...Would anyone sincerely welcome that into their lives? Because I could actually do that, but if I were any good at it, people would find Eliezer’s advice above neutralized. (I, for instance, procrastinate very comfortably and therefore derive no value from his suggestion.)
I’m thinking about two specific situations in which there do not appear to be effective procrastination options.
1: You are too tired to enjoy anything but sleep. You are procrastinating on going to bed.
2: You are at a beach or a pool and would like to swim, but the water is cold. You are procrastinating on swimming.
More serious thoughts I’m having are based on the observation that many fun things I could do require exercising willpower or a period of undistracted conscious thought, both of which would pretty much prevent me from procrastinating. Do you achieve effective procrastination reflexively, or do you engage in planning and similar behavior to achieve effective procrastination?
In the first half of the comment, it’s fine if you don’t have any information. My motives for bringing it up were rather dumb, and it’s not really a coherent point. The second seems like a reasonable question. Everything but the final sentence is relatively unimportant.
However your first sentence brings up something interesting. Walking to my bedroom and doing some basic hygiene unpleasant and necessary, therefore work. However it is short in duration, and carries significant rewards (sometime, lying comfortably in bed in a few minutes, always, being well-rested tomorrow) Many of the same failures that cause me to procrastinate more than I want to, cause me to stay up later than I want to. Therefore I see strong connections between not working and not sleeping. Are some of these connections not part of your experience, or do you see these connections, but still deny that staying up late is procrastination?
I have trained myself not to put off sleep simply because I don’t want to brush my teeth or change into my pajamas. Neither of those things is important relative to getting to bed at a sane hour; so when I notice that what I am avoiding is not physically moving to my bed, lying down, and closing my eyes, but rather walking into the bathroom and performing my evening ablutions, I skip the latter. (Interestingly, granting myself permission to skip it often leads to me doing it, when I make it clear to myself that my choices are “go to bed without brushing my teeth, right now” or “go to bed after brushing my teeth, right now”.)
Clearly there is no point in discussing definitions. I thought something interesting might be occurring, but in fact, nothing was.
Relevant conclusion: The proper mental exercises can form an effective solution to OP-style procrastination, in which the bad part of the activity you’re not doing is very short, on the order of seconds or minutes. The other form of procrastination, in which the activity none is doing will be more fun than the activity you’re not doing for a long period, will remain unaffected.
Then you should write a post on how to procrastinate more effectively!
...Would anyone sincerely welcome that into their lives? Because I could actually do that, but if I were any good at it, people would find Eliezer’s advice above neutralized. (I, for instance, procrastinate very comfortably and therefore derive no value from his suggestion.)
I’m fairly certain that your advice would not work for all the situations in which I procrastinate.
Edit: How do you procrastinate properly with regards to swimming? Can you?
I’m having some trouble parsing your comment. Can you rephrase with more context?
I’m thinking about two specific situations in which there do not appear to be effective procrastination options.
1: You are too tired to enjoy anything but sleep. You are procrastinating on going to bed.
2: You are at a beach or a pool and would like to swim, but the water is cold. You are procrastinating on swimming.
More serious thoughts I’m having are based on the observation that many fun things I could do require exercising willpower or a period of undistracted conscious thought, both of which would pretty much prevent me from procrastinating. Do you achieve effective procrastination reflexively, or do you engage in planning and similar behavior to achieve effective procrastination?
I don’t think I’d really call either of those things “procrastinating”. That’s probably because I don’t identify sleep or swimming as “work”, though.
I still don’t know what kind of information you’re looking for.
In the first half of the comment, it’s fine if you don’t have any information. My motives for bringing it up were rather dumb, and it’s not really a coherent point. The second seems like a reasonable question. Everything but the final sentence is relatively unimportant.
However your first sentence brings up something interesting. Walking to my bedroom and doing some basic hygiene unpleasant and necessary, therefore work. However it is short in duration, and carries significant rewards (sometime, lying comfortably in bed in a few minutes, always, being well-rested tomorrow) Many of the same failures that cause me to procrastinate more than I want to, cause me to stay up later than I want to. Therefore I see strong connections between not working and not sleeping. Are some of these connections not part of your experience, or do you see these connections, but still deny that staying up late is procrastination?
I have trained myself not to put off sleep simply because I don’t want to brush my teeth or change into my pajamas. Neither of those things is important relative to getting to bed at a sane hour; so when I notice that what I am avoiding is not physically moving to my bed, lying down, and closing my eyes, but rather walking into the bathroom and performing my evening ablutions, I skip the latter. (Interestingly, granting myself permission to skip it often leads to me doing it, when I make it clear to myself that my choices are “go to bed without brushing my teeth, right now” or “go to bed after brushing my teeth, right now”.)
Before you trained yourself so, were you procrastinating?
Yes, but not about sleep, only about things I had erroneously entangled therewith.
Clearly there is no point in discussing definitions. I thought something interesting might be occurring, but in fact, nothing was.
Relevant conclusion: The proper mental exercises can form an effective solution to OP-style procrastination, in which the bad part of the activity you’re not doing is very short, on the order of seconds or minutes. The other form of procrastination, in which the activity none is doing will be more fun than the activity you’re not doing for a long period, will remain unaffected.
Well, I would, but I suspect I’m pretty atypical for LW in terms of my relationship with procrastination, productivity, akrasia, and so forth.