
How to Procrastinate and still get things done - saroz
http://chronicle.com/article/How-to-ProcrastinateStill/93959
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puls
You'll be happy to know that this paper won the 2011 Ig Nobel prize for
literature: [http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/09/30/us-nobel-spoof-
idU...](http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/09/30/us-nobel-spoof-
idUSTRE78S6VP20110930)

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tikhonj
This seems to reflect my experience perfectly--I think the only reason I get
some things done is because I don't want to do other, ostensibly more
important things.

I think this habit has a couple of interesting results for me: \- The amount
of stress I feel--and the amount of time I spend "working"--does not go up
linearly with workload. I am doing roughly twice as much (in terms of course
credit and part-time work) as I was last year, and my classes are harder, but
I feel maybe 1.3 times as much stress and still have an effectively similar
amount of leisure time. \- I am much more efficient than I would have been
otherwise. There are two reasons for this: I give myself less time to do
things but still finish them and I sometimes procrastinate by learning my
tools (keyboard shortcuts, emacs-fu...) and by automating things I do
regularly (writing bash scripts or emacs extensions).

Ultimately I do not view my procrastination as nearly as big a problem as
others make it out to be. I think I'm happier and more efficient for it; I
suspect that I would actually have accomplished less had I not procrastinated
all these years.

Of course, this is probably just a result of confirmation bias (I like
procrastinating, I think it helps me so I only see the cases where it does)
but I don't really care--it works for me.

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jpulgarin
On a similar note, I have productive things I can do no matter what mood I am.
I always have a list of videos, books, blog posts, programs to write, things
to plan, and puzzles to do so that no matter how I am feeling there is always
something productive I can do.

~~~
jh3
Are you ever doing nothing?

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jpulgarin
Rarely.

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jh3
You should mix it in with your list of things to do.

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jpulgarin
Why?

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SageRaven
Idle time is a wonderful thing.

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subnetvj
I guess a procrastinator would have a hard time thinking about what are the
important tasks what not .. Mr Professor might deem that he is a
procrastinator, but I think he really is not ..

~~~
micah63
My thoughts exactly, I have already thought of this theory many times, but I
am too lazy to make the list and prioritize it and then try to figure out how
to trick myself into thinking that non-important things are top priorities...

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kqr2
The author's website on structure procrastination:

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

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chris_dcosta
"begin by establishing a hierarchy of the tasks you have to do"

I bet I could procrastinate about doing this too.

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viddi
Believe it or not, but I was in the middle of the article and then jumped to
this tab. I wouldn't have continued reading it if it wasn't for replying to
your post. You don't need that list, just think of one thing that's more
important than making this list.

Remember that the list can't be the most important thing, as the success is
not guaranteed.

~~~
chris_dcosta
Mmmm you're clearly not a procrastinator. By replying to my post with urgency,
you indicate a tendancy to get things done, unless of course you didn't finish
reading the article, in which case welcome to the club.

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ZeagleFiend
The problem with actually implementing this system is that, after drawing up
said list of things that need doing, I would simply go and find myself doing a
bunch of other stuff, stuff which isn't on the list, but is capable of making
itself seem important and worthwhile enough to me to keep me from feeling bad.
Stuff like reading that book I bought a year ago, practising piano, reading
articles about interesting stuff online, writing and then scrapping the
opening few pages of a novel...

The point is, making such a list of tasks to do would simply give me something
else to avoid entirely. I might even progress to having lists of lists of
tasks.

I realise this article isn't serious, but it's interesting to consider. I
could never make it work, because pandering to procrastination like this would
just engender further procrastination and further doing of things which can
seem important but are really utterly unimportant.

There is almost always something you would rather be doing than what you are
doing right now.

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rottendoubt
Break big tasks into lots of small ones. Add a "carrot" that you reward
yourself with each time you complete a small task.

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jarofgreen
Interesting, but the hard part of this is really knowing what is and isn't
important.

For instance, in the article he talks about how he "has" to publish his
reading list at the start of the summer and how he puts it off a couple of
months because he thinks it isn't really important. That's nice, but maybe the
students who want to sort out their books or even do some reading over the
summer and the hard working people in the admin office and bookshop disagree.
"I got almost daily reminders from the department secretary; students
sometimes asked me what we would be reading;" Sounds like his procrastinating
on this caused problems for others.

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bobstobener
Or, as designed by academia and force-fed into the business structure, the
PMBOK. [http://www.amazon.com/Guide-Project-Management-Body-
Knowledg...](http://www.amazon.com/Guide-Project-Management-Body-
Knowledge/dp/1933890517/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1317658138&sr=8-1)

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vilya
This reminds me of a really quite wonderful paper: "Scheduling Algorithms for
Procrastinators"

[http://www.cs.sunysb.edu/~bender/newpub/2007-BenderClTs-
JoS-...](http://www.cs.sunysb.edu/~bender/newpub/2007-BenderClTs-JoS-
procrastinate.pdf)

Well worth a read when you've got something else you're putting off.

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orionlogic
John Perry's in depth talk about procrastination
<http://www.philosophytalk.org/shows/procrastination>

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vsl2
I added "comment on procrastinator article at HN" to my list of things to do
and gave it low priority.

If only I could convince myself all of the onerous tasks at work were low
priority...

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machinarium
So when will we spend our time to do the important things? They are still the
things you have to do but dont want to do.

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viddi
There's just a problem when you have a "list" that goes like a circle.

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macco
I have a question? Can you fool yourself? Isn't it like ojects have kittleing
yourself?

