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In Praise of Procrastination
Ponca City writes "Every year, millions of Americans pay needless penalties because they don't file their taxes on time, forgo huge amounts of money in matching 401(k) contributions because they never get around to signing up for a retirement plan, and risk blindness from glaucoma because they don't use their eyedrops regularly. James Surowiecki writes that procrastination is a basic human impulse, a peculiar irrationality stemming from our relationship to time — in particular, from a tendency that economists call 'hyperbolic discounting,' the ability to make rational choices when they're thinking about the future, but, as a future event gets closer, short-term considerations overwhelm their long-term goals. Game theorist Thomas Schelling proposes that we think of ourselves a collection of competing selves, jostling, contending, and bargaining for control, where one represents your short-term interests (having fun, putting off work, and so on), while another represents your long-term goals. Philosopher Mark Kingwell puts it in existential terms: 'Procrastination most often arises from a sense that there is too much to do, and hence no single aspect of the to-do worth doing. Underneath this rather antic form of action-as-inaction is the much more unsettling question whether anything is worth doing at all.'"
Ponca City's link is over 5 years old.
but latter i'm busy right now :-)
I meant to get first post, but something more important came up.
I'll never make that mistake again, reading the experts' opinions. - Feynman
I bookmarked the article so I can read it later.
http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1388
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Couldn't be bothered to be first.
"We live in a global world" - Harvey Pitt, former Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman
my genes didn't let me finish homework
Third post!
Think I'm gonna go take a nap...
I've been fighting procrastination for several years, and I am sure many have and still are. The one(and seemingly only) solution that I have found is to change your entire attitude towards your life. Procrastination arises from your mental extrapolation of how long a certain task will do and how many other small sub-tasks it will include. This line of thinking is most likely to overwhelm you and stop you right in you tracks("well, just look how much there's still to do, i'd rather do it later, when i am not as busy"). This is, at least for me, is the source of laziness. The right way to approach things is not to think about the future AT ALL, it is hard, but possible. Living in the moment and doing what excites you at one particular moment in time still somehow accomplishes the task at hand, and you don't spend your time thinking about it as a bunch of small sub-tasks. Think of it as writing a 50 page essay. You don't just sit down and start thinking "oh I have to write a 50 page essay, look at how much planning i have to do before it", when to actually do it, all you have to do is just separate it in sections based on topics that it covers, sit down and start writing in said section sentence by sentence. Different approach, same result. This advice, my fellow geeks, also applies to interaction with opposite sex. "Oh no, i might say something, and then she might say something and i'll ruin everything so i shouldn't say anything at all." - Bad. "I feel like saying something to her right now, I should say it." - Good.
I can spend less time rationalizing my laziness, and more time wasting my life! Thanks, Slashdot!
It is quite easy to anger people if you direct them towards certain thoughts. We do at some level know that the Earth, the Sun and the entire galaxy will vanish as will all memory of humanity vanishing with it. Perhaps the entire universe will vanish as well. That means that all human activity is only meaningful in a very temporary way and only in relation to other humans and perhaps a few of our pets.
But the New Testament addresses that directly. Christ spoke of our lives being as brief as the twinkling of an eye. Therefore money, family, society, human goals, events were all void of worth with one exception. That exception was salvation and the prerequisite of baptism and repentance.
The easy way to confront that reality is to try to name one Etruscan or one Babylonian. Chances are that you can not. What then does it matter if an Etruscan committed a robbery, a theft, a rape, or a murder? Any harm done was fleeting and of no lasting importance at all. Without religious faith a man might think just like that. After all, we will be no more remembered than the Etruscans or Babylonians or members of thousands of other empires many of which are now not known to even have existed at all.
If this line is an example of the Op's grasp on information and reason ...
"and risk blindness from glaucoma because they don't use their eyedrops regularly"
you can forget about reading the rest of the post.
But regarding why we do anything at all...
It's just the way we are. We are here (survived evolution) because we do stuff.
i.e. We are animals with lots of sensors and information processing, so we
perceive and model the surrounding world, and move ourselves so we minimize
threats and maximize opportunities to gain survival-enhancing resources.
So it's built into us to do things rather than lie around.
What those things are doesn't particularly matter, as long as enough of us
are doing things that help them survive, so it continues.
Is there any higher purpose there? Probably not. It's just "I do therefore I am." :)
(In all possible senses of the words
Is there a direction to it all nonetheless? Well, humans' particular overall survival
strategy is "vertical" (increasing awareness of surroundings, increasingly complex action and the building of
increasingly pervasive, complex and functional self-sustaining artificial systems.)
rather than "horizontal" (multiply in the gazillions and support rapid physical evolution of biological form.)
So the direction is to increase our "chrono-gnostic horizon" (perception and understanding of events further
out in spacetime from our location) so we can do increasingly sophisticated and more far-reaching interventions
to tame a larger chunk of our environment and make it work toward our increased survival probability with lower
energy expenditure per unit of increase of survival probability. Yep that's about it. If that's not enough, tough.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
i'm supposed to be taking eyedrops?
Mark Kingwell was one of my philosophy professors at the University of Toronto. I admire his work and think that he is an amazing lecturer. He's published a lot of books on happiness and better living through a philosophical perspective.
He's in his late-40s I think, and he's pretty in touch with current issues. The article doesn't do him and his views enough justice. If you want to learn more about his views, there's a list of his books on his entry on Wikipedia.
For what it's worth, I think what he's trying to get at here is that we all try to assign some normative value to our actions and goals. But at some deeper level, we might believe that there really is no objective normative value to our actions, and that is reflected by our constant need to procrastinate. Of course, his view is much more nuanced than that and it's more ideal to read his books for the full story.
Could you simply not state the obvious, "People do not want to do boring shit"?
I love this article. It makes me want to buy the New Yorker.
Thanks, this was a nice posting. Just took a couple of minutes to go through and read the comments.
It was a good break from work, and I guess I should soon go back to it... Wait, just one game of sudoku, and then I'll really start!
I'll post content later. Or not.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
As Ellen DeGeneres strongly recommends, "Procrastinate now... Don't put it off"
"No matter how cynical you get, it is impossible to keep up." -- Lily Tomlin
I think most people would happily trade 10% of their salary for 10% more vacation (5 more weeks). We in the U.S. work way too much and live too little.
As for procrastination, unfortunately it often pays off in the workplace. If your boss asks for something to be done at deadline D and you know it takes T, then you do the prep work up front (like research the problem) but don't actually start on the specifics until D-T. Because quite often it turns out no longer to be needed, or before T arrives it's discovered something different is needed, so different that you would have to start over on the task-specific parts. Personally I hate having work on my plate and compulsively finish it up as soon as possible, but doing so isn't really in my own interest (in terms of ROI on my work).
And, like always, laziness is the mother of all invention. We harnessed animals so we wouldn't have to work ourselves, invented mills to save work of hand milling, etc etc. Basically we invent machines and smarter ways of doing things to save work. Unfortunately this is contradictory to the modern workplace where if you created a machine to do your work for you the employer would lay you off rather than continue paying you a salary for work done by your machine. More specifically, they'd buy your machine and RIF those now superfluous. It's why sysadmins automate tasks with scripts, even though if they do it well enough they might soon find themselves without work. Similarly an engineer who does the work of two and consistently delivers quality results early, without even appearing to work hard, may find management suspicious of whether their job warrants even one single full-time position. At least if management isn't technical enough to tell the difference.
Don't you get upset when people don't pay you on time?
procrastinating until the last responsible moment can require discipline but it helps ensure you are making the most informed, wisest decision.
sometimes people are unable to see the difference between reflection, consideration and procrastination, which can make this technique difficult to apply in some situations.
You take all of your long-term projects, break them down into atomic tasks and allocate time resources to each. However, you have to plan for the unanticipated, high priority tasks that arise short term. So you leave openings in your schedule to accommodate some number of these. But, there are times when such emergencies do not arise. You can keep some low priority tasks to fill in, or you can slide to high priority stuff forward.
Do the low priority stuff and let the boss see you doing it. The question is then, "Why are you doing this bullshit when my project is due next month?" "Because I have already allocated sufficient resources to complete said project", I think to myself. But PHB doesn't like that kind reasoning. He wants to see nothing but assholes and elbows dedicated to his priorities.
Slide the high priority stuff up and risk completing it early. Then the boss questions why you asked for a month on the last one and trims two weeks off your next estimate. And then the panic jobs arrive.
Either way, you're screwed. Procrastination is just a reaction against such scheduling conflicts and a means to keep a bit of flexibility in your planning. As long as PHB thinks its a psychological problem, you can get away with it (or fake a nervous breakdown and get some vacation time in the form of long term disability leave).
Have gnu, will travel.
I used to deliberately procrastinate on all coding jobs. That is because I found that I performed best under the stress of an approaching deadline. It forces you to totally focus on the job. In those circumstances, I was most creative, and productive, and made the fewest errors.
I believe that's why programmers have always loved all nighters. Programs conceived, designed, implemented, and tested in a single unbroken session are far more cohesive than any others.
I say all this in the past tense. Eventually I burned out when the stress overwhelmed me. Now I'm retired to a cruising sailboat and the closest thing to a deadline I see is the approaching change of season.
When talking about procrastination, we must either talk about the healthy or unhealthy procrastination. Every single person procrastinates to some degree and for most it is indees exactly as you say (negative effects tend to be short lived or minor and there are many positive side effects). Procrastination can also be rather ugly psychological problem, in which case that doesn't quite hold true.
Anecdote 1
When I was at my first job (18 years old, straight out of high school and landed in a great job. I was rather competent at what I did but I also had a lot of luck...), I suddenly got a huge load of responsibility. The company would sell projects (I won't go into detail about what it was. But the things to know were: They cost thousands of dollars a piece, last for a year or so and most customers weren't that interested to pay attention the whole time... So very poorly ran project might go a year unnoticed by a customer but at that point, shit would hit the fan) and I was assigned quite a lot of those. For most of the time, I handled those really well but then there were a few more problematic ones: We couldn't proceed before I would get some data from the customers. "I'll give them a call some day." Fine. A few weeks went... And at that point the procrastination started to kick in: "Shit. This is still on hold? It's a bit embarrassing to call them now and admit that we've done nothing during the first six weeks. Not the end of the world but unpleasant. I'll do it soon". Guess whether I did or not? Another month rolled by. "Shit. This is pretty bad. Not catastrophic but bad none the less. But the later I do this, the worse it gets... I'll better call them soon.". A few more weeks. At that point my superior began making some inquiries but I managed to dodge them. A few more weeks... At this point it was pretty "catastrophic" (Well, there was a large chance that the company would have to return some money and apologize... I might or might not have been fired for that) but I knew that every day made it worse.
I kept promising myself "I'll make the call after lunch." or "I'll make the call tomorrow." or "I'll make the call when it is exactly 2:30 pm."... But I could never do it when the moment came. I wasn't lazy or incompetent: I would do every new project and most old project very well. It just were those few skeletons in the closet that I just couldn't force myself to deal with. My superior began finding out and put some pressure on me to continue with the project... But I couldn't make the call. I liked what I did but every single time I heard a phone ring I thought "Maybe this time one of those customers calls...". The stress became so bad that I had to take a few shots before going to work, just so I could make myself do that... How did I eventually solve the problem? I quit. The awesome job had just gotten too stressful because of those few cases and after months of suffering I had proved myself that I just couldn't deal with them. So... That was it.
Anecdote 2
I'm not sure if this is technically an anecdote or not, because it is my general process... I guess it is an anecdote about a single procrastinating person.
I, like many people, do things the last night before deadline. And very late at night at that. But it isn't laziness: I don't choose immediate gratification over long term goal... As I don't enjoy myself while I delay things. Sure, up untill the deadline is close, I'll just think "Meh, I can do it later. It isn't a biggie." (As is common for procrastinators). Then, when deadline is close I think that healthy procrastinators say "Shit. I'll have to do it now." or "Meh. Too late. I just won't do it in time". But I? I can't start it but I won't accept not doing it on time... So I can't do anything fun as I know "I should be doing [the thing]" and will just feel anxious and bad about that. But I also can't start the thing... Untill it is really, really as late as it can be. That 2 hour thing that should be due 8am next morning? I'll start feel bad about it
I'll be sure to read it ... later.
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
Sounds as though the Gamer and the Philosopher skipped Nietzsche. Or are still procrastinating reading him....
Procrastinate now, don't put it off !
Not quite all human activity.
In 5 years, what will your current work be worth?
50 years?
500?
5000? Our entire civilisation will be gone.
50,000?
Anyone name anything or anyone or from 50,000 years ago? It's a blink of an eye in geological and evolutionary terms, but there is one single thing you can do which can matter over these timescales.
Have children. Procreate. Pass your genes on.
Your genes have an unbroken line of success going back to the primordial slime 4 billion years ago. If you break that line you are just another genetic dead end.
Deleted
Yes, often the most efficient way to get a task done well is to let it percolate for some time in your mind, until the best approach pops out. For those contracting by the hour, this means that the real work is often done off the clock, which isn't really fair.
If you need a good solution right now, the best approach is usually to spend some time thinking about it first, which may look like staring off to space. Again, it's hard to keep a billing clock running while doing this, if only for the feeling of being under the gun. Conversely, in an office environment, bad bosses may assume that someone isn't working if they aren't typing.
I regard the answer to the question "is anything worth doing at all?" as the answer to the question "what do you enjoy?". If it feels good, brings pleasure, excites you, makes you feel good about yourself, then please do it. If it's boring, tedious, unpleasant, turns your stomach, then please do not do it -- unless, of course, by not doing it something far more unpleasant will result.
:::steps off::: who's next?
Our brains give us the ability to make reasonable predictions about what might happen if we do or do not take action. At the same time, life is very good at throwing unanticipated curve balls that muck up the entire plan we had in mind. Have you noticed, though, how often things turn out for the better when they don't happen as planned?
Life is really quite simple. We humans just make things complicated because we're addicted to drama. Live, love, laugh, play as much as possible. Life gives us enough challenges, we don't need to keep making up our own.
Thanks for the soapbox loan.
"Molest me not with this pocket calculator stuff."
- Deep Thought
I look at things a bit differently, and it mostly works for me. I see the set of things that I could do as each having a different level of addictiveness. Together they arrange themselves in a pecking order. Whatever is available at the top of the list I tend to do. At the same time, deep down, I KNOW exactly what I should be doing.
The key for me is to remove the activities from contention that have addictiveness above the level of what I know I should be doing. As long as it takes X amount of time to get a particular fix, I don't get instant gratification. Instant gratification works best to increase addictiveness - increase the minimum delay and work necessary to get the payoff and that effort becomes something that can itself be procrastinated (coupled with the fact that you KNOW you shouldn't be doing that). And after a while the things you were addicted to don't have the same pull.
Which leads me to another observation: there is a different pecking order in terms of the potential maximum level of addictiveness versus the current level of addictiveness. e.g. If I haven't played $GAME in a month, there is virtually no pull. But I know that if I were to play $GAME now for a few hours, I would feel more compelled to do that than say, post to slashdot. This will last for a few days. If I play $GAME for a week, I will suffer withdrawal symptoms and be prone to relapses for weeks after. I've come to realize that there are certain activities that are like crack to me in terms of out-prioritizing other things, and they need to be out of my life.
Some things I don't even have to try in order to know how addictive they are. From everything that I can see, MMORPGs are the opium dens of the 21st century. They are only cheap if money is your only metric of how much they cost you. I will never try them for the same reasons I will never try any cocaine, meth or heroin.
If I have seen further it is by stealing the Intellectual Property of giants.
Whomever posted this story really took their time...
I'll finish this post tomorrow, I'm tired
sig loading.......
I have so much experience in procrastinating. I am going to write a book about it. One day..
If enithin kan gow rong it whil. (Murfey)
This might help:
http://antiprocrastinator.com/
A great related book: http://www.thetimeparadox.com/
"Welcome to The Time Paradox, a new book by Philip Zimbardo & John Boyd.
The Time Paradox is not a single paradox but a series of paradoxes that shape our lives and our destinies. For example:
* Paradox 1: Time is one of the most powerful influences on our thoughts, feelings, and actions, yet we are usually totally unaware of the effect of time in our lives.
* Paradox 2: Each specific attitude toward time--or time perspective--is associated with numerous benefits, yet in excess each is associated with even greater costs.
* Paradox 3: Individual attitudes toward time are learned through personal experience, yet collectively attitudes toward time influence national destinies."
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Ripples may not be remembered individually, but each changes the nature of the universe, and also together they can make bigger waves with futher effects. Also, as in the Time Paradox book I cited in another reply, people may have different time focuses -- past present, and the future -- which effect how they value different experiences or expectations. Also, to the extent the universe, or even multiverse, is a mystery, how do we know what is remembered or forgotten for sure across the great mystery...
Plus things can matter a lot to yourself at the time, depending on the roots you have grown -- family, community, friends, hobbies, causes, humor, health, a connection to nature or the infitite, and so on. A depression and carelessness or hurtfulness can also come from physical problems like vitamin D deficiency, lack of Omega-3/DHA, lack of whole foods, lack of sleep, lack of exercise, and so on.
You can also have a practical morality, or one that emerges from local experience or upbringing, whether you have a belief in a specific god or gods. So, there are a lot of assumptions there... See Kai Nielsen:
http://www.amazon.com/Ethics-Without-God-Kai-Nielsen/dp/0879755520
Or even Albert Einstein:
http://www.sacred-texts.com/aor/einstein/einsci.htm
"For the scientific method can teach us nothing else beyond how facts are related to, and conditioned by, each other. The aspiration toward such objective knowledge belongs to the highest of which man is capabIe, and you will certainly not suspect me of wishing to belittle the achievements and the heroic efforts of man in this sphere. Yet it is equally clear that knowledge of what is does not open the door directly to what should be. One can have the clearest and most complete knowledge of what is, and yet not be able to deduct from that what should be the goal of our human aspirations. Objective knowledge provides us with powerful instruments for the achievements of certain ends, but the ultimate goal itself and the longing to reach it must come from another source. And it is hardly necessary to argue for the view that our existence and our activity acquire meaning only by the setting up of such a goal and of corresponding values. The knowledge of truth as such is wonderful, but it is so little capable of acting as a guide that it cannot prove even the justification and the value of the aspiration toward that very knowledge of truth. Here we face, therefore, the limits of the purely rational conception of our existence.
But it must not be assumed that intelligent thinking can play no part in the formation of the goal and of ethical judgments. When someone realizes that for the achievement of an end certain means would be useful, the means itself becomes thereby an end. Intelligence makes clear to us the interrelation of means and ends. But mere thinking cannot give us a sense of the ultimate and fundamental ends. To make clear these fundamental ends and valuations, and to set them fast in the emotional life of the individual, seems to me precisely the most important function which religion has to perform in the social life of man. And if one asks whence derives the authority of such fundamental ends, since they cannot be stated and justified merely by reason, one can only answer: they exist in a healthy society as powerful traditions, which act upon the conduct and aspirations and judgments of the individuals; they are there, that is, as something living, without its being necessary to find justification for their existence. They come into being not through demonstration but through revelation, through the medium of powerful personalities. One must not attempt to justify them, but rather to sense their nature simply and clearly. "
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
I'd read this but I have other things to do
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
meh.. to lazy to read it time to move on to more unproductive things.
Physically speaking, procrastination is entirely a mental problem. In a greater sense, it is a spiritual problem. The article is correct that procrastination is a basic human (i.e. carnal) impulse. It arises from the inability to choose properly between tasks. The time factor is simply applied to the value of a task throughout different points in time. This choice can be between an important but unpleasant task, and a pleasant but not as important task. Less often, it could be a choice of similar tasks, such as in Buridan's Ass. Either case is the result of an incomplete method of heuristics. This is because without a proper world view, it is hard to determine which course of action is most beneficial. Even with a solid world view, the future cannot be seen. In reality, only one course is most beneficial.
The solution is simple, even if it is hard to apply. One must submit their own will to God and be led by his Word and His Spirit. If we commit our works to the Lord, He will establish our thoughts (Proverbs 16:3). As we seek God's will, our own pleasure seems less important and therefore less likely to sway us from important tasks. Furthermore, with divine promptings from the Law, secular authority, and the Holy Spirit, we can be guided into the actions which ultimately are most beneficial without having to use our own heuristics. This does not guarantee that a person is correct, but as one draws nigh to God, the tendency to procrastinate is lessened.
There are 10 commandments: 01)Thou shalt love the Lord Thy God 10)Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.Matt22:34-40
the sun will absorb the earth, so really, nothing is worth doing.