Structured Procrastination

1) http://www.structuredprocrastination.com/ is amazing when done properly. It should not be confused with productive procrastination which is closely related but much less useful.

So the idea of structured procrastination is you put at the top some task that is very important but at the same time could possibly be delayed or dealt at the very last minute.

Your tasks 2-5 are where the gains lie.

This is where you put your writing a book, writing that documentation for your project, writing that game, polishing that UI for your visualization.

Recent anecdata: I had to grade 90 algorithms exams, which I had foolishly allowed to submitted in about 10 different languages without an auto-grader. So I was getting PHP, Java,Rust, TS for Deno etc etc.

Instead I procrastinated for a few days writing a number of Jupyter Notebooks for munging some data which I had put off for about 4 months.

As soon as I received 10 bachelor thesis to review I moved those to the top of my list and I graded the 90 algorithms exams with time to spare.

So productive procrastination is the less useful cousin of structured procrastination.

In productive procrastination you put in slots 2-5 tasks that seem productive but rapidly reach diminishing returns.

So if my slot 2 was going over 40 points on chess Puzzle Rush, it would be better than playing 30 second bullet chess but still not really that productive...

So polishing UI could not be that productive at some point, or running 1000 AB tests.

I disagree with labeling work on less-imporant tasks as procrastination. I think it's often (but not always) more effective to breeze through less important tasks that you're itching to do instead of slowly trudging along the highest priority task that you detest. The unpleasant topmost task becomes much less daunting once you've built momentum with a few easy wins and can see yourself as a producer instead of a procrastinator.

There's also the idea of structured procrastination, [1] which turns procrastination into a productivity tool. It's based on the insight that an unpleasant task may become attractive when seen as a way to procrastinate on something even more unpleasant. For a true procrastinator it means working productively on tasks #2..n instead of reading Hacker News thinking "one last article and then I'll start working on task #1". It's an excellent way to avoid getting stuck in a vicious cycle of procrastination, and calling it "hidden procrastination" is unnecessarily negative.

http://www.structuredprocrastination.com/

> It can be actually good if you do "structured procrastination"

This is actually what John Perry, an emeritus professor of philosophy at Stanford calls it. There is even an essay (and a whole website) called "Structured Procrastination" [1]:

> Structured procrastination means shaping the structure of the tasks one has to do in a way that exploits this fact. The list of tasks one has in mind will be ordered by importance. Tasks that seem most urgent and important are on top. But there are also worthwhile tasks to perform lower down on the list. Doing these tasks becomes a way of not doing the things higher up on the list. With this sort of appropriate task structure, the procrastinator becomes a useful citizen. Indeed, the procrastinator can even acquire, as I have, a reputation for getting a lot done.

[1] https://www.structuredprocrastination.com/

I think that if people followed your advice academia would essentially be deserted and not only by students but by teachers as well. :)

I don't procrastinate because I don't care, I procrastinate because there are multiple things I care about. A few of those happens to be playing games, reading hacker news, having a god awful many feeds in my newsreader, drinking beer and having more then one project at any time. Although I have the personality type that does things at the end of a deadline and I know people who aren't like that think of us as lazy and unstructured but it's not like that at all.
I found this to be extremely insightful once: http://www.structuredprocrastination.com/

I also doubt there are many (if any) that has a job that's interesting all the time. :)

There are three tricks I've found work best to stop procrastinating.

1. Ovsiankina effect. The effect states that an interrupted task, even without incentive, values as a "quasi-need". It creates intrusive thoughts, aimed at taking up the task again. [1]

2. Structured procrastination. [2]

3. Concentrating on the steps to complete the task, not your feelings and emotions about completing it. Action vs. state orientation. [3][4]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ovsiankina_effect

[2] http://www.structuredprocrastination.com/

[3] https://catalyst.library.jhu.edu/catalog/bib_1668041

[4] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/jopy.12140

I think you might be referring to John Perry :)

http://www.structuredprocrastination.com/ [0]

I really liked his book "The Art of Procrastination: A Guide to Effective Dawdling, Lollygagging and Postponing". I read a lot about procrastination, as a form of procrastination.

It's not all bad, of course. But it can be a problem. These professors writing about it clearly has managed to make it work for them somehow. I guess the grass seems greener on the other side of the procrastination spectrum.

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10151481