Stop Beating Yourself Up: Procrastination Can Help You Work Better

Jo Conga discusses the common struggle of procrastinating on large, looming tasks, sharing her personal experience with academic writing. Her key insight is that procrastination isn’t a distraction, but a necessary preparatory stage *within* the work process itself. She uses analogies like oxen getting “yolked up” before plowing or walking to a mountain’s base before climbing to illustrate this. This perspective helps reduce pressure and self-blame, reframing “non-work” time as a vital phase that leads to eventually tackling the main task.