A friend of mine delightfully dubbed this “fauxductivity.” I’ve myself glossed it as “productivity by the willful misprioritization of one’s various responsibilities.”
And yes, as Perry says, it’s pretty much the only way to ever get anything done. He’s equally right when he points out elsewhere in the essay that you have to take on a lot of responsibilities for it to work. Don’t cut your responsibilities back to only the MOST important things, in the mistaken belief that you’ll then stop procrastinating and accomplish them—you need the pressure of lots of responsibilities to spur you to accomplish anything at all.
It’s seemed to me that, assuming I commit to a volume of responsibility that is at least hypothetically physically possible, the amount I accomplish varies linearly with what I commit to—maybe at the 80% level or so. So it’s very important not to do something stupid like decide “I’m going to clear out my schedule for the next three months so I can really finish that article.” And of course, for the remaining 20% (or however much), you fall back on the kinds of techniques Perry recommends—being apologetically late on deadlines, letting adequate work stand in for the much-better-than-adequate work you fully intended to accomplish, etc.
It’s worth adding that the whole business is rather dangerous, because you’re ceding control of your mental activities to a process you don’t have much control over. So while the ideal of structured procrastination is “I should be writing that article … but I’m going to slack off and work on that other, slightly less important article instead!”, it often manifests instead as “I should be writing that article … BUT I CANNOT HAVE A MOMENT’S PEACE UNTIL THE BATHTUB HAS BEEN THOROUGHLY SCRUBBED!”
And then you wind up half a day later with nothing accomplished, but with a very clean bathtub. And tomorrow it’ll be the oven. &c.
So in a sense, structured procrastination is only an anti-akrasia technique for the already-not-particularly-akrasic.
So in a sense, structured procrastination is only an anti-akrasia technique for the already-not-particularly-akrasic.
In this, it differs little from most advice for the chronic procrastinator. Honestly, the first time I heard of this structured procrastination idea several years ago, my first thought was along the lines of, “I should maybe try that sometime.”
A friend of mine delightfully dubbed this “fauxductivity.” I’ve myself glossed it as “productivity by the willful misprioritization of one’s various responsibilities.”
And yes, as Perry says, it’s pretty much the only way to ever get anything done. He’s equally right when he points out elsewhere in the essay that you have to take on a lot of responsibilities for it to work. Don’t cut your responsibilities back to only the MOST important things, in the mistaken belief that you’ll then stop procrastinating and accomplish them—you need the pressure of lots of responsibilities to spur you to accomplish anything at all.
It’s seemed to me that, assuming I commit to a volume of responsibility that is at least hypothetically physically possible, the amount I accomplish varies linearly with what I commit to—maybe at the 80% level or so. So it’s very important not to do something stupid like decide “I’m going to clear out my schedule for the next three months so I can really finish that article.” And of course, for the remaining 20% (or however much), you fall back on the kinds of techniques Perry recommends—being apologetically late on deadlines, letting adequate work stand in for the much-better-than-adequate work you fully intended to accomplish, etc.
It’s worth adding that the whole business is rather dangerous, because you’re ceding control of your mental activities to a process you don’t have much control over. So while the ideal of structured procrastination is “I should be writing that article … but I’m going to slack off and work on that other, slightly less important article instead!”, it often manifests instead as “I should be writing that article … BUT I CANNOT HAVE A MOMENT’S PEACE UNTIL THE BATHTUB HAS BEEN THOROUGHLY SCRUBBED!”
And then you wind up half a day later with nothing accomplished, but with a very clean bathtub. And tomorrow it’ll be the oven. &c.
So in a sense, structured procrastination is only an anti-akrasia technique for the already-not-particularly-akrasic.
In this, it differs little from most advice for the chronic procrastinator. Honestly, the first time I heard of this structured procrastination idea several years ago, my first thought was along the lines of, “I should maybe try that sometime.”
Never got around to it. ;-)