

Why procrastination is good for you  - ValentineC
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/Why-Procrastination-is-Good-for-You-162358476.html

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dictum
I have a love/hate relationship with books that capitalize on a
counterintuitive notion, and that includes Malcolm Gladwell, mentioned in the
article. While they're good reminders that many societal preconceptions are
incorrect, too often they just replace one misconception with another.

Procrastination is not good. Procrastination is not bad. It's a question of
when and why. Perhaps intentional procrastination on some tasks and plans is
good, but when you procrastinate on everything, things don't magically become
better and you don't get any special insight: you just stop doing what you
wanted to do, and over time you end up lagging behind people who don't share
your love for procrastination.

Not all advice is good for all people. For entrepreneurs, procrastination is a
terrible suggestion. In a small business, if you don't go after opportunities,
you may forget about them; they won't come for you. Of course, a good
entrepreneur should distinguish between a worthwhile endeavor and a dead
end... but someone who adopts procrastination as a principle will leave the
trouble of distinguishing between work that's worth doing and work that isn't
for tomorrow.

A bad idea doesn't become better when you decide to sit on it and only
implement it a few months later. A better advice would be: stop having bad
ideas, and shoot dead a bad idea when you see one. This is hard work, and hard
work doesn't get done when you procrastinate.

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chimi
After first reading about the benefits of procrastination a year or two ago, I
made a conscious effort to delay decisions and actions that previously seemed
to need immediate resolution. I found that I rarely encountered a situation
that I delayed action on, even when it felt like I needed to act immediately,
that ended up being a mistake to delay.

Since then, I have noticed countless examples where delaying action benefited
me. I have wanted to implement features in my software that I knew would take
a long time and much concentration, but wanted, only to stumble upon an open
source library or tutorial or new standard in the browser that made it easily.
These include jsPlumb, jsdiff, encryption algorithms, and more.

There are also other countless times that I have acted too quickly. Writing
code to generate images to create rounded borders that are now handled
natively via CSS's border-radius. Lots of jQuery functionality, ajax and more.

The point is, it really _does_ help to procrastinate. It's not just lip
service. I have extrapolated this to really move away from deadlines. All
deadlines have either already passed or do not need to be met. I create no
deadlines for myself. I leave to the universe more deadlines -- working on
other people's schedules or those set by the weather.

I have found myself much more at peace. I live a better life now and am a lot
happier since I stopped rushing through everything. As I look back on my life,
I tried to move deadlines forward, get out of classes, pass milestones quicker
and so many times I remember whatever task it was I wanted to hurry through
taking longer than had I just gone at the regular pace.

Procrastinate. It's good for life.

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kqr2
"Structured procrastination" is another attempt to use procrastination in a
positive way:

<http://www.structuredprocrastination.com/>

It utilizes the principle:

    
    
      ...anyone can do any amount of work, provided it isn't 
      the work he is supposed to be doing at that moment.
    

Robert Benchley, in _Chips off the Old Benchley_ , 1949

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mnutt
The problem I see with this is that humans are really bad at estimating how
long tasks are to complete. So while perhaps procrastination isn't inherently
bad, in the world of poor estimation it means things don't get done on time.

~~~
te_chris
"don't get done on time"

What is "on time"? If things aren't getting done on time surely that is at
least partly the fault of imperfect estimation practices.

~~~
mnutt
"On time" would be any externally imposed deadline, and I would say it's
completely the fault of imperfect estimation practices.

If we could estimate perfectly, then deferring all work until it needed would
be uniformly good. But many times the true size of the work is unknown and we
procrastinate on estimating, and we only figure out how much work is involved
until it's too late.

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Mordio
Some days are so hectic you have no time to procrastinate.

