Good and Bad Procrastination

dtolton writes "Paul Graham has written an interesting article on Procrastination. He presents three different types of procrastination and one type of procrastination is even good! He also suggests that some types of "getting things done" are actually weak forms of procrastination. The only downside to this article is now you'll have to look at your procrastination with an analytical eye too!" Perhaps next year's Christmas shopping can benefit from the writeup?

Comments

I use it

[DynaSoar]

I procrastinate to develop stress. I use the stress as motivation. It's called eustress (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Selye). It's like free coffee.

In the interim I purposely don't think about whatever it is. That often results in an answer, if not the answer, popping out of my intuition with far less work than it would have taken otherwise.

I call it being constructively lazy.

90% of everything is done in 10% of the time alloted. Why not just go ahead and accept it? All that other time you spent worrying could go to something a lot more fun.

Re:procrastinating worked for me...

[g2devi]

It's sounds like you're basically using a variation of the old Important/Urgent prioritization:
https://studentloan.citibank.com/s/faaonln/resourc es/first.asp
http://www.brefigroup.co.uk/acrobat/quadrnts.pdf

Basically, a task can either be important and urgent, important but not urgent, urgent but not important, or unimportant and not urgent. Instead of dealing with all tasks as urgent whether they're time wasters or not and running around like a chicken without a head, you're taking the time to sort out what's important and what's not before doing anything. That's not procrastination. That's just good time management.

Ob procrastination quote:
"One of the lessons of history is that nothing is often a good thing to do and always a clever thing to say."
-- Will Durant

Not so fast

[lheal]

Good procrastination is avoiding errands to do real work.

As an inveterate procrastinator, I have to say that while I mostly agree with TFA's premise, it suffers from the usual oversimplification it decries.

Putting off little things can end in crushing defeat. Failing to do basic maintenance on one's body, one's vehicles, or other property, often will result in catastophic surprises, and usually at the last minute.

For years, I've regularly gotten my oil changed (or done it myself) in my vehicles. This past week I discovered the hard way what happens when you put off getting your coolant flushed. A blown head gasket meant I had to buy a new car. Merry Christmas to you, too.

Similarly, failure to do the little maintenance things at work (changing backup tapes, daily paperwork, etc.) can result in blowups of a more career-threatening sort. Every job has those details, and you ignore them at your peril.

How many people have great ideas while brushing their teeth or do their best thinking in the shower? Handled correctly (as habits), the mundane details don't interfere with higher purposes. Handled incorrectly, they put the higher purposes hopelessly out of reach.