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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?
Procrastination is like masturbation; you're only fucking yourself.
google.slashdot
I'll read it later.
"A Lisp programmer knows the value of everything, but the cost of nothing." - Alan Perlis
I used to work for someone who was impossibly manic about things he wanted to do, which always meant things he asked "us" to do. I considered him visionary, but sometimes it was just too much.
My methodology was to mentally file away any requests (and there were many), and take no action other than to sketch mentally what the work would entail. The indicator whether or not it was real work I ever need do was if he came back to me in the next few days or so to see what progress I'd made for "task X".
Fortunately I was able to intuitively cull things that looked important from those that were simply "what ifs", and it was mostly a synergistic relationship -- I always had plenty to do from his bounty of ideas, but was able to be more productive by exercising a "procrastination policy".
I meant to get first post
In soviet Russia... no
Imagine a beowulf cluster... no
In South Korea only old people... no
Oh well, I will get around to it later.
This is a far more eloquent and humorous piece on the topic.
My photolog
You know it'll be there.
All your base are belong to Google.
I'm not a lazy bum... I'm a type-C procrastinator you insensitive clod!
Usually Paul Graham's social writings are quite good. Try his "why nerds are unpopular" or "What you'll wish you had known"
Bottles.
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.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
TFA mentions:
He's saying that an approach that does tasks when they should be done that results in a net productivity increase is procrastination, specifically type-C procrastination.
Really though, it just seems like effective time manangement. The true intent of the article seems to lie in DEFINING time management - that is, not "Crossing items off of a list" but rather doing things when they should be done, or "sneaking off to work on some new idea"
http://www.TheGamerNation.com/Forums
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.
Raise your children as if you were teaching them to raise your grandchildren, because you are.
Paul Graham's thoughts on procrastination overlap well with Paul Ford's thoughts on distractions, Followup/Distraction, and Are there "good" distractions?.
Graham:
I think the way to "solve" the problem of procrastination is to let delight pull you instead of making a to-do list push you.
Ford:
The most productive times in my life are the ones where I'm just doing my own thing, focused, and trying to solve some problem that I find interesting-when I'm narrowly distracted.
Same idea, different angle.
Don't become a regular here -- you will become retarded.
that maybe it's a bit ironic to be wasting time reading an article about procrastination?
I don't know who came up with this idea first, but I read it in Covey's
...
'First things first'. He suggests classifying tasks into four quadrants formed by (urgent, not urgent) and (important, not important), and asks you to get yourself more and more into the (important, not urgent) quadrant. If this requires you to say 'no' to a whole bunch of other things, why, it's all the better! To me, what Paul Graham says is quite similar "say no to other junk, make time for important stuff -- stuff that will give you the thrill of fulfillment not immediately, not tomorrow, but many days (weeks, months) later."
Now, if only I can figure out my life's mission
Now I'm working on decompilation (more generally binary program analysis) and hope that the same methods will work...
How to handle people like that: write each task you are planning to do on a separate piece of paper. Stack the papers on your desk in the order that you plan to do them, with the next task on top and the last task on the bottom. When ADD-man comes in to tell you about the big new thing, tell him to write it down on a slip of paper and insert it into the proper position on the stack. Tell him that when you finish your current task, you will take the next slip of paper from the top of the stack and do what it says, and repeat until the stack is empty.
This way he can come with as many bright ideas as he wants without interrupting your work, and he will be forced to prioritize the new tasks relative to the existing tasks, instead of expecting you to somehow magically complete them all first.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.