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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.'"
but latter i'm busy right now :-)
Couldn't be bothered to be first.
"We live in a global world" - Harvey Pitt, former Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman
Third post!
Think I'm gonna go take a nap...
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?"
It's not 10% of the time off he's getting, it's 10% of the time he's getting paid for.
Based on your calculation, if I work 100% less, I should expect 100% more days off (e.g. 28 instead of 14). That doesn't make any sense, so "Informative: 4" tells me that the people with karma points should pay more attention at school (less slashdot browsing, more homework).
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.