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Good and Bad Procrastination
Posted by
ScuttleMonkey
on Sun Dec 25, 2005 05:56 PM
from the massive-shuffle-of-geeks-sending-this-to-their-mothers dept.
from the massive-shuffle-of-geeks-sending-this-to-their-mothers dept.
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?
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Has to be said... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Has to be said... (Score:5, Funny)
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:Has to be said... (Score:5, Informative)
It took me a while to 'get it' too but I see the light and I've been a crusader for my friends by constantly asking them how much tax they paid come the first quarter of the year.
It started off with "I didn't have to pay, I got money back" type of comment and even then, they still didn't get it. People care more about the cash they get BACK that could have always been theirs, even if it was theirs in the first place.
People just don't like to save and like to run up credit cards.
People who say "I got money back", I then ask them if I can borrow a thousand dollars for 6 months and show the comparison between interest free vs a money market savings account.
They also don't understand why I choose to pay taxes vs withholding.
The only debt I have is a mortgage - tax deductible interest, and all my cars are paid off and they're less than 5 years old.
Re:Has to be said... (Score:5, Informative)
The more accurate perception is that:
You cannot manage your money well, the government has a plan that always works in their favor. See, they will take about 30% of your pay for "free" every month without you having to think about it. If fact, they will take a little extra, just to make sure you pay "enough" by the end of the year. They will hold it for free for you until the end of the year. The will then continue holding it until you ask for it back, for free!
Unfortunately, I have had the government blindly take my money every time I get paid since I was 15 years old, that I was conditioned not to think much about it until recently. People often say that their housing is the most expensive thing they pay for, then their car. The are wrong and off by one. Taxes are #1, house typically #2, car typically #3. Aside from gas and regular maintenance, I spend more on food and beverages (mostly alcoholic, and taxed out the wazoo) than I spend on car payments. I currently pay $20 a month interest on my car, and it will be paid off in a while. I've never paid more than $2,500 for a car before, but I wanted a better one so I splurged with a $7k car after the police took my last one. Oh, well.
I'm curious. How do you estimate your taxes, and what do you do with your money until they ask for it? I'm not that experienced with financial stuff because I'm apathetic towards it, but I'm very interested in putting more $$$ in my pocket and not the government's. By my rough estimates, I would only make about $200 to $300 at a 3% interest (I'm basing this on a 30% tax of about $50k income) if I didn't do any withholdings. I don't make much money, but to me I would actually prefer to have the government manage my debt to them and get a little extra back in one chunk at the end of the year for the extra couple of bucks. So I guess I'm in the "I cannot manage my money well department", but if there was more incentive for me to do so, I could be more interested in spending more time with this. But right now, I only deduct student loan interest and mortgage interest because I don't know if any extra investment in effort and time would be more profitable than getting a side job which I'm not interested in doing either.
I am grateful that I don't have to pay taxes on medications, but I'm ungrateful that I have to spend extra tax over top of the "regular" tax to eat. But I can shit for free.
Re:Has to be said... (Score:4, Funny)
Looks interesting... (Score:5, Funny)
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".
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.
Re:procrastinating worked for me... (Score:4, Insightful)
https://studentloan.citibank.com/s/faaonln/resour
http://www.brefigroup.co.uk/acrobat/quadrnts.pdf [brefigroup.co.uk]
Basically, a task can either be important and urgent, important but not urgent, urgent but not important, or unimportant and not urgent. Instead of dealing with all tasks as urgent whether they're time wasters or not and running around like a chicken without a head, you're taking the time to sort out what's important and what's not before doing anything. That's not procrastination. That's just good time management.
Ob procrastination quote:
"One of the lessons of history is that nothing is often a good thing to do and always a clever thing to say."
-- Will Durant
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.
Take it from me, I know about procrastination (Score:5, Funny)
oh damn (Score:3, Funny)
Obligatory (Score:5, Funny)
Imagine a beowulf cluster... no
In South Korea only old people... no
Oh well, I will get around to it later.
A better piece on the topic (Score:5, Interesting)
I'll read the dupe on Wednesday (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I'll read the dupe on Wednesday (Score:4, Funny)
Go do the laundry you lazy bum! (Score:5, Funny)
Prioritizing procrastination (Score:3, Funny)
SB
I use it (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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"
Not so fast (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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.
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
Re:Don't bother reading the article... (Score:5, Informative)