
Structured Procrastination: Do Less and Deceive Yourself - Tomte
http://web.archive.org/web/20160227122619/http://www.structuredprocrastination.com/
======
neckro23
This is a longer and more lucid version of a quip I have about my
procrastination:

"I can do anything in the world... as long as there's something _more
important_ I'm supposed to be doing instead!"

~~~
nwah1
A friend of mine always says something similar.

"There's no limit to what you can do, as long as it isn't what you're supposed
to be doing."

~~~
mamurphy
Is your friend the same Robert Benchley, from Chips off the Old Benchley, that
was quoted at the top of the article?

~~~
nwah1
Missed that quote. Good to see the source.

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danm07
I think this is kind of a thumbtack solution to a more systemic issue. Self-
deception, in my opinion, never works: you have to force yourself to be
slightly dumber than you are.

The other reason why it doesn't work in the long-term is that you will always
be working on things that are adjacent to what's truly important.

Clairvoyance is a better solution. Ever get stuck in a circular argument?
After a while, you realize its going nowhere and you walk away.
Procrastination, at least in my mind, is almost the same thing. If I let
myself observe the mundane things I do, I'll eventually get sick of myself and
stop doing it.

Success in dealing with procrastination really a question how viscerally you
feel a dead-end coming, and also making the necessary adjustments to remove
triggers if its difficult to stop yourself in the act.

~~~
spion
Another alternative (still requires willpower, but significantly less) is to
ask yourself "What is the smallest step I can take in the direction of
finishing the task" repeatedly.

It looks simple, but the answer to that question isn't always easy. Sometimes
the "smallest step" really isn't; then you have to drill down to get to a
smaller one. Sometimes its not clear which step should be first; a list of
potential steps is beneficial in those cases.

I think most procrastination stems from a combination of unclear goals and
getting stuck; for me the above method gets rid of the second aspect and lets
me move without having a clear idea which direction I'm going.

~~~
Scarblac
That's also a way to analysis paralysis though; sometimes you think about it,
make a list of steps, put the first on your to do list, and so on.

Later you find that the first five steps could in fact have been done in ten
minutes total without deep thoughts required.

~~~
spion
The important part is that it lets you move, even if at much slower speeds.
The small nature and unambiguity of the first step allows the possibility for
it to beat procrastination impulses with lower willpower.

Slow movement is better than no movement. Also it often makes it easier to
pick up speed afterwards.

------
treehau5
But if I put big seemingly important but not really important things at the
top and then work on the bottom ones, I will know that I am doing this, and
resent myself. That's the biggest issue with my procrastination: my self
loathing.

(Ironically, here I am, reading this article about how to do the things I am
suppose to be doing with at least 5 things that need to be done before this
week is over)

~~~
jschwartzi
I manage my procrastination by taking on more tasks than I can handle, and
then letting the seemingly really important ones wait while I finish less
important stuff. As an example, my apartment was never so clean as when I was
working from home on a side job, because I would wake up in the morning and
immediately clean it as a way of avoiding the side job.

~~~
treehau5
I get that part. What I don't get is how you deal with the fact that you know
you are just scheming yourself?

~~~
state_less
You were already scheming, slacking off and feeling bad about it. Now you get
some useful work done on the side.

~~~
charlieflowers
I think the self that you are scheming will see what you are doing, admire you
for it, and agree to play along. You're both participating in the con because
you both get what you want.

Granted, this feels insane as I type it, but it also sounds like it might work
quite well :)

------
tammer
My tip? Make your to-do list your twitter. I.e., when you get that ping of
dopamine depletion that makes you want to pop open a social network or
similar, open your to-do list instead. Start out by just scrolling through it,
then maybe go do whatever you were going to do. Ideally you'll have some
small, easily completable tasks on the list along with the larger more
annoying ones. If so, maybe sometime you’ll spot one you can get done really
fast. Make sure you check off the item when you’re done. Do it enough & the
goal is to rewire your reward drive towards productivity, eventually building
up a chemical response to checking off items that’s greater than dipping into
the infostream.

~~~
jgeraert
Great idea. I will start by developing my to-do app...

~~~
traviscj
Legitimately gone down this path and hack on it to procrastinate. It's now
redis-backed, supports dependent todos, and has a decent command-line
interface.

No idea how I am still employed.

------
afarrell
A far more effective method in my experience has been to focus not on the end
product, about which one has a feeling of dread, but on the process. Frame the
task as "spend N minutes doing X."

Of course, there is the possibility that you start doing X and just find you
don't know what to do with yourself in those minutes. That's useful
information! You've just discovered that you don't know enough about the task
to get started. Now your task is to write a coherent request for
help/clarification.

~~~
sampl
I've noticed this principle come up in the pomodoro technique and the
"Learning How to Learn" course on Coursera.

Not sure how applicable it is outside of just-do-it work (paperwork, emails,
etc) though. I've used it in my design work, for example, but I'm concerned
I'll spend too many cycles on spinning my wheels on rather than thinking
deeply about the problem and solving it simply.

~~~
afarrell
I recently watched the lectures from that class. I wish I'd taken it 8 years
ago because it was a clear and concise summary of a bunch of lessons I'd
learned through much harder ways.

As far as thinking deeply about the problem, I've found that is helped by
first getting your brain into the task by doing a pomodoro and, if you still
feel the desire to procrastinate, either talking it through with someone else,
going for a walk, or both.

------
golfer
Hard to tell (on my mobile screen anyway), but this was written by John Perry,
philosophy professor at Stanford [1]. I've been a huge fan of his ideas on
this for ~20 years. He has a number of other light essays. His website appears
down at the moment though.

[1]
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Perry_(philosopher)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Perry_\(philosopher\))

~~~
vic-traill
To avoid MeTooism, I'll agree _and_ note that my own favourite among JP's
varied, tongue-in-cheek, yet thoughtful essays has always been The Case
Against Golf [0].

[Posting webarchive.org link as the HN attention seems to have dropped the
site]

[0]
[http://web.archive.org/web/20160211223333/http://www.structu...](http://web.archive.org/web/20160211223333/http://www.structuredprocrastination.com/the-
case-against-golf/)

~~~
ikeboy
Submitted to
[https://www.reddit.com/r/nongolfers/](https://www.reddit.com/r/nongolfers/)
:)

------
jcoffland
Better advice is to allow yourself to do other things sometimes. We all have
this idea of what we should be doing, usually work related and when we are not
doing it we feel guilty. It took me a long time to accept that it was OK to
sometimes go off on a tangent to satisfy my own curiosity and that not only
did I not need to feel guilty about it but that it was actually good for me
mentally and for my career because I learned new and valuable skills and
avoided burnout.

~~~
nitrogen
I suspect that, over time, the brain learns to use nagging curiosities as a
signal that something important to one's current work can be found by pursuing
the tangent.

------
thomasahle
> Procrastinators often follow exactly the wrong tack. They try to minimize
> their commitments, assuming that if they have only a few things to do, they
> will quit procrastinating and get them done. But this goes contrary to the
> basic nature of the procrastinator and destroys his most important source of
> motivation. The few tasks on his list will be by definition the most
> important, and the only way to avoid doing them will be to do nothing. This
> is a way to become a couch potato, not an effective human being.

~~~
jasperry
Avoiding commitment out of fear of over-commitment is a problem, but there
there is also a danger in taking on more than we think we can handle, because
that can lead to feeling overwhelmed and becoming paralyzed and unable to do
anything. Probably this affects some personality types more than others. To me
it's better to gradually build up confidence in how much we can handle--
especially since the inability to say 'no' is such a prevalent disease in some
circles.

------
schlowmo
> "The key idea is that procrastinating does not mean doing absolutely
> nothing."

I felt that way since I know the word "procrastination". When I talk about
"procrastiantion" with other people I propose exactly this definition:
Procrastination is a way to get stuff done, only that it's not the stuff with
the closest deadline.

> Indeed, the procrastinator can even acquire, as I have, a reputation for
> getting a lot done.

This is why I felt the idea of the "instant gratification monkey"[0] doesn't
fit my definition of procrastination so well. It's not just a pet in my head,
but also friends, flatmates and co-workers whom I doing favors while I'm
procrastinating.

Anecdotal example: When somethings broken in our flat, my flatmates asking me
when I have much work to do, because then will be the time when I will fix the
broken stuff instead of doing the actual (paid) work. There's also the joke
about me that when I stop doing (paid) work the whole house will go down
because I will have less motivations to fix things.

But there's also a dark side of this kind of behaviour: When I call it a day
and review the things I have achieved that day, all the things I got done can
easily drown in the sea of things which I have not but were on the top of the
ToDo list. Sometimes this is the moment where "panic monster"[0] is seeing its
chance.

And yes, even reading article about procrastination is still procrastination
in the sense of my proposed definition.

[0] [http://waitbutwhy.com/2013/10/why-procrastinators-
procrastin...](http://waitbutwhy.com/2013/10/why-procrastinators-
procrastinate.html)

------
EnFinlay
Second time this has been posted. It's a cute idea but doesn't solve the
underlying problem that most people need to simplify and give themselves
time/permission to not be "succeeding" at all moments.

~~~
laughfactory
I agree that we do need to give ourselves permission to turn off sometimes;
and culturally we need to stop being so damn masochistic about work and such.
It would be good if we all put more of a priority on LIVING. Work, no matter
how inspiring, is still work.

That said, I think a lot of procrastinators could use this intentional
strategy to get more done when we are working. For instance, I can see how
this might help me out. And hey, I'm a big believer in doing whatever works,
even if it seems silly on the surface.

------
buzzybee
I use a to-do ordered by perceived energy and alternate between low and high
energy tasks over the course of the day. On most days this means that I do a
lot of low energy things and few or no high energy things, but as with the
structured procrastination approach, I am getting a lot done, the only
difference being that I'm not couching it in terms of ineptitude and
avoidance.

Edit: And I also had a huge issue before with concerning myself about the
"right time" to do a thing. The right time is now when I have the energy and
there are appropriate external conditions(time of day, weather).

------
urahara
The only thing that helps me to be more productive is allowing myself to
procrastinate as long as I want and do whatever I want. Because any other
scenarios make me caught in an endless "try to force myself - get nervous and
lose self respect because it didn't work - hate all work on earth forever"
cycle. If I allow myself to do whatever I want and procrastinate as long as I
want, I simply get bored soon and return to work. Or find better ideas what to
do next.

------
codingdave
Slightly different approach -- I put my big projects on top of my list, and
smaller bites of those projects below. The smaller bites are more
approachable, and I tend to want to tackle them quicker. And sometimes I
surprise myself, realizing a project IS done, as I tick off the last little
bite and realize there isn't another one to start.

------
Michielvv
Although I can see the reasoning, this absolutely does not work for me. The
times procrastination bothers me is exactly in those cases: when there is
something important but not exactly specified at the top of the list. I'll
feel guilty about not working on it and then end up in a sort of limbo between
the task I could be doing and the 'important' one.

What helps for me is exactly the opposite: deciding this important task does
not have a clear path forward and therefore go write down each and every
question I have about it and need answered before moving forward or explicitly
decide I don't have the proper energy/focus for it at that time and move on to
something easier.

------
asimjalis
I find it even more effective to pretend I have already completed the task and
then bask in the gratification of being done.

~~~
tudorw
a tweak to this is to throw a few things in the list that you've already done,
then at least you get to cross off something at the end of the day..

------
closed
I used to try stacking the deck in the way this article mentions, until I
tried Adderall and realized that it made this kind of task juggling totally
unnecessary.

It was really bizarre to experience. However, to be honest, I don't need laser
focus most the time, and like the sort ambling approach he discusses. My
strategy for the next few months is going to be using it one day a week, for
sweeping up the boring things (that otherwise haunt my waking life).

------
MetallicCloud
This seems a lot like the idea a lot of people I know do. They set their alarm
clock 10 minutes fast, so in theory they will assume they are running late and
get moving in the morning.

I honestly don't know how people think this will work. You _know_ you changed
the time, so people quickly just adapt to the new 'running late time'

~~~
vog
Interestingly, the real awareness starts when, after some weeks, one changes
such a clock back to the actual time:

Then you suddenly have to remember that this clock does show the correct time,
which increases the stress level even more than the previous "10 minutes fast"
phase.

Not sure if this is a good or bad thing, but an intesting experience
nevertheless.

------
proee
My most innovate times are during procrastination. My brain subconsciously
looks for something else to do, and my very best ideas come at this time.

When I'm razor focused on the task at hand (i.e. NOT procrastination), there's
no "creative" freedom to capture a tiger by his tail and follow him wherever
that may lead.

------
daxelrod
When I tried this technique, all of the self-deception stressed me out to the
point where I got nothing done.

I feel like it probably works better for people only balancing a few tasks
that aren't interrelated.

------
ccvannorman
Except for the super annoying blue bar popping in and out of this horrible
website I'll never visit again, great article!

I have found myself inadvertently taking advantage of my procrastination in
this way before, and it's useful to codify it in the language this article
uses.

EDIT: The horrible website is one I have respect for, archive.org, which
didn't use to have this eye-gouging UX. I'll send them a friendly feedback
email about it.

~~~
zapu
I think the blue bar is from
[http://www.structuredprocrastination.com/](http://www.structuredprocrastination.com/),
archive has it's own bar with capture date selection, that can be closed.

------
jcoffland
This fits in with games like setting your clock forward 5 mins to trick
yourself into being on time. It's a slippery slope.

------
marcosscriven
Oddly, my mobile provider Three (UK) blocks this, claiming it's 'adult'
content.

------
l1feh4ck
Imagine you are doing procrastination in a structured way. Everything you do
will go on to this algorithm before you even do it. So the combined effect of
all these might take you to a new direction in life which you intent not to be
in.

------
stenlee
"Good and Bad Procrastination" (Dec 2005)
[http://www.paulgraham.com/procrastination.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/procrastination.html)

------
indubitably
Apparently nothing was ever more important than renewing the domain…

------
notlikeme
The only thing i feel about procrastination -- problem exist only when it
receives your attention. Have no hunger? Keep it simple: don't eat.

~~~
posterboy
talk smack, noone complain? just keep going! (honestly, what are you trying to
say?)

~~~
notlikeme
What i want to say is that given explanation is more complicated than
necessary. If we have no flaws (?) with simple: "no wish -> don't do" why
there is a need to construct such complex things with self-tricking?

------
youare123
It seems the book the art of procrastination by Perry is about this kind of
thing. Has someone read that book?

~~~
youare123
The article is by John Perry author of the book: The art of procrastination,
more meat.

~~~
youare123
John Perry is an emeritus professor of philosophy at Stanford University and
currently teaches at UC Riverside. He is the co-host of the nationally
syndicated public radio program Philosophy Talk, and winner, in 2011, of an Ig
Nobel Prize in Literature for the essay “Structured Procrastination.”

------
porter
Spot on. How else are we all supposed to rack up HN Karma points?

------
mamarjan
Holy shit! This is me. Now everything makes sense.

------
xyzzy4
Procrastination is often caused by wanting to do something but not knowing
exactly what to do. The solution is to cut it up into bite-sized pieces and
start doing them one at a time.

------
chris0x00
This looks like it might be inline with a philosophy that I've been developing
independently. I should totally read this article at some point.

