Do you feel eager to complete the task at hand and not prolong it?
To be clear at the outset, this article is not about procrastination (or the lack thereof). Let me explain. Say you have a task that is genuinely urgent and important, and you are fairly sure about how to accomplish it. If there is lack of clarity, we do tend to procrastinate and that is not the focus here. I also want to say that although urgent, you have the time to accomplish them. For example, say you have a grant proposal with a deadline to turn it in by, but you are done early. I admire my colleagues that would read their proposal hundreds of times till the very last second of when it is due to be sure it is the absolute best. I also know of people who, like me, would send their proposal off as soon as it is ready enough, and get the satisfaction of checking it off the to do list.
For those of us not into writing grant proposals, let me give two other examples. Say your supervisor would like you to analyze some data and present the findings as well as make recommendations, both by creating a set of power-point slides. You are done with the task and have some time. Then, do you turn it in or double-check to make sure everything is okay? And also, spend a little bit of time beautifying things and emphasizing the important items, adding new pictures, etc. For the second example, say you need to cook and take a dish for a potluck dinner. You have finished making the dish and there is still time. Do you keep embellishing it (or add fringes like sides or dips) to make it better? Or do you say, I am done and put it away? Again, remember that the task at hand is important and has a deadline.
To analyze the situation, let us first imagine a graph. On the x-axis is time, in particular, time spent on the task at hand. On the y-axis we have some measure of performance. It could be the probability of the grant proposal being accepted, the impact of the analysis you did for your supervisor, or how much of the food item you made would get eaten (corresponding to the three examples above). If you were to plot the measure of performance against time spent on the task, more often than not, the graph is S-shaped. The S-shaped curve implies that initially you need to put in a good chunk of time to get a decent level of performance. Then the performance quickly goes up with some effort, and then again plateaus. You are not going to get much extra benefit for the time you put in, once it plateaus.
But, the problem is that in most situations we do not know the curve. It is an unknown or cannot be determined with certainty. Sometimes it does not matter that you do not know the curve, but it would be to your advantage to take up all the time till the deadline. This is especially if you have a task where every little improvement could be highly beneficial. Do you know of students who check their answers multiple times to be sure everything is correct? Even if they are done early, these students spend all the time available in the exam to go over their work. In an important exam, every point counts significantly and so it is to your advantage to stay on till the end of the exam. However, in other situations, do you even know if you have reached the top plateau of the S-curve?
In practice, there are two more aspects that we need to consider: (a) there are other important tasks that are waiting for our attention; (b) performing the task at hand does not bring us as much joy as we would like. Situations like (a) or (b) could be the reason that some of us prematurely turn things in, i.e., well before reaching the upper plateau of the S-curve. Not knowing the curve is really not an excuse here. But we are either overwhelmed with other tasks or not too excited about the task in hand. However, turning the task in earlier than you should, is extremely counter-productive. In fact, it could even result in your spending way more time on the task than you originally intended, as there are new things that could get added to the task after review.
Here are some strategies to help you ride the imaginary S-shaped curve. Ask yourselves these three questions:
Who are we helping?
It has been well documented that intrinsic motivation is not as useful as extrinsic motivation for such circumstances, especially when situations such as (a) and (b) arise. If we are doing something that may help us indirectly to get a promotion or a raise, it is a form of intrinsic motivation. The danger for intrinsic motivation is that we get easily affected by other important tasks (i.e. (a)) and worry if doing poorly would be a problem, and in the end do poorly on both tasks. Also, if the task does not bring joy (i.e. (b)), it is difficult to be motivated by our desire to succeed. However, if we focus on extrinsic factors such as how does this help others succeed, we could overcome the need to get done due to (a) and (b). So turn the focus toward benefiting others.
Who have we asked for help?
The previous item about helping others assumes that we have a reasonable idea of where we are on the S-shaped curve, and it is only motivation or focus that is lacking. Here we consider the issue of not knowing where you are on the S-shaped curve, head on. The best thing to do is to ask for help. You can run your report by a couple of people and seek honest feedback. You will have to make the person giving the help feel comfortable to provide criticism. Then you could estimate where you stand on the S-shaped curve. Also, it is important for you to offer such services to others. It is also important to not approach asking for help from a “seeking approval” standpoint. Make it clear what you want and also take the comments they give seriously.
What are our core values?
It is a good idea to know what are the things we value. If you have already searched within and know your values, then great. Otherwise, it is not too late to make that list. Frankly, I do not know my values by heart, I need to look up an excel sheet I created. How I created that is by Googling examples of core values. There are many sites and the one I used had about 57 of them. From those, I selected a handful of core values from which I got a decent idea of what my core values possibly are. Write down your core values and then look at how the extra time spent on the task at hand could use your core values. For example, say you need to deliver a speech you have prepared and one of your core values is humor. It would greatly empower you to add humor to your speech.
In summary, before submitting something earlier than the deadline, try to understand where you are in the S-shaped curve, and find ways to encourage yourself to put in that extra effort and not turn it in too early.