be a mistake. 

Use that time to recover - exercise, meditate, spend time with friends or loved ones in a restorative way. This extra time is the key to being able to have the energy and capacity to do more with less on a consistent basis, and soon you might find yourself getting closer to that ever-elusive “work-life balance” people talk about. 

This article was written in two, 45-minute sessions

I used to spend hours writing articles each week.

In my quest to unlock more of my personal potential I’ve been studying to become a Performance Neuroscience Certified Coach. And lesson numero uno is learning to compress one’s work. 

So I cut my writing time in half. And then in half again. And suddenly what used to take me 5 hours or more was getting done in 90 minutes.

Procrastination taught me that I could do more, faster, and better if the right conditions were in place. Today, I don’t wait for panic to find that gear. I create the conditions on purpose.

So here’s something to try:

Pick a task you’ve been avoiding. Give yourself less time than you think you need. Set a timer. Go.

It might take a few attempts, but if you stick with this strategy for a week, I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised by what you can achieve.