Procrastination...

an effective tool in your financial fitness kit

Procrastination: delay or postpone action; put off doing something.

Our mantra during my undergraduate degree was: don’t put off until tomorrow what you can delay until the day after.

And procrastinate we did. Last-minute assignments were lodged in the box at 2 minutes to midnight. No online delivery in those days. Exam preparation went down to the wire.

These days, if you Google ‘procrastination’, you will find 99.9% of posts explaining its evils, but I believe there are some benefits to procrastination, especially when building Financial Fitness. Let me explain…

While much of Financial Fitness requires getting things done on time, there are cases where procrastination is an effective lever to pull.

Procrastination - Level 1.

You see something you like in a store or online.

Procrastination is when you turn around and walk out or step away from your device. Not today, not this morning or just not this hour. Breathe.

Think of yourself as the child in the oft-quoted Psychology experiment: the Marshmallow game. The kid who could procrastinate scored the extra marshmallow for waiting 10 minutes and not eating the one in front of them. The success strategy was to look away, think of something else, and ignore the marshmallow. According to follow-up research, that strategy helped these kids achieve successful lives.

The same is true for most of our spending. Putting time and space between us and the purchase allows the adult brain to recover and take over from the irrational brain. It builds the self-restraint muscle.

We have a game in our household. If we want to purchase something, we wait for the next credit card cycle. The spending isn’t a problem; the card is paid in full monthly, but it’s a workout for the delayed gratification muscle.

I wait for specials in the supermarket, not because I have to, but because it’s another brain workout.

Even my fiction reading these days is subject to procrastination. I use the library instead of instantly clicking Amazon. Often, I have to wait for the book, but it doesn’t sit on my shelf after reading, I’ve saved money, and I’ve added another notch to my delayed gratification superpower.

Start small. The game is: You vs You.

Make ‘I’ll think about it’ your standard response.

Where can you insert time and space between you and a purchase?

Expand your procrastination skills - Level 2

Then there’s the game of planned procrastination. Marie Claire’s Emma Edwards wrote about her experience of not purchasing new clothes for a year and what she learned here.

What I learned by walking away from things I saw and loved is that nothing matters as much as our brains tell us in the moment.

She describes the sense of peace you feel when you remove the ‘buy or not to buy’ decision.

Her excellent new book, Good with Money: Reprogram your spending habits and take control of your money, explains the financial trap in detail, how it works, and how to get out of it.

Procrastinate to safeguard your future financial fitness - Level 3

This level of the game is not just ‘You vs You’ anymore; it’s ‘You vs the Machine’.

Recently, I took a look at Substack writer Michael Easter’s new book, Scarcity Brain. I downloaded the sample and was so shocked by that short snippet that I couldn’t even download the book. First, I felt that I was being groomed towards purchasing the book, and secondly, I didn’t need to read the whole book to understand how powerfully we are being manipulated. It shocked me to the core.

I still haven’t purchased the book, but I know the rest of it will be enlightening when I get to read past the sample. Both books mentioned will open your eyes to the game and make you more resilient. Awareness of the game is the first step.

Have you ever been at the checkout, and the retail assistant slips in the question: What’s your mobile number? After watching the person before me in the line hand over her details, I interrupted the retail assistant’s patter during my transaction. What do you need that for? I ask. To email you the invoice, she replies. (No it’s not. It’s so you can bombard my phone with marketing messages and use (sell) my data.) No thanks, I’ll have a paper invoice.

Or when they offer a store discount if you sign up for a membership. The shop assistant couldn’t believe I didn’t want the discount. She kept asking me. No, thank you.

It’s slick. They are trained to extract your data. I now question every request. It keeps me on my toes with my data. Every piece of data out there makes you vulnerable.

Procrastinate. Take control. Step back from the machine.

How many of you have reacted instantly to potential scam messages on your phone? A family member is in trouble. Your package is delayed. You haven’t paid a bill.

Stop. Procrastinate for 5 mins. Engage your adult brain.

Call the person or company to verify the message.

According to a recent article, the value of your data is rising in the black market, so they are working harder and harder to access it.

So, procrastinate on giving it away to start with.

Security expert Stan Gallo noted in a recent article:

The human firewall is one of the best defences you'll have.

Procrastinating on deals that are too good to be true is a hell of a financial strategy.

It gives you time and space to investigate, verify, talk to others, get advice before acting. How many people these days wish they had procrastinated on these deals of a lifetime.

According to the only article I could find on the benefits of procrastination; there is a difference between chronic procrastination and what psychologist Adam Grant calls a “sweet spot” of moderate procrastination.

Chronic procrastination is about bringing momentary relief by putting off an essential but unpleasant task that will come back to bite you later.

However, moderate procrastination is about giving your brain time to mull over a specific task or problem and create space for thinking it through.

You can build your delayed gratification muscle one event at a time until ‘stopping and thinking’ becomes habitual. Then, anchor it with a policy or a rule like: I never make on-the-spot decisions.

Thoughtful delay:

• Creates space for better decision-making

• Increases space for creative solutions

• Avoids impulse spending

• Protects your data

• Reduces stress

Your future Financial Self will thank you for it.