Personally, I have found that if I get on with certain tasks in a team environment with too much vigor, I start to get other team members feeling left out or feeling their input isn't adding value. Keep doing it and the team will fall apart. Sitting around and being lazy for a bit helps keep the team together and has more forward progress overall.
I'm the sole developer on a new project now, it's giving me a lot more satisfaction. I do run into procrastination and analysis paralysis though.
That's probably not a reasonable assumption. Evolution doesn't work so fast. Procrastination might simply be an indication that we're not living under liveable conditions. Why do octopuses eat their own limbs under some conditions? Does it give them an evolutionary advantage?
> It is believed that it is caused by a virus/bacteria which can manage to take hold on a stressed octopus. The biting is said to be due to irritation and biting alleviates the affected area. An octopus can lose an arm without harm and regrow it. By biting it off, the octopus loses the infected arm and hopefully a healthy one regrows, but in captive situations, probably caused by bad water quality, the infection can't be shaken off.
[1] https://tonmo.com/articles/do-octopuses-commit-suicide.47/
It is probably a poor defence of procrastination but it certainly does occasionally pay to put something on the back burner for a while to see if it actually needs doing.
The activities that people tend to procrastinate didn't exist until very recently...
The awful truth is that "doing nothing" or at least "waiting a bit" is quite often the right thing to do from a survival perspective.