Procrastinate on Purpose: Five Permissions to Multiply Your Time

That's where this book comes in. "Procrastinate on Purpose" shows us how to maximize our time by identifying and focusing on what's truly important. More than that, it explains how we can multiply our time by choosing to do the tasks today that'll give us more time tomorrow.

It helps us identify our top priority – at work and at home – and understand the emotional reasons why we may struggle to use our time productively. It gives us back control over our To-Do Lists, and helps us replace panic with a sense of peace.

So who's this book for? "Procrastinate on Purpose" is for anyone who's feeling short on time, so its audience is pretty big. It's written primarily with business readers in mind – so CEOs, managers and team leaders will get the most out of this book.

But its suggestions also apply to freelancers working across a range of sectors, and to anyone who runs a home. So whether you're in charge of a multinational, leading a small business, or juggling the school run with cooking for a family of five, "Procrastinate on Purpose" will show you a powerful new approach to using your time effectively – and in a way that could lead to a more successful, fulfilling life.

The author, Rory Vaden, is a self-discipline expert and strategist. He's co-founder of Southwestern Consulting, an international training company that helps individuals and teams all over the world maximize their time, overcome procrastination, increase productivity, and achieve their goals.

He's also the author of the New York Times best seller "Take the Stairs." But Vaden wasn't always a master of his time. He shares openly in this book about his battles with a lengthy To-Do List and a torrent of emails, and many of the featured tips and tricks are drawn from his experience.

So, keep listening to learn how to prioritize in three dimensions, how to eliminate time-wasting activities, and why it's sometimes better to wait rather than act.

Before we take a closer look at the book's content, a note on style, tone and overall approach. "Procrastinate on Purpose" is very user-friendly. It's well structured, with images and graphs to support the author's points, and bullet-point summaries at the end of each chapter.

Vaden's tone is familiar, direct and friendly, and he uses short sentences, exclamations and lots of repetition to drive his message home. Some readers will love the author's punchy, conversational tone, but others may find it grating after a while.

Vaden also emphasizes his Christian and family values throughout the book. He talks about being of service, uses a parable from the Bible to illustrate one of his points, and interviews a church pastor as one of his case studies. This may not be to everyone's taste. But, even if it's not to yours, we recommend you stick with this book, because its lessons are valuable and widely applicable.

So, let's now take a look at why we need to give ourselves permission to focus on what matters most to us.

Time management programs may work for some people, for some of the time, but what we really need is a "self-management system," Vaden says. Many of us know what we're supposed to do to make the most of our time and get the results we want, but often our feelings get in the way. We say "Yes" when we really mean to say "No." We react and respond to the demands of others out of fear, guilt, or loyalty, postponing our own tasks to help them first.

We do too much, ticking off items on our lists because the sense of accomplishment boosts our self-esteem. Our emotions are powerful: they often compel us to do things for short-term gain or to avoid immediate pain. This leads to what Vaden calls "priority dilution" – we're so busy attending to emergencies that we neglect what's most critical to our success.

The key to multiplying our time is to keep our sights firmly fixed on the "long game" – to focus on the tasks that are going to yield the best results in the future. That's why we need to understand the feelings that knock us off course, and then give ourselves permission to rise above them so we can achieve our long-term goals.

Vaden comes up with five permissions we need to give ourselves, alongside five choices that'll help us multiply our time. These are permission to ignore, where the choice is to eliminate all but essential tasks; permission to invest, which is about choosing to spend money on automated systems that'll save time in the long run; permission to be imperfect, which involves delegating and accepting things might not get done to our usual standards, at least at the start; permission to leave things incomplete, where we choose to put off tasks that can wait until later; and permission to protect, where we decide to ring fence our time to focus on the single most important action that'll generate more time in the future.

When deciding what task to prioritize, we need to look at how important and how urgent it is – as suggested by Dr Stephen Covey's time-management matrix in "The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People." But we also need to look at the significance of an action. Urgency asks, "How soon does this matter?" Importance asks, "How much does this matter?" But significance asks, "How long is this going to matter? What are the long-term benefits to this action?"

Top performers calculate their actions based on what matters later, not just what matters now. Adding the third dimension of significance to the questions of urgency and importance engages our emotions at a deeper level, and helps us build the future we want, rather than getting stuck in a cycle of putting out fires. If we can master this, we become what the author calls a "multiplier" – someone who uses time in the present in a way that creates more time in the future.

We really like the author's focus on emotions. Many of us struggle to resist the emotional pull of others' demands or our own guilt, which is why basic time management programs often fail us. When we realize the powerful forces at play and give ourselves permission to rise above them, we're free to focus on what's truly significant.

Vaden's first permission – ignore – and the related choice – eliminate –
illustrates this point best, so let's take a closer look at that.

Have you ever added something to your To-Do List after you've done it, just to get the satisfaction of ticking it off? Getting things done gives us an immediate boost, but measuring our success by the volume of actions completed will get us nowhere.

Instead, we need to whittle down our list of tasks as much as possible. The author suggests 16 things we might be doing but could stop doing, including watching TV, volunteering too much time, and double- and triple-checking things unnecessarily. We particularly like what he has to say about the energy we waste switching between tasks and about unnecessary meetings.

Every time we break off an important piece of writing to send an email, or stop compiling our sales figures to make a phone call, we have to mentally disengage from one thing to engage with another, losing time, energy and focus. One tip to prevent this is to group similar tasks together. So, set aside a morning to do phone calls, periods throughout your day to respond to emails, and blocks of time to focus on special projects when you keep interruptions to a minimum.

If you work in an office, meetings could be one of your most costly interruptions. So ask yourself, do you really need so many meetings, and do all those people really need to attend? To show how to cut back on meetings, Vaden includes the example of Reynolds and Reynolds, a company based in Dayton, Ohio, which provides software for auto dealerships.

Company president Ron Lamb explains how the mantra "Need to know, need to be" has helped reduce the number and size of meetings. There may be 90 people who need to know the results of the meeting but only three people who need to be there.

Those present at the meeting make faster decisions, while those who need to know the outcome get a concise email telling them what was decided. Lamb says a system of "precisely codifying and effectively communicating" decisions from meetings means most weekly meetings can happen monthly, saving as many as 36 hours per year of productivity per person.

Cutting down on meetings can be a real challenge, so we like how Vaden incorporates a case study to show how it can be done and its impact on output. We think this "Need to know, need to be" mantra is a great tip for businesses or employees struggling with meeting overload.

Let's now look at the permission and the choice that gave this book its name: "Procrastinate on Purpose."

We hear a lot about the importance of finishing tasks and the perils of procrastination, but Vaden says giving ourselves the permission to leave things incomplete and to procrastinate can sometimes be the right thing to do.

If we've checked whether a task needs to be eliminated, automated or delegated, and the answer to those questions is "No," that means we need to do the task ourselves. But first, we need to figure out whether to do it now or later. If we unconsciously delay an action because we don't want to do it, that's procrastination. If we intentionally delay because we know the timing is wrong – if we procrastinate on purpose – that's patience.

Patience is sitting on something to gain perspective, or to let it incubate. Action is important but, to multiply your time, you need both the patience to wait and the self-discipline to act.

Why would you want to wait? Because things change: strategy changes, prices change, dates change, legislation changes, and technology changes. If you act too early, you might lose money, deals or clients when things unexpectedly change further down the line.

Say you wanted to get new fliers printed, and you went for a great deal on bulk printing. But two weeks later, you decide you need to change your whole marketing message. That's a massive cost you wouldn't have had if you'd taken a bit more time.

Or, let's say you forced yourself to rush a creative project and you didn't give your ideas space to develop, or take time to set up a distribution network.

Doing things too early can bring hidden costs, but of course, doing things too late can bring costs too. Multipliers do things right on time. They wait until the last possible minute that'll allow them to get the action done without incurring costs or causing damage. We may be wise to purposefully procrastinate when placing large orders, to prevent unexpected costs, or when making big financial purchases, because our feelings may change.

We like the author's advice on intentionally waiting, particularly when mulling over big decisions or letting projects gestate. And, once again, he includes a good case study that brings his theory to life. But we're aware that timing isn't an exact science. The unexpected is, by nature, unpredictable, and it's often a challenge to identify the right time to act.

We think the author's final permission – the permission to protect a particular project by concentrating intensely on it for a season – is really powerful, and perhaps carries more weight than the idea of procrastinating on purpose.

This is about having one priority and bringing all our efforts to bear on that activity. Once you've identified the action that's going to have the biggest impact, you need to ask yourself, at every moment, whether what you're doing is linked to your ultimate goal. And you need the self-discipline to switch activities if it's not. It takes trust and self-confidence to protect something to this degree, but Vaden says this is where we'll find the biggest reward.

We understand why the author or the publisher chose the catchy title "Procrastinate on Purpose," but the message of this book is about so much more than intentionally waiting. Successful people use all five permissions, measuring tasks against each one before deciding what single thing to prioritize that'll give them more time in the future. They are seed planters, not firefighters, as Vaden says.

This brings us to our final observation. The author is a fan of metaphors, imagery, and analogies, and he uses them to good effect. They reinforce his message, challenging readers to take a long, hard look at the way they're spending their time, and to choose whether to focus on the here and now, or work towards long-term goals and deeper satisfaction.

We think "Procrastinate on Purpose" will inspire you to take action. One of those actions may be to read his earlier book, "Take the Stairs," if you haven't already. That's all about completing those all-important tasks.

"Procrastinate on Purpose" by Rory Vaden is published by Perigee, a Penguin imprint.

That's the end of this episode of Book Insights. Thanks for listening.