Slashdot Mirror


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.'"

11 of 118 comments (clear)

  1. Hyperbolic FP by shawb · · Score: 4, Funny

    I meant to get first post, but something more important came up.

    --
    I'll never make that mistake again, reading the experts' opinions. - Feynman
    1. Re:Hyperbolic FP by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      And before your know it, he's quoting some obscure English drug addict on Slashdot.

  2. Obligatory by maxwell+demon · · Score: 4, Funny
    --
    The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
  3. Re:From personal experience by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    tl;dr

  4. Re: Thoughts Avoided by Mitchell314 · · Score: 3, Funny

    Well, to be fair, everybody knows Hammurabi from his famous book, "282 Laws and You".

    --
    I read TFA and all I got was this lousy cookie
  5. Re:Tradeoffs by u38cg · · Score: 4, Funny

    If you get five more weeks with 10% more vacation, I'll bid 89% of your current salary to do your job, because fifty weeks holiday a year still sounds pretty sweet to me.

    --
    [FUCK BETA]
  6. Sounds like a great article. by Compaqt · · Score: 2, Funny

    I'll be sure to read it ... later.

    --
    I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
  7. Re: Thoughts Avoided by ObsessiveMathsFreak · · Score: 2, Funny

    It is quite easy to anger people if you direct them towards certain thoughts.... But the New Testament ... Christ spoke of our lives...

    ....I see what you did there.

    --
    May the Maths Be with you!
  8. Re:From personal experience by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    Son, I am *whoosh*

  9. The article is nearly a month old! by phozz+bare · · Score: 2, Funny

    Whomever posted this story really took their time...

  10. I am expert on procastination by $0.02 · · Score: 2, Funny

    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)