Good and Bad Procrastination 158
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?
procrastinating worked for me... (Score:5, Interesting)
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".
A better piece on the topic (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Has to be said... (Score:2, Interesting)
Hate to break the (mostly very good) analogy, but it isn't always true.
zerg (Score:3, Interesting)
Hamming's article mentions that the people w/ the open doors get more done then the people w/ the closed doors, yet isn't Graham's point that interruptions prevent serious work? Doesn't that disprove Graham's claim?
Re:procrastinating worked for me... (Score:5, Interesting)
So what is it? Well, notice I use the word 'victim'. You don't choose to procrastinate. Subtle but true, you have to choose not to Procrastination is either a fear of success or failure, actually the outcome is unimportant. Or better still a fear of change and progress. Perhaps with a programming problem you are secretly worrying where the next contract will come from once you finish this one, which you could so easily do if you just let yourself. In relationships it is the fear that it might "actually work", thus robbing one of the circumstances that excuse or explain a neurosis. This subtle and often unwilling holding back can be explained by the fact the mind enjoys struggle, we are most alive during struggle. Myself I've spotted procrastination because I am enjoying a difficult problem so much I don't want to commit to solving it and 'trivialising' my efforts. What is undone is full of potential, yet what is done and dusted is consigned to the ordinary.
A coder who considers 10 different solutions for weeks on end is not procrastinating, not if, as is usually the case with intelligent circumspect thinkers, they engage the problem with full gusto once they've decided upon the preferred line of attack. Rather, a procrastinator would be someone who, confident in their vision, still finds a reason to hold back. TFA describes nothing more than prioritisation and tasking. Procrastination is a subtle and devilish thing to defeat, often requiring you to look deep behind the facade of your behaviour to discover why you're really doing it.
The cure, imho, is often to embrace a more carefree attitude.
Time management... (Score:4, Interesting)
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"
Re:Has to be said... (Score:5, Interesting)
I've become more of a procrastinator over the years. For one, I see less of things being important, because they never are. Health issues are something I'm pretty aggressive about, but I put off stuff all the time. I didn't buy a computer beyond a P1 until recently because they were not good enough. I regret my haste, because then Apple came out with the 4 core PowerMac which should be more adequate than the cheaper iMac G5 that I opted for.
Also, if I put stuff off (since nothing is that important in the first place) I've found that many problems fix themselves or just go away, or something more "important" comes up.
Another thing to take into account is basic psychology. No organism really does anything before the time of reinforcement. People don't go to the bus stop much before the bus arrives. Most people don't do all of their Christmas shopping much before Chistmas. Most people don't file their taxes before April 15th. There are other variables though. I file my taxes right after Jan 1st when I get all of my documents together. I can always use the money, and I'd rather have the cash than the government keep it interest free until April. If I wasn't getting anything back, I'd wait until April 15th like most people.
So everybody, go ahead and fuck yourself. Its OK.
Re:Don't bother reading the article... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Not so fast (Score:2, Interesting)
Sometimes you just get unlucky. BTW on my more recent blown head gasket I got a new (used) header and better engineered gasket set and have gone an additional 60k miles without any problems! My break even analysis for if it was worth it was at 24k miles, also I did it when gas was at $1.25!!! Lol, I guess GWBush did help me one way, break even came sooner! POS '95 Plymouth Neon is my daily travel car (140-210 miles a day I drive, love being self employed). My other was a 64 1/2 Mustang. Hopefully I can get a Shelby Cobra this summer!!! 450 Horses!!!
See Also: Another Paul (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Don't bother reading the article... (Score:2, Interesting)
Working on something more important is a good thing? I'm sure this guy is going to face a lot of detractors that say that working on something less important is better. I hate it when essays have filler [wikipedia.org] like that.
Re:A better piece on the topic (Score:3, Interesting)
You would probably call my system cyclical procrastination. The key is to be doing more than one thing at a time. To get started you pick the thing that is least anxiety producing and tell yourself that you can leave it at any time with the proviso that you have to pick up something else, with maybe a short stint reading Slashdot or a newspaper online in between. You then do a little of the task, essentially until you get to a point where something is difficult or you generally want to avoid it more than the second least anxiety producing task. So then you move to that one, since it has become more relaxing to do.
One of the reasons why this works is because after a long enough period, you have had time to think about the harder task and work out how to do it easier or legitimately avoid it, so you can eventually return to it. You also have to find fairly mundane bits of difficult tasks that then let you get drawn further into the task.
If getting anything done at all is highly anxiety producing then the best thing is to change very quickly between many tasks, then it won't feel like you're doing anything at all, when in actuality you are.
A wise man... (Score:2, Interesting)
While we are on the topic (Score:2, Interesting)
Steven Covey? (Score:5, Interesting)
'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
I liked the article (Score:3, Interesting)
Now I'm working on decompilation (more generally binary program analysis) and hope that the same methods will work...
Procrastination is efficient (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:I have a boss like that. (Score:4, Interesting)
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.