Sometimes I appear to be looking for something to ‘work distract’ me. I’ll think “I should figure out the best use of my day”, and then decide “well, I’ll just check this email that only gets productive stuff sent to it, and then maybe I’ll start doing something off the back of that”. This is not a terrible habit: it leads to a lot of the work I end up getting done. But it is interesting that it displaces actually prioritising.
Sometimes I appear to be looking for something to ‘work distract’ me. I’ll think “I should figure out the best use of my day”, and then decide “well, I’ll just check this email that only gets productive stuff sent to it, and then maybe I’ll start doing something off the back of that”. This is not a terrible habit: it leads to a lot of the work I end up getting done. But it is interesting that it displaces actually prioritising.
Ryan Holiday calls this “Productive Procrastination”. I find this mental move especially valuable when:
I have a creative problem I need to let germinate, so I can just go with the flow of answering emails or whatever while that happens.
My highest priority tasks aren’t conducive to the state I’m in, so I need something lower value to build momentum.